History and Form
Thangka is a traditional Buddhist art form arising at the confluence of the Indian, Arab, and Chinese worlds along the Silk Road. The earliest forms of art thought to have influenced and developed into thangka survive in the Mogao Caves of Western China, which were filled with art and scripture by passing travelers as early as the 4th century CE. Tibetan Thangka definitively emerges by the 11th century.
Mostly, Thangka are small paintings done on sheets of silk or cotton, rarely exceeding 20 inches in size. The emphasis is on detail rather than scale, and that is the first thing that will strike you about thangka painting, the extraordinarily meticulous detail. Thangkas are painted by monks or lay Buddhists and the art is highly regarded as an achievement in skill and accumulation of karmic merit. Each thangka produced by an artist earns him a karmic improvement.
Rich amber-orange hues, fine golden line work, and lapis-lazuli blue sky backgrounds typify the thangka aesthetic, which is always colorful and fantastic. Though there are many types of thangkas, usually thangkas depict a central deity. They may also commemorate the life of an influential lama or bodhisattva. Thangkas are occasionally historical, with a narrative function, and help communities of monks and other Buddhists to remember and retell stories that are important to their tradition. Apart from these teaching and pneumonic functions, thangkas are also used in meditative practice. This is especially true with mandala thangka.