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Art lovers and collectors can divide thangkas basically into three different categories:
Thangkas older than 100 years
High quality thangkas created in the 20th century.
Cheap thangkas made for the tourist market.
Thangkas older than 100 years were and are not allowed to be exported out of Nepal, which can be considered the most important country for Tibetan thangka painting. In terms of quality, old thangkas are not necessarily the better thangkas. In former times there were good and poor handicraftsmen just as today, or the quality standard was limited due to what the commissioner of a thangka was willing or could afford to pay. If you are familiar with the subject, you can easily verify this fact by visits to museums of East Asian Art. I also want to mention that a large part of "old" thangkas and "old" Tibetan bronzes offered in the Western art market, is in my personal and humble opinion of rather recent nature. Nepalese handicraft people are great masters in making things "old". (Maybe one should really speak of artists in such cases.) |
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