ART CRITICISM

Art criticism

Art criticism

Chalermchai Kositpipat was born into a Sino-Thai family. He later attended Silpakorn University, which was Thailand's primary visual arts school. He graduated with a bachelor of fine arts degree in Thai art in 1977. He started out painting movie advertisements on billboards. His early murals mixed traditional Thai Buddhist temple art with contemporary images, which was controversial.Nonetheless, he was commissioned 1988 to paint murals for Wat Buddhapadipa in London. The murals took four years to complete and were controversial because of the contemporary stylings. "I got complaints from everybody - from the [Thai] government, from monks and from other artists, saying that what I was doing was not Thai art," he was quoted as saying in 1998. Eventually, his work became more accepted, with Thai King Bhumibol Adulyadej among his clients. One piece of his was sold for US$17,500 in 1998 at an auction of Thai art at Christie's Singapore. Among his works is Wat Rong Khun, an ornate white Buddhist temple being built in his native Chiang Rai Province. Work on the temple was started in 1996, and still continues

Rumors and descriptions of this bizarre, modern temple have been swirling around us the entire time we have been in Southeast Asia. The snow-white edifice features gargoyle-like decorative statues, pools of white coy, and gardens of writhing human hand statues reaching up from hell below. But the White Temple's piece de resistance is its enormous mural of an earthly hell featuring crumbling twin towers, comic book characters, Neo from the Matrix, and even a demon that looks suspiciously like Jabba the Hutt. The temple's provocative murals challenge Western culture, our materialistic instincts, our obsession with violent imagery and humanity's war-like ways. I came to the White Temple ready to love its quirky edginess and its philosophical blend of ...