Word: angkor
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...National Gallery in Washington has a marvelous show this summer--"Sculpture of Angkor and Ancient Cambodia: Millennium of Glory." It is by no means a rerun of a familiar subject. Most of the world's major sculptural traditions are abundantly represented in American museums--Egyptian, ancient Greek, Gothic, Italian Renaissance, Indian and Maya. Cambodian sculpture is the exception. Yet there is no doubt that in the small Southeast Asian kingdom between the 6th century and 16th century A.D., some of the greatest stone carving and bronze work in human history was made...
...image of Cambodian culture that haunts the West is vague and almost ineffably romantic: the royal city of Angkor, slowly abandoned under threat of Thai occupation after 1431 but still the chief symbol of Cambodian identity, one of the largest archaeological sites in the world, with its colonnades and giant water reservoirs; its huge, impassive stone faces split by tree roots; its temple mountains and crumbling pine-cone spires. Spreading over some 150 sq. mi., it has excited dithyrambs from visitors ever since the French started going there in the 19th century. "I looked up at those towers rising above...
...Angkor Wat in a box and ship it to Washington, but the organizers of the National Gallery's show have done the next best thing. With the cooperation of the National Museum of Cambodia in Phnom Penh and the Musee Guimet, under the general curatorial direction of the art historians Helen Jessup and Thierry Zephir, they have assembled the first full-scale traveling exhibition of classic Cambodian sculpture in more than 50 years. (A smaller show, a dress rehearsal for this one, was seen in Australia...
...contributors to the show's excellent catalog bluntly observes, "The museum staff lacks the expertise and resources to repair and conserve the sculpture, or to catalogue the collection. [This] can only be rectified with international help.") As if this weren't enough, a major problem around the monuments of Angkor is the land mines and other explosives sown by both the Khmer Rouge and the Vietnamese; some 21,000 of these have been found and defused by a French-led international task force since 1993, but plenty are left...
...Cambodian proverb says: If you are strong, make yourself feared; if you are weak, make yourself pitied. Cambodians are deeply insecure, aware that the proud temple-building empire of Angkor, which covered much of Southeast Asia in the 12th century, has shrunk to the small area of today's Cambodia. This insecurity has prompted much irrational aggression. In 1978 Pol Pot launched attacks on Vietnam, bragging that one Cambodian soldier could kill eight Vietnamese. It is a behavior pattern that is deeply rooted in the national psyche: to hold power one must show the utmost ferocity and single-mindedness...