With Explosions of Color, Tibetan Art Flourishes
For the New York Times, Edward Wong reports from Sengeshong, Qinghai Province, on the Tibetan Buddhist art of thangka painting:
The monasteries in this mountain valley are some of the most important centers of art in the Tibetan world, famed for the creation of painted and cloth scrolls called thangkas that depict Tibetan gods and other religious iconography. In 1999, artists in the area finished the 675-yard-long Great Thangka, which Guinness World Records certified as the biggest thangka in the world.
The artists here practice the Rebkong style of thangka painting that has flourished since the 17th century. Thangkas from this part of northwestern Qinghai Province are commissioned by monasteries as far away as Lhasa, the Tibetan capital. In recent years, thangkas have gained a following among some ethnic Han Chinese, and individual collectors from Chinese cities and foreign countries have driven up the prices. (For his painting of Chenresig, Lobsang was asking 3,600 yuan, or about $530, a fortune for most Tibetans.)
The commercialization will “drive thangkas far from their origins, from their use as religious objects,” said Zhang Yasha, a teacher of fine arts at the Minzu University of China who specializes in Tibet. “We see more young people learning the art because it’s lucrative.”
For more on the art of thangka, see this site.
POSTED COMMENTS: 12 Responses
With the road, come tourism along with yuan creating market for arts employing tibetan artist to preserve their culture and heritage. Commercialsm it is but flourishing culture nonetheless
With their money they contribute to the local temple and built or renovate religious icon
The virtuous cycle continue So who said Tibetan culture is dying down anything but
From Fool mountain Forum
http://blog.foolsmountain.com/2009/03/08/dalai-lama-warns-of-looming-violence/#comments
Mark Anthony Jones quote
“The government’s policy seemed to be that, as long as you did not talk about independence everything was permissible. Many more magazines and newspapers started up, and the government allowed a lot of local, indigenous NGOs to emerge, which have been very effective in campaigning against poverty….Culturally, there have been two separate kinds of development. On the one hand, there has been a revival of traditional Tibetan culture and arts and crafts. On the other, a new practice is emerging of modern, figurative painting by Tibetan artists….there is nothing immediately Tibetan about their work; conservative elements in fact see it as somehow a rejection of Tibet, an immitation of the West…There is something new and vital in Tibet, produced by a younger generation whose outlook is very different from that of conservative elements in our society…For me, the emergence of modern Tibetan literature – novels, short stories and poetry, from 1980 onwards – is a very exciting development, expressing much more of what is happening in Tibet, the desires of ordinary people and the region’s possible future direction.”
Tsering goes on to provide much more detail about such cultural developments, and again, his claims support those of Thowsen and Kolas, as well as those of other leading Tibetan specialists, like Melvyn C. Goldstein and Barry Sautman – most academic researchers of today’s Tibet agree that Tibet, since the 1980s, has experienced a cultural renaissance – both traditional and contemporary culture is flourishing. When fellow Sydney-sider James West, a radio journalist with Triple J, visited Tibet a few years ago, he discovered for himself the generation gap. As he wrote in his travel narrative, “Beijing Blur” (published by Penguin, 2008) his Tibetan guide, Thuptan, was “himself a fan of Chinese modernisation. He wore a spectrum-blue t-shirt emblazoned with ‘Nirvana’ – the band, not the destination – Michael Jordon-era hightops, and walked like a breakdancer.” (p.211)
“Since the 1980s….both traditional and contemporary culture is flourishing”
–John, you must place this sentence in a frame of reference. Pre-1980 the traditional culture was completely wiped out and destroyed for 20 something years by an invading foreign force! Now this same force would try and take credit for some very minor leniency to only make a buck on tourism??? How dispicable…but of course totally expected.
haha, when did Michael Jordans hightops become “Chinese modernization”, they are equally popular among Tibetans in India,
is that “Indian modernization”?
John, you must place this sentence in a frame of reference. Pre-1980 the traditional culture was completely wiped out and destroyed for 20 something years by an invading foreign force!
Are you referring to Cultural Revolution here. Tibet is not accorded special treatment in destruction of Cultural relic or Icon It happened else where is China. Whether it is Confucian temple of Uighur Mosque, they were treated equally harsh .
And most of destruction is perpetrated by local Tibetan Kids ofcourse under influence of Han Chinese
But it is water under the bridge now. Since then CCP acknowledge the error and try to make amend to those bad years and most Tibetan temple has been restore. Now with more richer population they too chip in to rebuilt those local temple to even more grandeur temple.
Potala Palace, together with the Norbu Lingka and the Sakya Monastery, are the three main Tibetan cultural heritage sites. They have been restored with a total investment of 333 million yuan (US$40 million) by the central government since 2002.
I know for sure It take them 7 years and 10 Million US dollar just to renovate Potala Palace. Not too mention other cultural relic like Norbu Linka, Labrang
From China daily
The Tibetan people’s freedom of religious belief and their traditional customs and habits have been respected and protected. According to statistics, since the 1980s the state has allocated more than 300 million yuan and a large amount of gold, silver and other materials for the maintenance and protection of the monasteries in Tibet. For instance, the state allocated more than 55 million yuan for the repair of the Potala Palace, and the renovation lasted more than five years, being the largest project and involving the largest amount of capital in the maintenance history of the palace in the past few centuries. At present, Tibet has 1,787 monasteries and sites for religious activities, and over 46,000 resident monks and nuns; the region’s various important religious festivals and activities are held normally; and every year more than one million Tibetan people go to Lhasa to pay homage. While maintaining the traditional Tibetan ways and styles
John,
If you trashed your own ‘house’, no one else really cares! BUT if you walk across the street into someone elses property and destroy their ‘house’, this is madness and an action that most civil societies will criminalize!
The destruction was by far and away from the PLA when they looted all the major monasteries and even homes in Tibet and then fell the major monastieries with mortars and bombs. The only looting the Tibetans did was to try and get something to eat caused by the famine after the PLA invasion!!!
hi sr,
how are you going today?
lol… good thanks :) (point taken) ;)
ohm mani padme hum
sr,
I am happy to see you lol-ing.
Grudge – however “justified” – is not going anywhere. Look at them old waxworks in the Beijing and Lhasa. I rather share a laugh with His Holiness!
The one who laughs last, laughs best!
And these grim guys don’t know to laugh even while they call the shots!
Pity them.
And if there are indead hells, they still have a worse time ahead… Imagine that!
indead…?
Should read “indeed” of course!
Lapsus linguae, I guess… LOLLOLLOL
My apologies, evil!
I’ve taken to imitating again…
LOLLOLLOL ;-)
LOLLOL, dosen’t matter that you’re imitating, so as you UNDERSTAND yourself WHY you are imitating me and WHY you CHOOSE to imitate me, LOLLOLLOL!!!
The interest in the art of Tibet is a good thing for the Tibetan people. Look at what happened to Innuit Art.