Chanon Praepipatmongkol

Spanning 1932 to 1992, Buddhist Modernism explores how monks, nuns, artists, and poets engaged with the “modernist” turn away from icon worship and instead fostered new relationships in the registers of beauty, affect, and intimacy. Reformist monks like Buddhadāsa Bhikkhu criticized idolatry yet embraced images as tools for spiritual cultivation. This simultaneously iconophilic and anti-devotional lexicon shaped modern Thai art, intertwining artmaking with the mass-mediated appeal of amulets and cultic images. This project argues for reclaiming the notion of Buddhist Modernism as, perhaps unexpectedly, a fertile platform for understanding the power and mobility of images across the artificially separated domains of religion and modern art.