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Cambodian art

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Beginning in the mid-20th century, a tradition of modern art began in Cambodia, though in the later 20th century both traditional and modern arts declined for several reasons, including the killing of artists by the Khmer Rouge. The country has experienced a recent artistic revival due to increased support from governments, NGOs, and foreign tourists.

In pre-colonial Cambodia, art and crafts were generally produced either by rural non-specialists for practical use or by skilled artists producing works for the Royal Palace. In modern Cambodia, many artistic traditions entered a period of decline or even ceased to be practiced, but the country has experienced a recent artistic revival as the tourist market has increased and governments and NGOs have contributed to the preservation of Cambodian culture.

Sculpture

Stone carving

Cambodia's best-known stone carving adorns the temples of Angkor, which are "renowned for the scale, richness and detail of their sculpture". In modern times, however, the art of stone carving became rare, largely because older sculptures survived undamaged for centuries (eliminating the need for replacements) and because of the use of cement molds for modern temple architecture. By the 1970s and 1980s, the craft of stone carving was nearly lost.

During the late 20th century, however, efforts to restore Angkor resulted in a new demand for skilled stone carvers to replace missing or damaged pieces, and a new tradition of stone carving is arising to meet this need. Most modern carving is traditional-style, but some carvers are experimenting with contemporary designs. Interest is also renewing for using stone carving in modern wats. Modern carvings are typically made from Banteay Meanchey sandstone, though stone from Pursat and Kompong Thom is also used.

Metal sculpture

Peoples of mainland Southeast Asia began extracting copper from the earth circa 1100-1000 BC and then melting, casting, or hammering raw copper or copper-tin alloys (bronze) in limited amounts for practical use. Some 600 years later, bronze and copper were used for ritualistic and personal objects. Burial sites in Cambodia have uncovered metallic items such as bells and jewelry, and excavations have revealed not only weapons, bowls, and jewelry but tools for metalworking, like crucibles and molds. The skill of metalworking was seen as a divine gift and tied to Khmer rulers who viewed themselves as god kings. The Old Khmer word for bronze is samrit and experts believe there was significant metal production in historic Cambodia. Both Hindu and Buddhist bronzes, some of the oldest of which show Indian influence, appear in the seventh century, before Angkor.

Inscriptions tell us Khmer kings and elites often commissioned bronze sculptures from skilled artists. A royal foundry where bronze sculptures were created, and whose activity peaked in the 11th century, was unearthed at Angkor Thom by archaeologists in 2012, in an area south of where the capital's Royal Palace would have been. Larger bronze sculpture were associated with the kings and their power, and were housed in temples for worshippers, whereas mid-size bronzes were created for rituals and processions. Small figures were held in the homes of believers who may also offer the bronzes to temples. Bronzes of all sizes bore intricate, careful details. The Buddha sheltered by a naga became a popular image during the Angkor era as it is associated with the divine and protection. Lists uncovered from this period revealed the weight, material, and features of items belonging to temples, including those of copper, gold, and silver. Representations of Lokeshvara and Prajnaparamita, as well as the Buddha seated on a naga, were popular with Khmer artists. Shiva in multiple forms was represented by bronze sculptors during the Angkor era as well. Copper and bronze, bearing the same patterns found carved into the stone, were used to adorn temples in the 12th and 13th centuries.

In the post-Angkor, Middle Period between the early 15th and mid-19th centuries, believers would make merit by commissioning metal statues of ancestors and Theravada Buddhist divinities. Changes in rulers often meant the creation or destruction of metal images. The recycling of metal objects, via crucible and recasting, was regularly carried out by the Khmer for the creation of new holy items and images. Production of bronzes and other metal sculpture remained tied to the king and his divinity, and records show bronze and other metals continued to be valued and essential to religion. Metal workshops have been fixtures of Khmer capitals, near the royal palaces, from Angkor to Longvek and Oudong and then Phnom Penh. In 1936, a villager named Chhit-Lat claimed he dreamed that the Buddha told him to rescue a figure that was buried and trapped. He journeyed to the West Mebon and, three feet down, uncovered some of a huge bronze statue consisting of a head, hand, and shoulder. Experts arrived to see the enormous bronze figure of a reclining Vishnu, a pose common in Khmer art, asleep on a large serpent named Ananta. The statue, nicknamed the “Cambodian Mona Lisa”, and also referred to as the Reclining Vishnu of West Mebon and the West Mebon Vishnu, is of bronze, silver, lead, mercury gilding, and cinnabar. Considered a masterpiece, the restored sculpture is usually housed at the National Museum in Phnom Penh.

Known as the "Golden Boy," a gilt Khmer statue of copper alloy with inlaid silver discovered in 1974 by a Khmer-speaking woman in Buriram Province, a part of Thailand that belonged to the Khmer Empire, was sent back to Thailand by the Met in 2024. The Met calls the image "the most complete extant gilded-bronze image from Angkor" and the item is part of an exclusive collection of metal images of Hindu gods tied to the Devaraja (a god-king, or "deified monarch") cult that were found in Khmer territories in modern Cambodia and northeast Thailand. Depicted in jewels and an elaborate sampot chong kben, this and its “naturalism” suggests the figure might be a composite “representing a cult icon for worship in a royal sanctuary and also acting as an ancestor image of a deceased ruler". Called 'Standing Shiva' on the Met website and referred to originally as “Cambodian,” Martin Lerner, curator of Indian and Southeast Asian Art at the Met from 1972 to 2003, wrote in 1989 that the statue likely depicts a "devaraja." Expert consensus aligns with Lerner's suggestion that it's Khmer King Jayavarman VI, “whose accession took place in 1080.” The Met called the Golden Boy “the most important gift of Southeast Asian sculpture ever made to our collection,” and the response demonstrates the influence of the Hindu-Buddhist Khmer Empire across the border into what’s now Thailand. It’s believed the 51-inch Angkor-era statue was stolen by British thief Douglas Latchford in the 1970s.

Titled "Royal Bronzes: Cambodian Art of the Divine," an exhibition featuring rare 10th-13th century Khmer bronzes - including the West Mebon Vishnu - toured internationally, including the Guimet National Museum of Asian Arts in Paris, France, and then to the only U.S. showing at the Minneapolis Institute of Art (Mia) October 2025 - January 2026. There were five main categories of the exhibition: The Origins of Copper Metallurgy; Casting for the King; Honoring the Gods; New World, New Places, New Faith; and The West Mebon Vishnu: A Rebirth, focused on the study and reconstruction of the Vishnu unearthed in 1936. The exhibition includes 176 items total: 49 from the Guimet in Paris and 127 from Phnom Penh, Cambodia’s National Museum. Upon the conclusion of the MIA exhibit, the bronze Vishnu continued to the Smithsonian National Museum of Asian Art (Washington, D.C., USA) and then to be displayed at San Francisco, California, USA’s, Asian Art Museum until 2027.

In 2022, a 60 tonne, 21m (about 70 ft) high copper sculpture, the largest in Cambodia, was erected in Preah Sihanouk. Depicted are Neang Neak and Preah Thong from the founding legend of the Khmer people. Cambodian artists such as Ith Sopheap today demonstrate the same eight-step lost-wax casting method used by the Khmer since at least the sixth century. The coppersmith, who has a workshop in Preah Dak (a popular village in Siem Reap province), spent 30 years making sculptures of figures such as apsaras and Vishnu. The Royal Palace Ministry commissioned Sopheap’s work for 12 copper statues of Angkorian warriors, each 2.1m (or almost seven feet) high. In 2023, the statues were erected in a Siem Reap park next to Preah Ang Chek Preah Ang Chorm shrine, which themselves are bronze statues. Metalsmith Sovannvibol Sok takes a minimum of three days to sketch and carve copper for his works, and then about eight hours to shape. Sok is driven to both preserve and push Khmer art forward, particularly Khmer kbach (decor/patterns). Artist Ouk Chim Vichet turns scrap metal into art that expresses Cambodian identity. A teacher of Architecture and Urbanism at the Royal University of Fine Arts in Phnom Penh, he once repurposed weapons into items of peace as a student at Peace Art Project of Cambodia (co-healmed by British artist Sasha Constable) before working with stone and wood on top of discarded metal. His most famous sculpture, the Apsara Warrior, was showcased at the University of Michigan Museum of Art.

Wood carving

As wood is a perishable material, few wooden sculptures survived the Angkor era and those that did were crafted in Angkor’s latest years. As Theravada Buddhism became the dominant religion, the practice of stone-carving faded and wood became the material of choice for Khmer sculpture. Historically, Cambodians have crafted from wood apsaras, Buddha sculptures, religious stories, and more to decorate temples, pagodas, and even houses. In the post-Angkorian era, artists would apply lacquer to wooden sculpture for decorative and protective purposes, as well as inlay mother of pearl, ivory, and vitrified lead as ornamental features for wooden sculpture. Post-Angkor Khmer wood-carving is usually styled in the elemental themes of earth, air, wind, and water. The meaningful, valuable practice of Khmer wood working survives in the living, breathing intricate wood work of Khmer artists today.

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