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2 comments about Alchi.

1. I was trained in art history at Smith College, so I thought I had some notion of the world's greatest art monuments. NOT!

   Alchi is every bit as sophisticated, refined and important as the Sistine Chapel, the Pompei frescoes, etc. that we in the West are already familiar with.

   Seeing Alchi in person blows you away - you're amazed that something this precious and beautiful exists, and, miraculously, has survived so many chances at oblivion. Go to see it - or, failing that, buy this book. You can't take pictures inside anyway, so either way, buy this book. An astonishing and deeply moving masterpiece (both the place and the book).




2. Upon the northern edge of the Indian subcontinent, in the hilly folds near the Himalayas, east of Kashmir near the Tibetan border south of the Indus river is Ladakh. Its valleys have long been a great trade and invasion route to the north of India. There is Alchi, a distinct daedal of Buddhist temples with splendid wall paintings and clay sculptures that have survived for the past eight hundred years to reveal some of the best preserved and unaltered images, an iconography of a flourishing Varjayana Buddhism. This sumptuous limited edition offers a detailed photo survey and archaeological description of one of the most impressive of the temples at Alchi, the Sumtsek (Three-Tiered) Temple. The building itself is a composite blend of Tibetan and Kashmiri elements that demonstrate some central Asian components. The wall paintings are in an elaborate and delicate Kashmiri style. This style is known to still exist only in a few other temples in Ladakh and western Tibet. The minuteness and finesse of the form and style of many of the paintings appears to be a transposition of techniques developed for miniatures in manuscripts onto the larger surfaces of walls. The adept vision of the monk artists of the Sumtsek combines a lavish display of tantric teachings, with still evolving artistic styles and methods. These are blended with the requirements of a donor's personal vision into structural possibilities of the building's interior design and access to light. All this culminates into a integrated sanctuary, one of the great gems of early tantric iconography. It is a treasure in its own right as valuable as the Sistine Chapel or Saint Marks Basilica. The wooden panels of the ceilings are painted with a rich variety of textile motifs, some deriving from Greco-Iranian and Sassanian sources, others similar to those found on the pantheon figures of the Buddhist wall paintings, pointing to the international character of the northwest Indian and Kashmiri medieval civilization. The text provides a full introduction to the icons and historical social religious context of the building as best as that can reconstructed through archaeological and scientific methods. In many ways the volume is also a plea for the international preservation of these treasures of Buddhist art due to of the recent rapid deterioration because of changes in climate and rainfall. The paintings reveal early forms of iconographic cult that offer important means of interpreting the evolution of the ritual use of painting. The book ALCHI contains over 300 color plates, maps, and plans. They are beautifully integrated into the text and are important evidence of the development of the cult meditation Buddhas of the Varjayana tradition. This volume is an important documentation of some world class art on the verge of extinction.

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