Illustrates, explains and celebrates 241 examples of Tibetan sacred art of the 9th to 12th centuries. The authors discuss the religious meaning and use of tangkas, Buddhist iconography and the aesthetics of tangka paintings, sculpture and mandalas.

A black and white presentation of sacred art and statuary, along with an introduction to its meaning. This book includes 40 pages of black and white photographs and descriptions of fine Tibetan statues and paintings.

Accompanying an exhibition to be held in New York during late fall of 1998, Sacred Visions is a superbly illustrated volume of art works from the 11th to the mid-15th centuries which includes scholarly essays that relate to the paintings to be displayed.

Tibetan religion and the art which illuminates it are a summation, an interweaving of many strands - shamanic spiritualism, magic myth, insights into time and death, combined in a unique form of Buddhism. Tibet retained its own religious and imaginative art for centuries without interference from the outside world, until the Chinese invasion of 1950 brought wholesale destruction. What remains - inside and outside Tibet - is doubly precious. The magnificent and mysterious arts of Tibet are much more than an adjunct to spiritual life; they are dwellings for the divine and images of inner states. Here text and illustrations together enter into the meanings of Tibetan imagery and practice, and reveal both the sources and living manifestations of Tibetan Buddhist belief and philosophy.