Thawan Duchanee †: Thailand loses a legend
Thailand has lost its most prominent artist. On Wednesday, 'national artist' Thawan Duchanee (74) passed away at the age of 1939, by Kong Rihtdee, art and film critic of Bangkok Post, described as rambunctious (busy, noisy) and extraordinary (extraordinary, special).
"His career was as renowned as his influence in shaping the contours and perceptions of modern Thai art over the past 40 years."
I won't quote Kong any further because, like his reviews, he uses an English that requires me to constantly consult my dictionary, although I'm pretty good at it anyway. How about the following sentence:
Thawan's paintings are known for their phantasmagorical swirls of solid colours, usually black on white canvas, and often with the figures of Buddha, demons and beasts forming a metaphysical cosmology.
Good morning, I think Google Translate will also have a lot of trouble with these kinds of sentences. What I do understand is the comment that Thawan was inspired by the European Surrealists of the early 20th century. But Thawan rejected that label. "People who say that don't understand my art."
Thawan Duchanee was born on September 27, 1939 in Chiang Rai. In Bangkok he studied at the Pohchang Academy of Arts and the Fine Arts Faculty of Silpakorn University. Thanks to a scholarship, he continued his education at the National Academy of Visual Arts in Amsterdam. He quickly gained fame in Europe and returned to Thailand in the early XNUMXs.
A series of paintings with Lord Buddha and the Mara went down the wrong way with some people at that time. They found it blasphemous and scratched it. Thawan considered the vandalism a misinterpretation of his work and destroyed part of the series himself. There are only a few of them left.
One of his most legendary projects was the 1977 painting of several hundred rooms and halls in the 700-year-old Gottorf Castle in Germany. It took him three years. His most famous work in Thailand is the Ban Dam compound in Chiang Rai, a collection of forty houses, most of them black, made of wood, glass, concrete, stones and terracotta. They house his collection of paintings, sculptures and so on. In 2001 Thawan acquired the honorary title of 'national artist'.
Most of Thawan's paintings can be found in the Museum of Contemporary Art on Kamphaeng Phet Road (Bangkok). In the Bangkok Art and Culture Center there are a dozen pieces entitled 'Thai Charisma', including a rare self-portrait.
(Source: Bangkok Post, Sept. 4, 2014)