The Role of Central Asian Traditions in Mongolian Fine Arts

Abstract

The article considers the role of Central Asian traditions in the formation and development of Mongolian fine arts. The authors reveal the significance of various factors for the formation of the original stylistics, which manifested itself in the methods, techniques and pictorial means typical of Mongolian art. The article defines the role of Indian artistic traditions in the development of Mongolian fine arts. The authors claim that Mongolian religious painting on scrolls is a bright artistic phenomenon based on the strict canon developed in India and inherited by many cultures of Asia. The means of artistic depiction, iconography, a system of proportions, borrowed and modified by the Mongols, had been developed in the cradle of Indian civilisation. The purpose of the article is to study the features of Mongolian fine arts on the basis of ethnic traditions, as well as to consider this phenomenon using the example of traditional and contemporary painting.

Multiculturalism conditioned by the polyethnic nature of the region played an important role in the history of Mongolian culture. The renewal of ethnocultural experience is related to the artistic traditions brought from India, Tibet and China, but in Mongolian art, there is no predominance of any forms of other cultures. Hence, the art is original and has its unique features. As a result of the combination of the ornamental pictorial technique of nomadic cultures with the painting techniques of sedentary peoples, an artistic style based on the Buddhist canon, supplemented by original ethnocultural elements, was formed. In the process of mastering and developing the artistic experience based on the traditions of planar painting, icon painting, arts and crafts, folklore, a new art direction "Mongol Zurag" appeared in the 20th century. The creative method of modern masters proves that while working in various trends, genres, techniques, individual manners, they preserve and develop national traditions in painting. Consequently, the preservation of the artistic-aesthetic heritage of the ethnos has a positive effect on fine arts and the vitality of culture in general.