Westerners often think of Tibet as an isolated country located somewhere on the roof of the world. And althogh it is true that tibet, has long made it an important crossroads between India, China, and Mongolia. These three powerful influences and many smaller ones have helped to make Tibetan culture amazingly rich and varied.This richness is most readily apparent in Tibetan Buddhism, or Lamaism. Lamaism is one of the best examples of syncretism in the modern world (syncretism is the term for two religions mixing or, even more accurately an imported religion overlaying the native one.) From the region's native born Bon religion Tibetan Buddhism inherits a pantheon so extensive that it almost borders on animism. Still, despite this, Tibetan society is not chaotic, but extremely hierarchial with three well-defined castes: commoners, nobility, and the clergy. In Tibet, art is almost entirely religious in its nature and, consequently, tibetan art reflects the society's structure and the religion's richness. Another important factor is the seminomadic nature of many Tibetan Peoples, whose sacred art must move with them.
Many of these characteristics come together in thanka(lit. "rolled-up cloth") painting, perhaps the most characteristic expression of Tibetan art. (Although most of what can be said about themes in thangka painting can be applied to Tibetan mural and manuscript painting.) Thangkas are scroll paintings used as altar covers. Made of cotton or linen that has been treated with gesso, they are painted with either watercolor or linseed oil mediums. the painting is then illuminated with gold and covered with a piece of silk, and the whole thing can be rolled up between two sticks.
The amazing thing about Tibetan painting is its extensive canon. The average thangka painter, usually a monk, spends the entire first part of his (traditional painters are almost exclusively male) life familiarizing himself with this canon, and executing paintings determined by a thangka master (the aim of this study is to eventually become a master, directing one's own team of monks.) There are so many rules of composition and iconography that pictures are almost predetermined. Every Buddha or bodhisattva, every peaceful, wrathful, or extremely wrathful deity has its own distinctive prportions, colors, composition, eyes, clouds, throne and borders.
This is by no means to imply that thangka paintings are formulaic, as Westerners commonly understand the term, or boring. Having such an extensive pantheon to draw upon means that each painting can be a unique combination of psycho-cosmic/sexual symbolism. Perhaps the closest common parallel would be the wide variation we find in Tarot decks-in both examples, familiar images can appear in an almost infinite number of configurations, bringing new interpretations to set symbols. Indeed, much like Tibetan society itself, thangka painting reflects a world of rigid hierarchies and ever-changing variables, strict discipline and ecstatic joy.