Mongolian Art at the Venice Biennale

Modern Paintings of Mongolia, 2002

Mongolian Art exhibition at Fukuoka Asian art museum in Japan, 2002

Space and Culture, India, ACCB, 2018

The article considers the role of Central Asian traditions in the formation and development of Mongolian fine arts. The authors reveal the significance of various factors for the formation of the original stylistics, which manifested itself in the methods, techniques and pictorial means typical of Mongolian art. The article defines the role of Indian artistic traditions in the development of Mongolian fine arts. The authors claim that Mongolian religious painting on scrolls is a bright artistic phenomenon based on the strict canon developed in India and inherited by many cultures of Asia. The means of artistic depiction, iconography, a system of proportions, borrowed and modified by the Mongols, had been developed in the cradle of Indian civilisation. The purpose of the article is to study the features of Mongolian fine arts on the basis of ethnic traditions, as well as to consider this phenomenon using the example of traditional and contemporary painting. Multiculturalism conditioned by the polyethnic nature of the region played an important role in the history of Mongolian culture. The renewal of ethnocultural experience is related to the artistic traditions brought from India, Tibet and China, but in Mongolian art, there is no predominance of any forms of other cultures. Hence, the art is original and has its unique features. As a result of the combination of the ornamental pictorial technique of nomadic cultures with the painting techniques of sedentary peoples, an artistic style based on the Buddhist canon, supplemented by original ethnocultural elements, was formed. In the process of mastering and developing the artistic experience based on the traditions of planar painting, icon painting, arts and crafts, folklore, a new art direction "Mongol Zurag" appeared in the 20th century. The creative method of modern masters proves that while working in various trends, genres, techniques, individual manners, they preserve and develop national traditions in painting. Consequently, the preservation of the artistic-aesthetic heritage of the ethnos has a positive effect on fine arts and the vitality of culture in general.

The nomadic culture and art of the Mongol Empire was influenced by a diverse range of traditions and religions from various regions. Throughout their history, nomadic cultures have always maintained extensive connections with foreign civilizations.

I libri di Ca’ Foscari, 2018

South Asian Studies, 2018

2003

I went to the Venice Biennale for the first time this year expecting to see some kind of acceptance of the huge range of modernist art now produced and exhibited in many Asian countries. Instead I found myself in a peculiar set of time warps, ones constructed by, for example, the peculiar historical architecture of Venice and the history of its Biennale, and also by the vagaries of the European art curatorial practice which in part had chosen the works.

2023

Book Review of Shane McCausland, The Mongol Century: Visual Cultures of Yuan China 1271-1368 (2015)

Museums in Mongolia underwent significant changes in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. By investigating activities of the museums as evidence of the reinvention of the normative narrative, it will be demonstrated that museums responded to post-socialism in differing ways, but with similar outcomes. The museums evidence the intersection of political and popular influence from within Mongolia and from abroad that has resulted in revised master narratives which contribute to the construction of a new national identity. The causes for changes in museums offer insight into how the past is mobilised for politics and international relations. In Mongolia’s case economic collapse, cultural diplomacy and nationalistic rhetoric surrounding the anniversaries of the founding of the Great Mongol Empire and the birthday of Chinggis Khan have been powerful influencers on how museums have reshaped their meta-narrative. Chinggis Khan, the core figure in Mongolian history has become the nexus for linkage of the ancient past and traditional culture, legitimising the present as a product of an ancient, ordained continuum. As Uradyn E. Bulag describes it, ‘Chinggis Khan is the fantasy structure, the scenario through which each of the countries involved perceives itself as a meaningful being or entity’.1 Further, the uncomfortable nature of the Manchu and socialist periods in the ongoing political legitimacy debate and in nationalist fervour significantly influence the extent to which and the manner in which these periods have been included in the story. 1 Uradyn E. Bulag, Collaborative Nationalism, Rowman and Littlefield Publishers Inc., Plymouth, 2010, p. 109. 2 The transition from the mono-ideology of the socialist period to the challenge to official hegemony that post-socialism demanded was a difficult process for museums due to existing museum culture and external influences. The form that the museums of the study take to this day reflect a collision between Mongols desire for self-assertion and the foreign policy interests of near and third neighbours. While Mongolian museums have survived transition, they have done so owing a heavy debt to deploying the ‘traditional heroic display’ while marginalising temporally significant periods of history that remain uncomfortable in the grand narrative.2 Carsten identified the complex interconnectedness between memory and the past and present and the political context in which they exist.3 While international influence has become more regulated in the recent decade in Mongolian museums due to economic stabilisation domestic influences continue to impact on the way museums present history.4 In reconstructing culture and history into clusters of meaning and hence value, Mongolian museums have been significantly influenced by the historical dissonance of periods of Mongolian history and by ongoing geopolitical anxiety.5 While their physical and metaphorical existence qualifies them for participation in building a revised national identity in the post-socialist period, the level of contribution has been delimited until recently not by a lack of professionalism or expertise, but by a lack of resources and a lack of political support in competition with economics, social issues and the internet and popular media. Without the time and support for sound planning, museums have with a few significant exceptions been forced until recently to take a responsive rather than proactive stance in regards their contribution to debate about history and as follows, national identity. The result has been that museums have been heavily affected by local and international popular and political constructs of what is jinkhin Mongol – true Mongolian. 2 Timothy Luke, Museum Politics: Power Plays at the Exhibition, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 2002. 3 Janet Carsten (ed.), Ghosts of Memory: Essays on Remembrance and Relatedness, Wiley-Blackwell, 2007, p.1. 4 Ibid. 5 Paula Sabloff (ed.), Mapping Mongolia: Situating Mongolia in the World from Geologic Time to the Present, Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania, 2011.

2023

https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674279162 ******* Based on the paper given to the International conference, The Mongols and Global History, Villa I Tatti, The Harvard University Center for Renaissance Studies, 10-11 December 2018. https://itatti.harvard.edu/event/mongols-and-global-history-international-conference