Regong Thangka art is an important part of Tibetan Buddhist art in China and a widely influential genre, originating in the Longwu River Basin in Tongren County, Huangnan Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Qinghai Province, from the 15th century onwards. For hundreds of years, a large number of artists have been engaged in folk Buddhist painting art, and the large number of artists and the exquisite skills of the group are rare in other Tibetan areas, so it is known as the "hometown of Tibetan painters", and the Tongren area is called "Regong" in Tibetan.
Regong, meaning a golden valley where dreams come true, is concentrated in the middle and lower reaches of the Longwu River in Huangnan Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, in the first bay of the Jiuqu Yellow River. Qiang, Tibetan, Han, Xianbei, Mongolian and many other ethnic groups in this area flourished, a variety of cultures here integrated, with the spread of Tibetan Buddhism, especially gelugism in the Amdo region, Regong gradually formed its own unique Tibetan Buddhist art form, Regong Thangka has also become a bright pearl on the snowy plateau.
Over the centuries, industrious Regong artists have traveled throughout Tibet, Qinghai, Sichuan, Gansu, Inner Mongolia and other parts of China and India, Nepal, Thailand, Mongolia and other countries, leaving many exquisite works of art in these places. This unique ancient Tibetan culture and art, its works are accurate and vivid in shape, exquisite in craftsmanship, bright in color and decorative. His simple painting style, uniform and harmonious color design, and exquisite depiction of the demeanor fully embody the industrious wisdom and splendid culture of the Tibetan people. Regong art is a magnificent branch in China's cultural treasure house, and it is also the product of the interplay between different tibetan regions and between Tibetan and Han ethnic cultures.
On May 20, 2006, Regong Thangka art was approved by the State Council to be included in the first batch of national intangible cultural heritage list.
Thangka is a kind of scroll painting, which is a kind of painting that is easy to hang and easy to collect, and is framed with colored satin. This kind of painting has obvious national characteristics, strong religious color and unique artistic style, and has always been regarded as a treasure by the Tibetan people.
The preciousness of thangka is doomed from the moment it is depicted.
Most of the painters of thangka have the identity and experience of monks, and drawing thangkas is part of practicing Buddhist rituals and practices. There are strict rules at every step of the painting process, from bathing and purifying at the beginning of creation, offering tribute, reciting scriptures, praying for the tools used in painting, to stretching and polishing canvases, developing pigments, constructing sketches and image measurements, and then to coloring, blending, drawing lines, and opening eyes, the painting process often lasts months or even years. The length of time a thangka determines the size and complexity of a thangka, which is also an important factor in judging its value.
The process of creating thangkas and the pigments used are also one of the reasons for the high value of thangka culture and collection. The color raw materials used in traditional thangkas are taken from the earth, including natural gem minerals, rare plants and particularly rare soils, such as gold, silver, pearls, agate, amber, coral, pine ear stone, malachite, saffron, blue indigo, etc. These pigments paint thangkas over a hundred years or even a thousand years, the picture is still golden and brilliant, brilliant as new.
Thangka art is derived from pursuits and beliefs, and the picture scroll can be transformed into a very large or very small universe, which is a condensation of the Buddhist worldview. Painting thangkas is like taking refuge, and watching and worshiping is to integrate the finiteness of this life into the infinity of thangkas, so that people can "cultivate the truth through illusion" and achieve a state of peace and stability. A thangka wrapped in a roll is a temple that can be carried around and can be a symbol everywhere you go, asking people to pray, pray, visualize, or bless their loved ones.
The thangka themes in the Regong area are extremely extensive, and the common ones are: Shakyamuni, Wuliangshou, Bodhisattva, Manjushri, Guanyin, White Tara, Arhat, Protector, and famous monks of various periods. In terms of painting technique, it is similar to the Han Chinese pen heavy color, generally using a single line flat painting slightly baked dyeing and color block filling techniques, and the composition uses the technique of scattered perspective. The gods, Buddhas, landscapes, flowers and plants, pavilions, and various birds and beasts on the picture are all painted very meticulously, vividly and brightly colored, especially some of the tantric statues that have been exaggerated and deformed, with distinct personalities and different forms, giving different identities to gods of different identities, some sitting, some dancing wildly, some smiling, some angry, some kind and kind, some with green fangs, really ever-changing, different postures, and each doing its best. Regong Thangka paints characters with exquisite and energetic brushwork, and the image is vivid; writing about animals, flowers and birds, it is good at outlining, paying attention to color, vivid posture, with strange stone mountain views, peaks and peaks, majestic; painting palace pavilions, stable style, magnificent arrangement. In the layout of the framing, the field of vision is broad, not limited by time and space, and the same theme is combined with things that occur at different times and in different places, so that a work is like a comic strip, so that the picture has a sense of thousands of miles and has a strong appeal. This unique technique of Regong Thangka makes it unique among similar art and has become a style of Tibetan painting art.
The following group is the Red Tang Three Lords of Regong
