Research Projects

Alchi Monastery Complete

An exciting project I took up with Jaroslav Poncar is the publication of all temples of Alchi in a two volume publication, one volume of which will be republishing the Sumtsek volume Jaro did with Roger Goepper. The publication will be of smaller size and in two volumes. The Sumtsek volume will be adjusted to fit the overall concept and updated if necessary.

Muhammad Nari Stele

Thanks to Paul Harrison—and many earlier conversations on the Muhammad Nari Stele of the Lahore Museum—in 2010 I was invited to teach Gandharan art at Stanford University. The complementary focus of our teachings and further discussions finally let us understand the stele much better, something we are now writing on together.

 

 

Gandhara

 

Western Himalayas

Undertaking privately-financed research trips since 1990 and participating in all major field research undertaken within the framework of Klimburg-Salter’s research project from 1991 to 2001 my academic career has from the start focused on in situ documentation and research. Consequently, I have contributed more than 20.000 slides and negatives to the Western Himalayan Archives Vienna (WHAV), now housed at the Institute of Art History at the University of Vienna.

The projects I have participated in concentrated on the earliest Buddhist art in the western Himalayas, attributable to the period from the 10th to the 13th centuries. This art can basically be read in two ways: on the one hand it is evidence for the latest phase of Buddhism in Northwest India, a stage of development otherwise almost completely lost, on the other hand it documents the main phase of the Tibetan adoption and adaptation of Indian Buddhism. The artistic heritage of this art is undoubtedly Indian, be it Kashmiri or representative of other schools of north Indian art (clay sculptures of a technique described in Indian Ś́ilpaśāstra literature, painted textile patterns best related to contemporary Gujarati textiles (Tabo), unusual iconographic types, both Buddhist and Hindu that appear to be specific to northwest India and at least partly derive from a Kashmiri context. In addition, certain artistic elements can be traced beyond the Indian heritage, e.g. to Central Asia or even the whole area surrounding the western Himalayas (especially evident in the textile patterns of the Alchi group of monuments).

My research on early Buddhist art in the western Himalayas has been generously funded for more than ten years by the Austrian 'Fonds zur Förderung wissenschaftlicher Forschung' (FWF). The extent of this support is well documented in my CV. September 2000 to August 2003 I received a three-year research grant by the Austrian Program for Advanced Research and Technology of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (> APART project).

I am extremely grateful to all the teachers who have supported my research over the years, most important among them being: Deborah E. Klimburg-Salter, Ernst Steinkellner, and the late Maurizio Taddei, and to the numerous kind and helpful people during my research travels, particularly the monks and caretakers of the monasteries and village temples I surveyed and documented.