On the Path of Faith

Yang is best known for his depictions of the daily lives of Buddhist monks. On the Path of Faith presents a procession of Tibetan monks before a large stone relief with Buddhist figures. When coming across such a relief in their travels, Tibetan monks traditionally stop and pray.

The artist employed a variety of pictorial effects to both distinguish and unite the three elements of rock, relief, and humans. The four seated Buddhist figures are treated in mosaic patterns, which distinguishes them from the crosshatched rock relief. Each seated figure corresponds compositionally to one of the human figures before it. The angular planes of the monks' forms echo those of the rock, as if both humans and earth were hewn of the same material.

The specific technique employed for this print is called relief etching. This entails inking only the unincised surface of the plate to create a reverse print—one with an inked background and uninked incised lines. Yang pressed all the prints by hand. Although fifty impressions were planned, corrosion of the metal plate allowed for only thirty.