Catalogue - De Foudre & de Diamant

Ed. Lienart / Published in January 3, 2017. Summary: Musée Georges-Labit, Asian Art Museum in Toulouse, has a rich collection of Tibetan thangkas that spans from the 17th to the 19th century and put together over the last forty years. These religious paintings printed on fabric whose Tibetan name means "thing that rolls", have at the same time a liturgical use in the Buddhist shrines of the Himalayas and a support function of meditation and devotion in the individual practices of the faithful. The iconography of the thangkas, in addition to usual representations of the historical Buddha, illustrates the amazing richness of the pantheon of Tibetan tantric Buddhism, populated by a multitude of deities invoked to guarantee the protection and progression of the meditator on the path of Enlightenment. The dedicated exhibition and catalogue invite the audience to discover the complexity of Tibetan Buddhism and understand its meaning and its symbolic and practical significance by contextualizing these images in a spiritual and religious framework. Authors: Francis Saint-Genez, director of Musée Paul-Dupuy and Musée Georges-Labit in Toulouse. Matthieu Ricard, Buddhist monk, photographer and author. Hardcover. 120 pages. In French.