Art from Thailand

This volume provides an overview of Thailand’s rich artistic variety. Though widely studied, the art history of Thailand is today highly contentious and revisionist, and the articles here present recent research and opinions. Art found in Thailand (previously named Siam) stretches over more than two millennia. Of great importance and of special interest is a long and intimate relationship between Thailand and India of cultures and artistic traditions, Buddhist and Hindu. This complex, and often mysterious, interrelationship of religious texts, teachers, and art between South and Southeast Asia continues to interest scholars and students alike. In September 1956 Marg published illuminating articles on Buddhist art in Cambodia, Champa, and Laos, and on the various Indian influences on Siamese art, highlighting similarities between the Buddhist sculpture of the two countries as being one of their strongest links. The present Marg volume offers fresh insights into the artistic traditions of Thailand. The articles are not intended as a survey of these traditions; rather, each presents the view of a particular scholar focused on an artistic area. Essays are included on sculpture and architecture, but also on lesser known aspects including coins, votive tablets, and ceramics. The book spans the fourth-nineteenth centuries, from the earliest Indian-related art up until the modern Bangkok period. The study of art from Thailand has progressed rapidly in the last decades. Thailand, unlike the rest of Southeast Asia, was never colonized, which allowed both local and foreign scholars access to the art without interruption till today, producing a continuous and rich scholarship. Thus scholars have new things to say, new theories, new dating new ideas regarding artistic relationships and influences. The Marg volume is timely as it presents writers who are involved in this rethinking of the artistic traditions of Thailand. They include senior scholars and promising young academics, and provide diverse and multifold approaches and points of view.