The Place of the Other in Temple Art

Chapter 3 examines the “Othering” of Europeans (farang) and Indian/Middle Easterners (khaek) in temple murals and illuminated manuscripts as a reflection of two divergent sources of knowledge: the premodern geography rooted in Indo-Buddhist cosmogony, and the commercial and diplomatic exchanges of the early modern age. The chapter examines several specific depictions of foreigners in pictorial illustrations of the Buddhist cosmology of the Three World and in mural cycles of the Buddha’s legendary previous lives (jatakas).

Itinerant Icons of the Theravada Ecumene

Chapter 2 describes the social lives of famous Buddha images, such as the Emerald Buddha and the Phra Sihing Buddha, by retracing their peregrinations through present-day northern Thailand and Laos as memorialized in chronicles. The chapter considers also the transmission of the technical knowhow involved in making images, and the ritual animation of inert statues. The chapter ends with a conceptual analysis of the ideas of original and copy in Buddhist visual culture.

Buddhist Landscape and Cultural Memory

Chapter 1 considers the Buddhist inscription of Thailand’s landscape across the longue duree of history. One main theme in this chapter is the replication in situ of the sacred geography of India and Sri Lanka, including physical sites such as footprints and reliquaries (stupas). A second theme is the historic relationship between relics as powerful objects and men of power as those seeking to appropriate and manipulate relics. A third theme is the construction and restoration of cultic edifices as a practice constitutive of cultural memory.

Rubbing the Past into the Present

Chapter 8 looks at public memorials and artworks from the decades of the 1990s and 2000s in a variety of media (painting, photography, installation and video) that challenge social amnesia of Thailand’s recent history of political violence. Though special attention is paid to public monuments and artworks that commemorate the traumatic events of October 1973 and October 1976, the chapter also discusses works addressing the more recent violence of 2010.

Monumental Failures

Chapter 7 examines the monuments realized by the nationalist leadership that came to power in 1932 as ambitious but ultimately failed attempts at localizing a type of commemorative public sculpture and architecture modeled on the European tradition of propaganda. The chapter offers a close examination of several public monuments in Bangkok and elsewhere, and discusses the central role of the Italian sculptor and art educator Corrado Feroci, naturalized Thai with the name Silpa Bhirasri, and celebrated as “the father of Thai modern art.”

Introduction

The Intro grounds the book’s subject matter conceptually with a discussion of cultural memory.

Whose Prehistory? Thailand before the Thais

Chapter 6 discusses the uncertain place in Thai cultural memory of prehistory, knowledge of which achieved definition as a result of archaeological investigations by joint Thai and American missions in the 1960s and early 1970s. The discovery of Neolithic and Bronze Age sites in northeast Thailand—most famously Ban Chiang—that led American archaeologists to reject French colonial scholars’ theory of cultural diffusionism was linked closely to the Cold-War political and strategic alliance with the United States. As a byproduct of this alliance, a great amount of artifacts from Ban Chiang were transferred to The University Museum, Philadelphia. After the end of the Cold War, Ban Chiang received the validation of UNESCO World Heritage, but the place it occupies in Thai cultural memory remains marginal.

A Museum and an Art History for the Thai Nation

Chapter 5 carries on from the previous chapter by detailing the assemblage of the Bangkok National Museum’s collection along with the formulation in the 1920s of a stylistic classification of antiquities that has since become canonical. The chapter examines the underlying assumptions of the art historical classification elaborated by Prince Damrong Rachanubhap (“the father of Thai history”) and the French scholar George Coedes, fouding director of the Siamese Archaeological Service.

Kings and Antiquarians

Chapter 4 traces the informal antiquarian pursuits of the royal elite during the latter half of the nineteenth century as well as the initial reconnaissance of Thailand’s historic topography by colonial scholars-officials and the establishment of state agencies (Archaeological Service and Fine Arts Department) concerned with the study and conservation of cultural artifacts.