“The Black Hat Eccentric: Artistic Visions of the Tenth Karmapa by Karl Debreczeny is at once a fascinating story of an unconventional artist and his times, and a landmark contribution to Tibetan studies. Debreczeny writes, ‘The life story of the Tenth Karmapa provides insight into the lives of Tibetan artists, who are typically absent from discussions of Tibetan art (65).’ This book addresses this curious state of art history within Tibetan studies by offering the first publication about a single Tibetan artist, with a strong focus on ‘the hand of the master.’
“The Tenth Karmapa, Chöying Dorjé (1604-1674), head of the Karma Kagyu school, was not a professional artist, but in Debreczeny’s words ‘painting and sculpture was his passion (65).’ Chöying Dorjé’s painting style was very different from ‘the mainstream Tibetan painting of his time (69),’ which was dominated by the Menri style from the mid-fifteenth century. Menri is known for its predominance of blue and green palette, strict iconography and iconometry [artistic conventions for the proportions of buddhas, deities and so forth], and a symmetrical composition crowded with details that fill the canvas. Chöying Dorjé was trained in part by his religious teacher, the Sixth Shamar, as well as a master painter of the Menri tradition, but seems to have developed most as an artist through the viewing and copying of Buddhist art encountered in his wide-ranging travels. Chöying Dorjé was especially interested in archaic styles and the art of Tibet’s neighbors, developing a highly personal idiom that incorporated features from what Tibetans called ‘Kashmir’ (northwest India), Nepal, and China and was unusually versatile in styles from the Tibetan Yarlung (7th – 8th century), Chinese Song and Yuan, and fifteenth century Tibetan master artists. He was especially fond of the Chinese theme of the Sixteen Arhats, and painted sets of the subject multiple times.”
From Mandala January-March 2013