U Ba Kyi's Neo-Traditionalist Comics Style: At The Crossroads of Myanmar’s Buddhism, Arts and Colonial History

Abstract

During the second part of the 20th century, U Ba Kyi has produced a prolific and unique body of comics narratives which remains ubiquitous in Myanmar up to this day. If he is widely celebrated as one of Myanmar’s finest painters and as the champion of the Neo-traditionalist art movement, his comics work didn’t receive any critical attention. Building from appreciations of his seminal 1951 The Illustrated History of Buddhism which marked a shift in U Ba Kyi’s production as he explored the local wall-painting heritage in the wake of the country’s independence, this paper aims to identify the sources of the signature—yet constantly versatile—style which permeated his comics narratives. Exploring Pagan traditional art, the early days of cartooning in Rangoon and the rise of traditionalist and esoteric Buddhist practices in post-colonial Myanmar, it offers context to U Ba Kyi’s lush and vibrant early comics art which places itself at the service of an unbridled cosmological lore and nation-building myths.