Contemporary Tibetan Art - An Exhibition

I am certainly not knowledgeable nor particularly interested in Tibetan contemporary art but the Rubin Museum of Art in New York is mounting an exhibition that opens in June. An artist represented in this exhibition (with three large canvases) happens to be a very good friend of mine and I would be remiss if I did not take the opportunity to promote him and his art. I think his art is very, very, good.

I for one am quite tired of some contemporary Tibetan art where it is a simplistic tracing of a Buddha image or the overdone juxtaposition of the Buddha and Mao, and I understand that art has always been a vehicle for politics just as literature. However, sometimes I just want to see good art masterfully done, creative, interesting, refreshing and new that makes me smile and engages me visually. I want to see a work of art where the more I look at the piece the more I see, and the more time I spend with the piece, the more time I want to spend - like a visual feast. I want to feel it from the inside and if someone has to explain it to me - then I have obviously missed it, or maybe it wasn't there in the first place. For me, art that has to be explained in order to be understood and appreciated is not great art - it is only a visual-intellectual statement.

Another artist, more familiar with contemporary art than me, I think says it best, "WOW, Pema's painting you included is KILLER! as soon as I saw it (the second one) and started reading your article, I was hoping that it was one of his! A lot of contemporary art I've seen by Tibetan artists is so predictable and lame, if not cheap and exploitative. It's great to see Pema's work - beautiful, thoughtful, and sophisticated! It's so great to see a work of contemporary Tibetan art that doesn't make use of the tired silhouette of the buddha! In fact, there really isn't much in Pema's painting that relates to (or falls back on) his identity as a Tibetan or his Tibetan ancestry. It's refreshing to know there's at least one Tibetan contemporary artist who's moved beyond that! perhaps there's hope after all...." (Currently anonymous).

Pema Rinzin is one of the only Tibetan artists that I know who has trained in the traditional way of 'tangka' and mural painting and that has also successfully transitioned into contemporary painting while still creating and teaching the so-called 'traditional' art.

The first image above is a small detail of a large painting that will be on display at the Rubin Museum of Art. The second two images are from the Joshua Liner Gallery where Pema exhibited in the early spring of 2010. He exhibited three paintings in that Chelsea New York show and all three sold. The second image (above) - that painting sold the first night of the Joshua Liner show. Aside from the RMA exhibition opening in June, Pema has another group show coming up in August - again in Chelsea. There is also talk of a solo show in the near future. (See Artist Biography and New York Tibetan Art Studio. For more information on the RMA exhibition see the link below).

Tradition Transformed, June 11, 2010 - October 18, 2010.

"Tradition Transformed: Tibetan Artists Respond marks the first exhibition of contemporary Tibetan art in a New York City museum. The nine Tibetan artists featured each explore contemporary issues--personal, political, and cultural--by integrating the centuries-old traditional imagery, techniques, and materials found in Tibetan Buddhist art with modern influences and media. (More info)."

Pema Rinzin was an artist in residence at the RMA for three years and produced a number of works during that time. The drawing of Himalayan 'Animals, Foliage and Landscape' was done in the gallery space during the highly successful 'Bon, The Magic Word' exhibition in 2007. The painting (below) of the Four Guardian Kings was the first painting that Pema completed while at the RMA. It was also first displayed in the RMA exhibition 'Big!' also in 2007, followed by the Trammell Crow museum in Dallas in 2008. I believe his three special skills that set him apart from the rest are [1] drawing, [2] composition and [3] colour balance.

The Fight Continues

The battle is sporadic. Mostly waged in the wee hours of the morning. The exchanges can be brutal and emotionally traumatic but the fight goes on. I have employed a new liquid deployed as a spray against large areas of the room. It is called Bed Bug Patrol and is a completely natural product with a strong hint of clove oil. The ground up sea bug dust, Diatomaceous Earth Dust, has been dispersed to the most important areas in need of defense - cracks, crannies and creases. The idea is to begin to limit the active area where the bugs - little bastards - are able to mount an attack, corral them into a small defensive zone, and then crush them with a final lethal blow.

Yes, I was bit!

Two bites last night around three in the morning. I will have to re-double my efforts. Needless to say I didn't sleep much after that. Have a look at this link about an apartment building in Princeton, New Jersey http://bedbugger.com/2010/04/03/bed-bugs-in-princeton-apartment-building/. It is a good example of the communications, exchanges and lack of them between some landlords, tenants and the health authorities. I am sure that the laws in New York State will be somewhat different from New Jersey. One problem with landlords and owners is that they often think that the regular pesticide company that comes once a month and sprays for cockroaches, silverfish and mice are up to the task of eradicating a bedbug infestation. It is a little bit like thinking that a regular doctor, a general practitioner, can perform complicated heart surgery requiring specialized tools and equipment. Bedbug extermination needs experts. Without recognizing this then the problem just returns again and again and the landlord spends more and more money. More tenants leave and the apartment building has a high turnover. The rent starts to go down and the place is of course already beginning to be rundown. Finally it ends up being a skid row apartment (or house). That is the life cycle of an untreated bedbug infested dwelling.

The Calm Before the Storm

No bites last night and none the night before, this of course means that they, the 'bugs', have been well fed. I have to be extra vigilante tonight because they are undoubtedly getting hungry 'on the move' and I am the only thing on the menu. Buckle up. It's going to get bumpy.

I have been informed by the building manager that the next bedbug spraying of the apartments won't be until the end of next week - plenty of bug breeding time in there between now and then. I am not yet confidant that the building owners are treating this matter with the seriousness and urgency that it requires. Regardless of that, I am on the offensive and have scoured the internet for reviews and anecdotes of bed bug sufferers and information on various products. I have also ordered a variety of different sprays, dusts and environmentally friendly concoctions - no DDT. I will let you know which items work and which do not. I am taking the battle to the bugs.

Yet, all of that being said, I figure even if the exterminators get the things out of my apartment I still have no control over the apartments of anyone else in the building, and they may be lazier than me, stay infested, and spread the bugs back to my apartment yet again. So, in other words, I am at war with both the bedbugs and with anybody who doesn't have the resolve and strength to get rid of their own damn bugs. To that end I must turn the apartment into a fortress surrounded at the outer edges with a series of ditches and tank traps filled with diatomaceous earth dust. Then, a film of poisonous enzymes - organic warfare - followed up by regular preventative spraying with a variety of lethal cocktails - striking randomly. However, none of this advanced arsenal of weaponry has arrived, as it was just now ordered, and until then I will continue to do battle with the enemy using rubbing alcohol in a spray bottle as my front line weopon. That is the strategy, that is the resolve - let the final battle for the apartment begin.

Constant Vigilance - The War of the Bed Bugs

Every night is potentially a battle although depending on the infestation the bugs may only feed every three or four days. Depending on their number they might need to feed every night. While waiting for the third spraying of the apartment which is usually five days between sprayings I have resorted to a spray bottle and alcohol. No, not for drinking - for spraying the wooden bed frame and then the area of the floor under and around the bed. This seems to work for a few hours at best. The alcohol kills the bugs, babies and eggs on contact - but only on contact. If they are hiding around a corner then they are safe - the little bastards.

I learned early on while staying in India in the 1970s that neither the Geneva Convention nor the Bodhisattva Code of Ethics need apply to bed bugs. They are a serious health risk and can spread salmonella and other diseases. I am also investigating other treatments such as natural products that destroy and keep the bugs at bay. Let it be said that the 'battle is on.'

My allies, the apartment management company and their hired mercenaries have not been overly successful in the battle but it is still early and there are many more days of fighting before this campaign is done.

In the end either I will be Lord of the apartment or the bed bugs will.

The Inevitable

Well, I guess it was just a matter of time, inevitable. When you live in a tenement flat in New York City, over a hundred years old, with porous walls and floors, and people coming and going, moving in and out - it had to happen. BED BUGS!!! BED BUGS!!! BED BUGS!!!

The question now is what to do about it and - not too patiently - watch how the property management company deals with it. Will they be aggressive in extermination or laid back and fight the scourge topically. The next two or three weeks will tell the story. One thing I already know for sure is that I cannot live with bed bugs.

All of my New York belongings which are basically clothes and books are wrapped in plastic bags and fill the middle of the apartment in order to facilitate the exterminators and their need to spray the corners of the apartment, walls, ceiling, etc. The wooden bed frame has been sprayed and the entire floor has been sprayed over the course of two extermination visits. Between the first and the 2nd visit (2 days after) I was bitten and after the second visit (2 days after) I was bitten again.

The exterminators are scheduled to return this coming week - Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday. Somehow I don't think that will be enough. I was told that in the building on the floor below me there was one filthy apartment that was overrun with bed bugs similar to the image at the bottom of this post. It was said that if you moved any item of furniture or lifted anything at all in that apartment then dozens of bed bugs would scurry in all directions.



Feeding Habits of Bed Bugs (from Wikipedia): "Bedbugs are bloodsucking insects. They are normally out at night just before dawn, with a peak feeding period of about an hour before sunrise. Bedbugs may attempt to feed at other times if given the opportunity and have been observed feeding during all periods of the day. They reach their host by walking, or sometimes climb the walls to the ceiling and drop down on feeling a heat wave. Bedbugs are attracted to their hosts by warmth and the presence of carbon dioxide. The bug pierces the skin of its host with two hollow feeding tubes. With one tube it injects its saliva, which contains anticoagulants and anesthetics, while with the other it withdraws the blood of its host. After feeding for about five minutes, the bug returns to its hiding place. The bites cannot usually be felt until some hours or even days later, as a dermatological reaction to the injected agents, and the first indication of a bite usually comes from the desire to scratch the bite site. Because of their natural aversion for sunlight, bedbugs come out at night.[8]



Although bedbugs can live for a year or eighteen months without feeding, and purportedly up to three years in the case of the species Oeciacus vicarius (the cliff swallow bug),[9] they normally try to feed every five to ten days. Bedbugs that go dormant for lack of food often live longer than a year, while well-fed specimens typically live six to nine months.

At the 57th Annual Meeting of the Entomological Society of America in 2009, it was reported that newer generations of pesticide-resistant bedbugs in Virginia could survive only two months without feeding.[10]

Low infestations may be difficult to detect and in the early stages, victims may not realize they have bedbugs. Patterns of bites in a row or a cluster are typical, as the insects may be disturbed while feeding. Bites may be found in a variety of places on the body."



I will look into some Tantric Buddhist texts to see if there are any special practices, charms, talismans or mantras for eradicating these bugs. Bed bugs were well known to Tibetans who called them 'demon lice'. Mipham Rinpoche had numerous techniques for getting rid of a wide range of pests from mice, to rabbits, body lice, rabid dogs and more.

Introducing Tashi T. Dharlo to the World

Tashi was born on Wednesday morning, 12th of May. Both the mother and baby are fine. For those of you who know, Tenzin the mother has worked with me on the Himalayan Art Resources website here in New York city since the Spring of 2001. Congratulations to the mother and father and to the proud grand-parents and their new grand-son.

Teaching Prejudice

Teaching the History of Yesterday might be Teaching the Prejudice of Today

I recently chanced upon a label copy for a Padmasambhava sculpture in a current exhibition at the Rubin Museum of Art in New York City. It was interesting because it was a sculpture that I had purchased for the museum some years earlier when I worked there (between 1999 & 2007) and an object that Samten Karmey and I had used in the first ever Bon art and culture exhibition, also at the RMA - 'Bon the Magic Word.' We used the object as a possible example of the 'legendary' teacher Yungdrung Tongdrol - why not?

Now, to my point, I include in this post the label copy that accompanies the image of Padmasambhava and ask you - does this smack of systemic conditioned and on-going prejudice? Or am I over reacting? I have written a short paragraph below that I think somewhat represents a similar historical prejudice (and racism) that is part of the American experience. For me the two paragraphs are essentially the same and are intended to convey, ignorantly or intentionally, the same basic story. The paragraph below is also something similar to what could be found in American school textbooks up to the 1970s. It is however, now, no longer publicly acceptable in the USA in any way and considered extremely prejudicial. Well, what about the Padmasambhava label and the portrayal of the Bon - especially to a new audience, a non-Tibetan audience, an audience that is currently being molded by educators?

Who out there is researching this topic of Buddhist textual prejudice against Bon? Who actually cares? Who has any kind of investment in this issue? I for one can cite dozens of examples, just from memory, of instances of anti-Bon prejudice in Buddhist literature. Those stories are part of my Buddhist training: Padmasambhava life story, Milarepa life story, Sachen Kunga Nyingpo life story, etc., etc., etc. Are we now ignorantly continuing this tradition of blatant prejudice against the Bon Religion and culture just because it is written in the Tibetan Buddhist 'sacred' texts?

Comparison Paragraph:

"A legendary American Hero, General George Armstrong Custer, was one of the figures that tamed the wild West. Stories abound about his travels through-out the country-side and the sites where he tamed and converted the locals are considered historical. One such episode takes place at a location where General Custer came to defeat the Indian people of the plains and their indigenous religion. When a local Indian chief rose up to resist by force of arms and the aid of their sacred religious drum and ghost dances the chief along with most of his people, women and children, persihed. Now when the thunder clouds rumble, the local Indians say that the spirit elders of that place are beating the sacred drums and dancing." (Written by Jeff Watt as a comparison to the RMA Padmasambhava/Bon label copy).

Padmasambhava Label Copy: (click on image)







(First published on the International Bon Studies website, May 13th, 2010).

Funny English at its Best

Please check out this link from the New York Times.

These Chinese signs are really a lot of fun. Some of the images below are just snap shots I took on my last visit to China while visiting the Buddhist Temple at Dazu Grotto half way between the cities of Chengdu and Chongqing. I don't search out and collect these signs like some travelers I know but they really are fun when you come across them unexpectedly.




Please check out this link.