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Web-only Exclusives
November 30, 2000

From Our Correspondent: Hirohito and the War
A conversation with biographer Herbert Bix

From Our Correspondent: A Rough Road Ahead
Bad news for the Philippines - and some others

From Our Correspondent: Making Enemies
Indonesia needs friends. So why is it picking fights?

Asiaweek Time Asia Now Asiaweek story

PAINTED INTO A CORNER

Thai artists have the skill.
One of the things they now need is an international canvas

By Julian Gearing / Bangkok


MENTION THAI CONTEMPORARY ART to international critics or collectors, and you will likely get a blank look and maybe a question about temples. While the works of Vietnamese, Indonesians and Filipinos are drawing praise and starting to find a place in the galleries of New York, Paris and London, little is heard of the progress made by Thailand's artists. And yet Thai artistic expression broke away from the staid confines of traditional temple art decades ago, combining Western and local themes in unique, expressive and sometimes even controversial ways.

That is why many in the Thai art world had hoped that Christie's "sale of the century" auction in Bangkok last June would give local artists a higher international profile. On sale were hundreds of local works purchased by finance houses in the boom years of buy, buy, buy. When the companies went bust in the downturn, the paintings were ordered to be sold off to raise money for creditors.

Thais turned out in large numbers, bidding up the prices against each other. But missing from the auction were the foreign dealers and critics - the people Christie's International Singapore had hoped might give the local artists an international jump start. Worse, some of the more incautious bidding may have skewed prices, rather than setting a much-needed benchmark for overseas buyers to go by in the future. Art consultant Pipat Pongrapeeporn could only shake his head in dismay: "This auction is insane."

Confounding pessimistic expectations that bids would barely exceed reserve prices, the paintings raised about $1.45 million. One piece by the late Thawee Nandakwang went for a truly remarkable $70,000. Who would have thought that so much money was still sloshing around in recession-hit Thailand?

Christie's Singapore managing director Irene Lee remains optimistic that the auction was just a temporary setback and that Thai artists will eventually be "discovered" just like their Southeast Asian neighbors. "Auctions in Singapore have raised the profile of Southeast Asian art, especially paintings, to an international level," she maintains. "Writers and critics from international publications have given us a lot of positive reports."

No one doubts that Thais have the necessary skills. "In terms of the diversity of the work and the quality of the artists, we are equal to others in Southeast Asia," says Surapon Bunyapamai, owner of the Surapon Gallery. Thais have also done well over the last decades in regional art competitions. Two out of the last three Philip Morris ASEAN Art Awards were won by Thai nationals. "There is little doubt that Thai art will grow more popular if it receives more exposure on an international level," says Surapon.

Many of Thailand's top painters and sculptors learned their skills amid the smell of paint, ink and clay at the Faculty of Painting, Sculpture and Graphic Arts at Bangkok's Silpakorn University. Founded more than 60 years ago by the man often called the "father of modern Thai art," Italian Corrado Feroci, the school and its alumni are proof of a considerable pedigree. But what kind of pedigree? How much of what is being produced in Thailand is authentically Thai and how much is merely mimicking the West?

"This is a serious question for art education," says faculty dean Nonthivathn Chandhanaphalin. "I have been in art studies for 40 years and would say that while artists may start by copying the West, they later begin to have their own mind, their own soul. They begin to choose the concept that suits them." Sumitra Channgao, editor of Art and Culture magazine, sees things a little differently: "Our art is very much influenced by Europe, by European teachers - but our roots are in classical Thai temple art."

Some modern Thai painting has now wandered far from the respectful ways of the temple - sometimes to the extreme irritation of traditionalists. Thawan Duchanee's 1970s works, in which he combines macabre sexual scenes with Buddhist images, were viewed as sacrilegious and were sometimes vandalized. At the other end of the scale are Thawee's gentle and soothing landscapes. And standing in a radical category all their own are the kinetic installations of Silpakorn lecturer Montien Boonma, who, at 45, is sometimes called the "guru" of modern Thai art - a notion he modestly rejects.

Montien is one of the few Thai artists to have made a name for himself on the international circuit. His latest work, "Six Weeks," gets its name from the fact that it was fashioned over a six-week period in Greece. The steel and clay construction was showing recently at the Marsi Gallery in Bangkok. But while Montien's work undoubtedly crosses borders, he is not always appreciated at home, where the public is often puzzled by his abstractions. "He isn't understood," says former gallery owner Alfred Pawlin.

Chalermchai Kositpipat, 43, has a different problem. As possibly Thailand's most successful painter today, he has attracted the standard criticism that he has "sold out" his talent. Chalermchai started out painting billboards for movies, then moved on to murals mixed with traditional and modern images that sometimes raised eyebrows. His murals for the Buddhapadipa temple in London in 1988 took four years to complete - and stirred up a storm the moment they were revealed. "I got complaints from everybody - from the [Bangkok] government, from monks and from other artists, saying that what I was doing was not Thai art," he recalls.

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