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We have to make a discernment here of art that is done for a living, for profit, or for ones self expression.
I have spoken about the repetitive nature of the little girls in white dresses. It is lucrative no doubt, but I won't go there right now.
I think an artist should paint what he truly knows and loves. He should develop and explore what he has to say, what he means to communicate, not endless genre paintings and landscapes of other cultures.The Burdick renderings are a superficial record of a culture he obviously neither knows or understands deeply and done for his own profit. They just as well could be paintings of Laplanders or Eskimos. It is the quaintness not the content that is important. They are simply facile renderings of photos taken in situ, illustrations. They are derivative and trite. The photographs would have served as well, unless paint handling is a major criteria in judging artistic merit.
The Tibetan culture is an extremely sophisticated one, which is belied by these paintings of the local peasants. Their religion and philosophy is being studied in the major universities of the West. Herbert Benson of Havard published a groundbreaking book called "The Relaxation Response" based on his work with Tibetan Lamas. As matter of fact the traditional form of art , the thanka painting is not done for profit. It is done and commissioned for religious purposes only. They should never be sold, though they are in the West.
For really evocative and sensitive pictures of Tibetan culture I suggest you look to the photographs of Mathieu Ricard.
A great deal of Asian art came into Europe in the latter part of the 19th century. Intelligent artists like Mary Cassatt and Gauguin among other assimilated the inherent flatness of the Japanese and Chinese work into their own. It was not an Asian pastiche, but an intelligent adaptation of another culture vis-a-vis their own artistic explorations.
As to portraiture, it is consiously done for money. There is no disguise, it is very straightforward, some of it achieves more, some does not.
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