One Hundred Years Later: Malraux's Raid on Banteay Srei Bas-Reliefs Still Sparks Interest and Controversy
- Bernard Cohen
- 14 hours ago
- 15 min read
One century later, André Malraux's raid on the Banteay Srei bas-reliefs continues to generate interest and controversy. While the Latchford saga and the rapid restitution of looted Khmer art have made headlines in recent years, Malraux's 1923 raid on Banteay Srei takes us back to an era when, even for self-proclaimed anti-colonialists, the notion that Khmer heritage could be exploited at will was still commonplace—and it must be viewed as such: a brazen attempt at cultural reappropriation for mercantile purposes.
December 2023: Wandering through the precious monuments of Banteay Srei bathed in the golden light of late afternoon, one cannot help but overhear two professional Cambodian guides in front of the graceful devatas removed from their alcoves by André Malraux (1901-1976) and his childhood friend Louis Chevasson on December 22, 1923.
One addresses a small group of visitors in Spanish, the other in English, without either mentioning the sorry fate once reserved for them. Reinstalled in 1925, they smile at the distant trees and a Cambodian future where bad karma has no place.
The information panel erected by the Apsara Authority at the entrance to Banteay Srei soberly notes that "discovered in 1914, it was only after the pillaging of seven bas-reliefs in 1923 that the EFEO began clearing the site a year later."
Back to 1923
The Société des Amis du Musée Guimet (SAMG) is launched, following the founding of the museum in 1889 by the industrialist and art collector Émile Guimet (1836-1918). Its reading room, which attracts young Parisians passionate about Asian art, provides access to reference works such as Lunet de Lajonquière's inventory of Cambodian monuments (1911), Louis Delaporte's Voyage au Cambodge, Aymonier's studies, and the EFEO Bulletin collection, in which Henri Parmentier published in 1919 his detailed work on several temples (Bakong, Prasat Phnom Krom, Roluos group, etc.), including a newly rediscovered one... a fascinating Khmer temple, Banteay Srei: L’Art d’Indravarman (Bulletin de l’École française d’Extrême-Orient, Tome 19, 1919, pp. 1-98).
Among these readers were André and Clara Malraux (October 22, 1897 - December 15, 1982, née Goldschmidt; they had married against Clara's family's wishes in 1921), and the latter would note in her memoirs:
"I had browsed the inventory of Khmer monuments… Oh well, we will go to some small temple in Cambodia, take a few statues, sell them in America, and live comfortably for two or three years...."
1923 is also the year when Joseph Hackin (November 8, 1886, Boevange-sur-Attert, Luxembourg - February 24, 1941, at sea near the Faroe Islands) becomes curator of the Guimet Museum. Author of the museum's first compilation of Buddhist art, he set off to explore the Bamyan site in Afghanistan in 1924 with Alfred Foucher and André Godard. Hackin, a renowned archaeologist and one of the first to join the French Resistance in 1940, trusted Malraux's apparently praiseworthy interest in Khmer art and felt "betrayed" during the Banteay Srei scandal (see Régis Koetschet, A Kaboul rêvait mon père: André Malraux en Afghanistan, Nevicata, Brussels, 2021, ISBN 978-2-87723-174-1).
It is said that the young couple also learned about Khmer art from the art historian, curator, and sinologist Alfred Salmony (November 10, 1890, Cologne, Germany - April 29, 1958, near Paris, France), who would publish his essay Sculpture au Siam in 1925. In 1938, Salmony taught at the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University. It is evident that Salmony never encouraged Malraux to go shopping at Banteay Srei, but his influence is perceptible years later, when the future French Minister of Cultural Affairs developed his concept of the "musée imaginaire" (museum without walls) by reframing and rearranging photographs of artworks to "decontextualize art to express its universality." Malraux grasped the potential of using photography in art history and, borrowing from Alfred Salmony, deputy curator at the Cologne Museum, effectively used the methodology of making stylistic photographs of the era's artworks.
"To establish stylistic comparisons of the period with images," writes Clarissa Ricci in "L’Atlas comme méthode: The Museum in the Age of Image Distribution" (paper at the OPEN ARTS symposium, University of Bologna, April 20-21, 2021).
Yet, as Michael Freeman remarks in his 2004 travel book on Cambodia [Cambodia (Topographics), Reaktion Books, 2004 & 2012]:
"Officially sanctioned pillaging played its role and, in Cambodia's case, helped found the great Guimet Museum in Paris. The inspiration came from colonial competition between the British and the French."
"After establishing a protectorate over Cambodia in 1864, the French mounted an expedition up the Mekong, aimed at opening a trade route to China. Led in 1866 by the French representative in Cambodia, Doudart de Lagrée, this expedition notably led to the discovery of the Angkor ruins. Inspired by these discoveries, one of its members, Louis Delaporte, returned in 1873 with his own expedition to collect the finest statues. These became, in 1882, the core of the Trocadéro Indochinese Museum collection in Paris, and ultimately, in 1927, of the Guimet Museum."
While the Latchford saga and the rapid restitution of looted Khmer art have been unfolding in recent years, Malraux's 1923 raid on Banteay Srei takes us back to an era when, even for self-proclaimed anti-colonialists, the notion that Khmer heritage could be exploited at will was still commonplace—and it must be viewed as such: a brazen attempt at cultural reappropriation for mercantile purposes.
The Facts
At the time of the theft, André Malraux had met in Hanoi Léonard Aurousseau of the EFEO, a scholar more absorbed by the study of Chinese and Vietnamese manuscripts than by fieldwork around Angkor, which required that all objects discovered during projected excavations remain in situ.
Aurousseau, portrayed as an old pen-pusher of the Royal Way, was at the time engaged in a fierce controversy with Henri Maspero and other researchers on the origins of the Annamite people.
He forwarded Malraux's request for research on Khmer temples to Henri Parmentier, whose indulgence toward the culprits in the 1924 trials remains puzzling.
It can be thought that Parmentier, dazzled by the nonchalance of the young Clara-André couple, never suspected they were targeting Banteay Srei. He even had a personal hesitation about this site: Georges Demasur, who had first documented Banteay Srei in 1914 (and was killed in World War I a year later), had been a direct rival to Maurice Glaize, Parmentier's protégé, in the 1913 EFEO entrance exam.
But if the EFEO heavyweights showed surprising indulgence toward Malraux's desecration of a 10th-century Khmer temple, the man who actually stopped the pillaging attempt was George Groslier.
As Kent Davis remarks in his biographical essay on Groslier, "Le Khmerophile: The Art and Life of George Groslier (in Cambodian Dancers by G. Groslier, English translation, DATAsia, 2011):
"In Cambodia, his cultural theft attempt was of such magnitude that it permanently marked his reputation. Upon hearing the name Malraux, Nicole Groslier instantly recalled her father's encounter with 'the little thief.'"
The Franco-Khmer writer Makhali-Phal called him that in her papers and, when she met him in Paris in the 1930s, refused to shake his hand. (pp. 71-2) When she met André and Clara in Phnom Penh, taking them to visit the Albert-Sarraut Museum (today the National Museum of Cambodia), Groslier was the first to see through Malraux's hidden intentions:
"The impression Mr. Malraux left on me during his visit to Phnom Penh, although introduced by Mr. Parmentier, was unfavorable. He showed himself too knowledgeable about Khmer art from an antique dealer's perspective, notably Khmer heads of mysterious provenance put up for sale at Bing, rue Saint-Georges in Paris, at extravagant prices."
Press Dispatches on the Malraux-Chevasson Trial in Phnom Penh
"Our colleague L’Écho du Cambodge informs us that antiquity enthusiasts are beginning to pillage the Angkor ruins under the conditions it describes as follows: The investigating magistrate in Phnom-Penh is handling a case that unfolded about fifteen days ago involving two Europeans recently arrived from France to visit the Angkor ruins and, at the same time, take away a few souvenirs that would have more than repaid the cost of their trip."
"Authorized sources allow us today to give precise details on this act of pillage, which denotes on the part of the perpetrators an incredible audacity and particular knowledge of the value of the stolen sculptures."
"The investigation revealed that a certain Mr. C. (Louis Chevasson), coming from France, arrived in Saigon where he met Mr. M. (André Malraux), also arrived from Europe on a previous mail boat. Old schoolmates, they decided to visit the Angkor ruins together. They thus undertook the journey to Phnom-Penh where they parted by one mail interval to reunite in Siem Reap a few days later.
Their stay in Angkor was noted for the particular interest they took in visiting the unrestored temple of Banteay Srei, located 25 kilometers from Angkor, generally ignored by tourists. But what most attracted attention was that, instead of being driven to the sites by automobile, they preferred the ox cart. This seemed all the more bizarre to the Siem Reap administrative delegate as the excursion lasted several days."
"From then on, discreet surveillance was exercised on Messrs. M. and C., which made it possible to note that having arrived with light luggage, they were leaving with 700 to 800 kilos of packages. The superior residence, warned by telegraph, dispatched Mr. Groslier to Kompong Chhnang with the mission to ensure that the luggage was properly transshipped onto the Phnom Penh boat. It was only upon arriving in the latter city that, on an order from the Prosecutor's Office, the crates were seized; they were addressed to Berthet-Charrière et Cie in Saigon, care of Mr. C., and labeled 'Chemical products'."
"Faced with the evidence of the facts, Messrs. M. and C. were asked to remain at the disposal of justice pending further information. We were able to see, at the Albert-Sarraut Museum where they are exhibited, the pieces stolen from Banteay Srei; they constitute admirable marvels of 11th-century Khmer art and represent considerable artistic value. What is most astonishing is the skill with which these bas-reliefs were detached from the granite; their choice is no less surprising and may suggest that the accused were not acting for disinterested purposes."
Last Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, the appeals court heard the Chevasson-Malraux case. We recall the odyssey of these two singular "pilgrims of Angkor" who, after visiting the famous ruins—duly charged with a mission by the Ministry of Colonies, no less—tried to take away, as souvenirs, bas-reliefs and statues chosen with discerning eclecticism.
Convicted in first instance, the two accused appealed the judgment. Before the Court, their respective lawyers put forward the most persuasive reasons to obtain acquittal for their clients. Let us set aside legal considerations; laypeople risk getting lost in the thicket of jurisprudence and interpretations. But they invoked in favor of the young men other sentimental arguments, some of which constitute particularly suggestive revelations.
Me Gallois-Montbrun, Chevasson's defender, in his ardent plea, recalled that during his career in Cochinchina, he had known multiple scandalous acquittals for people who had stolen state and private funds; he had seen numerous people acquitted who had done worse by taking something infinitely more precious than gold: human life.
"And today one would want to strike impitoyably two young men guilty of having taken a few stones from a virtually abandoned monument!" cried the honorable defender.
"But then," remarked Me Gallois-Montbrun, "if one prosecutes Malraux and Chevasson for this peccadillo, why not have prosecuted and condemned before them admirals, superior residents, and other 'mandarins' of equal importance (meaning: great lords of the Third Republic) for far graver depredations committed against the same monuments?"
"After all," added the eloquent Saigon barrister, "very recently, other similar cases were settled amicably, even when they involved more substantial thefts than those reproached to my client. It seems, indeed, that recently a senior officer committed the same offense, but the matter was hushed up."
"Yes, why two weights and two measures? It is the application of the eternal adage: 'According to whether you are powerful or wretched.' Anyway, thanks to the lawyers of the two accused, the public, especially the Annamite public, can savor the tasty frankness of remarks which, in the mouth of a native, would suffice to classify their author in the category of suspects and anti-French. But lawyers have the privilege of saying everything, and as a bonus, being French, they are family, so they can afford a little laundry-washing from which their clients benefit thanks to the retrospective effect of an appeal for clemency."
"Measures intended to prevent the export of Indochinese art objects of true artistic value have just been strengthened by a decree. Henceforth, art objects prior to the 19th century may only be exported through the ports of Haiphong, Tourane, Quinhon, Saigon, and Ream. These objects may only be exported if their owner requests, at least three weeks before departure, a non-classification certificate from the director of the École française d’Extrême-Orient, listing the objects he wishes to take. This certificate will be issued after examination of the objects: in Haiphong by Mr. Aurousseau; in Tourane and Quinhon by Mr. Sallet; in Saigon by Messrs. Bouchot and Groslier; in Ream by Mr. Groslier.
These provisions have contributed to considerably increasing the prices of Annamite, and especially Lao and Khmer, art objects currently in France, and Buddhas that sell for 2,000 piastres in the colony are demanded in France for nearly 100,000 francs."
The argument that French dignitaries had no scruples about picking up art objects during their visits to Angkor was popular in left-wing circles, eager to present Malraux as a courageous agitator denouncing colonial hypocrisy. The French diplomat Albert Bodard, based in China in the 1920s, father of Indochina War correspondent Lucien Bodard, exclaims:
"One has never seen that, a Frenchman working for revolution in Indochina with the yellow agitators! So they set up a trap for the odious Malraux, it is the revolutionary one wants to punish, and the stones (the Banteay Srei bas-reliefs) are only a pretext, the opportunity, even if Malraux exaggerates a bit in this regard." Problem: Malraux refashioned himself as an anti-colonial firebrand in 1925, not in 1923….
In 1928, the French writer Titayna recalls:
"Between Manila and Hong Kong, an American diplomat had shown me a fairly wide stone from which emerged, in bas-relief, a hallucinating tevada (sacred dancer).
'I took it from your Cambodia,' he told me… - Is it really that easy? - I don't know if it's easy for the French… I've heard that French journalists were arrested. You must be watched, but us Americans, they leave us alone!'"
In hindsight, one can see that EFEO researchers in Cambodia were too absorbed in their work to become guardians of isolated temples and that Parmentier did not perceive the ulterior motives of Malraux and his accomplices. He was a very busy man, as evidenced by his typical schedule described in the Activities section of EFEO Bulletin No. 24 (1924):
"Mr. H. PARMENTIER, Head of the Archaeological Service, who left at the end of the previous year for an inspection of the Angkor works, took advantage of this occasion to examine, with Mr. H. Marchal, the curator, the state of the Khmer bridges that line the ancient road used by the new Phnom Penh to Siem Reap route.
At the end of the year, Mr. Parmentier had to go assess the damage committed at the Banteay Srei temple by a band of ruin pillagers who had attempted this raid under cover of an official mission and who had just been placed at the disposal of justice with their loot."
"He also carried out a few rapid excavations at the Bayon and Angkor Wat to search for missing elements in later rearrangements; he was thus able to bring to light a curious pediment from the first Bayon, which had been partly hidden by the construction of the upper terrace, and rediscover the old central axis staircase of the temple. He then returned to Banteay Srei on January 17, 1924, to conduct an expertise requested by the Phnom Penh investigating magistrate on the nature and exact extent of the damage inflicted on the monument. Then he carried out the complete clearing of the main parts, decided by the Director of the School during his visit of January 20-21, an important work that lasted until February 14. The monument, of very remarkable sculpture and which brings interesting new data to the knowledge of Khmer art, yielded a whole series of new inscriptions and seems to provide a curious example of a search for archaism, a known fact in Champa but still unsuspected in Cambodia."
"The Head of the Archaeological Service was assisted in his operations by Mr. Goloubew, who took charge, with his usual mastery, of the important photographic documentation necessitated by the high artistic value of this tiny ensemble. Then Mr. Parmentier returned to Angkor to resume his study of the Bayon, begun many years earlier to accompany the remarkable surveys of J. Commaille, which he was able to complete this time. From March 7 to 13, he visited with Mr. Goloubew the monuments and ancient quarries of Phnom Kulen, a tour that led to the discovery of a small new classical art temple, Prasat Krol Romat, near a beautiful waterfall, and that of a group of animals carved into the vertical rocks that crenellate the plateau's ridge, splendid works of pre-Khmer art, contemporary with the analogous effort attempted in India at Mahabalipuram by the Pallavas.
From the 14th to 23rd, he revisited with Mr. Goloubew the temple of Beng Mealea and the Prah Khan group, completing on the latter the information gathered by Mr. de Lajonquière, particularly on the curious Prasat Stung, No. 178, the only Khmer building where the gigantic heads that make the originality of the Bayon and Banteay Chmar are used in the decoration of a simple prasat forming the central sanctuary. From Angkor, Mr. Parmentier went to Kompong Chhnang to examine an interesting collection of prehistoric pieces gathered at Samron Sen by Gayno, then to Stung Treng to review the results of Mr. Houël's research, customs receiver in the Stung Treng and Thala Borivat region; finally to Pakse and Savannakhet, where various highly interesting finds had been reported to him, notably a sculpted stele from Vat Phu and a remarkable bronze drum of type l. Back in Stung Treng on May 11, he left again on the 15th for Thom Khan to study the series of pre-Khmer art monuments in the region and complete the studies of Messrs. de Lajonquière and Groslier on Preah Vihear. From there, with some difficulties caused by the rains that had begun to swell the rivers, he reached the Koh Ker group, which he studied the main buildings from June 9 to 12, and returned to Stung Treng on June 23, after visiting en route the Keak Trapan Ku."
Reverberations
Malraux's raid on Banteay Srei in 1923 is a crime, even if French colonial justice ultimately considered it a misdemeanor, even if French intellectuals, including luminaries like André Breton or Max Jacob, petitioned in his favor in 1924, even if he entered Western history as the man who "led an archaeological expedition to Cambodia, was in contact with Chiang Kai-shek, Mao Zedong—and was active in the civil war—participated in the defense of his country—was involved with General de Gaulle," to cite President J.F. Kennedy in his toast to the French minister at a White House gala dinner on May 11, 1962, even if far graver pillaging crimes are currently being resolved through repatriation campaigns for stolen artworks.
Malraux himself rarely commented on his arrest and trial after the Banteay Srei debacle, except in the interview with André Rousseaux for the French magazine Candide a few days after the release of La Voie royale, on November 13, 1930 (Un quart d’heure avec André Malraux, available on www.malraux.org).
As was his habit, he vehemently denounced this publication, and Candide published his protest a week later, on December 20, 1930. According to Rousseaux, a right-wing Catholic publicist who would later censor collaborationists a decade on, when pressed to comment on Banteay Srei, Malraux replied:
"Note first," he said, "that I was on a gratuitous mission, which only gave me the right to requisition from the natives. Consequently, I had nothing of a salaried official bound by certain obligations. I operated at my own expense. And the sculptures I brought back, others could have taken them before me if they had wanted to venture into the bush. Besides, if they hadn't been seized, I would have given half to the Guimet Museum. Now, it's about getting them back. They are sequestered in the Phnom Penh museum, which belongs to the King of Cambodia. It's a new trial, because the Court of Cassation annulled the judgments already rendered, but the final judgment remains to be obtained…."
The most elaborate and flagrant attempt to absolve Malraux of his crime is certainly that of Walter Langlois (1966):
All Malrauxian fantasies are taken at face value by the American university professor of French literature at the University of Kentucky, even the alleged "ongoing project to write a major comparative study on Siamese and Khmer arts."
Langlois recalls that the young Malraux had been commissioned by "an American connoisseur to negotiate the purchase of the important Asian art collection" of Prince Damrong, the Siamese dignitary who would be the EFEO's guest at Angkor in January 1924.
"Looking back retrospectively on Malraux's work, one realizes that his experience in Indochina was determining. In a sense, the author of The Destiny of Man and The Hope of Man was created by the Phnom Penh trial and the injustices he witnessed in Cochinchina," writes Langlois (p. 229) to our great surprise.
Did Malraux want to get caught? In Malraux: A Biography (Open Road Distribution, 1976, ISBN: 978-1-5040-0856-3), certainly the most nuanced and insightful portrait of the "little thief," we read:
"In a few months, we will be rich. Or lost. Clara is decidedly frightened. It was never in question that she take part in the adventure. A good sign? Friends and acquaintances are not surprised: they envy, but also distrust the audacity. Max Jacob snickers in a letter to Kahnweiler:
'A Malraux mission… Well, he'll end up in the Orient. He'll become an orientalist and end up at the Collège de France, like Claudel. He's the type to get a chair.' From their first meeting, the poet knows that André will never stay in writing, the only truly holy mission in his eyes. Max thinks Malraux loves his century. Error: the path André seeks in the Orient certainly does not lead to the Academy. And for now, his baggage boils down to a dozen hand saws. And the seven sandstone sculptures that will be seized in his trunk when he arrives at the Mekong delta at the following Christmas will earn him not an academic chair, but a three-year prison sentence. Everything of value escapes and, caught by routine, must rot in prison. True books are written in a cell: Dostoevsky, Cervantes, Defoe, says Les Noyers d'Altenburg."
La Voie Royale, a quest for tantric Buddhist dharma?
That is the bold proposal of Korean scholar Kim Woong-Kong, author of several essays on French literature:
"It is natural that various readings of La Voie royale have been made. When this novel is read fragmentarily, or when its network of mâyâs is not unveiled, it shows several figures, for example a Nietzschean nihilistic vision, a Promethean revolt, an existentialist absurd drama, a Conrad adventure, an anti-destiny eroticism of self-affirmation, a critique of Western civilization, etc. These readings are not necessarily bad. Such colors contribute to enriching the novel and the depths of the work. They are like onion peels to be peeled in the process of discovering a treasure hidden in the encoded text. The new construction I have proposed should encompass them all because it comes from the analysis of their presupposition. The text is a space that opens to the measure of the reader's taste, culture, and knowledge. Although La Voie royale is an interrogative novel on the quest for the Way of Buddhism, it covers a deep reflection on the history and civilization of the West. This leads to a vast field of intellectual interrogation that should make Asia and the West dialogue with each other."
With our partner Angkor Database
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