Obituary；Vann NathVann Nath, a Cambodian who painted to stay alive, died on September 5th, aged 65When he was 52, with a hand that still trembled, Vann Nath produceda painting of a young man lying under a blossoming tree.He was playing a pipe while, in the background, cattle grazed by green palms in some bucolic corner of Cambodia.It was meant to be a self-portrait, he said, a beautiful memory from his childhood.He wanted only to paint idyllic landscapes now, in the style of temple muralsor the French Impressionists who had first inspired him to take up art.That was because, in 1978-79, he had been made to paint quite different pictures.In those months he was interned in S-21 prison, a former French lycée in Phnom Penhwhich had been converted into a torture-compound for alleged enemies of the Khmer Rouge regime.Perhaps 14,000 people were sent to S-21 for a daily routine of electrocution,water-boarding and flagellation before being carted off for execution―a shovel or spade to the head―at the nearby “killing fields”.Mr Vann Nath was one of only six or seven prisoners to make it out alive.He never expected to. Like almost all the others, he had no idea why he had been sent there.
