REVIEW
Daring revision
Book on Thai art by a well-known historian not only provides stunning scholarship, but also sufficient material to keep the controversy cauldron bubbling for the decades
- Published: 4 Feb 2013 at 00.00
- Newspaper section: Life
The eminent art historian Piriya Krairiksh is a famous iconoclast. He brazenly proposed that the Ramkhamhaeng inscription, the Magna Carta of Thai history, had been faked by King Mongkut (Rama IV).
The Roots Of Thai Art By Piriya Krairiksh River Books (Bangkok), 725 baht ISBN 978-616-7339-11-5
He suggested that the early greats of Thai art history, from King Vajiravudh (Rama VI) to George Coedes, had got just about everything wrong. Most of all he objected to the writing of art history within a political frame _ imagining a sequence of kingdoms and empires (Dvaravati, Chiang Saen, Sukhothai, etc) and then pigeonholing every object into this sequence.
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