Southeast Asia

We left the Khmers at their graceful old Chenla capital of Ishanapura, but their kings took some giant steps between the handsome Chenla temples and

More roots of Angkor Wat grew in northern Cambodia. Around 500 CE, communities there built a kingdom, or a network of independent cities, called the

My favorite regional variety of Thai art is from the north. After the Thais threw off the Khmer yoke in the 13th century, a king

The Kingdom of Lan Na emerged when the Thais liberated themselves from the Khmers in the 13th century. Lan Na thrived in northern Thailand, and

  Chiang Mai’s Wat Phra Singh has some of the best examples of northern Thai architecture, so it was high on my list of places to

In the last post, we walked towards Angkor Wat’s center and explored some of the carvings on its central section, beginning with the west wall.

Angkor Wat was built in the early twelfth century–exactly when the French pioneered Gothic architecture in the Basilica of St. Denis. Europeans constructed towering naves and choirs

  Vietnamese religious traditions have had many personalities. Their soft sides inspired a lot of great art, which isn’t in any books I’ve seen. But

I’ve never seen these in any books about Asian art or Buddhist art. But I saw two especially common types of statue in several Vietnamese

While Florentine artists and architects were developing three dimensional perspective in the 15th century, Thai sculptors perfected their own art forms. They express a different