B Series (B1-B10)

Hell scrolls are not individualistic works of art. Workshops painted hell scrolls en masse and relied upon guidebooks, pounces or stencils on one hand and a sheer repetition that resulted in producing near replicas on the other. The only mechanically reproduced set of hells scrolls on this website, B Series may appear garish and cheap compared to all its hand-painted counterparts here, but printed hell scrolls were simply a further step in mass production. While the B Series scrolls consist of pre-printed pages glued together like a billboard, they still include the popular stories found in their hand-painted cousins, including Mulian's search for his mother and Taizong's tour through hell. (Image: 71 X 146 cm.)