Originating in Tongren County of HuangnanTibetan Autonomous Region, Qinghai Province,Regong artis a successful mix of religious art by Tibetan and Tu ethnic minorities and local folk art. The art — an important genre in TibetanBuddhism– has a history of more than 700 years. It is called “the flower on the Tibetan Plateau.”
Regong art includes paintings (murals and scrolls called “thangka” in Tibetan), clay and wooden sculptures, barbola, color paintings on buildings, patterns,butter sculptures, and so on. Among these, the murals, thangka, barbola, and sculptures are the most famous.
The contents of Regong art range from the story of the Sakyamuni, Bodhisattvas, Buddhist guardians and fairies, to Buddhist stories.
A. Tongren: Birthplace of Regong art
Lying along theYellow Riverto the southeast of Qinghai Province, Tongren County is reputed as the “Home of Tibetan Culture and Art”. Tongren is called “Regong,” Tibetan for “Golden Valley.” It is where the art form sprang up along with the rise of Lamaism and the construction of lamaseries, mainly reflecting Tibetan Buddhist culture.
By the mid-17th century, Regong had become a village where nearly everyone could paint, and every family was engaged in the art. The people of Regong handed down the art from generation to generation, and now almost everyone there is an artisan.
Tongren County contains five villages, and Wutun Village is the most famous for its Regong art. In Wutun alone, there are more than 100 Tibetan families of artists. Drawing on theDunhuangarts, Tibetan painting, garze (in Sichuan) woodcarving and Tibetan folk art, the families have formed their own particular styles.
B. Main Features
In the early period, Regong artworks were crude and unsophisticated with monotone colors, featuring typical Indian and Nepalese styles. In the mid-17th century, artisans mastered better techniques and the painting styles became more elegant and exquisite. They also paid more attention to decorative effects in their works. Thus, the art entered a prosperous period of development.
After the 19th century, Regong artworks featured beautiful colors and an exquisite touch. The artisans of this period paid special attention to the decorative interest in their works and employed a great amount of gold to make the works resplendent and magnificent, creating an ardent atmosphere. The works not only look harmonious in their arrangement of different subjects but are also lifelike and lively, displaying outstanding artistic effects.
Over the past several centuries, Regong art artisans traveled to many different regions to create different works, such as Qinghai Province, Tibet Autonomous Region,Gansu Province,Sichuan Province, theInner Mongolian Autonomous Region and other places in China, as well as India, Nepal, Thailand, Mongolia and other countries in the world, leaving behind numerous exquisite art works. They assimilated artistic nourishment from Tibetan paintings,Dunhuang muralsand foreign similar works and then combined them with local folk arts of Qinghai Province to gradually consummate the techniques of Regong art.
The unpretentious painting style, even and harmonious color arrangements and realism of Regong artworks fully reflect Tibetan culture, making the art a curiosity hard to come by in China’s cultural heritage.
C. Major Types
1. Thangka
Thangka are visual expressions of the philosophy and psychology of Buddhism, painted on cotton or linen canvases that may be rolled up when not on display. They often depict scriptures and scenes from the lives of saints and great masters. Wutun Village in Tongren County is regarded as home of the thangka.
A thangka can take anywhere from a few months to several years to finish. Creating, for example, numerous miniature images of Bodhisattva on a one-square meter thangka canvas requires perfect understanding of iconometric principles, not to mention painstaking brushwork. It is a discipline that takes at least a decade to master.
Thangka painting is executed in four main stages. The canvas surface is first coated on both sides with a thin layer of plaster of Paris. This ensures smooth application of colors and inhibits peeling. The subject matter is then sketched on the canvas in charcoal. The third step is application of color from pigments of turquoise or carol according to the color gradations. Finally, the main features of the thangka, such as images of Buddha and Bodhisattva, demarcated subdivisions of a certain form, or swirling masses of flames, are outlined in gold foil for greater effect.
2. Barbola
This is a special art that employs the techniques of “cutting” and “piling” to portray objects. In terms of specific techniques, barbola can be subcategorized into “jian dui” (literally, to cut and pile) and “ci xiu” (embroidery). The barbola works in Regong are mainly of the “jian dui” style. To make “jian dui” barbola, artisans select silks and satins of different colors according to the type of expression desired, cut them into human, animal, flower and bird shapes of a certain size, and then paste the patterns onto the pre-cut paper models. After that, they are stacked from dense to light colors. Since the middle of the barbola is slightly convex, the work creates a strong three-dimensional effect that looks like a colored embossment made of silk material.
Barbola subjects generally come from Buddhist stories, and most of them are about people. Barbola pays much attention to posture and the details of human figures, and values the arrangement of silks and satins of different colors. It features an exquisite touch amid roughness, gives prominence to its major subjects, has vivid colors and forms a strong contrast. Barbola is an innovation in embroidery art, combining embroidery and embossment.
3. Sculpture
Sculpture, which holds an important position among Regong art, mainly includes clay sculpture, woodcarving, and brick engraving, with clay sculpture being the most popular. The art of clay sculptures had matured from the mid-17th century to the early 19th century when the sculptures were exquisitely carved and were lifelike, with smooth clothing lines, a sense of reality and a strong contrast in colors that were arranged harmoniously.
The clay sculptures in Regong were combined with temple architecture to express the wide-ranging content related to the architecture. The range of subjects is also very wide. Besides the sun, moon and stars, mountains, flowers and trees, birds, beasts, fishes and worms and other patterns used as decorations and foils, different colors and other various images also appear in sculptures. These include the bizarre motley Buddhist guardians, Buddha’s warrior attendants with horrifying features, horse-headed and red-haired gods, and so on.
In addition, woodcarving and brick engraving can also be found in many places. Woodcarving is mainly employed to make decorative patterns on door lintels and chapiters of a house, as well as wooden josses. Brick carving is mainly seen in such forms of architecture, as decorative patterns, dragons and phoenixes and pairs of lions on the ridge of a house, beasts on flying roofs and basso reliefs on walls.
