News from tibetanart.com
Kathmandu - November 2011
Descending into Kathmandu’s Tribhuvan airport over the intricately terraced southern foothills is like diving into murky water, with the pure white Himalayan snowline becoming increasingly jaundiced as it rapidly dissolves into the polluted haze of the pallid sky. Over the past ten years the population of the Kathmandu Valley has more than doubled to an estimated two million, and is predicted to reach four million by 2020. There are now around half a million motorbikes in the Valley, twice as many as there were three years ago, yet apart from a recently reconstructed and Japanese financed highway that extends from Koteshwar to beyond Bhaktapur, the fragile road system of the Valley remains much the same as it always has, but is now more congested and chaotic than ever.
So after just two days in Kathmandu I developed a severe respiratory problem, which stayed with me for the three weeks I was there. I had hoped to help a friend from Moscow to procure more than a hundred expensive copper statues for his Buddhist organization’s various centers across Russia, but in the end he essentially succeeded in accomplishing this task by himself. Aside from this, everything was extremely creative and as dynamic as it always is for me in Nepal, with much of my time being spent in the company of my Newar artist friends, especially Raj Prakash, Samundra Man and Davita, Ram Prakash and Amrit Dangol, who are always prepared for fun, learning and motorcycle adventures, with whom I have visited many ancient sites and remote temples over the years.
Much has changed in the world of Newar art since I was last in Kathmandu twenty months previously. The works of the finest painters are now in great demand, with some wealthy collectors, investors and art lovers in Nepal now seeking to acquire or accumulate their paintings. But given the amount of time needed to produce such masterpieces, this has led to a scarcity of available paintings and a great increase in the prices that individual artist’s can now command for their new works. All of this is good news for me, as I can no longer afford to collect and patronize Newar art like I have done for the past sixteen years. The collection I now have is embarrassingly enormous, and ironically I could easily take much of it back to Nepal and sell it at a great profit, though this was never my intention.
This time I only brought back a few commissioned Newar paintings: which include a sepia Mahavidya Bhairavi and a colour Tripura Sundari composition by Devendra Man Sinkhwal; a B/W White Tara by Hari Prasad Vaidya; three B/W compositions by Gyankar Vajracharya; a Vajrayogini, and an exquisite sepia Vidyadhari composition by the talented young Tamang painter, Sukha Raj, which apparently many people in Kathmandu had been lusting after. By chance I also found a beautiful Chinnamasta painted by Sundar Sinkhwal that was originally drawn by Uday Charan Shrestha; a fine Shri Yantra by Krishna Ram; and an innovative composition of Tripura Sundari by Ratna Gopal Sinkhwal, which also depicts the ten Mahavidya Goddesses and the eight Astamatrika Goddesses upon its throne and torana. Of these only the sepia Vidyadhari and the Shri Yantra paintings will be made available as medium and small Giclee Prints on this website.
Besides these Newar compositions I also brought back twelve rare Tibetan thangka paintings by Sunlal, whose work is now virtually unattainable. The first three of these are exact copies of masterpieces from the Potala Palace in Tibet, and all of these exquisite thangkas listed below will be made available as Giclee Prints in 2012:
1. Paldan Lhamo (Magzor Gyalmo), with the Twelve Tenma Goddesses (Ten-ma Chu-nyi), and the Five Long-life Sisters (Tashi Tsering Che-nga).
2. The Medicine Buddha (Bhaisajyaguru), along with the lineage holders and the special protectors of the Tibetan medical tradition.
3. Orange Manjushri and the lineage of phonology (Sheng-lu) or linguistic masters.
4. The Life of the Buddha.
5. Vajrabhairava (Yamantaka) in his ‘solitary hero’ aspect.
6. Guru Rinpoche with his two principal consorts, Mandarava and Yeshe Tsogyal.
7. White Tara.
8. Kurukulla.
9. The 35 Confessional Buddhas, painted by Dorje Tamang.
The quality and iconographic accuracy of Sunlal’s work is truly exquisite, and of all the five thousand or so Tamang thangka painters now working in the Kathmandu Valley I know of none who possesses Sunlal’s technical skill, experience and knowledge. The prices I have to pay for these pieces also reflects their uniqueness, for they are a product of great dedication, patience and time, and precise in every minute detail. Work of this quality never appears in the thangka shops of Thamel, Durbar Marg or Boudha, or on websites that buy from such suppliers. And although there are some excellent Tibetan thangka painters working in Nepal, most of their commissions come directly from Tibetan monasteries or established Buddhist centers. I am told that around Boudha Stupa local ‘touts’ now receive as much as fifty-percent commission for successful purchasing transactions made with tourists.
Developments in the Contemporary Newar Art Movement
There are several other Tamang artists of exceptional skill and versatility, who although not Newar by birth are accomplished Newar artists. These include Mukti Singh Thapa, whose work has been promoted for many years by James Giambrone and Ian Alsop at the Indigo Gallery, which is located above ‘Mike’s Breakfast’ in Naxal, Kathmandu: www.asianart.com/indigo. On my last meeting with Donald Rubin at the RMA Museum in New York, he spoke with much enthusiasm about the early Newar-style paintings of Mukti that he has managed to acquire. Another brilliant and prolific Tamang artist is Sukha Raj, whose magnificent Vidyadhari painting I mention above. Recently I saw a Gelugpa Refuge Tree that had been commissioned by a Tibetan Geshe from Sukha Raj, which was a precise and accurate copy of the original composition, yet far more refined in its attention to detail. As a versatile copyist Sukha Raj is now capable of replicating the style and technique of virtually any paubha or miniature painter, although it may take him many years to capture that sublime essence or embodied ‘soul’ of a deity that great artists such as Siddhimuni Shakya or Uday Charan Shrestha have been able to portray.
Besides the Indigo Gallery the only other venue that has exclusively promoted traditional Newar art is a small first-floor gallery located behind the main street (Tole) just to the east of Taumadhi Square in Bhaktapur. This co-operative gallery is run by Purna Hyotu, one of the senior Newar artists, and mainly exhibits work of local paubha painters from Bhaktapur. Unfortunately Purna’s gallery is a little hard to find and usually has to be opened by appointment with Purna, whose command of English is not that good.
In April and May of 2011 a major exhibition of Newar paubha painters and sculptors was held at the Siddhartha Art Gallery in conjunction with the Bodhisattva Gallery, both of which are located in the peaceful and beautifully renovated ‘Baber Mohal Revisited’ complex in Kathmandu. This exhibition, entitled “Jewels of Newar Art”, essentially featured selected works from the collection of Purna and Anjana Shakya, whose eldest son Prajwol Shakya now runs the Bodhisattva Gallery. The show featured the work of over thirty of the finest Newar artists and statue makers, and an excellent illustrated book with the same title (Jewels of Newar Art) was published as a catalogue for this exhibition. This catalogue includes articles by Purna Shakya, myself, Min Bahadur Shakya and Dina Bangdel, but essentially the deity descriptions were written by Dina Bangdel and Prajwol Shakya, who did an excellent job in compiling this catalogue.
More information regarding Giclee Prints
It is now just over a year since we launched this website, and the response to its imagery, content and textual information has been extremely positive, for it is truly a unique site. Recently we have added the full range of my silk-screen prints and sixteen new Giclee Prints to the site, and here I would like to explain a little more about the spiritual, artistic and aesthetic value of these beautiful prints...
Firstly, about their production costs and pricing. The sophisticated technical equipment and fine-art materials used in the digital photography, processing, testing and colour proofing of each image means that several copies of each print have to sell before their initial production costs can be recovered. The average cost for making a Giclee print can easily be found on Google, but I would like to specify here that neither the quality or subject matter of our prints are in any way average. Around a hundred exquisite and rare paintings are shown on this site and each one is a modern masterpiece in its own right. So our prints are not cheap to produce, but they certainly are good value, since I have spent my entire life and virtually everything I ever earned in assembling this unique collection.
Secondly, the Tibetan thangka and Newar paubha paintings from which these facsimile ‘museum-quality’ prints are reproduced have all been painted by the most skilful, knowledgeable and finest artists of Nepal. This is especially true of a few individual and exceptional Newar artists, whose minute attention to detail and subtle shading techniques are almost beyond comprehension. The Tibetan paintings of Sunlal are equally as exquisite, and few Tibetan artists can now produce work of such complexity and quality. Two of Sunlal’s new compositions are painstaking copies from the famous early Newar ‘Ngor collection of Mandalas’, which are now recognized as the greatest masterpieces of Tibetan Art. The paintings of John Miles I always regard as priceless, since I know of no other visionary artist who ever transmitted the Divine with such passion and spiritual intelligence.
Thirdly, economy is invariably the secret police of our senses. The commercial ‘thangka shops’ in the tourist areas of Kathmandu are overloaded with cheap deity paintings that are often iconographically inaccurate and virtually factory produced in sweatshop conditions. People always like to find a bargain, but like the dazzling shells or stones found on the seashore they often look drab and uninteresting once they are home and dry. The ‘click to enlarge’ or zoom facility on our website enables viewers to explore details of all the watermarked paintings in a highly magnified, or ‘larger than life’ resolution. With the exception of burnished gold, all our Giclee Prints have exactly the same exceptional quality of detail and colour fidelity as the original paintings. The thorough and precise textual description that accompanies each image is also a unique feature of this website. For me personally this whole enterprise is actually an enormous and continuing unpaid labor of love, just like everything else in my life.
At present we are introducing the Giclee prints onto Wisdom Books website, where they can be found under the new ‘Fine Art Giclees’ category. Soon I also hope to update my Blog section with a few new entries.
Robert Beer, August 2011.
“Read me well, O reader, if you find delight in me, because very seldom shall I come back into this world.” (Leonardo da Vinci)
New items now on the website
We have recently added some new items to this website, which include: eight new Giclee Prints; seventeen Silk Screen Prints; four galleries of Buddhist Statues; and a gallery of original Paintings for Sale, The Giclee Prints added to the Tibetan Art Galleries are: The Eight Medicine Buddhas; Vajrasattva and Consort; and a magnificent mandala of the wisdom-goddess Jnanadakini. And in the Newar Art Galleries: Vajrayogini (Naro Khajoma); the Yoga Chakra Diagram; Green Tara; Green Tara with Amoghasiddhi; and a composition known as the Death of King Dharmaketu.
Apart from the eight new Giclee Prints listed above we also processed more than twenty other new paintings at the same time, which will be released as further Giclee Print editions over the next months. These are:
Tibetan Buddhist Art: Thousand-armed Sitatapatra; Amitabha in Sukhavati (new version): Sarvavid Vairocana Mandala: Urgyen Menla (Guru Rinpoche as Medicine Buddha).
Newar Buddhist Art: Thousand-armed red Sristhikanta Lokeshvara: B/W Prajnaparamita: Green Tara (new): White Tara (new): Candamaharosana (Acala): B/W Kubera: Maitreya Buddha: Twelve-armed Chakrasamvara: B/W Vajradhara: The Birth of the Buddha.
Newar Hindu Art: Shiva and Family: Ardhanarishvara (Shiva-Shakti): Flying Sarasvati: Shiva and Parvati dancing: Siddhi-Lakshmi:
Japanese Buddhist Art: Kuan Yin: Standing Amida Buddha: Forty-two armed Avalokiteshvara.