THANGKA RESTORATION AND CONSERVATION
June 19, 2003
(click on small images for large images with descriptions)
One of the defining technical characteristics of a thangka 1, its most distinctive feature, is that it is painted on both sides. Thangkas are painted on a canvas support prepared and coated on both sides. Thangkas are rolled, as Chinese and Japanese works often are. The back of a thangka is as carefully prepared as the front, so that consecrated formulas, mantras, and other religious or historical writings can be inscribed on it. Before the 15th century, a pair of presentation frame textiles in cotton or silk was added by a single seam on its upper and its lower borders only, with the sides left unframed. Later thangka mounting included textiles on all four sides of the painting, usually in silk brocade.
All these particularities make restoration and conservation of thangkas a very specific job. Their conception, the place where they were kept and the way they were handled have also to be taken into consideration. Thangkas are exclusively religious works of art, honored in monasteries or private shrines, incessantly rolled and unrolled by the light of the butter lamps - this latter a cause of dirtiness we do not find in the painting of western countries. Many thangkas have been vandalized during the last 50 years as a result of the terrible cultural upheavals in Tibet during the period of the Cultural Revolution. This set of conditions causes specific mechanical wear, and alterations, which will be briefly described in this paper.
Tibetan paintings have to be freely rolled and unrolled. In their original form, they come with neither easel nor frame, the presentation textiles sewed on their upper and lower borders being there only for display purposes. Considering that both sides of a thangka have to be visible, we had to develop very specific conditions of conservation. New theoretical, methodological and solutions had to be found, combining occidental technology with Tibetan history and practice.
The restorer will find in a thangka a normal size painting with the graphic precision of a miniature or an illumination. The basic elements of Tibetan painting are accurate drawing and juxtaposition of shaded colored areas. The accuracy, even the miniaturism of the painting of a thangka, the indispensable comprehensive knowledge of the depicted subject, exponentially increases the difficulty of any intervention on a painting.
Buddhist Tibetan pantheon is very complex. Thangkas are the expression
of this pantheon and they reflect its complexity by an extremely varied
METHODS USED IN MUSEUMS AND COLLECTIONS UP TO THE PRESENT
In France, before the 60's, most Tibetan paintings were kept at the Guimet Museum and were restored by a famous Parisian relining workshop with an exclusively occidental approach. Torn thangkas or thangkas with a weakened support were lined and stretched on a frame, which made it impossible to see their back or roll them.
In the USA, to let the back of the thangka be viewed, some restorers had the idea to glue it on a Plexiglas pane, more or less thick but also somewhat flexible, with a synthetic adhesive. Again, the ability to roll the thangka was lost, and so was the aesthetic of its original display.
Some thangkas were transferred onto a paper support, in the Chinese or Japanese way, but this process crushes, flattens, and stiffens a work of art that draws all its beauty from movement, depth of field, and suppleness. This method also occults the back of the thangka.
Sometimes the presentation textiles were removed, or inappropriately replaced by others with no consideration for style or period.
As to the treatment applied to the pictorial coating, the ignorance of the original Tibetan techniques lead to practices with often disastrous results, practices such as:
Use of high retention solvents
Since the 1960s -1970s, the thangkas arriving on the market have shown occasional traditional Tibetan restorations made with small sewed or glued pieces of textiles. These restorations were quite rare, and often rough, with a minimum intervention on the surface of the painting. In fact a real traditional Tibetan method exists, involving the sewing or gluing of a strip of canvas into the larger cloth, and then an integration is made with a final coating; but they used this technique only for the initial preparation of the canvas and never for restoration purposes.
sum up we can say that many attempts have been made to find a suitable
method of conservation for these specific works of art, none of them being
satisfactory. In Tibet, the concept of restoration and conservation is
relatively unknown, and paintings were left in their original condition,
thang plain, flatlands; plain, steppe, soup, flat area,
prairie, broth, flatlands
2.With modern occidental advertising posters, a cotton
cloth doubling allow the poster to be rolled and unrolled. [back]
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