Red Morning Glory and Rotten Gun

Red Morning Glory and Rotten Gun depicts a desolate landscape populated by strange and surreal imagery. The painting is artist Pratuang Emjaroen’s searing critique of the state of Thailand in the 1970s. It reflects the violent military action taken against student protests at that time. Pratuang paints rifles that are limp, sagging, and decayed. It is almost as if these rifles had life once but are now putrefied and rotten. Death plagues the landscape. There are skeletal remains in the “rotten” gun. A mountain of skulls in the background is topped by the flag of Thailand. Skulls are hanging off a tepee of rifles. On the right, a beheaded Buddha cries, accentuated by a glistening teardrop in the light of a bleeding moon. Death has descended upon this sombre landscape, against which there are vines and a lone glowing flower. The painting was exhibited as part of a show of an artist group that many Thai military leaders considered “leftist”. It opened on the 5th of October 1976, and, on the next day, the police and military attacked a student rally in Thammasat University in Bangkok, killing hundreds of students and arresting thousands. This painting’s surreal style fittingly captures the massacre and violence engulfing Thailand at the time.