"Even if one has to experience all the hardships in the world to get there, it is worth it to be able to stand alone on a snow-clad mountain, even for a moment, to ponder life," said an artist who is unknown himself but whose saying about life on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau has become popular.

The roof of the world, a land of eternal beauty and crude tenderness, has long been a source of inspiration for artists, filmmakers, musicians and writers. Many of them have built their fame on works involving elements of Tibetan art.

Tibetan art, as reflected in their works, is mainly embodied in such traditions as thangka paintings and Buddhist sculptures.

The centuries-old tradition of thangka painting always involves religious themes, complicated layouts and bright, contrasting colors. Many priceless works are inlaid with precious jeweler and are revered by Tibetan people in the grand halls of monasteries across Tibet.

In the eyes of most visitors to the plateau, the glory of traditional Tibetan art far outshines the achievements of contemporary Tibetan artists, who refer to their works as "contemporary Tibetan paintings of rich color on canvas."

The young and middle-aged Tibetan artists who have emerged in China's art scene since the early 1980s, are moving away from the traditional paintings on cloth, of which thangka are the main representative, to paint in ways that express their personal feelings towards the plateau and life there.

They are now giving a group show until Saturday at the National Art Museum of China in Beijing. This is the first major show of this kind in the country's capital.

The exhibition, hosted by the Li Keran Art Foundation, features more than 80 works by 11 artists who are natives of or have spent most of their life in the Tibet Autonomous Region.

"Although they are marginal to the contemporary Chinese art scene, their kind of art has a place in the history of Tibetan art, where it is a new form of ethnic art that embodies the clash between modern life and ideas and the traditional cultures peculiar to the Tibetan plateau," said Li Xiaoke, director of the Li Keran Art Foundation.

The works on display, all large or medium-sized, were created with a variety of acrylic, oil or traditional Tibetan colors on canvas. The rich colors used achieve a brilliant, decorative effect like that of thangka.

The subjects of the paintings are traditional -- the artists paint mainly Tibetan landscapes, religious rituals, stories from Buddhist scriptures and historical records, and legends that have been handed down orally.

But the ideas involved and ways of expressing them are modern, indeed.

Of the 11 participating artists, seven are ethnic Tibetans. Three call themselves "Tibetanized" Hans, and one is from the Yao ethnic minority of Central China's Hunan Province.

Among the Tibetan artists, Bama Zhaxi, Jigme Chinlai, Banbar and Lhaba Cering have developed individualized styles and added a humanistic touch to their works based on theological themes.

Cering Namgyai and woman artist Dezhoin, both born in the 1970s, are avant garde in spirit but still immature in style, as they are breaking away from the theological core of Tibetan art and are experimenting boldly with a variety of modern methods of expression.

The above six have been educated in art academies or art departments of universities in the Tibet Autonomous Region or in other parts of China, or have learned from other artists who have received academic training.

They either work as art teachers at schools or as independent artists.

Wanggya is different. This farmer and part-time artist, born in 1968 in Parco Village, Sagya County, in the Tibet Autonomous Region, started to learn thangka painting from a fellow villager at the age of 16.

He later had an opportunity to undertake further studies at the Tashilhunpo Monastery in Xigaze for two years.

His works are the most similar to traditional thangka among all those shown at the exhibition. He uses traditional techniques to depict modern life on the plateau.

The works of the three Han artists, Han Shuli, Yu Youxin and Zhai Yuefei, and those of Yao artist Li Zhibao are easily recognized at the exhibition, as they, in varying degrees, bear traces of the literati painting traditions of the Han people.

Han Shuli and Yu Youxin have been teaching modern art concepts and techniques on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau for more than 20 years.

Han, born in Beijing in 1948, left the city for the plateau in 1973 after graduation from the Central Academy of Fine Arts.

Yu, born in East China's Shandong Province in 1940, was a graduate of the Beijing Arts School and studied with a number of master artists, including Wu Jingbo, Bai Xueshi, Zhao Yu and Wu Guanzhong. He has been working in Lhasa since 1980.

"There's a bunch of artists who were once Beijing-based on the plateau and many of them have lived on the roof of the world for decades," said Yu.

"Tibet is in my eyes a better place for artistic creation than Beijing," he claimed.

"I feel my spirit purified on the plateau and I can concentrate myself wholly on creation. But in Beijing I will naturally value fame and money and pay much attention to networking, which is sometimes more important to the success of an artist than his artistic explorations," he added.

Although it is like a paradise away from the buzzing Beijing art world, the region also has its own art market and contemporary Tibetan artists. The young ones who are not as established as Yu, still have to bear the market in mind in most of their creations.

"We rarely paint pictures of such a large size," said Dezhoin.

"Tourists are the major buyers of our works, and we often paint small ones and send them to tourist shops," she explained.

Traditional thangka are much more popular than contemporary art works, as local residents decorate their houses and temples with thangka, said Jigme Chinlai.

(China Daily May 26, 2004)