Introduction to Lai Thai (Traditional Thai Art)
Thai visual art was traditionally primarily Buddhist. Thai Buddha images from different periods have a number of distinctive styles. Contemporary Thai art often combines traditional Thai elements (Lai Thai, which means Thai Pattern) with modern techniques.
Lai Thai are decorative patterns created by ancient Thai artists of fine arts to decorate art works and to add a magnificent pattern as well as to convey a way of life, a belief, a representation of the Buddhist society and attributes of Thai people. It expresses Thai people’s delicacy, sweetness, gentleness and their love of beauty.
The uniqueness of Lai Thai is on the smooth flow of the line and the delicate pattern design. Lai Thai can be found in the fields of painting, sculpture, architecture as well as other forms of art such as the patterns of Thai fabric, furniture, ornament and various carvings.
From the history, we can see that Thai art has been influenced by various civilizations, including the Mon-Khmer, Sinhalese, Chinese and especially Indian, from which Thai Buddhism came. Thai art had continuously evolved from these civilizations until it reached the golden age of sciences and arts in the Sukhothai era (the Kingdom of Sukhothai was an early kingdom in north central Thailand, which existed from 1238 until 1438) when Thai artists changed the pattern to be unique and created Lai Thai; hence the art was liberated from the influence of Indian arts. The oldest discovered Lai Thai is the painting etched on the slate at Wat Si Chum in Sukhothai province.
Lai Thai continued to develop along the Ayutthaya period to the Rattanakosin period, which was the period when Lai Thai reached its perfection. Lai Thai has become an art form of Thailand’s current capital city. Therefore, Lai Thai patterns seen today are in the fixed form inherited from the ancient patterns.
Because the Thai ancient society is a place where life co-existed with the nature, the concept of Lai Thai was derived from natural shapes such as flowers, leaves, vines, candle flame, incense smoke, quadruped animals, Himmapan creatures and imaginary creatures.
Ancient Lai Thai are classified into 4 categories, including:
Kranok category, which covers decorative patterns;
Nari category, which covers human portraits such as an image of a man, a woman or angles;
Krabi category, which covers the painting of monkeys, giants, beasts and the undead. The characters are mainly from protagonists of Ramayana story;
Kacha category, which covers the painting of natural animals such as elephants, horses, buffalos, tigers, lions, bison, rhinoceros and creatures from the artist’s imagination, namely Himmapan creatures.
Within each category, there are subtleties in drawing each part of an image.
Both Thailand and India have similarities in their art and architecture. Looking closely arts and crafts reveals strange animals decorating the scenes. Most of them are what can be described as a “combined-animal” as for example, a horse with a bird’s head, a man with lion body, etc. These animals are actually mythical creatures who dwell in the legendary Himmapan Forest. The forest is said to be located in the Himalaya Mountains. (The word “Himalaya” in ancient Sanskrit means “abode of snow”. Perhaps that’s also how the name “Himmapan” was derived.) It is also believed that the forests are located below the Buddhist heavens and are invisible to the eyes of mortals, who can never approach or enter.
In the past, it was popular not to paint Lai Thai realistically. Therefore, human paintings in Lai Thai were two-dimensional without a representation of muscles. In contrast, the focuses were on delicacy, beautiful line movement and exquisiteness of the patterns.
In the present time, there are many contemporary artists who adapt Lai Thai to create contemporary arts, combining the two-dimensional style of Thai art with a three-dimensional style of Western arts. This can be considered an extension of the original Thai art works. Thai contemporary art continues to focus on stories and concepts related to Buddhism and Buddhist philosophy. Nonetheless, its representational format may be changed according to the artist’s will and belief, and may not adhere to the traditional format. Famous Thai contemporary artists include Thawan Duchanee, Chalermchai Kositpipat, Panya Wijinthanasan and Thongchai Srisukprasert have been very influenced by Lai Thai.
Even though a presentation of contemporary Lai Thai differs from the traditional one, the core values of the Lai Thai which distinguish it from others still remain, namely the delicacy, the sweetness, the flow, the tenderness and the intricate details of the designs which were continuously created by master artists in different eras. This makes the Thai art unique and distinctive from the arts of other nations around the world.
