New School Thangka Painter Amdo East-Caidan Research

Anthropology of art is a new discipline which was found in the middle of20th century in western countries. Its research approach, called fieldwork, is an important supplement to the methods of art history study. Lots of first-hand materials collecting from the fieldwork offers a much broad and totally new view to the researchers in their studyIn this paper, the author takes an important Tangka artist of the new school of A mdo art named Don-grub-tshe-rtan for presentative as the fieldwork case, tries to discuss how traditional style learns from modern art, and how the artist deals with continuity and creativity of art.The Introduction, the text of5chapters and the Conclusion constitute this thesis. In the part of Introduction, feasibility of this study is analyzed. In the first chapter, it presents the circumstance and background of the new school of A mdo art. In the next two chapter, it states experience of Don-grub-tshe-rtan’s upbringing and art in the form of oral history. Chapter4and5focus on the art piece of Don-grub-tshe-rtan. The author discusses the art language in his painting practice and his art conception, shows the artist’s attitude towards the traditionalism and modernism. And at last, the author discusses a new type of art sponsorship between the sponsor and the folk thangka artist. According to the discourse above, this research makes the preliminary conclusions as following:A number of innovative people were grown up in A mdo region under the circumstance of the unique geographic environment and abundant historical culture in this area. In the author’s view, the art conception and style of Don-grub-tshe-rtan represents the new direction of Tibetan art of painting and will affect increasingly number of Tibetan painters in the future. This is a tendency which should not be neglected.