Thawan Duchanee

Biography

In his second year, Thawan Duchanee was given fifteen points for drawing, although in the first year he had scored more than two hundred. His teacher Silpa Bhirasri explained it this way: the student’s fish had no fishy smell, his birds did not fly, and his horse could neither be ridden nor made to gallop. “You are merely a copier, not an artist.” After that, the story goes, Thawan rebuilt his whole way of working.

He was born on 27 September 1939 in Mueang Chiang Rai, in the northern province of Chiang Rai. His father worked for the excise department, and the family lived for a time in Phayao, where the boy attended primary and middle school; he finished the last grades in Chiang Rai again. From childhood he drew almost every character of the Ramakien, and in his youth he became absorbed in Buddhism, which remained his chief source of subjects. At fifteen Thawan received a scholarship from the Ministry of Education and entered Poh-Chang, the college of arts and crafts in Bangkok. His work was selected for showing at the national gallery in Tokyo. He then moved to Silpakorn University, to the department of painting, sculpture and graphic arts, and found himself among the last students of Silpa Bhirasri, the founder of the university. The same teacher who had given him the low mark later supported his application for a scholarship to study in the Netherlands. In Amsterdam, at the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten (the state academy of fine arts), he studied mural painting and urban planning; he is also held to have taken a doctorate there in metaphysics and aesthetics. Among his fellow students are named an Indonesian sculptor and the Swiss artist Hans Rudolf Giger. These details are hard to verify, and I would treat them with caution.

On returning to Thailand he met with rejection. Schoolchildren slashed several of his large canvases, considering them an insult to Buddhism, and for years he stopped exhibiting in his own country. Recognition, in his own words, came only after thirty-odd years.

In his mature work black and white predominate: he was led to this, it is said, by Chinese, Indian and Japanese monochrome painting. He painted with a Zen brush and made engravings with a ballpoint pen, covering the sheet with millions of strokes. Known cycles include “The Dhammapada”, “The Battle of Mara”, “The Last Ten Lives of the Buddha” and a Ramayana series in which he treated each hero in his own way. Critics set him against Chalermchai Kositpipat, also a native of Chiang Rai: heaven and enlightenment dominate in Chalermchai’s work, hell and human passions in Thawan’s, hence the saying “Chalerm the Heaven, Thawan the Hell”. “Art is beyond nature and intellect,” he said.

His best-known building is the Black House (Baan Dam) in Nang Lae district near Chiang Rai. It is a museum complex of more than a hundred rai, with over forty buildings in the northern Thai style, displaying folk art that he collected over about forty years. He lived there to the end of his life and received visiting artists.

In 1996 he set up a foundation in his name with a capital of 12 million baht; the interest went to scholarships for students at several institutions connected with his life. His honours include the gold medal of the Association of Siamese Architects (1985), an invitation from the United Nations to show Eastern art in New York, Paris, Rome, Lisbon, Canberra and Tokyo (1997), and the Fukuoka Arts and Culture Prize (2001). In 2001 he was named a National Artist of Thailand in the visual arts.

Thawan Duchanee died on 3 September 2014 at Ramkhamhaeng Hospital in Bangkok. The funeral took place at Wat Debsirindrawas, where Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn presided over the cremation.