Jeff Watt

Aug 10, 2024 | tricycle.org | Jeff Watt

In Himalayan art, we are likely to encounter three types of mandalas. One is the mandala-like object, such as a painting of the bhavachakra, the wheel of life. The next is an offering mandala, which is a flat ritual object, a kind of decorated plate. The third is a deity mandala, which is what we have here. This small 15th-century painting is intended for private use, and the figure in the lower-left corner is likely the patron who paid for it.

Aug 9, 2024 | tricycle.org | James Shaheen |Jeff Watt |Gregory Korte |Haley Barker

“I’m not half Japanese and half British; I’m wholly both.” Growing up in Japan and the UK, Duncan Ryuken Williams existed between cultures, languages, and religions, never feeling like he fully belonged anywhere. When he encountered…Ruth Ozeki in conversation with Duncan Ryuken Williams and Matthew Ichihashi Potts

May 11, 2024 | tricycle.org | Jeff Watt

When people are involved in Tantric practice and deity meditation, they want to know what the deity should look like. What is the deity’s proper form? It’s easy to look at a painting and assume that it is iconographically and textually accurate. But what the practitioner takes to be iconography may just be added glitter and adornments—details and affectations that the artist has pulled from regional aesthetic preferences and a particular artistic lineage rather than from the tantras themselves.

Feb 10, 2024 | tricycle.org | Jeff Watt

This is Mahakala. “Maha” means great, and “kala” means black, but we can see that this black figure is actually dark blue. Completely black figures lose contrast and lack detail. This is why paintings were developed in which the background of the canvas is painted black and then the figures are outlined in gold or ochre. We see this same device used with comic-book characters like Batman, whose suit was originally black but was changed to blue to show detail.

Oct 28, 2023 | tricycle.org | Jeff Watt

Skeletons, whether lying down in a cemetery, hanging over the branch of a tree, standing, walking, dancing, or in a pair, always represent impermanence and death in Himalayan art. This goes back to the Pali canon’s meditations on the stages of corpse decomposition. The skeleton is the ultimate decomposition; there’s really nothing left, unless you grind up the bones.