Time and Thailand: A quick survey
One of the best online resources providing an overview of the seriously eclectic art happening in Thailand is that of theRama IX Art Museum on Bangkok’s Yaowaraj Road, though even it’s still got a ways to go to approach definitiveness. There is good linkage with other galleries, though, including two over on Silom Road that specialise in “emerging artists”.
There’s an elastic term for you. At what point in his career does an artist stop “emerging” and arrive at where he supposedly wants to be/ ought to be? With his first big sale? His first write-up in the paper? When his name is in lights on Broadway?
Anyway, I’ll leave it to the dealers to decide when a caterpillar’s become a butterfly, though this facet of time’s passing is woven into the current art of a kingdom whose people proudly remember their quietly contemplative ancestral ways while rushing headlong into the loudly wired future. The country’s best-known artists fret grievously, and those not still shouting warnings from the gate look about for avenues of retreat.
La Lanta Fine Art and the Thivabu Gallery both have lots of contemporary Asian painting, sculpture, photography and drawing and do alright selling prints, frames and decorative notebooks. On this page is a cursory survey of paintings by some of their featured Thai artists, many originals selling for under $2,000.
At the Thivabu (the name is an amalgam of Thailand, Vietnam and Burma), Jitagarn Kaewtinkoy from Suphan Buri strikes me as one of the more unusual creative talents. That’s “Three Faces” at the top of this post and “Mr President” here. The cartoonist’s sensibility betrays his age, 28, but he’s got a ferocious satiric streak and a sharp eye for character. Bush isn’t the only politician who need worry. See the rest.
