Dear All Collectors of Artworks; This is a good Chance for you to Own Authentic Artwork by My Collectors Artworks
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Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Thawan Duchanee was born in 1939 in Chiang Rai and studied at the Poh Chang Arts and Crafts College, and Silpakorn University, both in Bangkok. He received a postgraduate fellowship from the Dutch Ministry of Education to study at the Royal Academy of Visual Arts in Amsterdam. Duchanee returned to Thailand in the late 1960s where he has continued to work in maintaining traditional and modern styles. He has exhibited throughout Thailand and Amsterdam, New York, Honolulu, Hamburg, London, Tokyo, and Kuala Lumpur, as well as in Israel, Spain, Switzerland, and Australia. Duchanee has created murals at the Royal Thai Embassies in Buenos Aires, Vienna, Paris, and many other public and commercial spaces. He is a recipient of the "Artist of the Year" gold Medal, awarded by the Siam Architects' Association.
he is known throughout Asia and the world. He works in an original, dynamic genre rooted in a unique perspective of Thai Buddhism. One of the foremost Asian artists, he has won wide acclaim from the general public as well as the art critics.Mr. Thawan was born in 1939 in Chiang Rai, northern Thailand. He studied at Silpakorn University under the Italian painter, Corrado Feroci, who is known as the father of modern Thai art, and also had the Thai name Silpa Bhilasri.
Mr. Thawan went to the Netherlands to study from 1964 to 1968, and became immersed in the tradition and techniques of Western art. After returning to Thailand, the artist devoted himself to an examination of his Thai identity. He then began to explore and reexamine the insanity, degeneration, violence, eroticism, and death lurking in the heart of modern man as they are involved with religion. Mr. Thawan expressed these concepts with a startling technique utilizing a black tone, drawing from the wellspring of traditional Thai Buddhist art and Buddhist thought.
His powerful style combines grotesque and erotic human figures that are a composite of animals or insects, and entwined with the Buddha as a saint. This scandalized many people, and his name quickly spread. His form of expression is harshly attacked as blaspheming Buddhism. The reaction has been so severe that some of his exhibitions have been attacked. His reputation, however, gradually improved with the consistent advocacy of leading Thai intellectual Kukrit Pramoj, who claimed "his art is to be understood as giving life to myth" and others. Now the novelty and originality of his paintings are widely recognized.
Mr. Thawan has frequently held solo exhibitions in Western countries, Asia, and Australia, starting with 1974 exhibition in West Germany and Great Britain. These met with an overwhelmingly positive response, solidifying his reputation and fame. The artist painted many gigantic murals from 1980s to 1990s, which were very popular among the public. He also created exceptional works in several other artistic fields. He has developed his abilities in architecture and as a master sculptor, using a sense of design that incorporates an original creativity with traditional Thai Buddhist architecture.Mr. Thawan brings to his creations an unending tenacity, energy, and rich talent. He is indeed a master of modern Asian art who has created a uniquely Asian artistic expression. With his capacity and performance that have shocked the world, Mr. Thawan Duchanee is a deserving choice as the laureate of the Arts and Culture Prize of the Fukuoka Asian Culture Prizes.
So what makes an art masterpiece? Webster's defines it as a "supreme intellectual or artistic achievement." Anne Richter, an artist and educator in New York City, has this to say: "You know when you've encountered a masterpiece because it stays with you the rest of your life. It's like chewing gum on the inside of your brain and it sticks there, becoming part of a private reservoir of things that take you away from yourself and your environment. It's just you and the masterpiece and the mystery. It grabs you. Often you don't know why."
A masterpiece should transcend its subject matter, expanding the viewer's concept of art, becoming a marker, a buoy, a reference point. There's no better example of this than Giotto, who departed from stylized Byzantine conservatism and revolutionized the art world of his time by using foreshortening to create the illusion of depth. His use of perspective paved the way for all masters that followed, making him one of the founders of Western painting as we know it today.
We admire the masterpiece because it pretends to have been effortless, its seams invisible to our adoring, hungry eyes. Take Diego Velazquez's Las Meninas (Maids of Honor), considered to be one of the greatest paintings in the world. As seen from the perspective of the king and queen being painted, we are given an intimate viewing of everyday royal life. The artist stares at the viewer from the canvas, leaving us to ponder who is watching who? It is painting as photograph, telling a story and inviting us to listen.
Through the imagination of the artist, what had only lived in the realm of dreams and nightmares is finally given a form we can see and experience in the company of others. From the prancing virgins of Botticelli's painting Primavera (Spring), to the grotesque figures of Paradise and Hell by Hieronymous Bosch (a forerunner to surrealism), to the distorted imagery in Salvadore Dali's The Persistence of Memory, a masterpiece shows us what can be brought out from deep within.
Although there are differentiating criteria on the exact elements involved in selecting a masterpiece, there are common qualities that every masterpiece shares. Some sort of feeling must be evoked, whether it's curiosity, awe, or disgust.
There should be style, technique, balance, and harmony. It is helpful to discuss perspective and form, but still, this would not describe that elusive element essential to any moving work. And let's not forget motive; one cannot deny the impact religion held for Fra Angelico, the insatiable curiosity of Leonardo, the rebelliousness of bad boy Caravaggio, or the insanity of van Gogh.
A master is a visionary capable of materializing his own vision while currently expanding our own. David Stoltz, an internationally educated sculptor who considers himself more a "twentieth century alchemist than an artist," put it simply: "Essentially, a master gets out of his own way, leaving his ego to the side as the creative process takes over."
A masterpiece will instill in us a sense of the infinite, the feeling that anything is possible. We idealize the genius that the master—through his toil and struggle, agony and ecstasy—has managed to extract, the genius we would like to believe exists inside all of us. And because the imagination knows no limits, art offers the mortals a chance to become immortal.
Sometimes, as in the case of Michelangelo's statue of the Virgin Mary holding her dying son (Pieta[ag]) a masterpiece is a work that is simply perfect in the same way a rose is perfect. We can add nothing nor do anything to improve it.
A masterpiece serves as a window to the past. The Greco-Roman period has given us great works that have miraculously survived intact through the ages. Sculptures depicting the human form—often young hunky males such as the Roman Discobolos or powerful winged goddesses like the Greek Nike of Samothrace—are vivid examples of the importance beauty, strength, movement, and athletic ability played in Classical times. We may not know who the masters were, but their mastery communicates universal values that have not faded with the passage of time.
Let's flash forward a few generations, where oils are not the medium and animation is. With Disney's coup de grace Fantasia—who could deny the mastery there? The one thing modern art has given us is that there are no rules. With mediums and styles as diverse as ever, anything goes. From Calder's mobiles to Picasso's disembodied portraits, to the dancers in a Matisse collage, mastery goes beyond technique and style, offering entertainment, an opportunity to pause and ponder, and perhaps see ourselves.
Artists have been as prolific in the last hundred years as they ever have. Having entered the new millennium, art is still challenging us to decide what is great and what is schlock. How about when Christo dressed the Statue of Liberty? And what of Mark Kostabi's assembly-line style painting, or the more recent uproar over Nigerian born artist Chris Ofili's use of elephant dung in his Holy Virgin Mary. Masters or Muppets?