 Bibliography
Although I attended the College
of William and Mary (double B.A., Fine Arts and English, 1980),
the University of Exeter,
England (Study Abroad Exchange, awarded 1978-79), and Virginia
Tech (M.A., English, 1983), my study as a student of South Asia
and its art has happened largely independently, through decades
of travel and the gathering of my own reference library.
For me, the richest scholarship on Tibetan art
begins with Robert Beer's 18-year project, The
Encyclopedia of Tibetan Motifs and Symbols (Boston: Shambhala,
1999), whose text contains hundreds of clear distinctions and anecdotes
in relation to his thousands of illustrations.
In 1991, Harry Abrams published Marilyn Rhie's
and Robert F. Thurman's Wisdom and Compassion: The
Sacred Art of Tibet, a close examination of 160 paintings, tapestries,
and sculptures, which was followed in 1999 by their Worlds
of Transformation: Tibetan Art of Wisdom and Compassion (Abrams
again), the close study of another 204 works, of mostly previously
unpublished examples of Tibetan art (from the collection of Shelley
and David Rubin).
Jane Casey Singer's and Philip Deowood's Tibetan
Art: Towards a Definition of Style (London: Laurence King Publishing,
1997) is excellent for its discussion of Tibetan art in Ladakh,
Bhutan, and Mustang.
In 1998, Susan M. Kossak and Jane Casey Singer
published Sacred Visions: Early
Paintings from Central Tibet (New York: The Metropolitan Museum
of Art, 1998), a collection and discussion of about fifty images
from the Tibetan Renaissance (1400-1600 C.E.), in which there are
particularly interesting sections on technique, especially pigments,
gold work, and inscriptions revealed by infrared photography.
For an artist like myself, untrained continuously
by one teacher or guru, David and Janice Jackson's Tibetan
Thangka Painting: Methods and Materials (London: Serindia Publications,
1988) is an unsurpassed guide to traditional tools and iconometric
theory. Rob Linrothe's Ruthless
Compassion: Wrathful Deities in Early Indo-Tibetan Esoteric Buddhist
Art (Boston: Shambhala, 1999) is a well-illustrated tracing
of the peregrinations and meanings of some of the lesser-known "fierce"
Tibetan deities.
In 1998, Denise Patry Leidy and Robert A. F. Thurman
published Mandala:
The Architecture of Enlightenment (New York: Asia Society Galleries,
1998), which is a wonderful book to pair with Barry Bryant's (in
cooperation with Namgyal Monastery) The
Wheel of Time Sand Mandala: Visual Scripture of Tibetan Buddhism
(San Francisco: Harper Collins, 1992), which documents and discusses
the intricate stages of a particular (contemporary) sand-painting
as it was being constructed.
 John F. Avedon's The
Buddha's Art of Healing: Tibetan Paintings Rediscovered (New
York: Rizzoli, 1998), Ian Baker's The Dalai Lama's Secret Temple:
Tantric Wall Paintings from Tibet (New York: Thames and Hudson,
2000), and Franco Ricca's and Erberto Lo Bue's The
Great Stupa of Gyantse: A Complete Tibetan Pantheon of the Fifteenth
Century (London: Serindia Publications, 1993) are all excellent
treatments of hundreds of previously unpublished illustrations of
details of art.
And, very interestingly, Pia and Louis Van der
Wee include, in their scholarly, ethnographic study of Tibetan paintings,
a fascinating, extended narrative prose-poem, in A Tale of Thangkas:
Living with a Collection (Antwerp: Ethnographic Museum of Antwerp,
undated), imagining, for instance, the intentions and thoughts of
the lamas and patrons portrayed in the thangkas.
The two-volume set of Li Gotami Govinda's annotations
and black and white photographs in Tibet
in Pictures: A Journey into the Past (Emeryville, California:
Dharma Press, 1979) remains indispensable material for me as records
of monastic sculptures and wall paintings, especially in relation
to her husband Anagarika Govinda's book, The
Way of The White Clouds (London: Rider and Company, 1974). And,
for their lavishly illustrated treatments of Tibetan textiles and
their motifs, I rely on Trinley Chodrak's and Kesang Tashi's Of
Wool and Loom: The
Tradition of Tibetan Rugs (Bangkok: White Orchid Press, 2000)
and Mimi Lipton's The
Tiger Rugs of Tibet (New York: Thames and Hudson, 1988).
To begin my select bibliography on India and its
art, I must mention the invaluable collection of books I have found
over the years at the Crafts Museum in New Delhi.
Nora Fisher's Mud,
Mirror, and Thread (Ahmedabad: Mapin Publishing, 1993), Stephen
P. Huyler's Gifts
of Earth: Terracottas and Clay Sculptures of India (Ahmedabad:
Mapin Publishing, 1996), and Ajit Mookerjee's Ritual
Art of India (New York: Thames and Hudson, 1995) are broad contributions
to the study of (often handmade and inexpensive) sacred objects
of the household or the village.
A trove of smaller books preserves brilliant examples
of fragile or rural work, such as:
- Smt Archana's The Language of Symbols: A Project
on South Indian Ritual Decorations of a Semi-Permanent Nature
(Madras: Crafts Council of India, undated);
- Jivya Soma Mashe's, Balu Mashe's, and Lakshmi
Lal's The Warlis: Tribal paintings and Legends (Bombay: Chemould
Publications, undated);
- J. Swaminathan's The Perceiving Fingers (New
Delhi: All India Handicrafts Board, 1987);
Nelly Sethna's Living Traditions of India: Kalamkari (New York:
Mapin International, 1985);
- Dr. M. K. Pal's Mandana: A Folk Art of Rajasthan
(New Delhi: Crafts Museum, 1985);
- Dr. Verrier Elwin's and Dr. Moti Chandra's Folk
Paintings of India (New Delhi: Inter-National Cultural Center,
1967);
- Elisabeth Anne Benard's Chinnamasta: The Aweful
Buddhist and Hindu Tantric Goddess (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass,
1994);
- Enakshi Bhavnani's Decorative Designs on Stone
and Wood in India (Bombay: Taraporevala Sons and Co., 1978).
read
more
|
