Koke Lor is a Cambodian-American artist who has taken the traditional bare-breasted apsaras that one sees carved into the temple ruins of, say, Angkor Wat and hundreds of other temples dotted around Cambodia, added a dash of color, a smile and a relaxed pose to turn out some rather erotic soft-core beauties. I’d say this is NSFW, so I shall disable the URL, but you can see them here:
He’s become controversial in Cambodia. Well geez, if the Khmer Rouge couldn’t destroy the place, I think it’ll survive Koke Lor. I find his stuff very beautiful indeed.
I considered putting this in my Cambodian Overview thread, but I think Koke Lor deserves of his own.
Looks like pretty much any other sort of Conan/Gor style fantasy art. If I wasn’t aware that it was supposed to be linked to all the erotic stuff on temples, I wouldn’t have guessed (especially when you start including white chicks in bath towels.)
I think the guy just added the temple explanation on as a pretext.
Apsara sort of translates as “angel.” (The Thai version of, say, the lady’s name Angela is Achara, a version of apsara.) You see a lot of them on carved temples in Cambodia, usually topless. Those old Khmers were a randy lot, I’ll clue ya. But that’s why you see a lot of the traditional Khmer apsara costumes, or semi-costumes, in these works. It’s really pissed off a lot of Cambodians, but he’s starting to get a lot of publicity. Controversy sells, I guess.
Yeah I’ll just note that artistically the guy is pretty meh. He seems to mostly be layering photographs together and photoshopping them. But the pictures are turning out sort of fuzzy and flat with different sections at different color levels or level of detail.
I’d be more impressed if they were actual paintings or at least better photoshopped.
Yeah, it’s pretty bad quality, and a cheesy subject matter to boot; this one looks like she’s missing a few partial limbs, and what the heck’s this half-naked female ‘samurai’ doing among those pictures?
Geez, I can tell this is a tough crowd to please. I’d better pull out the big guns and show these erotic temple carvings from the Kathmandu Valley (also NSFW, and thus the link is disabled):
I have personal photos of these, but on regular film, not digital, and so not easy to upload.
Apsara is actually a sankrit term and they originated in India as far as I know. Similarly, you will often see yakshis–extremely buxom nature spirits (they also have a male version, and these are the people you generally see copulating on Indian temples)–which are, as I said, from India and often found on Hindu temples there.
Yakshi statues are some of the most beautiful in India, in my opinion. Here is one of the most famous/beautiful ones:
Yeah, her face looks a little weird, but so would yours if you were over 2000 years old.
I have to say, not too impressed with this guy. His pics may be in color, but in sexiness, none of them can compare with the simple grace and elegance of the above statues, IMO.
Yes, that is correct. Angor Wat and many other Khmer temples were Hindu. There is quite a lot of Sanskrit words in Cambodian and Thai, back from when this whole area was Hindu. Lots of Indian influnce around the region.
Pretty standard fantasy/half-naked chick illustrations; it’s been done better by dozens of other artists. It’s good work, but nothing to write home about.
Ugh. I’m sorry, these are terrible. I almost feel offended, the way he is taking ancient art and tarting it up to his tastes, except they’re just so terrible I can’t even bring myself to be truly offended. Ick.
