Sex Tourism With Statues

Ah, Tibet. That “mysterious, fascinating land.” That “land of everlasting snow.” That “distant, inaccessible land of the sage.” There, the explorer travels in “a waking dream,” discovering “the final remaining hyperlinks within the chain of historic traditions (Egyptians, Incas, and so on.) which have disappeared in every single place else.” Sadly, “invasions and decadence have made [the Tibetans] lose a part of their information.” Now, “hidden within the depths of the monasteries, fabulous treasures slumber within the mud.” They cry out for rescue, for they “possess a singular power and vibration that yearns to present itself.”

You may suppose these quotes, with their picturesque stereotypes and clear justifications for taking historic cultural artifacts from fashionable Tibetans, come from some basic colonialist journey memoir, like William Montgomery McGovern’s 1924 guide To Lhasa in Disguise: A Secret Expedition By Mysterious Tibet. However no. I discovered all of them in a brand new guide, Buddhist Artwork of Tibet: In Milarepa’s Footsteps (Flammarion, 2022), written by Magali Jenny, Etienne Bock, and Jean-Marc Falcombello. Jenny and Bock are employed by the Tibet Museum–Fondation Alain Bordier in Gruyères, Switzerland, which payments itself as one of many world’s largest collections of historic Buddhist artwork, with round 350 artifacts courting from the sixth to 18th centuries. Most of those are from Tibet, however its holdings additionally embody objects from Nepal, Bhutan, Burma, and northern India.

The present publication will not be a complete catalog of those holdings. As an alternative, it makes use of a choice of works within the museum to try the modest job of presenting “a basic overview of Tibetan spiritual thought, artwork, and historical past.” Bock, who authored this overview, holds a grasp’s diploma in Tibetan research however demonstrates no reward for presenting his area. The textual content veers between simplistic discussions of primary ideas of Buddhism and tedious dissection of the historic minutia, as if Bock is unsure of whether or not he’s writing a youngsters’s guide or a presentation for a graduate seminar. Right here’s a pattern, chosen at random: “From Gampopa (sgam po pa, 1079–1153) on, what is named the Dakpo Kagyü (dwags po bka’ brgyud) will flourish and multiply, subdividing into the ‘4 principal and eight secondary’ lineages.” There are not any footnotes — you’ll have to take the creator’s phrase for all of the details he pours out upon you. 

Interspersed by means of Bock’s textual content are eight passages written by Falcombello, a training Buddhist who serves because the lama of Geneva’s Centre d’Etudes du Bouddhisme Tibétain. Falcombello interprets and gives commentary on sections of “The Black Treasury,” a Sixteenth-century manuscript within the museum concerning the Eleventh-century Tibetan yogi Milarepa. The guide makes a lot of the truth that this manuscript is unpublished and thus can “present a brand new imaginative and prescient” of Milarepa’s life … however doesn’t trouble to inform us how lengthy the manuscript is, how a lot of it’s translated right here, or how a lot it differs (if in any respect) from the a number of different manuscript biographies of Milarepa. 

Probably the most fascinating a part of the guide is its opening part, written by Jenny and titled “A Journey, A Life, A Work of Artwork.” It’s a cringing and cringe-worthy hymn of reward for her boss, the collector Alain Bordier, who based the Tibet Museum in 2009 to carry the artwork he had amassed over the previous 30 years.

Jenny opens with an excellent query: “What’s a museum devoted to Himalayan artwork and Tibetan Buddhism doing in Gruyères?” She means that “some rationalization could also be discovered” in Bordier “falling in love” each with Himalayan sacred artwork and the Château Saint-Germain in Gruyères, whose chapel he transformed right into a museum to carry the artifacts he had beforehand “gathered round” his mattress in a room he describes as “my den, the room during which my father died.” Assembling these sculptures made him really feel like “the creator of a brand new universe.”

After taking on the household enterprise of actual property growth, Bordier realized that his “basic ambition was for his life to have true that means.” He first sought this that means in journeys to India within the Nineteen Eighties. (No less than, I feel it was the ’80s — for a historical past of a collector’s life, this part is frustratingly gentle on dates.) Bordier then met a number of students and sellers who launched him to the artwork of Tibet. He made seven journeys to the nation between 1993 and 2000. After his first journey, when he generally discovered himself in locations with nothing to eat moreover the standard Tibetan dish of barley flour combined with salted tea and yak butter, Bordier at all times got here with a suitcase filled with “tubes of pâté, Cénovis [yeast extract] paste, anchovy puree, mustard, mayonnaise …. Something to brighten this cereal paste and provides it the flavors of distant Switzerland.” 

This picture — of a European explorer managing to choke down the native meals solely because of his suitcase filled with pâté — is humorous, however it additionally serves as a metaphor for what Bordier has finished along with his gathering. He believes that the sacred artifacts he bought “emanate” sure “blessings and forces.” By gathering them, he took one thing nourishing to Tibetans, modified it to his personal style, after which consumed it himself. 

The guide invitations readers to comply with Bordier’s instance. The authors clarify that it may be learn so as, for “a guided journey,” or “explored” “in response to your individual pursuits and needs.” “Above all,” they inform us, “we hope this studying shall be a pleasurable expertise.” There’s a distinction between searching for the that means of an artwork object and searching for that means in your personal life by means of your interplay with an artwork object. Chasing your individual pleasure by exploring the beauties of a faraway place in response to your individual specific needs is intercourse tourism with statues.

Many Westerners, from Sir Richard Francis Burton making a pilgrimage to Mecca in 1853 to Elizabeth Gilbert consuming, loving, and praying in India and Indonesia, have emulated the non secular rituals of non-Western nations in acts of non secular appropriation. However Bordier was not glad in taking on yoga or buying a up to date art work to take residence. As an alternative, he adopted a extra extractive mannequin of what some have referred to as “non secular colonialism.” Sacred art work made within the Himalayan area within the sixth to 18th centuries is a non-renewable useful resource, and Bordier has taken as a lot of it as he may.

“However China!” you might be in all probability considering. Jenny’s account of Bordier’s travels in Tibet focuses on the harm finished by the Chinese language occupation, full with pictures of monasteries in ruins and Bordier’s descriptions of the issue of getting official permission to {photograph} surviving artworks (luckily, generally “a frail, ageless monk” would whisper to the “explorers” that they need to come again after hours). It is rather true that the upheaval of the later twentieth century resulted within the destruction and dispersal of many sacred artworks from Tibet. Some refugees fleeing Tibet carried sculptures and work; impoverished, they later bought them, usually to sellers in Nepal. Few would at present advocate for the return of such artifacts to Chinese language authorities.

However political turmoil and the determined selections of refugees shouldn’t be an excuse for completely separating Tibetans from their heritage. For example of 1 different strategy, the “Repatriation Assortment” of the Tibet Home in New York Metropolis holds sacred artifacts in belief, hoping to return them in the future to a “culturally free Tibet.” Bordier, alternatively, appears to think about himself a significantly better caretaker for these sacred objects than the Tibetans. When he’s not bemoaning the details that some artworks he noticed in Tibet have been heaped in dusty storerooms, he’s criticizing the Potala palace for placing them “in locked cupboards” or complaining that statues on show are “buried” beneath “mountains of material” — that’s, the standard choices given by worshippers. He’s unwilling to confess that Tibetans can retailer and even worship their very own heritage accurately. (He thinks the sculptures ought to be unclothed and often touched, as is disturbingly becoming for somebody who “admits that his relationship to statues is particular, sensual, nearly bodily.”)

So, how did Bordier get hold of all this artwork? He claims to “have by no means bought any artwork object on Tibetan soil.” As an alternative, he purchased artifacts in Nepal, India, and Europe from auctions and sellers. He particularly credit a seller named Benny Rüstenburg for giving him “direct entry to the most effective objects” and “open[ing] his eyes, awakening him to their magnificence.” Such reward of Rüstenburg is stunning, given the information in 2015 that he bought a statue of a meditating Buddha to a Dutch collector shortly after it was stolen from a temple in China. Restoration revealed that the item was no statue, however the thousand-year-old physique of a monk, lined in a gilded casing. Chinese language courts have ordered the Dutch collector to return the monk, however he has not but finished so — unsurprisingly, as a result of the item is alleged to be value hundreds of thousands.

How the stolen monk ended up in Rüstenburg’s palms is unknown. Though the guide tells us that Bordier purchased “a dozen statues” from Rüstenburg, the id of just one is specified. Contemplating how a lot Jenny insists on Bordier’s “robust carnal and non secular reference to the museum,” evaluating him to “a lover able to go overboard; when one is that passionate, there are not any limits,” I’ve robust doubts that the bounds of native export regulation introduced any obstacles to Bordier’s acquisitive need.

I did, as I explored the guide, make a discovery of my very own. I noticed an illustration of an early Sixteenth-century portray within the museum whose inscription notes it had been created for the Tham Bahi, a Buddhist monastery that also features within the Thamel neighborhood of Kathmandu. Once I introduced this to the eye of an nameless activist often known as “Misplaced Arts of Nepal,” they replied that they’d noticed it up for public sale in Switzerland in 2018, however had not recognized its destiny afterward. They promised to inform the monastery that their stolen portray has reappeared. 

The guide describes the portray as an “astonishing work” that “stays fairly mysterious,” due to the “sequence of unidentified scenes” within the aspect registers. I started this evaluate with what might need appeared like a stylistic criticism of the authors’ phrase decisions. I did so as a result of stylistic thrives can reveal deep-seated attitudes. What does it imply to name a picture “mysterious” in case you have not requested the group who used it for hundreds of years what it meant to them? It means, I feel, that you haven’t even thought of that they could have something beneficial to contribute to the dialog about their very own heritage — a lot much less any proper to retain it. 

McGovern, the American who wrote the 1924 memoir about sneaking right into a Tibet closed to foreigners, stained his pores and skin with walnut juice. To cover his blue eyes, he wore darkish goggles and claimed he was affected by snow-blindness. To simulate the signs, he “dabbed copious quantities of glue and mucilage beneath [his] eyelids.” His monumentally self-congratulatory guide is stuffed with such insulting observations about Tibetans that one hopes this disguise was as disagreeable because it sounds. Due to his foresight with the pâte, Bordier’s travels don’t appear to have been so painful. However maybe the course of his love affair with Tibet’s sacred artwork won’t at all times proceed so easily. 

Buddhist Artwork of Tibet: In Milarepa’s Footsteps by Etienne Bock, Jean-Marc Falcombello, and Magali Jenny (2022) is revealed by Flammarion and is out there on-line and in bookstores.