Paradise & Plumage: Chinese Connections in Tibetan Arhat Painting

Rob Linrothe

A visually stunning inaugural catalog of the Rubin Museum of Art, New York, scheduled to open in October 2004. This 104-page volume celebrates and explores the artistic exchange between Tibet and China from the 13th to the 19th century, taking the theme of Buddhist Arhat painting as a concise lens through which to view the wider ramifications of artistic and cultural interaction. Examining the exchange of motifs, compositions, and modes of representation, “Paradise & Plumage” reveals the creative reassignment of meaning when Tibetan artists appropriate aspects that may derive from older Chinese traditions and vice versa.

The catalog features a rich selection of objects and paintings, ranging from a fine 17th-century Kesi textile from the Newark Museum to a delicate mid-14th-century hanging scroll from The Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY. Also included are traditional Arhat objects, such as furniture, pottery, pieces of coral and turquoise, and scholars' rocks.

Arhat paintings are often created in sets. However, due to political conditions and the distribution of works over time, older paintings are seldom seen in this context. The Rubin Collections are fortunate to hold eighteen Arhat paintings from a 17th-century set of twenty-three, including both attendants and all four direction guardians; these are reproduced in the catalog in a full-color appendix.

Price: US$29.95