Jack Karp
July 2009
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Zanabazar Fine Art Museum, Ulaan Bataar, Mongolia
By Jack Karp
Most of us living and working in New York tend to think of the Big Apple as the absolute center of the world, especially the art world. But every once in a while, it’s good to remind ourselves that art was not invented by goateed hipsters in Williamsburg but has been being created in every far-flung corner of the world since man first stood upright.
With that thought in mind, I decided to check out the Zanabazar Fine Art Museum, located about as far – geographically and aesthetically – as one can get from Manhattan, in Ulaan Bataar, the capital of Mongolia (yes, Mongolia).
Mongolia actually has a thriving contemporary art scene and its capital city is littered with new galleries, most of them having sprung up in the 18 years or so since the fall of the Soviet Union, of which Mongolia was a satellite state for most of the twentieth century. But Mongolia’s love affair with the arts goes way back, at least to the 1600s, when it was ruled by Zanabazar, Mongolia’s Bogd Khan (the country’s political and spiritual leader, akin to Tibet’s Dalai Lama and the man after whom the museum is named), who also just happened to be the country’s most celebrated artist, often called the Michelangelo of Asia. Zanabazar was renowned for his Buddha images and sculptures, being a Buddhist monk, and he even brought young artists to his winter palace in Ulaan Bataar to be trained under him. (Can you imagine Barack Obama or George Bush bringing aspiring painters to sketch in the Oval Office?)
The museum itself, set in an ugly, institutional, old Soviet-style building left over from Communist days, turned out to provide a good historical overview of Mongol art. If you’ve ever seen Tibetan or Nepalese art, or visited an Himalayan art museum like the Rubin Museum in Manhattan, you can imagine some of what Mongol art looks like, having been heavily influenced by the Tibetan paintings and sculptures of the Buddha brought from Tibet with the advent of Buddhism in Mongolia.
But Mongolians definitely have their own artistic traditions as well, my favorite of which was the Zurag – a style of large, almost mural-like painting that addresses the subject of nomadic life. Zurags generally run large enough to fill a wall and show many activities and events occurring simultaneously in a single space, including everything from men riding horses to women milking cows to gers being built to camels having sex (yes, that’s in there, too). The style is exemplified by the work of painters Tsagaan Jamba and Balduu Sharav, both of whom painted in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Sharav’s zurag painting “One Day of Mongolia” is considered an icon in the country and is often reproduced.
And while Mongolian art itself may not be widely known or have had a huge impact on world art as we know it, the Mongolians certainly did. One other thing I learned in my travels – it was Chinggis Khan’s conquest of Eurasia and establishing of trade routes between Asia, the Middle East, and Europe that led directly to the flowering of art and thought in Europe we now call the Renaissance.
If you ever happen to be in Ulaan Bataar, Mongolia (hey, it could happen) and you want to check out the museum, it’s open in the summer and autumn everyday from 9 am to 6 pm and in the winter and spring everyday from 10 am to 5 pm. It’s located on Khudaldaany Street, Barilgachdiin Square. Website at www.zanabazarfam.mn.
– Jack Karp
