Does Thangka have space in the Western art market?

The misreserved phenomenon occurs not only in Tibetan Buddhist monasteries, Buddhist halls and Buddhist museums in the Himalayas such as Tibet, Nepal, Bhutan and India's Ladakh, but also in the thangkas that were dispersed to the West before 1970.

(1) Trial and error: the premise is to exhibit

In the 1970s, the western collection environment and method were no better than the Tibetan Buddhist temples in the Himalayas. It is conceivable that in addition to the above-mentioned kozlov, Duqi, etc., which were directly obtained from the original temple, the vast majority of thangkas have experienced the fate of displacement, leaving the Tibetan Buddhist monastery in ruins, and many of the brocade and curtains have been lost. The means by which early Western museum conservators disposed of these thangkas, as Yun fei put it: "During my twenty-one years of research, I have seen many man-made mistakes in preserving Tibetan thangkas."

Sheffield's so-called "human error" mainly refers to the limited knowledge of early restoration experts about the characteristics of thangkas, the significance of religious images, and the painting techniques, and that all preservation methods are only based on the premise of "exhibition", ignoring the indigenous Tibetan tradition. The most common, such as the Western oil painting style "press frame method" to strengthen the old thangka: directly glue the picture to a large hardwood board. This method can stabilize the picture, which is inconvenient to break the old marks and expand, but it is "irreversible".

Reversibility refers to any material used in any way, such as trimming pigment cracks, stabilizing the pigment without peeling off the reinforcing material and adhesive, or the form of lining, or the pigment that is used to supplement the pen, provided that when more advanced and suitable materials are available in the future, the raw materials can be completely removed and replaced by the new method. As for the overton card in the framed way, once the picture is pasted, it can no longer be removed without damage. Secondly, if the lining brocade is old, it is simply dismantled, or even not retained, and it cannot be found over time. Today's consensus in the cultural relics preservation community on "acid-free" has not yet been popularized in the early days, and many acid-containing plates have been injured by the long time. In short, this Western method completely violates the original Tibetan traditional Tibetan lining concepts and techniques such as "painting the heart and loading the lining are one", "the back of the painting heart is also part of the thangka", "hand sewing process", "soft can be retracted", etc.

Another western oil painting " waxing and ironing " strong fixing method, in the early days is also often used in the restoration of thangka: directly on the back of the crisp folding canvas, glued a layer of thick cloth, coated with a layer of wax on the picture, and then ironed hot, so that the old and new canvases are glued together. Improper use of this method will also cause the picture to become hard and shiny, which is contrary to the original artistic effect of thangka and the value of influencing thangka.

Chinese and Japanese paintings predate than thangkas and have been widely recognized and valued in Europe and the United States. Therefore, in the early days, the "paste framing method" of Japanese screen paintings or Chinese silk paper paintings, which used a thin layer of paper with paste on the back of the painting center, was also used for thangkas; the thangka of the well-known collector Irimanek was resealed by the late Anhiro Idaguchi, a cultural preservation expert at the Boston Museum of Art, in the traditional Japanese way of mounting the screen. This method also obscures the back of the painting heart, which is also contrary to the characteristics of the thangka "hand sewing process".

Other ways, either considering convenient frames, retain the original lining brocade of the thangka, but remove the upper and lower poles of heaven and earth; or remove the veil covering the surface of the thangka; or use oil paint to re-write in the unknown place of the picture. The Boston Museum of Art, the Newark Museum, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, among other museums in the United States that pioneered the restoration of thangkas, have all experienced what Sheffield called a false attempt. The protective measures adopted in these collections already belong to the category of restoration, and some of the effects are counterproductive.

(2) Establish principles; take into account Tibetan tradition and modern science and technology

Around 1970, it was a crucial era in the development of the discipline of "thangka preservation" in the West. Huntington has published three papers in the journal "Cultural Relics Preservation Research": (Tibetan Painting Techniques), (Tibetan Thangka Preservation), (Tibetan Painting Of Day Lining Images and Structures). At the same time, Mehela wrote the results of the Central Art Science Research Laboratory in the Netherlands as an article (Techniques and Preservation of Thangka), which was also published in "Research on The Preservation of Cultural Relics". While the Boston Museum of Art was still dealing with thangkas in the Japanese way, Mehera took the lead in using chemicals, which can be described as a pioneer in the "technological restoration" of thangkas in the West. Although Huntington is not a restoration expert, he argues from an academic point of view on the principle of preservation, pointing out that the dust, fumes, stains, water stains, etc. accumulated on the surface of the thangka are the main reasons for the "white powder becoming very dark, causing the color and brightness of the object to lose its original brightness, making the picture image sometimes difficult to identify", and the "how to make the faded or discolored places bright" proposed by him is the primary topic of "cleaning" project for the future preservation of the thangka; and he inherited Duqi, Gao Luopei and other scholars" The idea that the lining is part of the thangka as a whole coincides with Mehera's statement based on the restoration stance that "when conservation experts deal with old thangkas, even if it is the most basic surface cleaning, it is difficult and difficult, because this is not only a technical problem, but also an aesthetic problem".

The conceptual principles and methods advocated by Huntington and Mehela, in short, are: "preserving thangkas with modern scientific and technological materials, while taking into account the traditional Tibetan forms and original techniques of thangkas", has become the policy followed by the West in the preservation of thangkas in the past thirty years. In 1986 and 1991, Sheffield was published in the Journal of the American Society for the Preservation of Cultural Heritage. Two related papers have been published, pointing out the problems that Chen Thangka repairs, and their argument is based on the fact that "the lining and painting of the heart are regarded as an inseparable part of the thangka". Another Parisian preservation expert, Michael Terrell, was more firm in his support for the traditional position of Tibet; he believed that the positioning lines painted on the back of the heart at the beginning of the thangka's drafting and the mantra written on the back of the heart after the thangka was completed were also inseparable parts of the whole. In 1996, The article "Thangka Preservation" advocated "reverence for thangkas": preservation experts should not only understand the religious nature of the creation of the thangka, the object of their work, but also maintain and restore the thangka with respect. In 1988, the Italian preservation expert Xue he Zenikos published an article (Preservation of the Thangka Lining Brocade in the Ducci Collection) at the International Symposium on the Preservation of Far Eastern Art and Cultural Relics in London, detailing the restoration steps of this batch of thangka lining brocade. Xue's view is slightly different from that of Sheffield, Michael Terrell and Berlissiel; Xue believes that if the heaven and earth pole and the lining brocade must be dismantled and repaired separately, and there are technical difficulties in sewing after repair, it may not necessarily be re-stitched, just put the repaired lining brocade, etc., next to the heart of the painting, and exhibit it together, so that the viewer can experience the original appearance. This "separate and simultaneous exhibition" approach also takes into account the ideas of art historians. Xue also agreed that the thangka should maintain its original hanging shaft form as much as possible, and agreed that Mehera "restored the thangka without losing its original soft and easy-to-wrap character".

"Reversibility" and "acid-free materials" have also become practical means of implementing the balance between tradition and technology. These new concepts of preservation can be seen in 1993 in Berlissell's (the preservation history of thangkas in Western collections).

The use of technology in the museum community to preserve cultural relics arose in 1888; the Staatsmuseum in Berlin, Germany, set up the world's first shijun room belonging to the museum. Subsequently, the British Museum and the Louvre Museum in Paris set up laboratories in 1921 and 1930 respectively, and the United States also carried out such work at the Fogg Museum at Harvard University. After the 1980s, the establishment of cultural relics preservation departments and professional cultural relics preservation organizations attached to museums has become the norm in Europe and the United States. In terms of "Thangka Preservation", in addition to the Central Art Science Research Laboratory in Amsterdam, others such as the Paolo Getty Heritage Preservation Association of Los Angeles, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and Preservation Center, the London International Association for the Preservation of Historical Art and Cultural Relics, the Textile Preservation Laboratory of Florence Pitti Palace in Italy, and the National Research Laboratory for the Preservation of Cultural Properties and Cultural Relics in Lac nao, India, all regard the maintenance and restoration of thangkas as an important discipline.

Next, please enjoy a group of longevity Buddha Thangkas numbered 138-867794: