Dashi Namdakov won popular acclaim quickly. Practically overnight, he became known as a highly original artist. It just took him a few years to make a reputation of a master and the leader of a new movement in sculpture. His first exhibits, held in Irkutsk, Moscow and St. Petersburg in 2000–02, discovered an accomplished artist. His system of ideas and imagery, full of esoteric implications, demonstrated, beside powerful imagination, a really masterly performance. What comes as a fact is the Oriental character of his work, which is neither an attempt to follow fashion, nor a passing fancy, but, as people say, ‘something deeply rooted’. Dashi’s animals and mystical creatures fascinate. They all have powerful appeal. Obvious presence of the dark and the light in their imagery and making, both male and female sides add some erotic meaning. The affecting, tender female nature seems to be somewhat predominant at times, although it is the male one that defines the militant attitude, the overmastering resolution. As for the key topics in Dashi Namdakov’s work, the religious one can be mentioned as the most important. It would be wrong to say that the artist professes Tibetan Buddhism. His artistic beliefs would rather be called syncretic, associated with ethnic identification, with some original views of the nomadic lifestyle of the steppe people or elements of nature and only then, with Lamaism. Undoubtedly, his early education in the family and his life in Zabaikalie influenced Dashi’s way of thinking enormously. Now, Dashi Namdakov’s work has been given absolute recognition in the Asiatic region. It happened after his one-man show mounted at Tibet House, New York in 2004. More, a memorial tablet dedicated to Agvan Dorjiev, the first lama of the Buddhist temple in St. Petersburg, the oldest in Europe, was designed and performed by Dashi Namdakov in collaboration with the architect Vyacheslav Bukhayev in 2004. An elegant bronze bas-relief depicts the lama in the traditional ‘lotus seat’ holding the sutra in hands. Some of Dashi Namdakov’s sculptures bear the mark of the Mongolian art of the tenth – thirteenth centuries. That does not only show in the overall look of the sculptured warriors and horses, but also in the small details: their headwear, clothes, and weapons. Associated with the images of kings and heroes, elements of the same compositions repeat themselves both in bronze, in gold and in other materials. They are Khan’s crown or cap, the rod, convoluted ram’s horns and Mongolian sacred weapon – the bow and arrows. Quite often you can see styled arrowheads or thin broad Mongoloid faces or hyperbolic elongated arrow-like masks which symbolize the eternity as, for example, in gold earrings and eardrops The Idol, The Aim and The Eternity. Challenging and spellbound is the theme of Genghis-Khan, forbidden for the Buryats. The artist has to admit that is a taboo which he ‘would rather not violate’. Despite that, he makes a sculpture of the great Mongolian hero and even agreed to be the art director on the feature film The Mongol (director Sergei Bodrov Sr.) about Genghis-Khan’s life. Dashi Namdakov is very keen on the animalistic theme in sculpture, drawing and in jewellery where he finds exceptionally sophisticated, fantastic, ways of expression. The image of his home land, his people has been familiar and dear to Dashi since he was a little boy and his parents used to tell him old legends and tales, sing ancient tunes… Since his childhood he has learnt to feel awe to the animals every Mongol or Buryat considers sacred. Naturally, the artist admires the beauty, grace and the dashing ‘flight’ of horses, as well as the plasticity and power of the soft movements of predators. Today, those images are transformed by Dashi’s wonderful fantasy and mastery into fascinating works of art. Namdakov is brilliant at sculpturing in bronze. The detailed facture and coloured patina give his sculptures an antique and noble look. He learnt this art of bronze patina finish from Oriental craftsmen, mainly from the artists of ancient China. His favourite materials in jewellery making are bronze and silver. Still gold comes first with him. His early pieces made of silver – their form, the way how the metal is treated and what other materials it is matched with (the compositions with red corals in particular) – look typical of the Buryat folk art. Dashi is a real virtuoso in dealing with pure metal and different alloys. His combinations look simply fantastic: smooth polished gold and crude metal casting, shining surfaces and dull ones. Infusion of various stones, precious red and blue ones, as well as semi-precious green, adds to the original beauty of the metal. As a rule, the stones are not cut but, typical of the Oriental tradition, just polished to acquire the form of cabochons and set deeply in the notches of the metal. Dashi does not use cut gems – diamonds or rubies – too often. On the other hand, some of his materials look surprisingly new – for example, fossil ivory. They demonstrate Dashi’s interest in experimenting with surfaces of different colour and facture, love for everything new and unusual. It is difficult to say what exactly influenced Dashi artistically: looking at his work we see both features of Scythian and Sarmatian styles, elements of the art of the Huns (the Ordos culture) of 1000 B.C. to the early centuries of this Era. Surprisingly, their influence on Dashi’s work showed most graphically in his jewellery, which is not accidental, of course. Bracelets, belt buckles, decorative details of the weapons for the leaders of the Scythians or Huns used to be made of gold. Gold was sacred; it was thought to be able to endower those who wore it with power. Figures of predators – panthers, lions, tigers – were supposed to share with the jewellery owners their natural capacities. Jewellery figures of some animals were considered to be amulets or totems which saved the warrior or leader from death, or helped to protect their families. Beside the real animals, Dashi Namdakov’s gallery includes some legendary or mythological creatures which are to do people good and protect them from evil spirits. Among them there are Dragon Serpents, Garuda or a half-animal-half-bird creature, some outlandish guardian patrons. The master’s jewellery collection consists mostly of eardrops, bracelets and earrings which, in their every detail, have a symbolic meaning. Some of them are traditional for the Buryats, as, for example, the bracelets The Twins and The Truth, both having dragon-like heads at their extremities. Others have Scythian or Siberian implications with their design reminding of petroglyphic drawings and their figurativeness reminiscent of the golden shield from the Siberian collection of Peter the Great. Such decorations are typically Asiatic in origin: no other than eardrops and bracelets used to be worn by Siberian children since early childhood to make a closed circuit of their life, not to let their drain away. Dashi’s mother might have put on her son such bracelets when he was born or when he was ill. Dashi Namdakov’s work, either his drawings, or bronze sculpture, or jewellery of precious metals and stones, displays a unified figurative approach and method. That is why the master’s sculptures look like jewellery and jewellery pieces are so sculptural, both originating from his drawings. You cannot confuse his language and style with any other. ‘You do not take credit for that what you do with your hands,’ said a shaman to Dashi, who was still very young at that time. ‘It is your ancestors who take credit. Through you they choose to bring the art to the people. You are just a link of the chain between the world of spirits and the earthborn creatures.’ M.L. Menshikova, Senior research worker, Oriental Art Department of the State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg