Art review: Bhutan exhibition holds mysteries
Kenneth Baker, Chronicle Art Critic
Friday, February 27, 2009
Go well rested to "The Dragon's Gift: Sacred Arts of Bhutan" at the Asian Art Museum, or plan to go repeatedly.
Vast in scope and dense with detail, it demands a sustained attention and curiosity the opposite of what American life cultivates today.
Organized by the Honolulu Academy of Arts and the government of Bhutan, "The Dragon's Gift" introduces to the Western art public a centuries-old artistic tradition centered on Tantric, or Vajrayana, Buddhist belief. The area is so little studied, the editors of the catalog note, that phonetic conventions for rendering Bhutanese art terminology have not yet solidified.
Even the visitor familiar with arts of the Himalayan region may strain to discern the fine differences between Buddhist-inspired artifacts and parallel examples from Tibet and Nepal. Often such differences come down to the company of deities, or their attributes, ranged peripherally around the central figure in an elaborate thangka, or scroll painting on fabric.
Unprepared viewers may feel lost in an alien image-world, though concise explanatory labels help considerably. The only real preparation for seeing the exhibition with understanding may be seeing it cursorily.
Three examples suggest the majesty and challenge of the artifacts in the exhibition.
Compassion without scale
An enlightened being who has forsaken nirvana to deliver less evolved souls from suffering, the androgynous Avalokiteshvara takes many forms in Asian sculpture and painting, some involving "a thousand" arms and 11 heads.
This example from Bhutan, from the 18th or 19th century, less than 7 inches tall, has the proportions of a figurine and the presence of a monumental sculpture. Its anonymous creator finessed the task of making a four-armed human figure look natural, though the rules for depicting Avalokiteshvara would have come to the artist as a cultural legacy to which any challenge might have amounted to defiance of belief. The deity's multiple arms - whatever their unnatural number - evoke the "skillful means" by which any Buddhist adept advances the fulfillment of Buddhist law in the world. They also betoken the artistic imperative to provide the subject with special symbolic attributes.
In the case of this gilt wood sculpture, the joined hands clasp a wish-granting jewel, the upraised ones would have held prayer beads, since lost, and a lotus flower, its stem the only vestige remaining. The sculpture's crown features a tiny figure of Amitabha, the Buddha of Infinite Life, symbolizing the soul's potential for rebirth in a state of boundless paradise or realization.
Avalokiteshvara appears frequently in Bhutanese art personifying Vajrayana Buddhism's allowance for the possibility of awakening in this lifetime from the cycle of death and rebirth.
Greats of wrath
Nearly every benign spiritual figure in the Vajrayana Buddhist pantheon has a wrathful manifestation or counterpart. In this 19th century thangka, the avatar of Vajrayana Buddhism in Bhutan, Padmasambhava, appears in the fierce guise known as Guru Dragpo Marchen.
Such images gave visual form to the Buddhist scriptures' power to quash demonic influences, whether in the external world or the meditator's consciousness. Bhutanese artistic convention provided a full measure of frightful detail for depiction of wrathful deities.
Within his aura of flames, Guru Dragpo Marchen wears tiger and elephant skins, a crown of skulls and a necklace of severed heads. He carries a scorpion in one hand and a vajra scepter, a symbolic thunderbolt, in the other. His lower body ends in the form of a ritual dagger symbol of the power to dispel anger, desire and ignorance.
An array of benign, becalmed spiritual luminaries oversees Dragpo Marchen's apparition. They personify the fearless detachment in the face of spiritual reality that every meditator seeks.
A map of everything
Western viewers may grasp the intent of a mandala best by thinking of it as a spiritual map. This 19th century "Complete Mandala" hints at the complexity and duration of effort faced by the adherent who would make his way to the enlightened state personified by Buddha Sakyamuni, the historical Buddha, at the center of the painting.
Each of the many medallions surrounding the central Buddha contains figures and structures representing spiritual or ritual passages in the meditator's journey to liberation. How little even an experienced Western art viewer can discern of the figural detail in the "Complete Mandala" suggests how thin may be the analogy between pleasure in art and spiritual devotion.
The Dragon's Gift: Sacred Arts of Bhutan: Sculpture, paintings, textiles and ritual artifacts. Through May 10. Asian Art Museum, 200 Larkin St., San Francisco. (415) 581-3500, www.asianart.org. "Seated four-armed Avalokiteshvara, the Bodhisattva of Compassion" (1700-1900), wood, gilded and lacquered with gold.
The teacher and saint Padmasambhava - avatar of Vajrayana Buddhism in Bhutan - depicted as the wrathful Guru Dragpo Marchen (1800-1900), ink and colors on cotton.
This 19th century "Complete Mandala" hints at the complexity and duration of effort faced by the adherent who would make his way to the enlightened state personified by Buddha Sakyamuni, the historical Buddha, at the center of the painting.