Nhek Dim

In an occasional series, The Blue Lotus delves into the history of Modern and Contemporary South and South East Asian arts. This issue highlights Nhek Dim, who has been considered to be one of the leading lights in ‘post independence’ Modern Cambodian art. King Norodom Sihanouk declared Cambodian independence, from France on November 9, 1953.

In ‘Phnom Penh : a cultural and literary history' (Milton E Osborne, 2008), it is mentioned that…

“Far more than is the case in Vietnam, where there is a lively modern art movement, Cambodian visual art is struggling to establish a presence and an identity in contemporary Phnom Penh. Before 1975 there was an active art scene that benefited from the support of expatriates and foreign diplomatic missions. By far the best known artist of this period was Nhek Dim whose landscapes were technically accomplished, perhaps reflecting the period he had spent working in the Disney studios on pieces such as ‘The Wise Rabbit’ cartoon (1967) . Like so many others who worked in the arts, Nhek Dim died during the period of Khmer Rouge rule.”

The following was published in ‘The Cambodia Daily’ (2009) and written in an article called

La Moisson (The Harvest)

Cambodia National Tourist Office Travel Poster

Angkor

‘Painting by Famed Nhek Dim Returns Home’, by Michelle Vachon…

”Born in Prey Veng province in 1934, Nhek Dim spent four years in the US studying animation at the Walt Disney film studio, returning in 1967 with the studio’s studentcompetition first prize, according to Lors Chinda’s 2001 book on the painter titled “Nhek Dim”.

There is something deeply satisfying about research. Through access to the ‘Internet Archive’ (which is a non-profit library of millions of free books, movies, software, music, websites, and more) I had searched for the Cambodian ‘Modern’ artist, Nhek Dim.

There were few ‘hits’, but one did interest me. It was a reference in ‘Asian Comics’ by John A. Lent. I remembered John Lent’s excellent volumes on the history of comics and cartoons from my interest in the history of comics, but had not expected Nhek Dim to feature in ‘Southeast Asian Cartoon Art’ (John A. Lent 2014) and the ‘Cambodia’ section of ‘Asian Comics’ (John A. Lent, 2015). In the latter Lent had said that…

“Phseng-phseng, Kambuja, and Le Sangkum, magazines directed by Norodom Sihanouk,

who was alternately king and head of government (Marston 1997, 60). Huy Hem, Nhek Dim, and Khut Khun were the magazines’ featured cartoonists.”

Nhek Dim was born in February 1934, in Reap village, Reap commune,Pea Reang District, in Prey Veng Province, Cambodia. He loved art early on, and in 1949 his parents enabled him to go to the School of Cambodian Arts (now the Department of Plastic Arts of the Royal University of Fine Arts), in Phnom Penh. The art school had been overseen by George Groslier and Suzuki, a Japanese teacher who had trained at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Tokyo (by Japanese painters who had studied Impressionism in France), became one of the most important art teachers at the School of Cambodian Arts.

Nhek Dim worked as a designer for the American Embassy in Phnom Penh and, in 1957, spent six months in Manila studying printmaking and publishing techniques with the support of the United States government at the United States Information Service in the Philippines. In 1963, Nhek Dim travelled to the USA, spending over three years studying under the celebrated animator Walt Disney and bringing back to Cambodia a white Mustang convertible, as a sign of his material success.

During the 1950s, back in Phnom Phen, Nhek Dim made a living as a cartoonist and a designer/commercial artist producing advertising/ travel posters, such as ‘Landscape of Angkor Wat, Visit Cambodia’ and “Cambodia Game Hunting” for the Cambodian National Tourist Office’.

Nhek Dim also created record covers (like Saravann) for artist such as Sinn Sisamouth, Ros Sereysothea, Pan Ron and Huoy Meas from Cambodia’s musical golden era. That is before the killings of artists and intellectuals (who emulated the West), by the Khmer Rouge. Latterly Nhek Dim produced “more or less naturalistic drawing and painting” (Roger Nelson, Lasalle Art History Forum, 2017, Singapore).

Nhek Dim has been seen as more of a ‘romantic’ painter, somewhat in the mode of Indonesia’s Raden Saleh Sjarif Boestaman (painting in Java, during the mid-1800s). Nhek Dim painted seemingly sentimental images of apsara dancers, idyllic landscapes and villages, such as his ‘Village Scene’ (1960) which was “…featured in a 1961 exhibition organised by the United States Information Service in Phnom Penh, and subsequently reproduced in Free World, a magazine published by the United States in several Southeast Asian languages and distributed widely” (we are informed by the National Gallery, Singapore, 2021). ‘La Moisson’ (The Harvest, 1961) is another such painting in the same mode as ‘Village

scene’ demonstrating that Nhek Dim was one of Cambodia’s first renown ‘Modern’ Cambodian artists who had adapted the more gentler, prettier, Western styles of painting to suit an idealisation of Cambodia and heavily romanticised images.

By1960, Nhek Dim had adopted a fresher style for his fine art paintings, one more easily recognised across South East Asia. In his Phnom Penh gallery (at 367 Kampuchea Krom St.), where he promoted himself as an ‘Artist and Cartoonist’, Nhek Dim’s new painting style appeared to have had commonalities with Nanyang painting styles championed by artists such as Cheong Soo, and Georgette Chen (from Singapore), a decade earlier. This is evidenced in ‘Village Scene’ (mentioned above) and a beach scene (in uncharacteristic gouache), from 1963, which rests somewhere between the illustrative and ‘fine’ art. That style, developed in oil paint, includes an image of a monk, a sailing vessel (both1965) and a domestic scene of a young child sleeping a hammock (undated).

Sadly, the artist who is arguably the father of Cambodian ‘Modern’ art, Nhek Dim, having been perhaps the most famous Cambodian artist in the 1950s, 60, and early 1970s, and had developed a very Western ‘artist’ lifestyle, had his life cut short by the after-effects of the tragedy which was the Cambodian civil war (effectively from 1967 until 1975). Lors Chinda, himself an artist, in his well researched book about Nhek Dim (Nhek, Dim, 1934-1978, Lors Chinda Art Publishers, 2001) suggests that the Khmer Rouge may have killed Nhek Dim in the December of 1978, along the Takeo-Kompong Speu province border.

Ed.

Image of a monk

Studio address on rear of canvas

Love’s Texture

poems and pictures by martin bradley

"There is always madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness."

Friedrich Nietzsche

These love poems stem two decades of being in Asia (essentially Cambodia, Malaysia and the Philippines), some were previously presented in the collection ‘Remembering Whiteness’ and re-visited, others lay patiently waiting for this brief chapbook volume to share with you. Love can be beautiful, and devastating.

https://issuu.com/martinabradley/docs/love_s_texture