An American in Mongolia: Part VI

On Modern Art and Culture

If you want to build high, you must dig deep. –Mongol Proverb

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Many an Ulaanbaatar art gallery is filled with what appears to be innovative art, yet as soon as you look at the image next to the one you’ve been gazing at, it is clear that even the artist is unable to deviate far from the prescribed style of imported masters, and the content is almost always a horse. The composition seldom holds interest, or goes beyond the basic boundaries of the traditional landscape. One becomes tired at the repetition. It’s not that the horse is a boring subject; it’s merely that the manner in which it is depicted rarely changes from one image to the next.

Maybe the horse is the image that most thoroughly permeates the average Mongol consciousness, and therefore is the topical image most desired to depict. However, I fear that with a combination of a supply and demand economy and a dreadful fear of free thinking, which is a remnant of the Soviet regime, are in fact the true culprits that give way to these less radical forms of art, the conceptual art camp, and the suppressed art of the 1960’s excluded.

From the lecture on ancient and contemporary art in Mongolia that I attended at the School for International Training in Ulaanbaatar, I’m tempted to say that even those are not fully understood, even if they are now acceptable and maybe even embraced forms of expression. Perhaps my conceptions of “radical artistic expression” are warped by a Western perspective; I’m certain that to some degree they are. But SIT’s lecturer on visual art9 seemed to concur that many contemporary artists block themselves into a particularly uninteresting artistic niche.

As far as musical expression goes, it’s clear that the ancient art of Morin Khuur (horse head fiddle) construction and musicianship has disappeared during socialist repression. The basic shape (form) of the instrument is still available and widely used, and Morrin Khuur fiddlers play in performative forums, nationally and internationally. For example, there is the Mongolian National Morin Khuur Ensemble who I saw perform at SIT’s Ulaanbaatar premises. Both the ancient traditional use of materials (which consist of animal skins, very similar in construction to the ancient drums used by shamans to transport themselves between worlds) in production and style of playing, accompanied epic song, Khoomii (throat singing), and to soothe the herd have virtually disappeared from what was once a hallmark of nomadic life.10

Mongolian society is enthusiastic about its heritage, and the Mongols certainly have one of the more interesting and best-preserved cultural histories in the world. Indeed the Soviets should have been concerned about nationalistic tendencies here. Every Mongolian that I’ve interacted with embraces the revitalization of the traditional arts and culture, and not in the least bit cautiously, which I would deem a new generation’s subversion of Soviet conditioning. Mongolia is at a critical point in its historical evolution, its people at a critical point of transition. Mongolians are eager to re-identify themselves in relationship to what they know of themselves and also to define themselves in relationship to the global landscape, in both opposition and collaboration.