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THE MUSEUM ON THE ROOF OF THE WORLD
Art, Politics, and the Representation of Tibet
By CLARE E. HARRIS
The University of Chicago Press
Copyright © 2012 Clare E. Harris
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-226-31750-2
Chapter One
The Tibet Museum in the West
In this the twenty-first century, Tibetan art is a familiar entity. It can be encountered in the grand chambers of national museums and the living rooms of private collectors. It can be admired in the pages of glossy publications produced by art historians and curators. It can be purchased from auction houses, art dealerships, and the retail outlets of the virtual bazaar such as eBay. Funds permitting, it is still possible to buy a "genuine" seventeenth-century bronze from Tibet for perusal in the privacy of your own home. If not, a small, copper gilt Buddha crafted by a contemporary artisan from Nepal can be acquired for as little as a hundred dollars. Should you wish to decorate your bathroom in Tibetan-style, a handbook with designs derived from Tibetan monastic architecture is available. For those incarcerated in an American prison, where metal statues are not allowed, the Tsa Tsa Studio: Center for Tibetan Sacred Art in California can supply rubber Buddha images for inmates "who are practicing Dharma." Today it seems that "Tibetan art" can be contemplated and consumed anywhere and everywhere. It is certainly displayed in all the major museums of the world, from Boston to Beijing, as well as in the city that was once the Tibetan capital: Lhasa. There the Tibet Museum presents the heritage of a place called Tibet despite the fact that no nation with that name currently exists.
In this book I argue that the absence of Tibet as an independent political entity goes some way to explain the ubiquity and popularity of Tibetan art in the domestic and public spaces of numerous other countries. On one level this is simply the result of the large-scale removals of objects from the homes, monasteries, and shrines of the Tibetan plateau and the Tibetan-speaking areas of the Himalayas during the twentieth century. This process began in the early 1900s but was most dramatic during the period after Tibet's absorption into the People's Republic of China in 1950. As a result, the majority of the collections now held in the West (as well as in China) were obtained after Tibet lost whatever political autonomy it may have previously enjoyed. But acknowledging the transfer of large quantities of objects from the domain of Tibetans into the possession of others does not entirely explain why Tibetan art has become so desirable. Why would a rubber Buddha make an "invaluable gift" for an American convict? How can a sixteenth-century painting of a multiarmed Tibetan deity, garlanded with human skulls and fused at the genitals with his consort, be described as one of the loveliest icons imaginable? The answers may lie in a crucial definitional corollary to the term Tibetan art.
The things the West deems examples of Tibetan art are almost without exception the material manifestation of religion: that is, the painting, sculpture, and ritual implements that the term encompasses are described in Tibetan as supports (rten) for the practice of Tibetan Buddhism. So Tibetan art, unlike, say, Japanese art or German art, might be more accurately described as Tibetan Buddhist art: that is, as an art form defined by its original purpose rather than the location of its manufacture (Tibet) or the ethnicity of those who make it (Tibetans). But there is a problem here. For the Tibetan adherents of Buddhism, rten are not just artworks but objects with many powerful effects and functions. These objects may enable adherents' engagement with the philosophical principles of the Buddha, portray his life story, or illustrate the vast panoply of beings (whether human, demonic, or divine) that exist within the complex cosmology of Tibetan Buddhism. They can also assist in the visualization of a mandala (a cosmological diagram) and reveal miraculous episodes from the biography of a Tibetan yogin such as Milarepa. Three-dimensional items such as small stupas (shrines), bells, and tsa tsa (votive tablets) embody abstract ideas, but fundamentally they are tangible supports that facilitate the practice of Tibetan Buddhism. Above all, once consecrated by a monk in a ceremony called rab gnas, a representation of the Buddha quite simply is the Buddha. All these things are certainly valued and appreciated by Tibetans according to their own aesthetic principles—in terms of style, quality, the correctness of design and manufacture, and so on—but they are not classified as art in the Western sense.
So this book begins by suggesting that what has come to be known as Tibetan art is a product of the Western imagination. It was invented over the course of nearly two centuries by people who were not Tibetan but who developed a passion for Tibet primarily through an encounter with the portable, material signifiers of Tibetan culture. Their interest was initially fed by the small numbers of objects that could be extracted from a closed land, but it was greatly increased when looting and colonization in the twentieth century created an artifactual diaspora that brought Tibet into closer proximity with the outside world. At first it was only the privileged few who could own the rare things that left the Tibetan plateau for distant lands. But as this chapter will reveal, it was not long before many others were encouraged to share in their astonishment at the peculiar features of these artifactual emissaries. When investigating the collection and display of things Tibetan in Britain from the mid-nineteenth century onward, it becomes clear that the idea of Tibetan art was forged in the classificatory systems of museums and the shifting academic fashions that informed them. What also becomes apparent is a dramatic contrast between the approaches of the Victorian era and those of the present day—a difference that reflects as much about attitudes toward Tibetan Buddhism, and to Tibet and Tibetans, as it does about art.
For example, one of the most important displays of Tibetan art ever mounted was the exhibition Wisdom and Compassion: The Sacred Art of Tibet. Featuring more than 150 objects and augmented with the live creation of sand mandalas by groups of Tibetan monks, the show appeared in two prestigious venues on the East and West Coasts of the United States in 1991 and at the Royal Academy in London in 1992. This was truly a blockbuster exhibition in scale, ambition, and the number of visitors it attracted. It therefore required a substantial catalog. On its cover was a reproduction of the "lovely" icon mentioned earlier, in which the bodily forms of wisdom and compassion (also described as yab yum, or Father-Mother) are shown in what appears to be a passionate, sexual embrace. However, when addressing neophytes in the appreciation of Tibetan art, the authors of the catalog and curators of the exhibition, Marylin Rhie and Robert Thurman, were determined to ensure that this image was not misinterpreted as an example of "erotic art" or as a reiteration of "longstanding misperceptions of Tibetan Buddhism as a 'primitive mix' of Buddhism and an indigenous animistic religion." Instead Professor Thurman suggested that "modern depth psychology" had revealed that such an image represents one of "the deepest archetypes of the unconscious, integrating the powerful instinctual energies of life into a consciously sublimated and exalted state." He proposed that by looking at an example of Tibetan art such as this, museumgoers could learn to overcome the most "dread-filled phenomena of the human psyche" and experience it "as Tibetans do." They might even be inspired to entertain the "possibility of enlightenment" for themselves.
In this and several other passages in his introductory essay, Thurman emphasized the potential for Tibetan imagery to perform a kind of therapy on the viewer. Embracing the message of Tibetan Buddhist art would provide a panacea for the ills of Western individualism, an antidote to materialism, and an entry point into what Thurman called the "transcendent yet earthy aesthetic of one of the most spiritually developed of all the Buddhist civilizations." Tibetan art thereby supplies the illustrations for a self-help manual for the unenlightened, demonstrating how Tibetan Buddhist techniques could be used to control an unruly psyche and enhance the spiritual faculties of those dogged by the malaises of the modern, urban West. The Wisdom and Compassion catalog appeared to suggest that the religion, derived from the teachings of a South Asian prince who had renounced his wealth and high station to seek enlightenment more than 2,500 years ago, could help solve many contemporary quandaries. Encountering Tibetan art in the ostensibly secular spaces of Western museums was therefore an act of veneration for the religion that had produced it, and the Tibetan rten had been converted into supports for the Western mind.
If the Wisdom and Compassion exhibition was designed to show that Tibetan art could train the mind and harness the power of the subconscious, the next major exhibition of Buddhist art to be held at a prestigious venue in the United States was aimed at tutoring the eye and warming the heart. In 2003 Himalayas: An Aesthetic Adventure was hosted by the Art Institute of Chicago. Although the show avoided referring to Tibet or Tibetan Buddhism in its title, the objects selected for it were mainly drawn from the regions of Asia where Tibetan Buddhist culture had predominated for many centuries: Nepal, northern India, Bhutan, and Tibet itself. As its curator, Pratapaditya Pal, informed readers of its catalog,
There are two primary ways of responding to a work of art: seeing it and reading it. It has become much too fashionable these days to read about art rather than look at it, especially when the artwork belongs to another culture. This is particularly true of the religious arts that were created primarily to appeal to the heart rather than the intellect. The purpose of this catalogue and the exhibit it accompanies is to encourage the viewer first to look and enjoy the beauty of the objects and then to explore their spiritual import.
Dr. Pal recounted that his own "aesthetic adventure" had begun in Nepal in 1959 but had since been cultivated by working with "portable objects within the confines of what is considered to be 'fine art' in American museums." However, to his regret, many of his requests to museums to borrow pieces for the Chicago exhibition had not been granted. He had therefore been forced to rely on loans from the private collectors who, according to Pal, had "outstripped and outbid the museums in the exploding Himalayan [art] market and formed extraordinary collections." Consequently, the resulting show was a celebration of the achievements of the fabulously wealthy in preserving Tibetan Buddhist art for the appreciation of others. Not only that, it would transmit the collectors' way of seeing without the encumbrance of an overemphasis on religion or any reference to the perspectives of those who first made and used the "artworks." As Pal put it, "It is gratifying that even though the scholarly world continues to concentrate on the religious message of the objects, there has been a significant movement since the 1960s, among collectors and connoisseurs in the West, to acknowledge their artistic brilliance." Visitors to the Art Institute of Chicago would therefore be able to pursue an "aesthetic adventure" without being burdened by knowledge of their context within Tibetan Buddhism. Nor need they be troubled by the fact that the 1960s had marked the creation of the Tibetan diaspora and the mass exodus of objects from Tibet to the United States, a process that had enabled their elevation into the canons of Western art in the first place.
Thus by the start of the present century, Tibetan objects were to be viewed in museums as a delight for the eyes or a balm for the troubled soul. Representations of Tibetan monks made from precious metals were deemed sculpture, while thangkas (scroll paintings) colored with finely ground mineral pigments had become examples of "fine art." Following principles of aesthetics first formulated in the eighteenth century by philosophers such as Alexander Baumgarten and Immanuel Kant, Tibetan things had been categorized as beautiful, spiritually uplifting, and available for ownership or contemplation by persons of suitably refined tastes. At the same time, Tibetan Buddhism has become a religion to be revered and even followed by non-Tibetans. Yet the difference between current appraisals of Tibet's art and religion and those that pertained a hundred years earlier could not be more marked. At the end of the nineteenth century, Tibet was presented to the public as a land of demon worship, superstition, and bizarre rituals. Museums in Europe and North America created displays focusing on their holdings of "devil daggers," "praying wheels," and amulets, along with a range of items made from human remains, including "skull bowls," "thigh-bone trumpets," and bone "aprons." Although some pioneering scholars of the period sought to characterize Tibetan religion as one of the higher forms of Buddhism, others saw it as a repugnant and degenerate version of the Mahayana school. Due to the influence of the proponents of the latter view and the nature of the objects gathered by collectors at the height of the imperial era, Victorian museum audiences were therefore usually presented with a depiction of a remote Tibet, where yaks roamed in a barren wilderness and humans occupied their time following a "primitive" religion that required the use of some decidedly ghoulish implements.
Collecting Tibet
Among the serried ranks of bronze and golden figures on view in a large Victorian case at the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford is a rare object from Tibet (fig. 1.1). This colored clay plaque depicts the goddess Palden Lhamo riding a mule through a sea of blood and brandishing the grim accoutrements associated with the "wrathful" forms of Tibetan Buddhist deities: weapons, skull bowls, and necklaces of freshly severed heads. According to legend, the source of Palden Lhamo's anger was her failure to convert the people of (Sri) Lanka to Buddhism from their practice of cannibalism and human sacrifice. When even her spouse refused to abandon his bloodthirsty ways, she slaughtered their son in his presence and commandeered the child's flayed skin as a saddle for her mount. As she rode away, her husband shot a poisoned arrow at the horse's rump, but the wound miraculously mutated into an all-seeing eye that would, she declared, only aid her in promoting Buddhism in more receptive lands beyond Lanka.
For Tibetan Buddhists, the elaborate iconography of Palden Lhamo encompasses her varied and apparently contradictory roles: armed with weapons she is Magzor Gyalmo (Queen of Armies), and yet she is also one of the eight principal protectors of Buddhism. She carries a sack of diseases to inflict on her enemies, but the bag also contains the remnants of a meal in which she devoured the bulk of the world's illnesses in an attempt to reduce the toll of human suffering. By the fifteenth century, the title of personal protector to the dalai lamas was added to her list of responsibilities, and she became firmly associated with the Geluk school of Tibetan Buddhism. In more recent centuries, Palden Lhamo has acted as the tutelary deity of the government in Lhasa and defender of the entire Tibetan nation. To this day, a thangka depicting Palden Lhamo accompanies the Dalai Lama wherever he goes.
The clay plaque at the Pitt Rivers Museum therefore seems to bear all the hallmarks of a quintessentially Tibetan object, but for contemporary visitors to the museum this may not be immediately apparent—the case in which she resides has remained largely unchanged for more than a century. Palden Lhamo arrived in Oxford in 1884 along with some twenty thousand other objects presented to the university by Augustus Pitt-Rivers. When the collection was arranged in the museum according to his specifications—by type and form rather than by region—the Tibetanness of Palden Lhamo was effectively suppressed. Exhibited among more than two hundred other items in case 123. A, Palden Lhamo became just one figure in a crowd of predominantly Hindu gods and demigods and a handful of Buddhas and bodhisattvas from different parts of Asia (fig. 1.2). Originally labeled "Idols and Religious Emblems Belonging to Various Countries," this case reflects the history of ideas in Britain in the second half of the nineteenth century, when the race to garner knowledge about the religions of Asia was gathering pace.
The fact that Palden Lhamo is vastly outnumbered by Hindu "idols" at the Pitt Rivers Museum is no surprise given the long duration of British involvement with the Indian subcontinent and the collecting activities of some of the chief protagonists in the colonial project. The onset of this process is datable to 1685, when William Hedges, governor of the East India Company in Bengal, donated a large siltstone figure of Vishnu to the newly founded Ashmolean Museum at Oxford. Over the course of the eighteenth century, the scholarship of India experts began to filter through to museums and informed staff concerning the provenance, naming, and iconography of the curious things that were arriving from that country. This meant that by the mid-nineteenth century, curators in British museums were already familiar with the imagery of Hinduism, but expertise on Tibet and Tibetan Buddhism was comparatively scant.
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Excerpted from THE MUSEUM ON THE ROOF OF THE WORLD by CLARE E. HARRIS Copyright © 2012 by Clare E. Harris. Excerpted by permission of The University of Chicago Press. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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