Flyer Promoting "Art and Imagination: Mongolian Buddhist Texts and Ritual Practices"

Abstract

Art and Imagination sheds light on this unique tradition and on the Buddhist past of Inner Asia in general. It explores the relationships among texts, artistic images, structured imagination practices, and visual aesthetics, examining the roles of meditation and ritual in visualizing images and producing the artifacts of visual culture. Contemplative practices of imagination and visualization in ritual contexts are invariably prescriptive, whereas the depiction of Buddhist deities in works of art allows for creative freedom, and Wallace and Tsultemin investigate how the mental imagery that is invoked in contemplative and ritual practices, which requires the activation of memory and at times verbal and physical partici- pation, are manipulated in visual art. Using the methods of religious studies and art history to analyze texts, visualization and imaginative practices, and artworks, they demonstrate that the adaptation of Tibetan Buddhism and its imagery to the Mongolian context resulted in unique textual, ritual, and artistic innovations that emerged in different social and political conditions, thus contributing to our understanding of the effects of cultural encounters through different geographi- cal areas and historical periods.