The Art of Bhutanese Tangkhas
One need not be Buddhist to appreciate Bhutanese tangkhas, or religious painting. The idealized image of Buddha in a meditative pose is both a work of art and a religious offering. It is a thing of beauty and is a tool for meditation.
Tangkha painting, like Mahayana Buddhism, came to Bhutan via Tibet with Padmasambavha or Guru Rimpoche in the 8th century. The art of Bhutanese tangkha painting has changed very little over the centuries, and painters make their tangkhas much as they did so many centuries ago. It is painstaking, slow work, and the great painters of Bhutan can take months to complete a single tangkha.
To paint a tangkha is an act of piety.
The more perfect a painter can make the thangka the more merit he and the one who commissions the tangkha, the patron, will receive. Tangkhas are commissioned in Bhutan to decorate a prayer room or temple, either in a person’s house or to adorn one of the thousands of temples in Bhutan. Tangkhas are also commissions to commemorate a death or a birth, or given as gifts to a friend, teacher, or for a marriage. If a tangkha is given as a gift, it is said to create a strong spiritual bond between the giver and the receiver.
Motivation or the attitude of the artist who paints a tangkha is considered important. Since it is a piece of sacred art, the painter must have the proper reverence for his work.
Many painters recite mantras, chant and pray while they paint a tangkha because they believe it gives the image power. Likewise, the owner of a tangkha should treat the tangkha in a manner befitting a holy object and avoid putting it on the ground and smoking in the same room where the tangkha is hanging.
The value of art.
Asian art in general and Bhutanese art in particular reflects opposite values of western art in the sense that Bhutanese tangkha painters do not seek an original point of view. Creativity is very much a part of thangka painting, but it is not the creativity of western art. Bhutanese tangkha painters are taught that the value of their work is measured in how closely it can conform to the ‘ideal’ forms that were first created thousands of years ago. It is said that the first likeness of the Buddha was painted from his reflection as he sat beside a pool of water. This first artist used his fingers to measure the proportions of the Buddha’s body, and made a grid on the canvas based on these proportions. This grid method is still used today to draw the deities on a tangkha.
The best tangkha painters study for 8 to 10 years at the National Painting Schools in either Thimphu or Trashiyangtse and then they apprentice for many years. For years they learn to draw the various icons, flowers, clouds, deities perfectly and then they learn to paint tangkhas.Making a tangkha.
Bhutanese tangkha painters make their own canvas, paint and brushes. Canvas is made by stretching and sewing a high quality cotton cloth onto a wooden frame. The cloth is painted with a mixture of gum and calcium chalk and allowed to dry. Then the cloth is rubbed with a smooth stone to create a polished surface. This process is repeated three or four times—sometimes more, until the canvas is strong enough to secure the paint, yet thin and light enough to be rolled for storage and unrolled for hundreds of years.
While the canvas is still on the wooden frame, the tangkha painter draws an outline of the image that is to be painted. To make a perfect tangkha, the statue or deity that is being represented must be proportional and based on centuries old iconography so the painter draws the grid on the canvas and uses it as a guide so that the proportions of the deity conform to prototypes.
Bhutanese tangkha painters prepare their own paints, using natural vegetable and mineral pigments from India, Bhutan, Nepal and Tibet. Some also use ground precious and semi-precious stones. The powdered colors are mixed with gum and water so that they will adhere to the canvas.
While they are in school Bhutanese tangkha painters learn to make their own brushes using animal hair. The summer hair inside a cow’s ear is said to be the perfect weight for a brush to draw the delicate, almost invisible lines of the face and hands of a deity. Painters also use hair from cats, pigs and dogs to make their brushes.
After the image has been drawn on a canvas, the painter begins to paint the tangkha. First the larger background areas are finished. All Bhutanese tangkhas have a prescribed background of earth and sky. The painter is free to embellish or stylize the background with water, clouds, mountains, flowers, trees, jewels and animals, but the presence of sky and earth is typical of Bhutanese (and Tibetan) tangkhas. After the background is completed, the painter paints the sacred figures. When the tangkha colors and shading are filled in the painter outlines the figures with lines. Again, he starts with the background earth and sky and finishes with the figure. The face is the last part of the tangkha to be completed and is perhaps the most important feature of the tangkha. When the lines are finished, he embellishes the flowers, robes of the deities and the ornamentation with paint made from gold powder. When this dries he uses a precious stone to polish the gold to a bright luster. He may also write a prayer on the back of the tangkha. Then the painter cuts the tangkha off the frame.
When he has finished painting the tangkha it is either framed or sewn into a silk brocade to make a scroll that can be rolled and unrolled. The silk brocade consists of two narrow strips that frame the tangkha—one yellow and one red, and these are framed by silk brocade. A brocade patch of different color or pattern is usually sewn just below the tangkha on the silk. This is symbolic of a ‘door’ into the tangkha, so people looking at the tangkha can enter it and become a spiritual part of the image.
There are many different styles of tangkha painting, but Bhutanese tangkhas generally adhere to two specific styles: Karma-gardri has a Chinese influence and deities and backgrounds in these tangkhas are distinctly Chinese in origin; Tshangdri originated in the Tshang region of Tibet and is the most popular style in Bhutan.
. How to tell a quality tangkha.
There are several ways to discern quality in a tangkha:
• First, the paint should be very thin so that it doesn’t crack from being rolled and unrolled over the years.
• The proportions of the deities should be perfect, realistic, and well drawn.
• Master tangkha painters are adept at shading the work. Very good tangkhas, in addition to realistic shading of the bodies of the deities have kam dang, gradated shading from dark to light in a pointillist pattern on the sky and sometimes on the earth in the background of the tangkha.
• A good quality tangkha uses real gold paint for highlighting the clothes of the deities.