 I
was born over three-quarters of a century ago, in a time when our
country was strong and full of hope. My parents were devout Buddhists,
and they put me in a monastery when I was just six years old. Because
of this I had the opportunity to experience, albeit briefly, the
inner workings of traditional Mongolian religious life. I remember
as a child seeing great yogins and meditators wandering the countryside,
following a strict practice regime in the quest for enlightenment.
We lived in the grasslands, and life had a joyful simplicity about
it.
But then in 1936 the Communists unleashed their so-called “cultural
purges,” and over the decade to follow all but a half dozen
of our great cultural and spiritual institutions were destroyed.
The few that remained were converted into army barracks or storage
warehouses. Most of the great artworks that filled these institutions,
products of centuries of artistic endeavors by great painters,
sculptors and craftsmen, were burned, melted down, or otherwise
destroyed. What survived did so because of being secretly carried
away and hidden in the countryside by dedicated people, where it
was carefully preserved over the decades that followed.
Things improved in the 1950s. The government announced that it
had made a mistake in its cultural destructions, and that it would
initiate a program for finding and protecting whatever art had
survived the purges. I was a young man by then, and an artist by
inclination. I managed to get a job with this newly established
program of cultural preservation.
It is now more than fifty years since I became involved in this
undertaking, and over forty of these have been with the Zanabazar
Mongolian National Fine Arts Museum. It has been hard work, and
I often had to spend long periods of time traveling the countryside
in search of masterpieces. Sometimes my wife complained that I
spent too much time away from home on these quests; but she understood
the importance of the work, and could see that our personal sacrifices
were justified. In retrospect I do feel that I have been able to
make some small contribution to the preservation of our great Buddhist
artistic tradition, for during the course of these many years I
have been able to find and acquire several thousand surviving artworks
for our National Museum, and in doing so have been able to play
a role in salvaging them for future generations. Many of these
rescued artworks are now classified as priceless masterpieces by
our Cultural Ministry.
The present exhibition, “Portals to Shangri-La: Masterpieces
from Buddhist Mongolia,” is very exciting for me. It has
been created in honor of the 800th anniversary of our nation’s
statehood, and co-curating it with Buddhologist and art historian
Glenn Mullin is one of my final tasks at the Zanabazar Museum.
I am now seventy-seven years old, and it is time for me to hand
my responsibilities on to a new generation. Moreover, I am first
and foremost an artist, and I look forward to having some leisure
time to spend with my own canvasses.
In formulating the exhibition Glenn and I have tried to select works
that represent the great genius of our Buddhist artists of old. Each
painting, statue and artifact in the exhibit was chosen on the basis
of artistic merit, and also because it embodies the mood, style sentiment
and playful inspiration of the Mongol spirit. Most are from the eighteenth
century, because this is when Mongolian art achieved a particularly high
flowering. However, we have also included several from the fifteenth
to seventeenth centuries, and also some from the nineteenth century,
for many great masters also worked during these periods.
Our country was controlled by Soviet Communism for seven decades,
and it is only slightly more than a decade now since we managed
to extricate ourselves from that situation. During those seven
decades we were very much cut off from the mainstream world, and
are only now beginning to be known to the international community.
It is perhaps appropriate that our Buddhist artworks serve as our
early friendship ambassadors.
Each piece in the exhibit has its own story to tell, a story that
contains elements of drama, conflict, heroism, and triumph. Most
of the pieces were rescued three-quarters of a century ago by great
heroes or heroines, who risked imprisonment and even their lives
to save the art they loved during the dangerous era of the Communist
purges. These noble and dedicated beings took upon themselves the
responsibility of whisking their favorite artworks out of the institutions
that were under attack, and hiding them for the many years to follow.
Most of these courageous beings died in obscurity of natural causes
over the decades that followed, and the artworks were thereafter
carefully guarded by their children and even grandchildren, often
buried in the desert, kept in remote caves, or concealed in simple
gher tents in the grasslands.
Glenn and I would like to dedicate this book, as well as the work
of formulating and organizing the exhibition, to the memory of
these thousands of unknown heroes and heroines, whose special destinies
enabled them to play these dramatic roles in preserving our precious
heritage.
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