| Art work
in traditional Thai form or style was first popular among traditional or applied Thai
artists. Some artists wanted to express their own feelings by means of the traditional
forms and stories, for example, the Tempting by Mara, the Enlightenment, etc., but using
an individual style. Some artists may still keep the form and content of traditional Thai
style, while giving a feeling of aesthetic quality in the view of contemporary theory.
Some artists break the forms and elements of the traditional Thai style to pieces,
composing them again from some selected pieces which represent the strong feeling of the
individual artist. The artist touches the image with lights, color and atmosphere. Some
artists show a sentimental attachment to the fine old Thai culture which is presently
decaying away. The painting of “The Defeat of Mara“ is full of the movement of myriads
of related lines in the traditional Thai form. It still arouses sensibilities capable of
catching the public’s feeling in the present day” Clearly, this group of artists have
as their theme their own expression, but in a Thai way, by means of contemporary artistic
expression and they have moved to their objective successfully. That was the
beginning for some groups of artists working with Thai traditional art. They reconstructed
it in order to bring, in one way or another, the intuited self to expression and the
viewer towards Thai culture. The art work of Apichai Piromrak at his first stage was of
this same type. His further development came in creations of signs or important symbols of
Buddhism, for example, Sema, Buddhism footprints, the Dhamma Wheel, or maps of the Wheel
or Life. Apichai used new techniques with substance and depth, with weight, form and
color, beautifully and successfully, to convey their meaning. Comparing the later works
with those of the first period, we see that the objects of his art used to be the signs
and symbols of Buddhism. That was a kind of traditional art. His later series are
expressions of his feelings about those symbols or stories, instead. That is the way Asian
or Western artists usually create from subjects in Buddhism. But Buddhism, is not the same
thing as Thai-ness. Buddhism is not the only character of Thai art. The real impact that
his two series of art works have on the public is his effort to link Thai-ness with
contemporary expression. But how much he succeeds in “Thai-ness” is still hard to
tell.What is more interesting, in his present art works, is his advance in to the core of
Buddhist art. He has abandoned the shell of form and symbols with which he used to work,
and he now enters into the heart of Buddhism.His techniques are adapted accordingly. He
may use Tusche with water or oil in a lithograph, or water and clay, crumpled metal, or a
patch of dried earth, etc., All these substances convey the meanings of Buddhism.In the
first his abstraction of Buddhism appears in the shape of symbols, but later these
disappear, leaving only disinterested objects such as: triangles, rectangles and circles.
These geometric forms become his way of conveying the meaning of the changing world beyond
human control. It makes one wonder exactly where in the works of Apichai is the
“Thai-ness” for which he has been aiming, when he passes through the shell, deep into
the core of the universal truth. Does he travel far enough to join the same path of other
contemporary artists? It is true that the experiences he gains from his working intention
and the form of “Thai-ness” that he has chosen will enable his work to bear its own
special character; that, as a Thai artists, his work must be different from the work of
contemporary artists from other nations? However, as one of his observers for a long time,
I never hesitate to urge him to go on traveling his path. Art is the truth of life which
must clearly be expressed from the direct experience of the artist in a proper context |