Khmer sculpture

Khmer sculpture refers to the stone sculpture of the Khmer Empire, which ruled a territory based on modern Cambodia, but rather larger, from the 9th to the 13th century. The most celebrated examples are found in Angkor, which served as the seat of the empire.

There are several recognisable specific art styles of the Angkorian period:

Earlier Khmer art were influenced by Indian influences of Hindu themes. By the 7th century, Khmer sculpture begins to drift away from its Hindu influences – pre-Gupta for the Buddhist figures, Pallava for the Hindu figures – and through constant stylistic evolution, it comes to develop its own originality, which by the 10th century can be considered complete and absolute. An example of Khmer style that totally departed from Indian sculpture tradition is the wholeness of its figure, which bears similarities to the ancient Egyptian sculpture. Unlike almost all of Indian and Javanese Hindu-Buddhist stone sculptures, which were carved in high reliefs, slabs or supported by stelae on the figure's back, Khmer sculpture is carved wholly in the round. Khmer stone sculpture did not employ any stelae on the back of the figure to support it, as the result broken arms, hands or ankles vividly attested to the vulnerability of this format. Nevertheless, Khmer sculptors seems to wish their works to be seen from all sides in the garbagriha in the center of the temple. Khmers attempted to make free-standing statues, supported by an arch or by an attribute of the divinity such as a piece of clothing or a hand-held object.

Khmer sculpture soon goes beyond religious representation, which becomes almost a pretext in order to portray court figures in the guise of gods and goddesses. But furthermore, it also comes to constitute a means and end in itself for the execution of stylistic refinement, like a kind of testing ground. We have already seen how the social context of the Khmer kingdom provides a second key to understanding this art. But we can also imagine that on a more exclusive level, small groups of intellectuals and artists were at work, competing among themselves in mastery and refinement as they pursued a hypothetical perfection of style.

The gods we find in Khmer sculpture are those of the two great religions of India, Buddhism and Hinduism. Priests supervised the execution of the works, attested to in the high iconographic precision of the sculptures. Nonetheless, unlike those Hindu images which repeat an idealized stereotype, these images are treated with great realism and originality because they depict living models: the king and his court. The true social function of Khmer art was, in fact, the glorification of the through these images of the gods embodied in the princes. In fact, the cult of the “deva-raja” required the development of an eminently aristocratic art in which the people were supposed to see the tangible proof of the sovereign’s divinity, while the aristocracy took pleasure in seeing itself – if, it’s true, in idealized form – immortalized in the splendour of intricate adornments, elegant dresses and extravagant jewelry.

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