Charting Thoughts:

Essays on Art in Southeast Asia

Edited by Low Sze Wee & Patrick D. Flores

 Contents

6
7 An Introduction 90 Pre-war (1886–1941) Art Activities
Low Sze Wee of the Chinese Community
in Singapore through a Narrative
12 Address of Art: Framework of Diasporic Bonds
Vicinity of Region, Horizon of History Yeo Mang Thong
Patrick D. Flores
7
104 A “Forgotten” Art World:
The Singapore Art Club and
1 its Colonial Women Artists
22 When Was Modernism? Yvonne Low
A Historiography of Singapore Art
Kevin Chua 8
120 Balinese Modernism
2 Adrian Vickers
34 The 19th-Century “Origins”
of Singapore Art 9
Kwa Chong Guan 130 The Birth of ‘Fine Art’ in
Southeast Asia, 1900–1945
3 Ushiroshoji Masahiro
44 Colonial Art as a Space
of the Asian Modern 10
John Clark 140 Conditions of Freedom,
Contingencies of Art
4 Patrick D. Flores
60 The Javanese Painter
Raden Saleh (c. 1811–1880): 11
A Star in the Firmament of 154 The Transition of
Indonesian Modern Visual Art Thai Traditional Art
Marie-Odette Scalliet to Modern Art
in the 1950s and 1960s
5 Somporn Rodboon
78 Towards a History of the Asian
Photographer at Home and Abroad: 12
Case Studies of Southeast Asian 164 Landscape Painting in Indonesia:
Pioneers Francis Chit, Continuity and Change in
Kassian Céphas and Yu Chong President Sukarno’s Collection
Gael Newton Susie Protschky
 13
174 Confict and Denial: 278
The Discourse of Identity in
Indonesian Art, 1950s –1980s
Aminudin TH Siregar
20
Unpacking the Legacy of an
Exceptional Artist from Myanmar:
Bagyi Aung Soe (1923–1990)
Yin Ker

14 21
188 Lim Hak Tai Points a Third Way: 292 Emergenc(i)es:
Towards a Socially Engaged Art by History and the
the Nanyang Artists, 1950s –1960s Auto-Ethnographic Impulse in
Seng Yu Jin Contemporary Cambodian Art
Ashley Thompson
15
202 The Woman and the Vista: 22
Intimate Revolt of the Cultural Left 304 Rhetorical Postures
Simon Soon and the Photographic Condition:
A Minor Malaysian Detour
16 Adele Tan
214 Cultural Wars in Southeast Asia:
The Birth of the Critical Exhibition 23
in the 1970s 318 Undoing the Global:
Seng Yu Jin Contemporary Art of Singapore
June Yap
17
232 Reading Conceptual Art in 24
Southeast Asia: A Beginning 328 Drafting History:
T.K. Sabapathy Meditation on Location,
Institutions and Myth-Making
18 in Visual Arts
246 The Singapore Contemporary in Postcolonial Singapore
and Contemporary Art Venka Purushothaman
in Singapore
C.J.W.-L. Wee 25
336 Metonym and Metaphor,
19 Islands and Continents:
268 Continuity and Change: Refections on Curating
Vietnamese Art in Contemporary Art
the Age of Đổi Mới from Southeast Asia
Nora A. Taylor Lee Weng Choy

349 Figures 1.1 to 25.5

479 Notes on the Contributors

 An Introduction
Low Sze Wee
The writers invited by National Gallery Singa-
pore to contribute towards this publication were
given a main brief that their essays should fur-
ther the understanding of the history of modern
art in Singapore and Southeast Asia. This was
aligned to the Gallery’s own research interests,
as refected in the framework of its two inau-
gural long-term exhibitions—one on Singapore
modern art and the other on Southeast Asian
modern art. Whilst the curatorial narratives of
both exhibitions were shared with the writers, it
was left open for them to choose whether their
essays would complement, expand, critique or
highlight aspects of art histories covered (or not
covered) in the two exhibitions.
The eventual essays in this anthology, or-
ganised chronologically according to the periods
and practices under study, cover a wide terrain.
In a sense, they also refect the current scholarly
preoccupations in a feld that has gained con-
siderable depth over the past few decades, but
continues to suffer from critical gaps.
On Singapore
The writers requested to refect on Singapore
art responded in diverse ways. A number took
the opportunity to cast light on overlooked or
lesser-known aspects of Singapore art history.
For instance, Kwa Chong Guan highlights how
materials such as 19th-century colonial natu-
ral history paintings and photographs inform
our understanding of the beginnings of art in
Singapore, which have hitherto been conven-
tionally associated with the founding of the
An Introduction
Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts in 1938. Simi-
larly, Yeo Mang Thong extensively researched
pre-war Chinese-language newspapers to fore-
ground the vibrant cultural scene amongst the
Chinese diaspora in Singapore then. His essay
provides a refreshing account of the lively lit-
erati exchanges and fervent nationalistic activi-
ties by painters and calligraphers in the years
leading up to World War II. This has, in turn,
shed new light on why the local art scene was
able to rebound with relative ease in the 1950s,
after the war came to an end.
Yvonne Low, a younger scholar, has also
done admirable research on early 20th-century
art activities in Singapore—an area which has,
to date, received insuffcient attention. Low’s
essay examines the contributions of colonial
women artists working in social art clubs in
Singapore. Such amateur artists are often over-
looked in mainstream art historical accounts
which privilege the role of professional art-
ists. Moreover, postcolonial discourses of art
also tend to lack colonial references. Hence,
Low provides a much-needed exploration of
the now-forgotten Singapore Art Club which
was set up in the early 1880s, and how such
social clubs survived and further developed in
post-independent Malaya. Her essay also makes
mention of a few early 20th-century artists,
including Low Kway Song, a Singapore-born
artist who enjoyed considerable success in the
predominantly European expatriate art scene at
the time. His achievements notwithstanding, he
as well as his contemporaries are little-discussed
in conventional art historical discourse today,
7
 which tends to emphasise the contributions
of the Nanyang School artists who came into
prominence in the 1950s onwards. Yet, as Seng
Yu Jin points out through his piece, there are
still layers of complexity that need to be better
understood. Seng focuses on the practice of Lim
Hak Tai, a fgure most known for his role as the
founding principal of Singapore’s oldest tertiary
art school, the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts.
Seng urges a rethinking of both Nanyang and
social realist art in Singapore. Challenging the
notion that such rigid categories are mutually
exclusive, he contends that such classifcations
become problematic when applied uncritically
to our understanding of Nanyang art and so-
cial realism. Seng argues that although Lim did
not seek to evoke explicit social change through
his works (unlike other social realist artists), his
works should be seen as a form of Nanyang art
which sought to raise social awareness. Hence,
such “socially engaged” Nanyang paintings
offer a possible way to bridge the seemingly
opposed positions of the Nanyang and social
realist discourses today.
Three writers chose to examine the pe-
riod from the pivotal 1980s until the present.
As C.J.W.-L. Wee points out, the 1980s was a
decade of transition for arts and culture policy
making in Singapore. There was a new empha-
sis on developing the cultural sector to enhance
Singapore as a tourist destination and an attrac-
tive place for Singaporeans and foreign talents
to live and work. By the 1980s, Singapore was
seen as having attained economic success and
therefore, “inhabiting at least more of an equal-
ly shared present” with the advanced economies
of the West. This meant that Singapore had
to be “more of a transnational space” due to
its increased interconnections with the global
economy. Against that context, Wee describes
contemporary art of the period as a “fex-
ible art practice” that departed from medium-
specifc and object-based modern art. This
resulted in an expanded use of seemingly
non-aesthetic material for art-making that
8 Low Sze Wee
facilitated Singapore artists to examine the
“incomplete fragments of life in the historical
present” and engage with the impact of mod-
ernisation from the 1960s. In her essay, June
Yap extends the discussion on the contempora-
neity of art in Singapore by looking at the neo-
liberal globalisation of capital post-1989, and
how the aesthetic expressions of the global—its
fows, interruptions, disjunctions and limits—
are manifest in the works of a range of artists
including Tang Mun Kit, Simryn Gill, M.
Faizal Fadil, Tang Da Wu, Lee Wen, Amanda
Heng, Vincent Leow, S. Chandrasekaran and
Lim Tzay Chuen.
Lastly, in their respective essays, academics
Venka Purushothaman and Kevin Chua pose
thought-provoking questions on how, why and
for whom art history is written. Whilst Purush-
othaman raises issues of location, institutions
and myth-making in the historicising of art
in Singapore, Chua examines the state of art
historical writing in Singapore in three broad
periods, or what he calls “three moments of
modernism” in Singapore: the 1300s–1890s,
1920s–1960s and 1970s–2000s. In his analysis
of art historical texts by key writers like Marco
Hsu and T.K. Sabapathy, he highlights the
critical importance of understanding how an
artwork moves through time, meeting different
audiences, making new meaning and gathering
complex layers of interpretations along the way.
On Southeast Asia
Of the essays dealing with art in Southeast
Asia, more than half are devoted to studies on
either the nation or the individual, the latter
usually in the context of national art history.
The nation therefore looms large in the study
of art history in Southeast Asia, especially with
the end of colonialisation and rise of nation-
states after World War II. Over the years, aca-
demic courses, publications, exhibitions and
collections have been developed within this
deep-rooted nationalist paradigm. Interest in
the region and art historical research with a
regional perspective has been sporadic. It only
began picking up momentum from the 1990s
onwards, with the advent of a growing art mar-
ket in Southeast Asia. This was underpinned by
rising affuence in the region due to the post-
war economic boom of the 1970s and 1980s.
The period also saw the emergence of institu-
tional interests, as evidenced by the establish-
ment of international biennales, triennales and
museums with a regional focus in the 1990s.
In a way, the profle of our writers also refects
these developments. For instance, Ushiroshoji
Masahiro was the founding Chief Curator at
the Fukuoka Asian Art Museum in the 1990s,
an institution critical to promoting greater
scholarship in Southeast Asian modern art.
Likewise, John Clark, whose comparative ap-
proaches in the study of Asian modern art has
nurtured, over the years, many younger schol-
ars in the feld.
In their respective essays, a number of
writers have highlighted the limitations of us-
ing Western (Euro-American) art historical
frameworks for understanding modern art in
Southeast Asia. In such paradigms, modern art
has been generally understood as a rupture with
the past and a preoccupation with the new, as
refected in the succession of styles from real-
ism to abstraction from the late 19th to mid-
20th centuries. Modern Southeast Asian art,
therefore, sits uneasily within such defnitions.
As Marie-Odette Scalliet notes, an artist like
Raden Saleh is not considered “modern” under
such a framework since he did not take up any
of the modernist styles associated with Western
art. Other essays commissioned for this vol-
ume also reveal that searching for clear ruptures
with the past is problematic. For instance, in
the case of Indonesia, its modern art beginnings
are conventionally understood as a clear de-
parture from the Mooi Indiës (beautiful Indies)
of its colonial past. However, Susie Protschky
demonstrates that there are clear continuities in
both subject and style in works from the colo-
An Introduction
nial to the early post-independence period, as
refected in the art collection of its nationalist
leader President Sukarno. Likewise, how does
one account for an artist like Bagyi Aung Soe
from Myanmar, whose eclecticism has defed
Western categorisations, and whose exceptional
practice has left no obvious legacy in terms of
followers or students? In that respect, scholars
like Yin Ker and Ashley Thompson have shown
that disciplines such as sociology, anthropology
and ethnography can help to open up the dis-
course, and facilitate alternative insights into ar-
tistic practice and production in Southeast Asia.
In the discussions about art and the na-
tion, a number of essays have coalesced around
Indonesia: one of the largest countries in the
region with a relatively longer history of mod-
ern art development. This is mirrored by sub-
stantial discussions about Indonesian art and
its relations with the nation. What is Indone-
sian modern art? What is “Indonesian” about
Indonesian art? How does one defne local or
national identity in art? These are issues that
have preoccupied Indonesian artists and com-
mentators since the early 20th century. In his
essay, Aminudin TH Siregar surveys the long-
running cultural debates in Indonesia that
emerged in the early years of her struggles for
independence. These debates continued in
1969 when Oesman Effendi controversially
argued that most art produced then was still
derivative of the West, and Indonesian painting
with national characteristics had yet to emerge.
Siregar concludes in his piece that the issue of
Indonesian art’s identity is not easily resolved,
given its complex web of “acculturation and en-
culturation processes.” These processes become
evident in Adrian Vickers’ study of Balinese
modernism from the 1920s to 1940s, which
spotlights the diffculty of accounting for such
art within the conventional nationalist narra-
tive of Indonesian art. Each generation will
need to fnd its own answer to these complex is-
sues. In fact, as Scalliet discusses in her detailed
study of Raden Saleh, an artist’s identity and
9
 standing was highly malleable at the time, and
could change from generation to generation.
Initially marginalised in the early 20th century
due to his European affliations, Raden Saleh’s
reputation was later restored by the founding
President of Indonesia, Sukarno, who admired
his art and positioned him as a nationalist art-
ist. Somporn Rodboon’s and Nora A. Taylor’s
respective studies of Thai modern art and Vi-
etnamese contemporary art both highlight the
dilemmas and contradictions in art practice
and writing. In Rodboon’s succinct account,
she examines how Thai artists grappled with
Western modernism and Thai traditionalism
in the 1950s and 1960s. When Bhirasri’s stu-
dents were criticised for using modernist styles,
their teacher defended them by arguing that
such use was a “natural development” so long
as it could convey their individuality. Likewise,
Taylor provides a nuanced analysis of the Vi-
etnam art scene from the 1970s to 1990s. She
demonstrates how a reading of the convention-
al association between the rise of Vietnamese
contemporary art and the Đổi Mới governmen-
tal economic reforms in the mid-1980s can be
complicated by the agencies of individuals like
Bui Xuan Phai and informal associations like
Salon Natasha. Adele Tan uses Malaysian art-
ists as her case studies for arguing that closer
attention be paid to photographs of artists pos-
ing with their artworks, found as illustrations
in publications or reports. Usually regarded
as supplemental or marginal to an essay, Tan
makes a case for using such materials as critical
resources to appraise an artist’s work, attitudes
and politics by examining the “ways they inter-
pose on how we read artists, their art and their
unexpected lifeworlds.”
Acknowledging the limitations of nation-
centric discourses, with their essentialist ten-
dencies and unproductive binary relationships,
scholars like T.K. Sabapathy, John Clark,
Ushiroshoji Masahiro, Patrick D. Flores and
Lee Weng Choy have looked to the region to
play up relationships, fows and connections
10 Low Sze Wee
that are more refective of the fuidity and
complexities of identity formation and artistic
production in Southeast Asia. In his analysis
of the development of conceptual art (and
conceptualism) in Southeast Asia, Sabapathy
highlights such diffculties, and cautions that
researchers are unlikely to fnd “continuously
linked lineages” but rather, “broken and sepa-
rate genealogies” arising from diverse geogra-
phies and histories. Looking across time and
space, Clark, Ushiroshoji and Flores analyse
parallel developments in the region from the
19th century to the 1960s. Whilst the impact
of European colonialism has been much com-
mented upon, Clark’s analysis of 19th-century
art from Thailand, Indonesia and Philippines
surfaces connections beyond Europe by intro-
ducing intriguing connections with the Indian
Company School and Chinese trade paintings.
Flores’ analysis illuminatingly maps artistic
developments against the complex processes
of “the struggle with successive colonialisms,
the coming to terms with independence and
the process of belonging to the international
world.” Arguing against a simplistic under-
standing of Southeast Asian art as a series of
stylistic infuences, Ushiroshoji voices concern
about the over-reliance on Euro-American
frameworks in discussing art from Southeast
Asia, given the syncretic nature of art practice
in the region. For instance, the art academies
established in Hanoi, Bangkok and Singapore
in the 20th century all advocated hybrid ap-
proaches in art education, where Western art
styles and techniques were taught alongside
traditional art forms. Whilst Sabapathy and
others have embarked on broad comparative
analysis, younger scholars like Soon and Seng
look at more specifc instances of common his-
torical experiences and artistic developments
in Southeast Asia. Soon compares leftist art
movements in Indonesia and Singapore, and
fnds common strategies in the politics of in-
clusion and use of the body as a weapon to
challenge power structures. Seng examines the
phenomenon of what he terms “critical exhibi-
tions,” organised by artists in the 1970s. This
was a new exhibitionary mode at the time,
led by student–artists who challenged then-
dominant categories of art and promoted so-
cially engaged art.
Conclusion
In closing, Lee’s acute observations come to
mind. In thinking and writing about South-
east Asian art, a degree of self-refexivity is crit-
ical in the “diffcult and complicated process
An Introduction
of making sense” of the terrain. As he asserts,
“[c]oncepts like modernism, realism or con-
ceptualism become even more contentious
when applied across cultures and geographies.”
In her essay on the Burmese artist Bagyi Aung
Soe, Yin Ker maintains that each artist is excep-
tional, and merits scrupulous study in examin-
ing how he/she responds to specifc problems
arising from an evolving context. Ultimately,
as she persuasively argues, scholarship needs to
be open to fux, plurality and challenges, and
not seek the safety, singularity and stability of
theories and defnitions.
11
 1 Roger D. Abrahams, “The Past in the Presence: An
Overview of Folkloristics in the Late 20 th Century,”
Studia Fennica Folkloristica I, no. 24 (1992): 32–51.
2 Elizabeth Mansfeld, “Introduction,” Art History and
its Institutions: Foundations of a Discipline, ed. Eliza-
beth Mansfeld (London: Routledge, 2002), 1–8.
3 See for instance the efforts of the Clark Art Insti-
tute, the Getty Research Institute, the Tate and the
Guggenheim, to name the most prominent.
4 Southeast of Now, “Call for Papers: Volume #1—
Discomfort,” Southeast of Now: Directions in Con-
temporary and Modern Art, http://southeastofnow.
com/call-for-papers-issue-1-discomfort/ (accessed
2 November 2016). The journal has been published.
Address of Art: Vicinity of Region, Horizon of History
Patrick D. Flores
In Bahasa Indonesia and Melayu, address is
alamat; in Filipino, alamat is lore or legend. In
this universe of language, origin is more than
just locus or inscription that hews, oftentimes
even overdetermines, identity. It is a cosmo-
logical condition. It is a world conceived not
in terms of possession or domain that con-
denses in discursive property; it rather rami-
fes in myth and tale, in a conjuring. It is more
atmosphere than territory. In such a scheme,
the art that must fnd its address does not nec-
essarily have to take on the habit of identity,
because it must not. It must, in fact, refuse it.
After all, apart from being fable or saga or par-
able, address is speech (text, texture, context),
a performative act that signifes as well as dis-
sembles; its truth contingent on its telling and
its teller, the very procedure of its history in an
expressive public sphere.1
12 Charting Thoughts
5 “The Forever Now: Contemporary Painting in an At-
emporal World,” MoMA, https://www.moma.org/calen
dar/exhibitions/1455 (accessed 2 November 2016).
6 Glenn D. Lowry, The New Museum of Modern Art (New
York: Museum of Modern Art, 2005), 15.
7 Johannes Fabian, Remembering the Present: Paint-
ing and Popular History in Zaire (Berkeley: University
of California Press, 1996); Hélène Cixous, The Hélène
Cixous Reader, ed. Susan Sellers (New York: Rout-
ledge, 1994).
8 Michael Ann Holly, “Mourning and Method,” in Com-
pelling Visuality: The Work of Art in and out of History,
eds. Claire Farago & Robert Zwijnenberg (Minneapo-
lis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003), 175.
Art history in Southeast Asia cannot be
merely marked as a province of the “history of
art” as conceived as an academic vocation at the
Musée Napoléon in 1803 and at the University
of Berlin in 1844.2 It cannot likewise just be a
fallout of the crisis of the discipline of art his-
tory, burdened by its 19th-century provenance
and impedimenta, and at the moment diligently
recalibrated in various algorithms by art history
departments, research centres and museums
in the West.3 An art history in Southeast Asia
must revisit the address of whatever art history
it has known, written, and continues to medi-
ate, its declaration and its dream, its norm and
its fction, its écriture. In returning to this ala-
mat, it must decidedly be deconstructive but at
the same time true to the spirit of its legend and
lore, to the integrity of its persistent cosmology.
It must cherish and defend an incessant world.
 This alamat is reckoned in the present. In
Philippine dictionaries, alamat is a narrative of
wonder and translation, generated from telling
to telling and proves diffcult to confrm at the
moment of its utterance. (And for sure, it is un-
canny that the alamat evades the very modus of
verifcation.) This present is seductively and ur-
gently depicted as the “now.” In this regard, it
might be instructive to point to two evocations
of the “now.” In 2015, an editorial collective
was working towards a journal titled Southeast
of Now: Directions in Contemporary and Mod-
ern Art. The brief for its inaugural issue invited
contributions that “explore discomfort as a ve-
hicle in the thinking of art histories and cura-
torial discourses connected to localities within
the region known as Southeast Asia. It seeks
to interrogate, recover, challenge, and rede-
fne the ‘contemporary’ and ‘modern’ through
new readings of art practices connected to the
region.”4 In New York in the same year, the
Museum of Modern Art opened the exhibition
The Forever Now: Contemporary Painting in an
Atemporal World. It presented the work of 17
artists
whose paintings refect a singular ap-
proach that characterises our cultural mo-
ment at the beginning of this new mil-
lennium: they refuse to allow us to defne
or even meter our time by them. This
phenomenon in culture was frst identi-
fed by the science fction writer William
Gibson, who used the term ‘a-temporality’
to describe a cultural product of our mo-
ment that paradoxically doesn’t represent,
through style, through content, or through
medium, the time from which it comes.
It defnes its key term thus:
A-temporality, or timelessness, manifests
itself in painting as an ahistorical free-for-
all, where contemporaneity as an indica-
tor of new form is nowhere to be found,
Address of Art
and all eras coexist. This profigate mixing
of past styles and genres can be identifed
as a kind of hallmark for our moment in
painting, with artists achieving it by re-
animating historical styles or recreating a
contemporary version of them, sampling
motifs from across the timeline of 20th-
century art in a single painting or across an
oeuvre, or radically paring their language
down to the most archetypal forms.5
The “now,” therefore, is caught up in the
logics of refusal, profigacy, reanimation and
discomfort. On the one hand, the “region” that
is Southeast Asia is almost painfully refunc-
tioned so that it can hopefully “address” a par-
ticular presence. On the other, in an institution
that professes to be “metabolic” or “self-renew-
ing,” art is imagined to whirl in some kind of
heady ether, in an “ahistorical free-for-all” that
infnitely progresses.6 It is at this conjuncture
of abandon, in the sense of both licence and
recklessness, that the now is intuited. In the
copious context of the now, we ask this: What
happens to the past and how does the future
transpire? Johannes Fabian speaks of “remem-
bering the present” when he intertwines paint-
ing and popular history in Zaire while Hélène
Cixous contemplates a “present passing.”7 The
annotator of the intellectual history of art his-
tory, its historiographer, Michael Ann Holly,
abides by melancholy, inviting us to “suffer the
sting of loss” and relive the “incision” of the
“aesthetic capacity of the work of art to wound,
to pierce.”8 These are elusive phrases that at the
same time bear the weight of the ethnographic
art-historical and the feminist philosophical,
or of a dense “historical,” but one that is par-
tial and restive. It is a historical no longer en-
sconced or captured. It can, in fact, overcome
the pressure of its supposed fundament or be
indifferent to a “futural horizon” or “coming
community” altogether. In the mind of the
Japanese critic Sawaragi Noi, “The world that
is here now has nothing to do with the future.”
13
 In other words, according to Kenichi Yoshida,
the now can be an index of “severance” and
“uselessness” and not only a metric of alle-
giance and productivity.9
In discussing tendencies in how art history
has been and is being written in the region that
is carved out as Southeast Asia, central is the
concept of timeliness, which implicates the cri-
sis in art history with regard to the region in
terms of omission, absence, misrepresentation,
orientalism, denigration and outright negation.
It is the task of a timely art history to question
the basis of this lapse in art historical judgment
through intense critique and an equally intense
effort to move beyond the absolutely essential
critique. Thus, in tension with the timely is the
untimely. This art history should be committed
in the same vein to anticipate the untimely, to
altogether lift itself off the time that it has suf-
fered for so long but cannot seem to fnd the
means of a proper parting.10
And so, one of the strongest tendencies in
the writing of art history in Southeast Asia or in
Asia for that matter is the postcolonial critique
of the normative text that springs from a per-
ceived Euro-American intelligence. Partha Mit-
ter, for instance, looks at how texts on Indian
sculpture and architecture such as Fergusson’s
A History of Indian and Eastern Architecture and
A.M. Hocart’s Decadence in India regard Indian
form in terms of decadence. Mitter offers an
alternative approach through the concept of
ornament; in Sanskrit, the verb alamkar is to
decorate and literally means “to make enough,”
to complete, or accomplish the form. A pro-
found shift takes place when decadence is re-
placed with ornament.11
T.K. Sabapathy, for his part, dwells on
how art historiography in Southeast Asia
would be conditioned by a strategically non-
Western knowledge system. Sabapathy probes
this problem through the texts History of In-
dian and Indonesian Art by Ananda Coomar-
aswamy and The Indianized States of Southeast
Asia by George Coedes. His main point is that
14 Patrick D. Flores
Southeast Asia gains the privilege of identity
through India; in fact Coomaraswamy calls
the region Farther India. Coedes for his part
would reduce Southeast Asia to the process
of Indianisation or Sankritisation, prompt-
ing Sabapathy to argue that he “has imposed a
programmatic design of Indian infuence onto
Southeast Asia […] tantamount to propound-
ing a colonial doctrine.”12 It is here where we
can tease out the strand of the Great Tradition
or oriental antiquity that privileges the Hindu-
Buddhist sphere as the space of Southeast Asian
art history and the impulse of the creative life
it encompasses, something that a Philippine
moment can challenge through its peculiar and
precocious mediations of the West and the re-
gion beyond the pale of this highly Sinitic and
Indic Great Tradition.
The second tendency pertains to the for-
mation of a national modernity in which art
history distributes its attentiveness to the mo-
dernity of art and the modernity of nation and
the historical form that is aesthetically medi-
ated through the artefact of art and the arte-
fact of nation. In other words, the history of
art is braided with the history of modernity in
the context of the emergence or the “unfolding
ontology” of the nation. In this scheme, mo-
dernity may be construed as a consciousness of
art; modernisation as the rationalisation of art;
and modernism as a refnement of the sensibil-
ity for the potential of art. What is therefore
paramount in this regard is the anxiety of con-
text and the fear of repeating the anti-context
which is the universal, on the one hand, and
the necessity of worlding in which a notion of
the outside is posited and then transformed so
that context may be wrested from the universal,
on the other. The said context is almost already
understood as “country” and as Clifford Geertz
has asked: “What is a country if it is not a na-
tion?”13 And more often than not, this coun-
try that is a nation is made to characterise the
category of art as if no problematic or frisson
inhered in the conjuncture. Thus, the terms
9 Kenichi Yoshida, “Deactivating the Future: Sawaragi
Noi’s Polemical Recoil from Contemporary Art,” Re-
view of Japanese Culture and Society 26 (2014): 318.
10 See Wendy Brown, Edgework: Critical Essays on
Knowledge and Politics (New Jersey: Princeton Uni-
versity Press, 2005) and Fenella Cannell, Power and
Intimacy in the Christian Philippines (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2007).
11 Partha Mitter, “‘Decadent’ Art of South Indian Tem-
ples,” in Views of Difference: Different Views of Art, ed.
Catherine King (New Haven: Yale University Press,
1999), 93–118.
12 T.K. Sabapathy, “Developing Regional Perspectives in
South-East Asian Art Historiography,” in The Second
Asia-Pacifc Triennial of Contemporary Art: Brisbane
Australia 1996 (Brisbane: Queensland Art Gallery,
1996), 16.
Indonesian or Cambodian art present them-
selves almost naturally, with the presumption
that the proposition of art is as transhistori-
cal or transcultural as the rubric of aesthetics.
A cognate situation would be appending the
term “aesthetics” to a cultural conception like
the Yoruba or Inuit to form another naturalised
phrase such as Yoruba or Inuit aesthetics, as if
the constitution of Yoruba or Inuit could not
resist the aesthetic to render itself sensible.14
In these formulations, it is as if the category of
country did not mediate the category of form
(or sensible life), found in or in fact constitut-
ing, the country.
Aside from “country,” the other mediating
category of context is “culture,” which is seen
to endow the art with distinction or even au-
thenticity. This is a tricky operation basically
because culture, in the way it tends to reify the
mess of lived practice, is actually a corruption,
a fction and facture of coherence and not a
fact of feld work. It is supposedly culture that
animates the particularity of art from Southeast
Asia. We can perhaps trace this anthropological
Address of Art
13 Clifford Geertz, Available Light: Anthropological
Refections on Philosophical Topics (New Jersey:
Princeton University Press, 2001).
14 Tom Ingold, ed., Key Debates in Anthropology (Lon-
don: Routledge, 1996).
15 Stanley J. O’Connor, “Art Critics, Connoisseurs, and
Collectors in the Southeast Asian Rain Forest:
A Study in Cross-Cultural Art Theory,” Journal of
Southeast Asian Studies 14, no. 2 (September 1983):
408.
16 Nora A. Taylor, Painters in Hanoi: An Ethnography
of Vietnamese Art (Honolulu: University of Hawaii
Press, 2009); and Astri Wright, Soul, Spirit, Moun-
tain: Preoccupations of Contemporary Indonesian
Painters (Kuala Lumpur, New York: Oxford University
Press, 1994).
turn in Southeast Asian art history to Cornell
University’s Stanley O’Connor who has ex-
pressed the belief that the “aesthetic attitude”
is not so much a study of privileged objects; it
is rather “rooted in social customs concerning
death and a speculative investigation into the
nature and the destiny of the soul.”15 It can be
noticed that the work of Nora A. Taylor and
Astri Wright who came from the same pro-
gramme of art history at Cornell is committed
to the description of culture that surrounds the
art.16 In fact, Taylor characterises the story of
painters in Hanoi as an ethnography. Needless
to say, such a turn to and of the ethnographic
needs to be subjected to the thoroughgoing cri-
tique within the discipline of anthropology it-
self. For instance, it is fair to ask: How far can a
trained art historian really do ethnography and
how can this art historian not instrumentalise
the ethnographic just to sustain the art histori-
cal? It is in the realm of culture that the binary,
and the potential dialectic, between tradition
and change, temporality and cosmology tend
to overdetermine postcolonial practice. The
15
 17 Claire Holt, Art in Indonesia: Continuities and Change
(Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1967).
18 Alice G. Guillermo, Image to Meaning: Essays on
Philippine Art (Manila: Ateneo de Manila University
Press, 2001) 11, 13.
19 John Clark, Modern Asian Art (Honolulu: Univer-
sity of Hawaii Press, 1998); Flaudette May Datuin &
Patrick Flores, eds., Women Imaging Women: Home,
Body, Memory (Manila: Ford Foundation, Art Stud-
ies Foundation, Cultural Center of the Philippines,
1999); and Simon Soon, “What is Left of Art: The Spa-
tio-Visual Practice of Political Art in Indonesia, Sin-
gapore, Thailand and the Philippines 1950s–1970s,”
(PhD diss., University of Sydney, 2016).
20 Sakai Tadayasu, “Was Japanese Fauvism Fauvist?”
in Modernity in Asian Art, ed. John Clark (Sydney:
Wild Peony, 1993), 128–34.
21 Patrick D. Flores, “Turns in Tropics: Artist–Curator,”
work of Claire Holt (continuities and change),
the First Asia-Pacifc Triennial in Brisbane,
Australia (tradition and change), and Apinan
Poshyananda’s travelling exhibition Contem-
porary Art in Asia: Traditions/Tensions for Asia
Society based in New York are helpful in this
respect.17 Alongside culture, there is likewise
an insistence on the coordinates of the social
and the historical in the projection of the con-
text of art as thought through by the art critic
and historian Alice Guillermo; she locates art
within iconic, contextual and evaluative planes.
Through the contextual, she clears a relatively
autonomous space for art as, in her own fe-
licitous phraseology, “reverberating in the real
world,” revealing “numerous ramifcations of
meaning,” grounded in the circumstances of
its production.18 In these various elaborations
of context, of material conditions and mate-
rialities, the discipline inevitably dissolves to
give way to the interdiscipline or the transdis-
cipline, with various epistemes infltrating the
premises of the study of art, from the social sci-
16 Patrick D. Flores
in Modern and Contemporary Southeast Asian Art:
An Anthology, eds. Nora A. Taylor & Boreth Ly (Ithaca:
Cornell University Press, 2012), 171–88.
22 Hans Belting, “Contemporary Art as Global Art: A
Critical Estimate,” in The Global Art World: Audi-
ences, Markets, and Museums, eds. Hans Belting &
Andrea Buddensieg (Ostfldern: Hatje Cantz), 38–73;
Reiko Tomii, Radicalism in the Wilderness: Inter-
national Contemporaneity and 1960s Art in Japan
(Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 2016).
23 See Afterall Books series on exhibition histories.
24 Patrick D. Flores, “The Exhibition as Historical Prop-
osition: An Introduction” Yishu: Journal of Contempo-
rary Chinese Art 13, no. 2 (2014): 103–4.
25 June Yap, “Retrospective: A Historiographical Aes-
thetic in Contemporary Singapore and Malay-
sia,” (PhD diss., National University of Singapore,
2014).
ences to visual culture, and on to the hybridi-
ties, to which a so-called new art history would
become hospitable.
The said national modernity, however, is
not fated to stasis; it is, rather, in fux, always
inclining outward, open to belong to a broader
assemblage of forces. It is at this point that a
corollary tendency arises in the writing of art
history in Southeast Asia, and this is largely
about the history of transfer and translation,
investing agency in the region as a locus of
critical mediation and not just passive accept-
ance of so-called infuence or diffusion. Here,
the procedure of comparison is set in high relief
so that the possibility of a comparative modal-
ity can be made to play out through a survey
or comparison of national modernities (the
Association of Southeast Asian Nations, the
Fukuoka Asian Art Museum, the Singapore Art
Museum/National Gallery Singapore, the Ja-
pan Foundation, and the exceptional work of
John Clark over time) or a scanning of social
practice through a thematisation of, let us say,
gender or politics.19 The production of mono-
graphic projects around artists or forms that
tend to represent a national expression or tradi-
tion is well within this tendency. These include
efforts that prop up a stylistic category as a node
or transmitter of artistic technology from the
West, such as Cubism by way of the exhibition
Cubism in Asia, or realism via Realism in Asia.
Another case in point is Sakai Tadayasu’s essay
in which he asks if Japanese Fauvism was truly
Fauvist and to which he answers: its “strange-
ness” became so “adjusted to the Japanese ‘cli-
mate of sensitivity’ that in the end it really does
not seem so strange anymore.”20 To be noted
here is ambivalence, of a condition of almost,
but not quite, strange.
The stability of such a national modernity
and its comparativities may be unhinged or
suspended if a certain turn were initiated, for
instance by a polytropic agency, like the artist–
curator, or the production of a provocative text,
like the manifesto. The work of Jim Supangkat,
Redza Piyadasa, Raymundo Albano, and Api-
nan Poshyananda and the seminal role of the
manifestos in Indonesia, Thailand, the Philip-
pines and Malaysia in the 1970s are important
ciphers in this landscape.21 It is at this critical
crossing that a break with the modern may have
been effected, or if not a break, at least a com-
plication or a critique, or a movement towards
the global contemporary or international con-
temporaneity in the register of Hans Belting or
Reiko Tomii respectively.22
The third tendency in the writing of art
history in Southeast Asia can be found in the
exhibition and the history of exhibitions, from
19th-century expositions to the biennales of re-
cent time. Many exhibitions have endeavoured
to confgure the history of art of the region and
have proposed periods, themes, artists and ecol-
ogies of art worlds. And there have been incipi-
ent attempts to historicise the exhibitions and
to regard as discursive, the exhibitionary ges-
ture and aesthetic; and they are in conversation
with the global interest in the history of exhibi-
Address of Art
tions.23 The question that needs to be asked in
the face of these initiatives pertains to method.
Is the history of exhibition just a supplement
of the history of art?24 Or is it another realm
of inquiry altogether? With this privileging of
the exhibitionary comes the intervention of the
curatorial, and its exceptional talent to convene
an intersubjective space and to form various re-
sponses from various constituencies. It is the cu-
ratorial that can dissipate the sedimentation of
data in the archive of the art historical. It is also
the curatorial that transforms the art historical
in more idiosyncratic ways and is the project
that is inclined to erode the tenacity of art his-
torical knowledge in the atmosphere of engage-
ment, institutional critique and activism, criti-
cal institutionality, speculation, space making,
political action, refexive social research, and a
range of intersubjectivities. Finally, it is through
the curatorial that a contemporary subjectivity
may be able to shape the art historical. Related
to this predilection in the writing of art history
is the production of art that tends to write art
history itself as embodied in a “historiographi-
cal aesthetic” in which “the aesthetic purpose
may be conjectured as examining the produc-
tion of history,” including art history.25
The fourth tendency in the writing of art
history in Southeast Asia is articulated through
the archive, such as the Asia Art Archive and
the Indonesian Visual Art Archive. The archive
in this case has become a mutating apparatus:
a repository of documentation, an exhibition
platform, and a discourse generator through
research, publication, and dissemination. As
a place of accumulation, the archive is an en-
chanting forest of data, but by the very nature
of its temperament to amass that underlies its
political economy, its authority to programme
the terms of the discussion and inability as yet
to cut through the thickets of local discourse
may actually fatten the history it collects in the
guise of merely documenting it.
And the last tendency is the writing of the
history of art history in Southeast Asia, a kind
17
 of metacommentary on both methodology and
material. T.K. Sabapathy has charted that his-
tory in Singapore by implicating the germinal
texts The Art of Southeast Asia: Cambodia, Vi-
etnam, Thailand, Laos, Burma, Java, Bali by
Philip Rawson and Art in Indonesia: Conti-
nuities and Change by Claire Holt. The former
would proceed from the history of art; the lat-
ter from the polemics on culture, but both nev-
ertheless would distend the term “art” into a
transcultural and transhistorical category with
only a shift in orientation—one of possession
(of Southeast Asia), the other of location (in In-
donesia). This device of the polemic, which in
the 1970s refgured as a manifesto, is of interest
because it introduces a particular diction and
tenor of the crisis in art history as it converges
with “aspirations towards the formation of new
nations or states and at other times revolv[ing]
around heightened claims of individuality and
the self.”26
In light of these tendencies in the writing
of art history in Southeast Asia, the succeeding
initiations should cluster around the reconcep-
tualisation of the region that is Southeast Asia.
To think of the region or regionality is to think
of the vaster world of which it is a vital part. In
many ways, therefore, the region is a moment
of a constant worlding, a “process geography”
in the words of Arjun Appadurai who warns
us of reducing places to stable characteristics or
traits, “driven by conceptions of geographical,
civilizational, and cultural coherence […] with
more or less durable historical boundaries and
with a unity composed of more or less endur-
ing properties.” On the contrary, Appadurai
looks at geographies in terms of “precipitates
of various kinds of action, interaction, and mo-
tion—trade, travel, pilgrimage, warfare, pros-
elytization, colonization, exile, and the like.”
Moreover, according to him, “regions are best
viewed as initial contexts for themes that gener-
ate variable geographies, rather than fxed geog-
raphies marked by pre-given themes.”27 Thus,
Southeast Asia as a setting should be seen as a
18 Patrick D. Flores
level or a layer in the conception of a shifting
geography and should not be made to overde-
termine or colonise the domain of a region in
the process of constant forming across different
scales from river to street, from hemisphere to
archipelago. There is a need to hold out this
possibility because the prevailing imagination
of Southeast Asia was forged by the Association
of Southeast Asian Nations beginning in 1967,
which was in cadence with a larger sequence
of efforts to bind the region in some kind of
defence and trade alliance. This is a restrictive
geopolitical imaginary, one that must be tran-
scended because the geopolitical is one thing;
but the geopoetic, the mediation of the earth
through the aesthetic and the aesthetically me-
diated initiations to gather, is another. A more
refexive geopolitical and geopoetic rendering
of Southeast Asia should be able to open up
the region, or the problematic of the southeast,
to other axes and coordinates, such as South-
east Europe, for instance, or South America.
It could re-enter the sphere of the Pacifc and
re-engage with Austronesian archaeology and
the Silk Route past and present, and it could
deepen the relational links to migrant commu-
nities across the world as well as intersections
that lie beyond the compass of the nation-state
or the inter-nation regional assemblage; the
Sulu Zone comes to the fore as an instance.28
If one were to take the case of a national
art history like Singapore’s and ventilate it,
so to speak, it would be helpful to track the
dispositions of the discipline, or the habits of
its writers. In this volume, we can glean some
symptoms of the struggle to write art history in
Southeast Asia by way of Singapore. For cer-
tain, the spectre of historiography hovers at the
outset; to critically refect on the intellectual
history of the art-historical modality is an es-
sential exercise. This becomes acute if seen in
relation to the more popular, more mediagenic
appraisals of art that preponderate in the art
market or the leisure industry. What must be
attended to is a rigorous conceptualisation of
26 T.K. Sabapathy, Road to Nowhere: The Quick Rise
and the Long Fall of Art History in Singapore (Singa-
pore: The Art Gallery, National Institute of Education,
2010), 3.
27 Arjun Appadurai, “Grassroots Globalization and
the Research Imagination,” Public Culture 12, no. 1
(2000): 1–19.
the “historical moment” so that the history of
art, or its movement “through time,” becomes
less vulnerable to the appropriation of the “lat-
est.” From such a historiographic approach, the
temptation to render time in terms of periods
is diffcult to resist. But again, with a frm grasp
of the historical moment, one does not merely
“periodise,” to lapse into an infelicitous word;
one rather, historicises the geography of art,
which extends to diasporic formations. In this
volume, we see Singaporean scholars grapple
with the temporalities of the 19th century and
the contemporary, with the thrill of origins/
beginnings and the bedeviling prospects of ter-
mination as referenced by the prefx “post.” It
is uncanny, of course, that the 19th-century and
the contemporary thicken and thin out in the
face of the self-metabolic modern.
In this context of interrogation, mono-
graphic excursions are charted. In this respect,
the oeuvre of Lim Hak Tai and reprographic
practice (cartoons, woodcut) are furnished am-
ple realms in which to unfold. Deepening this
surface are efforts to stake out the ground with
problematics such as “gender” and the “glob-
al”—how to foreground it; how to undo it.
Finally, the institutionalisation of art through
the museum and art history is enfolded into the
critique, subjecting it to equivalent reconsid-
Address of Art
28 James Francis Warren, The Sulu Zone, 1768–1898:
The Dynamics of External Trade, Slavery, and Ethnicity
in the Transformation of a Southeast Asian Maritime
State (Singapore: National University of Singapore
Press, 2007).
29 David Lloyd, “Representation’s Coup,” Interventions:
International Journal of Postcolonial Studies 16, no.
1 (2004): 1–29.
eration. The challenge perhaps is not to tarry
with the institutional critique but to rethink
its governmentality so that its institutionality
could become more redemptive. Otherwise,
the threat of the Futurists to destroy all mu-
seums would become the only politics with a
chance.
In light of this, further work in Southeast
Asia needs to be pursued still. And here are
some aspirations:
First, there is a necessity to surmount the
idea of an alternative art history and try to create
instead a conceptual space for an art-historical
alterity, a deconstructed art history that is so
radically different from a supposedly originary
Western discipline that it does not only include
the excluded, but shifts the parameters of what
to exclude and where to begin the inclusion,
which need not be in the postcolonial modern
nation-state or through the aporetic process of
decolonisation.29 The latter tends to inscribe
alterity, or subalternity for that matter, in a na-
tional folklore (or the folklore of nation) and
makes it legible through the tropes of authen-
ticity, syncretism, or hybridity, thus foreclosing
the possibility of a third moment beyond the
native and the colonial. Here, the problematics
of naming; the obligation to overinvest in the
category of art to embrace even the archaeologi-
19
 30 Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, “Scattered Speculations
on the Question of Value,” in In Other Worlds: Essays
in Cultural Politics (New York: Methuen, 1987), 155.
31 Appadurai, op. cit., 11.
32 Darby English, How to See a Work of Art in Total Dark-
ness (Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 2010).
33 Michael Baxandall, Patterns of Intention: On the His-
torical Explanation of Pictures (New Haven: Yale Uni-
versity Press), 10–1.
cal and the ethnographic; and even the privileg-
ing of aesthetics as a supposedly transhistorical
and transcultural term are foregrounded along-
side the procedure of what Gayatri Spivak calls
the “enablement” of a “violation” from which
renegotiated techniques of inquiry may arise
and which should at the same time reiterate that
no “total undoing” could ever be realised.30
Second, it is imperative to build up a lexi-
con of inclinations, words and phrases emerg-
ing in Southeast Asia that reference extensive
localities and vectors of region. The imagina-
tion of the national, the international, and the
global has been suffciently mediated by dif-
fcult, sometimes eccentric, words and phrases
crafted and circulating in Southeast Asia, and
several of these are catechetic, willfully or in-
advertently straining language to the point of
near error or errant signifcation, such as “de-
velopmental art,” “mystical reality,” “visible
soul,” and “preter-national.” This disposition
to spin words and let them unravel in practices
is a full-bodied sign that the discursive context
in the locality is dense, open to play and keen
on urgency, and that its word makers are una-
fraid to both mix and master with the patience
and the agency of a native and a migrant.
20 Patrick D. Flores
34 Remigio E. Agpalo, “Liwanag at Dilim: The Political
Philosophy of Emilio Jacinto,” in Third Lecture (Ma-
nila: University of Philippine Press, 1976), 8.
35 Zeus A. Salazar, “Ang Kartilya ni Emilio Jacinto at ang
Diwang Pilipino sa Agos ng Kasaysayan,” in Bagong
Kasaysayan (Manila: Bakas, 1999), 90.
36 Ibid., 91.
37 Lloyd, op. cit., 12.
Third, essential is a kind of critical writing
that resists the requirements and customs of
Western academic writing in the social scienc-
es and in the course of this experiment recover
the animus of the material of the feld. Arjun
Appadurai reframes the research imagination
and revisits possible ways to generate knowl-
edge without depending too much on a “prior
citational world and an imagined world of
specialized professional readers and research-
ers.” Appadurai fnds wisdom in the “virtuoso
technique, the random fash, the generalist’s
epiphany, and other private sources of conf-
dence.”31 It is likewise important to avoid the
capture of meaning and cognition, refuse the
temptations of thematisation, and fnally re-
store the potency of the act of sensing and the
activity of a mindful body. An art historian has
likewise reminded us of the need to “frustrate
perception” and instead foster the “elements of
surprise and encounter that signify that a re-
arrangement of mind […] has occurred” in the
sensible mediation of art.32 Crucial here is a
kind of writing that is performative and ludic
and takes liberties with orthodox syntax; it is
generative and idiosyncratic and if English is
appropriated as a medium, it is not smoothed
over. It is rather made to sound like a strained
second or third language, prone to error and
improvisation, made to enunciate a theoretical
vernacular. Moreover, data should be engaged
with critical theory and a theoretical imagina-
tion and constellate these data with ideas and
speculations through a kinetic curatorial sen-
sibility, or the instinct to gather persons and
things in a “sudden vicinity” in the cogent
words of Michel Foucault.
It is only by taking up these challenges
that art historians in Southeast Asia can be-
come true interlocutors of the history of art
who signifcantly threaten the narrative of art
history and so cease to remain as native inform-
ants summoned from provincial art worlds
to merely supplement the fantasy of an ever-
renewing modernity and its global permuta-
tions. In other words, this art history, aside
from being resolute in its timeliness, could
also be spiritedly untimely, that is, out of the
time along which it has been made to decline
or progress. In this tension between the timely
and the untimely, art history may be able to
survive what Geeta Kapur calls civilisational
hubris on the one hand, and the crisis of rep-
resentation, on the other; or the deconstruc-
tive and the dialectical; or the negation of the
centric and the normative—and fnally risk the
play of extensive local modes of sensing, quirky
semantic formulations, and discrepant ways of
being in and remaking the ways of the world
in relation to the conditions of the new, the
demands of the now, and the persuasions of
the not-yet.
In this matrix of art history, it is essential
to grasp the instance of art as an affective inte-
rest within a historical and cognitive horizon,
so that when taken as a repertoire it becomes
a sensible responsibility that demands and de-
serves explanation. The art historian Michael
Baxandall proposes that: “If we wish to explain
pictures, in the sense of expounding them in
terms of their historical causes, what we actu-
ally explain seems likely to be not the unme-
Address of Art
diated picture but the picture as considered
under a partially interpretative description.”33
In Filipino, to explain is to shed light (mag-
paliwanag). The revolutionary and organic
intellectual Emilio Jacinto had written a tract
titled “Liwanag at Dilim” in which he distin-
guishes between what is likely an emanating
light from within, on the one hand, and bril-
liance or sparkle on the surface, on the other.
For him, the latter mediates and therefore is
prone to misrecognition or tempts beholders to
misrecognise. Because it is glare, it blinds and
impairs vision (nakasisilaw at nakasisira sa pan-
ingin). Moreover, it is bent, distorted, deceitful
(maraya), and so in a way, it can be compared
with the apparatus of the ideological, or the
force of doxa as contrasted to episteme.34 Li-
wanag for its part requires the “eye,” or a dis-
criminating seeing (kinakailangan ng mata),
to discern the total truth of things (upang
mapagwari ang boong katunayan ng mga bagay
bagay).35 Those who are lured and enchanted
by the glitter are condemned to a life of grief
and misery (hinagpis at dalita).36 Seemingness
and representation, or “what at frst appears (or
presents itself ) to sensation has to be subjected
to refective analysis in order for an accurate
comprehension to be had of relations whose
apparent immediacy or self-evidence is decep-
tive.”37 Liwanag is an ethical substance, an ar-
mature rather than a carapace, a kind of truth
that addresses an emergent lifeworld, spreading
and scattering towards a climate, light in light,
as it were, ever imminent: an alamat, the lore
like the letter that always arrives and is actually
the destination.
Parts of this paper were delivered as a key-
note address titled “The Art-Historical World
of Southeast Asia” for the conference Southeast
Asia and Taiwan: Modernity and Postcolonial
Manifestations in Visual Art, 21–22 November
2015, Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Republic of
China.
21
 1 Or maybe it was stillborn: while T.K. Sabapathy has
written about the history of the discipline of art his-
tory in Singapore in the 1960s and 1970s (in Road
to Nowhere: The Quick Rise and the Long Fall of Art
History in Singapore (Singapore: Art Gallery, National
Institute of Education, 2010)), one wonders whether
such mourning is really melancholia (in Freud’s
sense), and productive for the future of art history in
Singapore.
2 While C.J.W.-L. Wee’s bibliographic list (“Shortlist: Sin-
gapore,” for the Asia Art Archive, available at: http://
www.aaa.org.hk/Collection/Shortlists) is capacious
and rigorous, one cannot tell the art-historical stakes.
3 Whitney Davis, “Visuality and Pictoriality,” RES: An-
thropology and Aesthetics no. 46 (Autumn 2004): 9–34;
(1)
When Was Modernism? A Historiography of Singapore Art
Kevin Chua
It may not surprise anyone to know that art his-
tory, at least in Singapore, had neither a birth,
nor really an afterlife.1 Its current incarnation
has been chastened by easier, more accessible
forms of art writing, whether the journalism
that passes for art criticism, or the occasional
screeds that pop up on social media—catchy,
but quickly forgotten.
Art writing in Singapore is often couched
in the language of boosterism. One hears talk
about the country “developing” in art: having
more exhibitions, more spaces to display art,
more hot young artists. Cue the next media dar-
ling! Dollar fgures are trotted out to justify the
latest buying spree, as though market valuation
were the only determinant of good art. Watch
this brushstroke turn into that price point.
Let me be clear that I have little conf-
dence that art history can write against such
22 Charting Thoughts
Jas Elsner & Katharina Lorenz, “The Genesis of Iconol-
ogy,” Critical Inquiry 38, no. 3 (Spring 2012): 483–512.
4 My essay is indebted to Nora A. Taylor, “Writing Con-
temporary Southeast Asian Art History,” in South-
east Asian Studies: Pacifc Perspectives, ed. Anthony
Reid (Tempe, Arizona: Program for Southeast Asian
Studies Monograph Series, Arizona State Univer-
sity, 2003), 179–92; Nora A. Taylor, “Introduction: Who
Speaks for Southeast Asian Art?,” in Modern and
Contemporary Southeast Asian Art: An Anthology,
eds. Nora A. Taylor & Boreth Ly (Ithaca Southeast
Asia Program Publications, Cornell University, 2012),
1–13.
5 Geeta Kapur, “When Was Modernism in Indian Art?,”
in When Was Modernism: Essays on Contemporary
idle chatter. But in order for the discipline
as it exists in Singapore to mean something,
to matter, it needs to undergo rigorous self-
examination: What are its goals? What are “our”
key texts?2 What constitutes the real work of
art history? No doubt securing a work of art’s
production and reception, as well as uncover-
ing new objects and material evidence, should
still be a fundamental task of art history. But I
don’t think this is enough. Most art histories
in Singapore tend to what I would call “his-
toricist culturologies”: simple iconographical
and sociocultural unravellings of a work of art
within a given place and time. Yet these rarely
attain what Erwin Panofsky once called “ico-
nology”: a total understanding of a work of
art in its context, including an unpacking of
the cultural or collective unconscious triggered
by the work.3 Art-historical writing often pays
 Cultural Practice in India (New Delhi: Tulika, 2000),
295–324; Raymond Williams, “When Was Modern-
ism?,” New Left Review I, no. 175 (May/June 1989):
48–52. More than simply saying that modernity was
“incomplete,” Kapur plumbs the specifc uptake of
modernism in India.
6 On my use of the “1300s” as a period starting point,
see Leonard Y. Andaya & Barbara Watson Andaya,
“Southeast Asia in the Early Modern Period; Twenty-
Five Years on,” Journal of Southeast Asian Studies
26, no. 1 (1995): 92–8. I am using this “early modern”
periodisation to decentre the conventional privileging
of the 19 th century in the (art) histories of Singapore.
Though no art-historical writing exists for this 1300s–
1890s period, one might juxtapose artworks with vari-
insuffcient attention to form; works of art are
too quickly explained—or worse, decoded. A
familiar assumption is the complete translat-
ability of image to word. Art historians and
critics often struggle to catch up to what many
artists already know: that investing in form in-
troduces a time depth into the work, and can
secure a work’s passage through historical time.
What follows is a selective history of art-
historical writing in Singapore—a historiogra-
phy—via three broad periods.4 Each poses the
enduring question of modernism. If spatially
situating modernism in Singapore entails as-
sessing it within its regional context of South-
east Asia (or Asia), equally important is a con-
sideration of temporality: How did modernism
emerge out of a long span of historical time?
(Modernism is treated here as both an effect of
modernity, and a cultural response to it.) The
challenge, as I see it, is not so much to move
from national to regional-global accounts, but
to decentre the national within the regional-
global. Taking into account a spatially enclosing
“what,” I will simultaneously try to grasp mod-
ernism’s time-trickling “when” (my title echoes
Geeta Kapur, but also Raymond Williams).5
The 1300s–1890s, 1920s–1960s and 1970s–
2000s were, as we shall see, three moments of
When Was Modernism?
ous forms of indigenous writing, such as inscriptions,
stories, myths, and in the 19 th century, European travel
writing. The intra-regional artistic networks that Nora
A. Taylor discusses (in “Art without History? Southeast
Asian Artists and their Communities in the Face of
Geography,” Art Journal 70, no. 2 (2011): 6–23) hark
back, I think, to this early modern period in Southeast
Asia. European colonialism, in other words, tended to
disenable these intra-regional networks.
7 Wong Hong Suen, “Picturing a Colonial Port City:
Prints and Paintings as Visual Records of 19 th Century
Singapore,” in Singapore through 19 th Century Prints &
Paintings (Singapore: Editions Didier Millet & National
Museum of Singapore, 2010), 30–53.
8 Wong, ibid., 32.
modernism in Singapore: three moments in the
defeat of labour and the rise of capital.
1) 1300s to 1890s 6
National Museum of Singapore curator Wong
Hong Suen’s chapter “Picturing a Colonial Port
City: Prints and Paintings as Visual Records of
19th Century Singapore,” in the book Singa-
pore through 19 th Century Prints and Paintings,
published in 2010, is a recent treatment of 19th-
century art in Singapore.7 An example of strong,
rigorous scholarship, the essay is well-researched,
and thorough with regard to the existing histori-
ography on 19th-century landscape painting.
These prints, produced by British and Eu-
ropean artists travelling in the Malayan region
and intended for consumption back home in
Europe, employed the representational genre
of the picturesque. While Wong is familiar
with the critique of the picturesque—indeed,
many of her discussions of particular prints are
informed by that critique—more could have
been made of why the picturesque was cri-
tiqued in the frst place, as ideology, by Marxist
historians and art historians such as Raymond
Williams, John Barrell, David Solkin and Ann
Bermingham in the 1970s and 1980s.8 In its
23
 9 Enclosure was the removal of land from the commons,
the putting of territory into private hands, which took
place in Britain in the 17th and 18th centuries. See, for
instance, J.M. Neeson, Commoners: Common Right,
Enclosure, and Social Change in England, 1700–1820,
reprint edition (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1995).
10 Wong, op. cit., 37.
11 “The 1823 sketch of Singapore from the sea by Jack-
son [...] obscured the Temenggong’s community in
visual space—the impression of a few houses lying
close to a beach with nothing beyond the space lead-
ing to the slope of the hill is inaccurate. The drawing
conceals the fact that a large part of the area be-
tween High Street and the coconut palms on the left
was occupied by the Temenggong and his followers, a
call for visually pleasing landscapes, the pictur-
esque was, in fact, an ordering of nature. It was
an assertion of human agency and control. A
long history preceded the picturesque, desig-
nated by the term “enclosure.”9 Such pictur-
esque imagery had therefore a class politics,
and acquired a colonial politics when brought
to Southeast Asia. Many of these scenes were
only superfcially interested in place, and were
addressed to a European audience. It comes as
no surprise that these images were often read in
terms of boosterist, pro-business ideology: they
were made, after all, for the commercial class in
Britain who were interested in coming to the
colonies to, literally, set up shop. Challenging
that gaze was not part of their agenda.
Though Wong is often strong on the
politics of early 19th-century imagery (for ex-
ample, her discussions of prints of Govern-
ment Hill, presently known as Fort Canning
Hill), one wonders whether her readings are
decentred enough with regard to the history of
Singapore.10 Take her discussion of Lieuten-
ant Philip Jackson’s 5 June 1823 sketch of the
Singapore coastline (fg. 1.1).11 1823 was the
very year the Temenggong was forced out of
Singapore town, and made to move to Telok
24 Kevin Chua
group which comprised more than 600 people living
in 79 huts.” Wong, ibid., 41.
12 “It does not appear to me that the infuence of the na-
tive chiefs has in any respect been necessary or even
benefcial in the formation, maintenance, or progress
of this settlement, the prosperity of which has rested
solely and exclusively on the character and resourc-
es of the British government.” Crawfurd to Governor
General, 10 January 1824; quoted in Carl A. Trocki,
Prince of Pirates: The Temenggongs and the Develop-
ment of Johor and Singapore 1784–1885 (Singapore:
Singapore University Press, 1979), 55.
13 Ibid.
14 For sovereignty, see Lauren Benton, A Search for Sov-
ereignty: Law and Geography in European Empires,
1400–1900 (New York: Cambridge University Press,
Belanga. When the new Resident, John Craw-
furd, claimed that the native chiefs had con-
tributed nothing to the success of Singapore,
this was patently ideological, a forgetting that
necessarily preceded the actual displacement
of the Malays.12 Only two days after Jack-
son’s sketch, on 7 June 1823, another treaty
was signed with the British. The chiefs gave
up their rights to port duties and their share
in the revenue farms—essentially giving up
their authority over Singapore island. (Another
treaty between the British, the Sultan and the
Temenggong on 3 August 1824 gave full ces-
sion of Singapore and the adjacent islands to
the East India Company in exchange for a cash
settlement, while the Anglo-Dutch Treaty of
1824, which entailed Dutch recognition of the
British settlement in Singapore, made the Brit-
ish even less dependent on the native chiefs.13)
It is uncertain whether what we are looking at,
in Jackson’s drawing—the distance or “gap” be-
tween the Temenggong’s estate, below, and the
smaller group of houses on Fort Canning Hill,
above—is a mere visual separation (Wong says
that distance is “inaccurate”), or, more deeply,
an aporia that calls for a decision in order for
Singapore to be founded. (Sovereignty, put
 2010) and Jens Bartelson, “On the Indivisibility of Sov-
ereignty,” Republics of Letters: A Journal for the Study
of Knowledge, Politics, and the Arts no. 2 (1 June 2011):
85–94.
15 Recent historical writing on Singapore has allowed
a revaluation of art and visual-cultural history: see
Derek Heng, “Situating Temasik within the Larger Re-
gional Context: Maritime Asia and Malay State For-
mation in the Pre-Modern Era,” in Singapore in Global
History, eds. Derek Heng & Syed Muhd Khairudin Alju-
nied (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2011),
27–50; Derek Heng, “Casting Singapore’s History in the
Longue Durée,” in Singapore from Temasek to the 21st
Century: Reinventing the Global City, eds. Karl Hack,
Jean-Louis Margolin, with Karine Delaye (Singapore:
NUS Press, 2010), 27–50; Kwa Chong Guan, “From
simply, needs to be performed.14) Such an apo-
ria needs to be fgured or represented. Intrinsic
to the British tabula rasa imagination was the
forgetting and erasure of the long history of
Malays in the region. Long a powerful self-gov-
erned maritime state that was able to control
trade in the region, they had only recently been
eclipsed by the Bugis, Dutch and British in the
1760s. Such a forgetting also took place against
the broader strategic penetration of the Brit-
ish into Southeast Asia—culture was entwined
with politics. Acknowledging this longer his-
tory decentres the conventional history of the
founding of Singapore in 1819, which tends to
stress the country’s necessity, rather than con-
tingency, and tends to privilege British agency
and autonomy in their ability to turn the island
into a successful port and trading centre.15
A 19th-century viewer might have consid-
ered the observational freshness in Jackson’s
sketch and many other picturesque scenes new,
which ties into a feeling of the “modern.” But
we need to heed O.W. Wolters and Barbara An-
daya’s point that Southeast Asia had long been
modern, in the sense of people in the region
adopting and adapting to new cultural-techno-
logical forms and techniques. In many parts of
When Was Modernism?
Temasek to Singapore: Locating a Global City-State
in the Cycles of Melaka Straits History,” in Early Sin-
gapore 1300s–1819: Evidence in Maps, Text and Ar-
tefacts, eds. John N. Miksic & Cheryl-Ann Low Mei
Gek (Singapore: Singapore History Museum, 2004),
124–46.
16 See O.W. Wolters, “Southeast Asia as a Southeast
Asian Field of Study,” Indonesia 58 (October 1994):
1–17; Barbara Watson Andaya, “Historicising ‘Moder-
nity’ in Southeast Asia,” Journal of the Economic and
Social History of the Orient 40, no. 4 (1997): 391–409.
17 On Raffes’ reading of Malay history, see Christina
Skott, “Imagined Centrality: Sir Stamford Raffes and
the Birth of Modern Singapore,” in Singapore from
Temasek to the 21st Century, 155–84.
18 Wong, op. cit., 42.
the region, long before the European advance
in the 17th through 19th centuries, there was an
interest in being up to date, with an emphasis
on the present, the now.16 The forgetting “in”
the image, I argue, mobilised by a 19th-century
viewer, was tied to the British attempt to claim
the centre—of Singapore, in Southeast Asia.
Such a centrality did not pre-exist—it needed
to be imagined, performed.17 And one effect
of that performative view was to locate new-
ness and modernity as belonging exclusively
to the West. The Jackson sketch may be called
“modernist,” if we understand modernism in
the early modern period as tied to a disruption
of alienating perspectival realism. Jackson may
have been replicating a British colonialist gaze,
but his drawing unravels the more one looks
at it.
Wong persuasively argues that the pictur-
esque became internalised from the mid-19th
century onward.18 But I would argue that
this internalisation was not just a change in
representational form; it was also an effect of a
shift in capital. The opening of the Suez Canal
and increased use of steam shipping from the
1860s, and the greater intervention into the
Malay states from the 1870s (for the intensi-
25
 19 Ibid.
20 Wong’s remark that many of these pictures “left out
dissonant elements”—in other words, politics—is,
I think, only partly true. Ibid., 50.
21 Reproduced in ibid; see fg. 1.2.
22 For “amok,” see “Amok,” The British Medical Journal
1, no. 2112 (1901): 1569–70; John C. Spores, Running
Amok: An Historical Inquiry, Monographs in Interna-
tional Studies, Southeast Asia Studies, no. 82 (Athens:
Ohio University Press, 1988). A similar phenomenon is
the refex gesture called “latah,” common to Malays.
For latah, see Ambrose B. Rathbone, Camping and
Tramping in Malaya (Oxford: John Beaufoy Publishing,
2011), 36; John D. Gimlette, “Remarks on the Etiology,
Symptoms, and Treatment of Latah, with a Report of
fed extraction of primary products like tin)
increased the fow of goods and people into the
colony, and changed the very nature—the very
basis—of representation. Concomitant with
this internalisation of the picturesque in the last
four decades of the 19th century was, as Wong
points out, a greater exclusion of racial others,
both in society and in representation (native
residences, for instance, were newly described
as “slums”). These views, she justifably says,
“precluded any engagement with this popula-
tion.”19 Yet, I would argue, there continued
to be encounters with the native population in
the second half of the 19th century. It is, rather,
the nature of the encounter that changed.20
Though locals are shown doing manual labour
in many of these images, there are also subtler
or obscure instances of contact: for example,
the print reproduced in the book has one vi-
gnette showing a Malay man moving forward
hysterically, a kris in each hand (fg. 1.2).21 The
caption for the vignette reads “Running amok.”
“Amok” has a complicated history in Southeast
Asia; European colonisers misrecognised a con-
dition that was intrinsically religious and could
not be tamed by their medical-anthropological
categories.22 Such ineffable phenomena had an
ability to unsettle and undermine the colonial
26 Kevin Chua
Two Cases,” The British Medical Journal 2, no. 1912
(1897): 455–7; Robert Winzeler, “The Study of Malayan
Latah,” Indonesia no. 37 (April 1984): 77–104.
23 Similar to the “Running Amok” print in its precari-
ous content is Heinrich Leutemann’s Unterbrochene
Straßenmessung auf Singapore (Interrupted Road
Surveying in Singapore). Though Wong dates this
print to 1835, it was likely made substantially later.
Leipzig-born artist and book illustrator Leutemann
lived between 1824 and 1905, and it is unlikely that
he did the drawing for the print when he was 11 years
old. Though Coleman was attacked by a tiger in 1835,
the print, I would argue, belongs to the late-19 th cen-
tury—probably after John Cameron’s description of
the event in 1865. It is from the 1860s that such a
artist-viewer. These images may quite possibly
be the strongest instances of the refusal of West-
ern epistemology we have. (There is something
precarious about the vertically upright man in
the image, as though on the verge of falling to
the horizontal.)23
It comes as no surprise when the one
“modernist” writer we do have from the peri-
od, Joseph Conrad, centred his Southeast Asian
stories on such moments of radical unknowing
(suicide, betrayal, trauma). If the word “folly”
in the title of Conrad’s frst major book, Almay-
er’s Folly (written between 1889–1894), refers,
on one level, to the Dutch trader Almayer’s
extravagant house—a playful mistake—the
French derivation of the word, “folie,” suggests
something deeper—madness, a condition that
Almayer sunk into once his daughter, Nina, de-
parted.24 The 1890s, when Conrad was writing
his frst stories, was a crucial decade in the his-
tory of colonial capitalism.25 Again, think of
capital as conditioning representation. To focus
on the post-production afterlife or reception of
a picturesque print or painting, as Wong does,
does not adequately address the contingencies
of history. We should instead ask: why did this
particular work appear when it did, and not at
another time?
 consciousness of the Other—an existential anxi-
ety of something outside that is in fact something
within—became possible. For more on the print, see
my essay, “The Tiger and the Theodolite: George Cole-
man’s Dream of Extinction,” FOCAS: Forum on Con-
temporary Art & Society 6 (August 2007): 124–49.
24 Ian Watt, “Almayer’s Folly: Introduction,” in Essays
on Conrad (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2000), 57. For Conrad and Southeast Asia, see James
Warren, “Joseph Conrad’s Fiction as Southeast Asian
History: Trade and Politics in East Borneo in the
Late Nineteenth Century,” in Pirates, Prostitutes and
Pullers: Explorations in the Ethno- and Social His-
tory of Southeast Asia (Crawley, Western Australia:
University of Western Australia Press, 2008), 33–46.
2) 1920s to 1960s
One seminal piece of art writing produced be-
tween the 1920s and 1960s—a period often
thought of as the beginning of modern art in
Singapore—is Marco Hsu’s A Brief History of
Malayan Art. Initially published as a series of
articles for the Nanfang Evening Post between
1961 and 1963, Hsu’s writing was compiled
into a book in Chinese in 1963, and translated
into English in 1999 by architectural historian
Lai Chee Kien.26 Hsu was perhaps doing the
frst real history of art in Singapore and Ma-
laysia: the region then known as “Malaya.” I
admit to being a little bit unimpressed when I
frst read the English translation around 2000:
it seemed like a familiar story of racial harmony
in Singapore, only told through the arts. But
the book became interesting to me, several years
later, when I realised that beneath the surface
story of racial harmony lay a more complicated
narrative of internecine political struggle, racial
antagonism and anti-colonial sentiment. There
is notably no mention of the student activism
of the 1950s that informed so many paintings
of the Equator Art Society; Hsu might have had
to repress a lot of these tensions. When Hsu ar-
gued that Malaya was not a “cultural desert,”
When Was Modernism?
25 “[D]uring the 1890s the business of empire, once
an adventurous and often individualistic enterprise,
had become the empire of business.” Edward W. Said,
Culture and Imperialism (New York: Vintage Books,
1993), 23.
26 Marco Hsu, A Brief History of Malayan Art, trans. Lai
Chee Kien (Singapore: Millenium Books, 1999). Marco
Hsu (or Ma Ge in Chinese) was the pseudonym of Koh
Cheng Foo. See Ma Ge, Malai Xiya jianshi (Singapore:
Nanyang chuban youxian gongsi, 1963).
27 Between Here and Nanyang: Marco Hsu’s Brief His-
tory of Malayan Art, an exhibition held at the National
University of Singapore Museum, Singapore, 21 Au-
gust 2013–3 September 2016, curated by Chang Yueh
Siang and Lai Chee Kien.
that it did indeed have art, as well as a long cul-
tural tradition, one senses a last-gasp despera-
tion and anxiety. 1963 saw the beginnings of
a political merger between Singapore and Ma-
laya (along with Sarawak and North Borneo)
which, as it turned out, would only last for two
years. The two countries would split in 1965.
Of course Hsu, along with so many of his gen-
eration, had no idea that that union would not,
maybe could not, last, and maybe the trick to
reading Hsu’s book is to peer through the art,
to detect the burgeoning cracks and fssures in
the bedrock of society.
National University of Singapore Museum
curator Chang Yueh Siang has pointed out that
Hsu seems to have gotten the idea of a “cultural
desert” from the generalised public discourse of
his time, specifcally a series of newspaper articles
published in 1949 that questioned the existence
of culture in Singapore. Hsu changed his mind
between the 1930s and 1960s with regard to the
value of art in the Malayan region.27 Early on
he had believed that Singapore was a place that
was only good for trade, but gradually he gained
a greater understanding of the art and culture in
the region, and wrote books on Malay culture
as well. Hsu’s affrmative answer to the question
of a “cultural desert” in Singapore isn’t satisfy-
27
 28 See also Karl Hack, “The Malayan Trajectory in Singa-
pore’s History,” in Singapore from Temasek to the 21st
Century, 243–91.
29 Hsu, op. cit., 63.
30 On the post-1950s differences between Singapore
and Malaysia, see Sudhir Thomas Vadaketh’s excellent
travel history Floating on a Malayan Breeze: Travels in
Malaysia and Singapore (Singapore: NUS Press, 2012).
31 In Eye of the Beholder: Reception, Audience, and
Practice of Modern Asian Art, eds. John Clark, Mau-
rizio Peleggi & T.K. Sabapathy (Sydney: Wild Peony,
2006), 72–93. The published essay was a developed
version of a paper presented at the Our Modernities:
Positioning Asian Art Now conference, organised by
the Asia Research Institute and the History Depart-
ment of the National University of Singapore, held
ing, as the term contains a colonialist tabula rasa
understanding of history that rhetorically erases
the already established culture and history on
the island, and compares only by way of further
normalising the standard of Western art and cul-
ture. The East–West comparison was stacked in
the West’s favour to begin with.
This is why the appearance of the word
“Malaya” in Hsu’s text is loaded—for it tracks
a more contradictory relation to place. If, in
his early writing, Hsu had referred to the ge-
ographical region as “Nanyang,” by the early
1960s, he began to use the word “Malaya.”
This coincided with a broad shift in the orien-
tation of the cultural group that identifed with
the name “Nanyang”: if the earlier Nanyang
was more Chinese-oriented (with most of these
immigrant Chinese still yearning for home); by
the 1940s, the Nanyang became more multi-
cultural (after 1949, there was a greater sense
of being cut off from then-Communist China).
By 1955–1956, there was a general use of the
word “Malaya” in newspapers, with the word
“Malayanisation” even being used as a verb. In
the late 1950s, “Malaya” was promoted—one
could say co-opted—by the colonial authorities
as the cultural corollary of political merger.28
28 Kevin Chua
at the Asian Civilizations Museum in Singapore on
19–22 February 2004.
32 T.K. Sabapathy, “The Nanyang Artists: Some General
Remarks,” in Pameran Retrospektif Pelukis-Pelukis
Nanyang (Kuala Lumpur: Muzium Seni Negara, 1979),
44–5.
33 Art historians have pointed out that the methodo-
logical complexities of that frst and second genera-
tion of practitioners of form, style, and iconography
in Europe and America (which began with Aloïs Riegl
and was extended by several Vienna School art histo-
rians) did not always extend to their successors. See
Whitney Davis, A General Theory of Visual Culture
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011).
34 T.K. Sabapathy, “Bali, Almost Re-Visited,” in Reminis-
cence of Singapore’s Pioneer Art Masters, exh. cat.
So the stakes of the word are high.
There are moments when the word “Ma-
laya” sits uneasily within Hsu’s text. In chapter
ten, for example, he opens an early paragraph
with the declarative “Malaya has no painting tra-
ditions.”29 Given the sentences that follow, he
seems to have meant “Malay races,” but some-
how uses the more encompassing geographical
term (the Chinese term he uses is for Malaya,
and this can clearly be distinguished from the
Chinese word for Malay races, which he uses
elsewhere in the text). The elision here is telling:
the push toward cultural unity literally occludes
the Malay races. Think back to the 19th-century
British colonial forgetting of the Malay. The
contradiction would bedevil both Singapore
and Malaysia in the decades to come.30
My 2004–2006 essay “Painting the Nan-
yang’s Public: Notes toward a Reassessment”
was an attempt to resituate Nanyang painting
with regard to the problem of “Malaya,” as
both cultural idea and political reality.31
The “Malayan” was something that had been
mostly forgotten, but I would argue had been
repressed, in the decades of economic growth
and cultural nationalism in Singapore between
the late 1960s and 1990s. It was left implicit
 (Singapore: The Singapore Mint, 1994), unpaginated.
35 Such formalism continues, e.g.: “The common thread
that runs through all the artworks commonly referred
to as ‘Nanyang Style’ is actually the eclectic approach
of mixing and matching different techniques, media,
compositional formats or modes of representation
within a single painting, coupled with the use of local
subject matter.” Emelia Ong, “The Nanyang Artists:
Eclectic Expressions of the South Seas,” in Imagin-
ing Identities: Narratives in Malaysian Art, Volume 1,
eds. Nur Hanim Khairuddin & Beverly Yong, with T.K.
Sabapathy (Kuala Lumpur: RogueArt, 2012), 64. For
me, it is the lack of synthesis, the incompletion and
“unstudiedness” of these paintings that is compelling.
There seems, in Ong, an anxiety to defne the Nanyang
style—as though pinning it down was the problem. A
in art historian T.K. Sabapathy’s writing, even
though he had lived through the period. Here is
Sabapathy, writing in the catalogue for the
seminal exhibition Pameran Retrospektif Pelukis-
Pelukis Nanyang (1979):
In addition to proposing an attitude to-
wards art activity that readily identifed
it as being modern, the School of Paris
provided for the Nanyang artists a variety
of pictorial schemas in which the obliga-
tions of traditional iconography were ei-
ther minimised or neutralised by formal
and technical considerations. The absence
of such an iconography released the need
to root the art object in a clearly defned
ideology or value system. Consequently,
artists were free to select from the avail-
able schemas features which were suitable
to their own aspirations, without having to
adopt any supporting ideology. The selec-
tion was governed primarily by formal (sty-
listic) requirements.32 (emphasis mine)
The formalism here may belong less to
the painting, than to Sabapathy’s methodology
itself, one rooted in an understanding of style
When Was Modernism?
simple notion of pluralism operates here that shuns
any kind of defnition.
36 For the “New International Division of Labour,” see
Garry Rodan, The Political Economy of Singapore’s
Industrialisation: National, State, and International
Capital (London: Palgrave Macmillan; New York: St.
Martin’s Press, 1989).
37 I drew from the writings of T.J. Clark, who was a prod-
uct of the Marxist New Left, formed out of the ruins of
the political struggle of 1968 in Europe and America.
Instead of orthodox Marxism’s view of culture as sec-
ondary to politics and economics—i.e. culture as the
superstructure to the base of economics—the New
Left thought of culture as primary, and drew from the
rich theoretical well of fgures such as Walter Benja-
min, Theodor Adorno and the Frankfurt School.
and iconography that was being disseminated
in Euro-American universities in the 1950s and
1960s.33 Reading Sabapathy’s writing of the
1980s and 1990s, one feels like he was simply
taking these Nanyang paintings at face value,
or taking these artists—many of whom he had
interviewed—at their word.34 Though there
was generous praise of their art, there was very
little attempt to read the paintings apart from
the artists’ own manifest discourse on them. If
the Nanyang artists had a “clearly defned ide-
ology” and were in fight from politics, Saba-
pathy’s methodological formalism did not call
them out for it. To me, in 2004, these paintings
needed to be wrested from their formalist (pas-
toral) seclusion—all that nonsense about Bali
being a “paradise”—and read in the light of the
social throng, the din and buzz of the city.35
Sabapathy’s take on Nanyang painting, to be
fair, was perhaps the narrative we needed to be-
lieve in the 1980s and 1990s, when Singapore
moved into a New International Division of
Labour, a global economic and political system
that emphasised capital over labour.36
My essay tried to reconnect the painting
to its social world via the methodology of dia-
lectical Marxism.37 Instead of stylistic develop-
29
 38 My essay was not without mistakes. For instance,
the bourgeoisie “[moving] out into the suburbs” was
vague (Chua, op. cit., 80.). The squatter problem has
since been thoroughly analysed by Loh Kah Seng,
Squatters into Citizens: The 1961 Bukit Ho Swee Fire
and the Making of Modern Singapore (Singapore:
NUS Press, 2013).
39 Loh Kah Seng et al., The University Socialist Club and
the Contest for Malaya: Tangled Strands of Modernity
(Singapore: NUS Press, 2012). See also T.N. Harper,
The End of Empire and the Making of Malaya (Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001).
40 Despite some solid new research on the 1950s
ment, I was interested in the specifc trajectories
of art, their rise and fall, and how social contra-
diction became manifest “in” aesthetic form.
Form was tracked alongside certain develop-
ments that were taking place in the modern
city (the crisis in housing, the building of the
frst skyscraper, etc.).38 Modernism, it seemed
to me, grew out of modernity, forming some
kind of resistance against it. The best paintings
of the period—Cheong Soo Pieng’s Malayan
Life (1957), Chua Mia Tee’s National Language
Class (1959), among a few others—were, I felt,
in tense contradiction. What continues to be
so interesting about National Language Class,
to me, is the way its tensions and contradic-
tions are left unresolved. In the painting, the
cross-race, cross-class political idea—or better,
dream—of Malaya was still alive. We can see the
dream quite literally in the pastoral painting on
the wall in the background—which recalls the
more prosaic “dreams” of the Bali group of art-
ists. It is as though the second generation had
worked through the alienation of the frst, and
made the dream more tangible and real—but
simultaneously precious and delicate, prone to
rupture and collapse. Hence my notion of “fail-
ure,” which was both aesthetic and political,
and was pitted against a bourgeois understand-
30 Kevin Chua
exhibitions of the Equator Art Society group, Seng Yu
Jin’s exhibition From Words to Pictures: Art during
the Emergency (Singapore Art Museum, 2007) tend-
ed to paint the artworks on display with a broad po-
litical brush. The problem of aesthetic form dropped
out of the picture.
41 Patrick D. Flores, in his Past Peripheral: Curation in
Southeast Asia (Singapore: NUS Museum, 2008),
made the valuable point that sometimes exhibi-
tions do contribute to art history. I would say that the
Between Here and Nanyang exhibition at the NUS
Museum was one such art-historically important ex-
hibition. My discussion of the works in this exhibition
draws from Chang and Lai’s research.
ing of art. Chua seems to have been burned:
after the late-1950s, his painting—so stellar at
the outset—quickly descended into a morass of
saccharine depictions of the Singapore River.
To see “failure” in a painting by Cheong (say,
Malayan Life) is perhaps to push it a bit too
far, forcing it—but this was still, I think, a le-
gitimate move. In the interstices of the essay
was the understanding that modernism always
meant revolution. Historians such as Loh Kah
Seng and T.N. Harper have also uncovered a
short-lived Malayan moment, a diversity of
social and political possibilities, which became
narrowed as the option of merger was put on
the table.39
Art-historical writing of this period needs
to work away from the double trap that 1940s–
1950s Nanyang painting was free from ideol-
ogy and that the work of the Equator Art So-
ciety was fully ideological.40 Ideology should
be treated as enabling, yet not necessarily
all-encompassing. The key is not to presume
that aesthetic autonomy will always result in
ideological rigidifcation. In this light, one re-
cent exhibition that opened up the art of this
Nanyang period was the 2013–2016 NUS
Museum exhibition Between Here and Nan-
yang.41 (To my mind, the second version of
42 Yao Souchou, “Books from Heaven: Literary Pleasure,
Chinese Cultural Text and the ‘Struggle against For-
getting,’” Australian Journal of Anthropology 8, no. 2
(1997): 204–5.
43 Sunil S. Amrith, “Internationalism and Political Plu-
ralism in Singapore, 1950–1963,” in Paths Not Taken:
Political Pluralism in Post-War Singapore, eds. Mi-
chael D. Barr & Carl A. Trocki (Singapore: National
University of Singapore Press, 2008), 37–57. “The
Singapore state has tried particularly hard to forget
the paths not taken of the 1950s, investing much into
‘naturalising’ the offcial story. A good part of this ef-
fort depended on crushing the ‘subversive’ sense of
vernacular cosmopolitanism [...], in favour of a man-
the exhibition in 2015 was especially laudable,
because it gave the paintings room to breathe.)
One excellent comparison had Lai Kui Fang’s
War and Peace (1959, fg. 1.3) hung across from
another very similar still life by him, Still Life
(1959), on an opposite wall. At frst, the for-
mer painting, hung next to Nanyang paintings
of Bali, came across as “apolitical,” while the
latter, hung alongside other Equator Art Soci-
ety works, looked “political.” But, more than
simply showcasing the diversity of work by
Equator Art Society members, the compari-
son problematised the politics of interpreting
painting of this period as such. One could cer-
tainly read War and Peace in a political light:
the date “1 January 1959,” on the depicted
calendar, may have referred to a new, perhaps
more hopeful, year in the Malayan “Emergen-
cy” (for the Malayan Communist Party, a war
of liberation). Or one could read it apolitically
or formally, as a mere painting exercise: Lai re-
marked how the props used for this work were
circulated in a number of other paintings. No
doubt such a polyvalent work would have been
attractive for members of the Society, many of
whom were under governmental surveillance
in the 1950s. Were these paintings aimed at
the general public, or at those who were on
When Was Modernism?
aged, state-directed production of ‘multicultural-
ism.’” (Ibid., 51.)
44 Cheo Chai-Hiang Thoughts and Processes: Rethink-
ing the Singapore River, eds. T.K. Sabapathy & Cecily
Briggs (Singapore: Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts
& Singapore Art Museum, 2000); Ho Tzu Nyen, 4 x
4 Episodes of Singapore Art (video, 2005); Russell
Storer, “Making Space: Historical Contexts of Con-
temporary Art in Singapore,” in Contemporary Art in
Singapore, eds. Gunalan Nadarajan, Russell Storer
& Eugene Tan (Singapore: Institute of Contempo-
rary Arts Singapore, Lasalle-SIA College of the Arts,
2007), 9–18.
the “right” side of history? The Tolstoy refer-
ence may have resonated with the vernacular
cosmopolitanism prevalent in Singapore and
Malaya after the Asian-African conference in
Bandung, Indonesia, in 1955. Chinese high
school students were avidly reading works of
Russian literature.42 Reading Lai’s painting in
this light decentres the conventional, national
interpretation, towards a consideration of the
work within a broader relational feld of politi-
cal actors in Southeast Asia.43 The strength of
the exhibition lay in the way the viewer was
allowed to test these interpretations, as a means
of accessing—or better, inhabiting—history.
I would say that contesting the interpretation
of these paintings keeps the question of the
politics of Nanyang and Equator art alive. Let
“modernism” remain as a barely uttered, fugi-
tive demand.
3) 1970s to 2000s
Art history in Singapore, as it turns out, may
have been built on a tangle of myth. One in-
stance is the reception of Cheo Chai-Hiang’s
5′ x 5′ (Singapore River) (1972). Since 2005, if
not slightly earlier, the work has been held up as
the origin of contemporary art in Singapore.44
31
 Yet recent research by curator Seng Yu Jin has
shown how the reception of that artwork—
Cheo famously submitted the work, from Eng-
land, as an entry into an exhibition organised
by the Modern Art Society in Singapore, and
was rejected—was in fact more complicated.45
In fact, Cheo’s submission was never really
rejected; Seng thinks it was ultimately an ad-
ministrative error. But a lingering question is
why we needed that myth of rejection in the
frst place. For several years, Cheo became our
Duchamp (recall the brouhaha surrounding
his Fountain [1917]). It is as though, to get its
art history going, Singapore needed to call up
these mirrors of Western modern and contem-
porary art.46
One recent essay that mentions 5′ x 5′
is Sabapathy’s catalogue essay for the exhibi-
tion Intersecting Histories: Contemporary Turns
in Southeast Asian Art, held at the School of
Art, Design and Media Gallery at the Nan-
yang Technological University in 2012.47 Sa-
bapathy’s argument, at least for the section on
Cheo, is that “the modern, the contemporary,
and the seventies may be nudged into form-
ing historically infected intersections.”48 An
incontrovertible statement, as it is. But when,
taking up Cheo’s call to artists and the public to
actively deal with and give shape to their times,
he writes that the artworks that were to be pro-
duced “may no longer be embalmed by purely
aesthetic values but had to resonate with living
experience,” we get a sense of the limitations of
his approach.49 Cheo’s proposal was laudable
for wanting to break free from the conservatism
of so much of modern art then being produced
in Singapore, but when the art historian sim-
ply repeats the artist’s statement, it becomes a
token heteronomy. Heteronomy refers to the
blurring of art and life—a move made by many
contemporary artists after what was perceived
as the dead end of modernism.50 But heter-
onomy is never total; art never fully blurs with
life. The blurring of art and life has become an
empty utopianism of contemporary art. Cheo’s
32 Kevin Chua
artwork, read via his manifesto-like state-
ments, should be treated as aiming for, but not
necessarily reaching, heteronomy (as Adorno
knew, there is a necessary opacity at the heart
of society). How do we write of an artwork’s
unpredictable contact with its public, instead
of assuming an easy relation between artistic
intention and reception? Heteronomy more
properly grasps an artwork’s non-relation with
the social world; it is the obverse of autonomy.
Another way of putting this is that Sabapathy’s
writing stays within the acceptable bounda-
ries of the art world, within art discourse. So
even as the essay claims some larger social and
political purpose for the art that he discusses,
methodologically, this art historian’s approach
ironically closes itself off from the world.
An instructive counter to Sabapathy’s es-
say is Lee Weng Choy’s “Coincidence and Rela-
tion: Art Criticism and Heartbreak” (2006).51
Normally Lee’s writing gets slotted under “art
criticism” rather than “art history”—which is
unfortunate. Art criticism and art history are
necessary siblings; one cannot exist without the
other. “Good” art history always has a compo-
nent of art criticism, and the most compelling
art criticism gains historical value and specifc-
ity from careful attention to visual particulars.
In Lee’s case, specifcity comes through the re-
gard, the gaze, the address to, not about, a work
of art. He begins with an analogy between art
criticism and falling in love, but instead of the
expected idea of “falling in love with a work of
art”—mere subjective taste, one could say—
Lee does something altogether more interest-
ing, that hinges on unpredictability and con-
tingency: “A declaration is made in the absence
of a relation. The actual relationship is entirely
a matter of coincidence—or, some might say,
of chance, of luck.”52 Similarly, the judgment
of a work of art is based on risk. What follows
is a meandering, one might say digressive, dis-
cussion of Richard Linklater’s flm Before Sunset
(2004), and the third part of Ho Tzu Nyen’s
4 x 4 Episodes of Singapore Art (broadcast on the
45 Seng Yu Jin, “Rejection-Proof: Contestations of the
‘New’ in the Modern Art Society Exhibition of 1972,”
in Modern Art Society Singapore 50 th Anniversary, ed.
Lim Choon Jin (Singapore: Modern Art Society Singa-
pore, 2014), 36–45. This builds on an earlier essay:
Seng Yu Jin, “Re-Reading the Rejected: Contesta-
tions of the ‘New’ in the Modern Art Society Exhibi-
tion of 1972,” in Iconoclast Series: Cheo Chai Hiang,
5′ x 5′ (Singapore River) (1972) (Singapore: Sculpture
Square, 2013), 12–23.
46 I do not think that the work’s non-rejection takes
away from Cheo’s achievement; 5′ x 5′ has a formal
and conceptual complexity that will ensure its sur-
vival. As Louis Ho has well written (in “Voids, Riverine
and Otherwise,” in Iconoclast Series: Cheo Chai Hiang,
5′ x 5′ (Singapore River) (1972) (Singapore: Sculpture
Square, 2013), 4–11), more than a simple undermin-
ing of a tradition of paintings of the Singapore River,
the work is about uncertainty, alienation and loss.
Instead of a naïve tabula rasa forgetting, Cheo was
remembering a more tangled history of Singapore in
and through the work.
television channel, Arts Central, in Singapore
in 2005). And yet the essay’s very digressive-
ness is, paradoxically, its strength. Of course the
heart of Ho’s flm, Tang Da Wu’s (non-)contact
with the President of Singapore at an art open-
ing, bears on this point, of Lee’s Lacanian call to
“not give up on one’s desires.” “Episode three,”
Lee concludes, “while ostensibly a documentary
on art, is less about an artwork than a perfor-
mance of regard, a speaking to art, both in the
singular (Tang’s work) and in the universal, to
Art with the capital A. [...] What Ho teaches
me is how the tension, the seductive interplay
between irony and sincerity is central to the
declaration of love [...]. One cannot say every-
thing, one cannot be entirely sincere and some-
times the best use of irony is, paradoxically, not
as a means of protecting oneself, of distancing,
of undermining the full presence of an encoun-
ter, but of maintaining and making possible a
When Was Modernism?
47 T.K. Sabapathy, “Intersecting Histories: Thoughts on
the Contemporary and History in Southeast Asian
Art,” in Intersecting Histories: Contemporary Turns in
Southeast Asian Art (Singapore: School of Art, Design
and Media, Nanyang Technological University, 2012),
36–82.
48 Ibid., 39.
49 Ibid., 37.
50 For a similar use of “heteronomy,” see Claire Bishop,
Artifcial Hells: Participatory Art and the Politics of
Spectatorship (London and New York: Verso, 2012),
27.
51 In Broadsheet 35, no. 1 (2006): 36–41.
52 Ibid., 36.
53 Ibid., 41.
54 Space does not permit me to discuss another ex-
cellent example of specifcity in writing: Ho Rui An’s
“Making Live Again: Between Josef Ng’s Brother Cane
(1994) and Loo Zihan’s Cane (2012),” in Archiving
Cane (Singapore: The Substation, 2012), 73–85. The
essay is a good example of what a non-linear visual-
cultural or art history might be.
greater intimacy.”53 For my purposes, Lee’s es-
say discloses—eloquently and precisely—the
non-relation at the heart of the social world.54
Art history is conventionally understood
to document. It tells a story, and fxes an
object in time. But the strongest forms of art
history do much more: in looking deeply into
a work of art, a viewer-writer is given an op-
portunity to grasp a historical moment, in all
its stunning complexity. When we as writers do
that, the yawning chasm of the past opens up
before us, leaving traces, in turn, for the future.
Thanks to Chang Yueh Siang, Lai Chee
Kien, Shabbir Hussain Mustafa, Seng Yu Jin,
Jason Wee, Lee Weng Choy and Nora A. Tay-
lor for conversations that led to this essay. All
judgments and assessments in this essay are,
however, my own.
33
 1.1

1.1 Philip Jackson

A View of Singapore from the Sea
1823
Graphite on paper
28 x 43.6 cm
Collection of the British Library
© The British Library Board WD 2971

When Was Modernism? 349

0328-Charting Thoughts.indd 349 28/3/17 2:51 PM

 1.2 Skizzen aus Singapore
[Sketches of Singapore], after original
drawings by A. Wanjura
1880s
35.1 x 26.5 cm
Collection of National Museum of
Singapore
Image courtesy of National Museum
of Singapore, National Heritage Board

1.3 Lai Kui Fang

War and Peace
1959
Oil on canvas
48 x 59 cm
Collection of the artist

1.2

350 Kevin Chua

0328-Charting Thoughts.indd 350 28/3/17 2:51 PM

 1.3

When Was Modernism? 351

0328-Charting Thoughts.indd 351 28/3/17 2:51 PM

 1 Edward W. Said, Beginnings: Intention and Method
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1985), xix, 12.
2 Mildred Archer, Natural History Drawings in the India
Offce Library (London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Of-
fce, 1962), 88. In 2007 the British Library acquired
the Raffes Family Collection, including the natural
history collection, see H.J. Noltie, Raffes’ Ark Re-
drawn; Natural History Drawings from the Collection
of Sir Thomas Stamford Raffes (London: British Li-
brary; Edinburgh: Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh,
2009).
3 A facsimile reproduction of 138 of the 477 paint-
(2)
The 19th-Century “Origins” of Singapore Art
Kwa Chong Guan
If art in modern Singapore began with the
founding of the Nanyang Academy of Fine
Arts (NAFA) in 1938, then how are the 19th-
century genres of natural history drawings,
landscape sketching and painting, photography
and portraiture related and relevant to the be-
ginnings of modern art in Singapore? Edward
W. Said has argued in his ruminations of the
beginnings of the novel in Western literary
culture, that it was somewhere in the 18th and
19th centuries that the novel was acknowledged
as an authorised, institutional and distinct ex-
perience in Western culture. It is in Said’s un-
derstanding of “beginning” as the “frst step in
the intentional production of meaning and the
production of difference from pre-existing tra-
ditions. It authorizes subsequent texts—it both
enables them and limits what is acceptable”
that the establishment of the NAFA was the
beginning of art in Singapore.1
34 Charting Thoughts
ings are published in John Bastin, Ivan Polunin &
Kwa Chong Guan, The William Farquhar Collection
of Natural History Drawings (Singapore: Goh Geok
Khim, 1999). Dr Polunin provided the annotations to
these 138 selected drawings and identifcation for
the rest of the collection. The entire collection of 477
drawings in reduced size is reproduced in John Bas-
tin & Kwa Chong Guan, Natural History Drawings; The
Complete William Farquhar Collection, Malay Penin-
sula 1803–1818 (Singapore: Editions Didier Millet &
National Museum of Singapore, 2010) with annota-
tions by Morten Strange and Hassan Ibrahim.
Were these 19th-century practices of art an
earlier “beginning” of modern art in Singapore?
If they were, then where was the agency that in-
stitutionalised and authorised these practices of
art? Or were they perhaps more the “origins,” as
Said has defned it, of modern art in Singapore?
Said juxtaposes this notion of beginning to that
of origin, “the latter divine, mythical and privi-
leged, the former secular, humanly produced,
and ceaselessly re-examined.” In making this dis-
tinction between origins and beginnings, Said is
pointing to the restructuring and animation of
knowledge, not as something already achieved,
but as a continual self-examination of method-
ology and practice. This essay is an attempt to
probe possible 19th-century origins of art in Sin-
gapore, and how these possible origins may have
informed the beginnings of art in Singapore in
1938, its subsequent practices and its effects on
our understanding of Singapore’s history.
 William Farquhar’s
Legacy of Drawing Nature
William Farquhar (1774–1839) is remembered
as the frst Resident and Commandant who
nurtured the East India Company settlement of
Singapore that Sir Stamford Raffes is credited
with establishing and was the absent father of.
But Farquhar is today, with Raffes, acknowl-
edged for having established the practice of
drawing nature. Like others of his generation,
Farquhar had a deep interest in the fora and
fauna of Melaka where he served from 1795 to
1819. For Farquhar and other men of the East
India Company posted to Sumatra and the
Straits of Melaka from the late 18th century, it
was not only the physical landscapes, but also
the human and natural landscapes that were
unfamiliar and fascinating. Like their peers in
India, they set about documenting in drawings
the fora and fauna of the world they found
themselves in.
Raffes, through his various assignments
in the region, beginning in Pinang in 1805
to his fnal departure for home in 1824, also
maintained a strong interest in the region’s
natural history, amassing a huge collection
of specimens and commissioned drawings of
plants and animals. To a lesser extent, he also
collected historical and ethnographic artefacts.
Unfortunately these collections were lost when
the ship, the Fame, transporting them back
to London, caught fre shortly after departing
Bengkulu and sank in 1824. Today we have
several drawings and one bound volume of 129
watercolours of birds from Sumatra in the In-
dia Offce Library.2
Farquhar, like Raffes, also commissioned
drawings of the fora and fauna of Melaka dur-
ing the years he was posted there. He evidently
brought this collection of 477 natural history
drawings to Singapore in 1819, and then back
home to Scotland. He did not commission
any further drawings while he was in Singa-
pore. In 1827 he donated this collection to
The 19th-Century “Origins” of Singapore Art
the Royal Asiatic Society, where they remained
until 1937, when six of the eight volumes of
drawings were loaned to the Natural History
Department of the British Museum. In 1991
the Society recalled the loan for valuation and
sale, as it needed funds to purchase new prem-
ises. The drawings were auctioned by Sotheby’s
in London in their 20 October 1993 auction,
where Goh Geok Khim successfully bid for
them, and donated them to the National Her-
itage Board in 1996, where they are now on
rotating display at the National Museum of
Singapore.3
Curatorial examination of Farquhar’s col-
lection reveal that the drawings were—like
those commissioned by Raffes, and their pre-
decessor, by William Marsden for his book The
History of Sumatra published in 1783—done
by Chinese artists. These artists were prob-
ably recruited from Guangzhou, where there
were studios producing artworks for European
traders. It must have been a struggle for these
Chinese artists, who were trained in Chinese
techniques of drawing “fowers and birds”
(huaniao) to adapt their artistic practice to the
norms and techniques of European natural his-
tory drawings. Their training had not prepared
them to conform to the rigours of taxonomic
detail demanded in European botanical draw-
ings or to render their subjects within the lin-
ear perspective of Western art. As a result, the
trees they drew often appeared fat, like a fan, as
evident in the drawing of a sea almond or keta-
pang tree (fg. 2.1). This “fatness” and “stiffness”
which Raffes and others complained about is
today seen as charming and perspicacious.
Today, Farquhar’s collection of natural his-
tory drawings can be perceived as the origins of
the practice of late 19th-century natural history
drawing practised by the Botanic Gardens of
Singapore (established in 1888). The standards
and detail of drawing demanded by Farquhar
and Raffes of their Chinese artists and, more
importantly, the East India Company of their
Indian draughtsmen producing natural history
35
 4 The Singapore Botanic Gardens have been exhibiting
some of their collections of drawings by James and
Charles de Alwis painted between 1890 and 1908 in
their annual calendar for 2007 and 2014.
5 Eng’s paintings of fowers were the theme of the Na-
tional Parks Board calendar for 2003.
6 Mildred Archer discussed the circumstances sur-
rounding the development of these company draw-
ings and paintings and catalogued the Library’s
collection in Company Drawings in the India Office
drawings, is now known as the “Company
style.” This style remained in use long after
the Company’s dissolution. This continuity
of Western natural history drawings in India
ensured that Henry Nicholas Ridley, the frst
Director of the Singapore Botanic Gardens,
could engage a Ceylonese artist named James
de Alwis in 1890 to illustrate his fve-volume
Flora of the Malay Peninsula. James and his
brother, Charles, who succeeded him in 1900,
came from a family of eminent natural history
painters form the Botanic Gardens in Ceylon
(fg. 2.2).4 Today this tradition of natural his-
tory drawing continues more as an aesthetic
practice than the scientifc documentation of
nature. Eng Siak Loy is probably the last artist
engaged by the Botanic Gardens in Singapore.5
More critical is that the origins of look-
ing scientifcally at our natural environment is
embedded in these natural history drawings.
The aesthetics of huaniao painting were trans-
formed to conform to the Western norms of
clinical drawings of nature for scientifc docu-
mentation. This documentation extended to
appropriation of the local knowledge of the
fora and fauna inscribed in the margins of
each painting. This is evident in the pencilled
notes correcting and commenting on the Jawi
name of the plant or animal inscribed on each
drawing. The common English and Latin
36 Kwa Chong Guan
Library (London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office,
1972). For a catalogue and description of some of
the Southeast Asia prints see John Bastin & Paul-
ine Rohatgi, Prints of Southeast Asia in the India
Office Library (London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Of-
fice, 1979). Bastin and Bea Brommer have also de-
scribed the 19 th Century Prints and Illustrated Books
of Indonesia with Particular Reference to the Print
Collection of the Tropenmuseum, Amsterdam: A De-
scriptive Bibliography (Antwerpen: Het Spectrum
Utrecht, 1979).
names of the plant or animal according to the
Linnaean system of classifcation, where they
were known, were also pencilled in the mar-
gins. These marginal notes, which Ivan Polunin
has collated, is testimony to the imperative of
Western science in understanding and appro-
priating Malay knowledge of their world.
The Rhetoric of Painting Landscapes
Singapore’s rapid and unexpected development
as a colonial port city in the frst half of the
19th century is documented in not only its trade
statistics, but also visually represented in draw-
ings and paintings of its evolving landscape.
Singapore in this respect, was no different from
other colonial port cities in being visually docu-
mented by its residents and visitors and offcials
as part of their duties in an expanding British
empire. The East India Company engaged a va-
riety of Indian artists during the 18th and 19th
centuries to visually document the territories
they were slowly taking over. These artists pro-
duced thousands of works. Some 3,000 exam-
ples of these “Company Drawings/Paintings,”
including a collection of prints of Southeast
Asia, are today deposited in the India Offce
Library.6
For Singapore, there are a larger number
of sketches and paintings by its visitors and
7 John Hall-Jones, The Thomson Paintings: Mid-
Nineteenth Century Paintings of the Straits Settle-
ments and Malaya (Singapore: Oxford University
Press, 1983); Irene Lim, Sketches in the Straits: 19 th-
Century Watercolours and Manuscripts of Singa-
pore, Malacca, Penang and Batavia by Charles Dyce
(Singapore: NUS Museums, National University of
Singapore, 2003).
8 Marianne Teo, Yu-Chee Chong & Julia Oh, Nineteenth
Century Prints of Singapore (Singapore: National
Museum, 1987).
residents than drawings by Company offcials.
Notable among the former are the paintings
of the surveyor John Turnbull Thomson and
Charles Dyce.7 A major focus of their visual
documentation of Singapore’s development is
understandably its maritime economy. Views
of the shoreline with a variety of European and
Asian ships anchored offshore, and an emerg-
ing townscape and Government Hill in the
background, are found in a large number of
paintings. The bustling mouth of the Singa-
pore River is another focus of this visual docu-
mentation of Singapore’s growth (fg. 2.3). From
the 1850s, there is a new series of drawings and
paintings of the “New Harbour,” which was
developed to replace the overcrowded Singa-
pore River.
Another popular vantage point from which
to paint Singapore’s development was Govern-
ment Hill, before it became an artillery fort in
1857. From here the preferred view was down
to the Singapore River to view the lighters an-
chored there, and then outwards towards the
sea to capture the forest of sails offshore. Oc-
casionally the view turns west, looking towards
an emerging Chinatown. Other vantage points
from which to view the port city were Princeps
Hill (or Mount Sophia as it is known today)
and Mount Wallich. The 1856 panorama in
oil by Percy Carpenter of the View of Singapore
The 19th-Century “Origins” of Singapore Art
9 Wong Hong Suen, ed., Singapore through 19 th
Century Prints & Paintings (Singapore: National
Museum of Singapore & Editions Didier Millet,
2010).
10 See in particular, Oral History Department, Singa-
pore Lifeline: The River and its People (Singapore:
Times Books International & Oral History Depart-
ment, 1986), which draws on an exhibition curated
by the Oral History Department based on its re-
cordings focusing on the Singapore River.
from Mount Wallich, showing the town from
Pearl’s Hill on the left to Tanjong Rhu and be-
yond, is probably the best known of this cate-
gory of landscape paintings of Singapore. From
these vantage points, the artists descended to
record streetscapes and followed the extension
of the settlement to its suburbs, rural towns
and surrounding jungles. Sketches of Singapore
are also found in collections of paintings of the
other two Straits Settlements. The National
Museum of Singapore published a selection of
52 of its collection in Nineteenth Century Prints
of Singapore on the occasion of its centenary in
1987.8 Two decades later, on the opening of
a new History Gallery, the National Museum
published a new edition of its collection of
these 19th-century prints of Singapore.9
What is the signifcance of these 19th-
century paintings and prints to the origins
of modern art in Singapore? Did these 19th-
century paintings and sketches prefgure what
later artists would focus on when portraying
the landscape? For example, the Singapore
River captured the attention of a distinguished
series of artists from the 1950s and continues
to preoccupy us.10 Could these 19th-century
drawings have established the Singapore River
as a site of Singapore’s social memories?
Can we also see in these 19th-century
paintings a precursor of our desire to provide
37
 11 Peter Burke, Eyewitnessing: The Uses of Images as
Historical Evidence (Ithaca: Cornell University Press,
2001) and earlier, the major study, Francis Haskell,
History and its Images: Art and the Interpretation of
the Past (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993), for
the ways historians have turned to images to visual-
ise and understand the past.
12 For comments on this oil by Thomson, see Hall-
Jones, op. cit., 38; also Wong, op. cit., 112. All the
a visual component to the textual record of
Singapore’s historical development? In curat-
ing these 19th-century prints and paintings, we
match them with texts that authenticate them
as accurate and reliable representations of Sin-
gapore’s past—a fundamental function of art
history. The hope is that these 19th-century im-
ages could then be archival records for a more
visual understanding of our past.11 This ap-
pears to be the intent of the National Museum’s
1987 Nineteenth Century Prints of Singapore.
However, as with any other archival re-
cord, these prints can be read on a number of
levels. At the most basic level, they can be read
for what they show—most prints show grass or
shrubs and pebbles in the foreground, which
form the platform for human activity or con-
struction in the middle ground, which then
merges into a background of virgin jungle. But
at another level, this picturesque framing of a
landscape suggests the imposition of order and
progress on the land under the East India Com-
pany; this is evident in J.T. Thomson’s best-
known painting, The Esplanade from Scandal
Point, completed in 1851 (fg. 2.4).12 As with
other archival records, a close and critical read-
ing of these paintings and sketches reveals gaps,
absences and silences in what is depicted.13
The fgures and activity represented in the
middle ground of these paintings are invari-
38 Kwa Chong Guan
buildings visible in the background of this painting
were designed by G.D. Coleman, the first trained
architect in Singapore. For details on Coleman and
the identification of the buildings in the painting,
see T.H.H. Hancock, Coleman’s Singapore (Kuala
Lumpur: Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic
Society in association with Pelanduk Publications,
1986), 30–1.
13 See especially the monograph by Sophia McAlpin,
ably of Europeans taking in and enjoying the
landscape. The landscape is a background to
highlight the Europeans. The Asians servicing
the landscape in these pictures are subservient
to the Europeans. More critically, the location
of these landscapes were centres of European
activity and power: Government Hill or the
Padang or the seafront dominated by Euro-
pean vessels. Absent is the Kallang River estu-
ary which was clearly marked by Sir Stamford
Raffes’ hydrographers on their sketch of the
waterfront of Singapore as a “Ryat [sic] Vil-
lage.” A “ra’yat village” in the 19th century
referred to an aboriginal settlement, which in
the context of the Kallang River estuary, meant
the sea nomad communities who inhabited the
estuary.14 Sultan Hussein’s decision to estab-
lish his Istana at Kampong Glam was part of
a wider plan to re-claim the allegiance of these
sea-nomad communities. This could help him
develop the Kallang River estuary into an alter-
native harbour to the Singapore River and its
waterfront, which were controlled by the Brit-
ish. The absence of any 19th-century painting
of the Kallang River estuary is therefore nota-
ble, but perhaps not surprising. Also notable is
the absence of any painting of Telok Blangar,
where Temenggong ‘Abdu’r-Rahman parked
himself, until it became the site of the “New
Harbour.”
 The Landscape Palimpsest: Reading Early 19 th Cen-
tury British Representations of Malaya (Clayton, Vic-
toria: Monash Asia Institute, 1997).
14 Marcus Langdon & Kwa Chong Guan, “Notes on
‘Sketch of the Land round Singapore Harbour, 7 Feb-
ruary 1819’,” Journal of the Malaysian Branch of the
Royal Asiatic Society 83, 1 (June 2010): 6.
15 Charles Harrison, “The Effects of Landscape,” in
Landscape and Power, ed. W.J.T. Michell, 2nd ed.
We have in these painting what Charles
Harrison, in a striking phrase, says is the “pic-
turing of power.”15 Wong Hong Suen recog-
nises this “picturing of power” in the paintings
she is curating when she writes:
The predominance of certain depictions
refects how Europeans made sense of the
Singapore landscape from a position of
power. Views of the bustling harbour […]
and a lively Singapore River, refect how
the raison d’être for the establishment and
development [of Singapore] as a British
settlement was founded upon trade and
commerce […]. Views of the town ren-
dered from high vantage points presented
a panoramic view of the topography but,
more importantly, convinced stakehold-
ers that Singapore was a proftable colony;
while scenes of the jungles refected their
ambivalent views of nature as being en-
dearingly wild and underdeveloped but
also economically valuable.16
Irene Lim similarly points out that the
Charles Dyce collection is
signifcant for two reasons. Firstly, it pro-
vides information on the historical land-
scapes of Singapore, Malacca, Penang and
The 19th-Century “Origins” of Singapore Art
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002), 203.
Harrison and his co-authors in this volume argue “to
change ‘landscape’ from a noun to a verb. It asks that
we think of landscape, not as an object to be seen or
a text to be read, but as a process by which social and
subjective identities are formed.”
16 Wong, op. cit., 50.
17 Irene Lim, op. cit., 21.
18 McAlpin, op. cit., 41.
Jakarta in the mid-nineteenth century.
[…] Secondly, the works yield invaluable
insights into the mind of the European
traveller-artist and more broadly, the Brit-
ish colonial empire in Asia.17
We can see in these early 19th-century
sketches and paintings constructions of British
colonialism and domination of the Singapore
landscape. Sophia McAlpin has commented:
Unlike India, the Malayan landscape
was, to the European mind, relatively de-
void of signs of a pre-existing civilisation,
at least in the areas of British settlement
to which these depictions were confned.
Thus, the freedom to “imagine” the land
according to their own needs. The type
of images they produced were of a re-
assuringly familiar landscape, one that
appeared to comfortably accommodate
the cultural values and aesthetic tastes
of their aristocratic patrons. They refect
a bond (however real or imagined) be-
tween these early British colonialists and
the Malayan landscape evidenced not
only in the obvious European presence
but also in their civilising infuence over
the land and the manner in which it was
transformed.18
39
 19 Daphne Ang, “Portraiture and Photography in Colo-
nial Singapore,” in Peter Lee et al., Inherited & Sal-
vaged: Family Portraits from the NUS Museum Straits
Chinese Collection (Singapore: NUS Baba House,
2015), 76–81.
20 John Falconer, A Vision of the Past: A History of Early
Photography in Singapore and Malaya: The Photo-
graphs of G.R. Lambert & Co., 1880–1910 (Singapore:
Times Editions, 1987).
One reading of this power of picturing the
landscape as background for European actions is
that it shaped perceptions of what 19th-century
Singapore was about: a creation of British colo-
nialism. The native was marginalised and writ-
ten out of the painting. He appears to have lost
any power to resist colonial domination, and
the silences and absences of these paintings do
not conceal any subaltern resistance to power.
The legacy of this power of picturing Singapore
is British colonialism that moulded Singapore’s
historical development into the 20th century.
The Vistas of the Photograph
The arrival of photography in Singapore—
when Gason Dutronquoy established his stu-
dio at Coleman Street in 1843—would have
provided residents of and visitors to Singapore
with new vistas to view and shape the land-
scape. People no longer needed to commission
an artist to sketch a view of the landscape for
them. Anyone could engage the growing num-
ber of photographers establishing themselves
in the High Street and Coleman Street core of
European activity to make a mechanically ob-
jective and photographically true image of the
Singapore they were seeing.19
These early European photographers ini-
40 Kwa Chong Guan
21 Jason Toh, Singapore through 19 th Century Photo-
graphs (Singapore: Editions Didier Millet, 2009) for
a selection of some 130 photographs presenting a
“picturesque medley” of 19 th-century Singapore.
22 Gretchen Liu, Singapore: A Pictorial History 1819–
2000 (Singapore: Archipelago Press & National Her-
itage Board, 1999).
23 John Urry & Jonas Larsen, The Tourist Gaze 3.0, 3rd
ed. (London: Sage Publications Ltd, 2012).
tially offered their services as portrait photog-
raphers and painters, but soon realised there
was a greater demand for topographical prints
of Singapore and the region from an increasing
number of tourists. Photographers started trav-
elling around the region to develop a collection
of photographs of not only landscape views,
but also streetscapes with a focus on its “na-
tive” inhabitants. The studios of G.R. Lambert
& Co. began in 1867 by undertaking commis-
sioned portraits, but in the next 35 years grew
to become the largest purveyor of topographic
prints, not only of the Straits Settlement and
Thailand, but also of China and Borneo.20
These topographical prints with the im-
print of G.R. Lambert and others continue to
be in demand today as they are perceived to
provide an objective perspective of the land-
scape. As with the earlier sketches and paint-
ings, the photographic landscape also looks at
Singapore’s coastline from the deck of the ship
before moving inland to survey the landscape
from its vantage points and then descending
to capture the streetscape.21 As with paintings,
the Singapore River also attracted much atten-
tion as the photographs of G.R. Lambert sug-
gest (fg. 2.5). The mechanical ease of making
a photographic image compared to producing
a drawing enabled a much more detailed and
extensive visualisation of the late 19th-century
landscape of Singapore than in the paintings
and drawings of the early 19th century. What
has been the effect of these photographic im-
ages on our visualisation and understanding of
Singapore’s past, captured in pictorial histories
of not only Singapore, but also Malaya?22
Compared to the painter mentally visu-
alising a streetscape for a drawing, the camera
provides the photographer a more intrusive and
intimidating gaze of the streetscape and its peo-
ple. Despite its mechanical objectivity, the pho-
tographic image of any Lambert or Thomson
photograph is about as authentic as a painting
or sketch in its careful composition of subjects
portrayed to convey narratives that speak of
the uniqueness of the history, culture and per-
formative practices of the subject. For Lambert
or Thomson, their photographs had to capture
what John Urry has termed the “tourist gaze,”
catering to the emerging tourism market.23
These photographs capture the tourist expecta-
tions of Singapore and their gaze of its residents
and exotic performative practices, as in Lam-
bert’s photographs of Chinese barbers cleaning
the ears of their clients. The step from the tour-
ist gaze to the voyeuristic gaze, that say looks
upon the nude Asian female form, is a small
one (fg. 2.6). Can Lambert and his colleagues
claim to be ethnographers visually document-
ing the peoples they were observing? Or, were
they more view-makers and entrepreneurs?
In reproducing, displaying and exhibiting
these 19th-century photographs, we are identi-
fying ourselves with a landscape we have lost
and are today nostalgic about. But in appropri-
ating these images, have we also adopted and
unconsciously internalised the tourist gaze em-
bedded in these 19th-century photographs? It
raises perplexing issues of what then is the real
and authentic in these photographs.
The Status of Portraits
Photography also opened up new vistas for the
The 19th-Century “Origins” of Singapore Art
making of portraits in not only painting but
sculpture as well. Lady Raffes’ presentation of
a copy of Sir Francis Legatt Chantrey’s (1781–
1841) plaster bust of Sir Stamford Raffes to the
Singapore Institution (later the Raffes Institu-
tion) in the 1830s is probably the beginning
of a tradition of monumentalising signifcant
personalities in civic portraits. Dutronquoy
frst established himself as a portrait painter
and miniaturist when he arrived in Singapore
in 1839, four years before he established the
frst photography studio in Singapore. Many,
if not most, of the other photographic studios
offered portraiture as a service, thus liberalising
the production of portraits for clients wanting
to commemorate others, especially ancestors,
or celebrate themselves.
The visual representation of persons in
painting, drawing or sculpture has a vener-
able genealogy in both Asian and European
art history. But portraiture as a distinct genre
of modern art, with the conventions, mean-
ings and values we recognise in a portrait to-
day, emerged in the 15th century and bloomed
in the 18th century when it became part of
the academy system for training, accrediting
and exhibiting works of aspiring artists. 19th-
century Singapore society followed this Europe-
an tradition of portrait painting as an honorifc
process to commemorate and celebrate power-
ful, wealthy or symbolically signifcant persons.
When Hoo Ah Kay (Whampoa) was awarded
the Companion of the Order of St Michael and
St George, he commissioned a portrait by John
Edmund Taylor. Earlier, Whampoa had his
portrait painted by the Prussian artist known
by his surname Beyerhaus when he visited Sin-
gapore in 1845. Beyerhaus also executed the
portrait of John Turnbull Thomson.
The portraits of Tan Kim Seng (1805–
1864) and his circle tell of the evolution of
portraiture in Singapore. Peter Lee’s close ex-
amination of these portraits suggests that the
oldest work is a watercolour done by possibly
a European artist working with European wa-
41
 tercolour techniques and perspectives.24 The
later portraits of Tan are copies by Chinese
painters trained in export painting techniques
in Guangzhou and Shanghai. Daphne Ang
sees infuences of the aesthetic traditions of the
Shanghai Jesuit painting school in two of the
later portraits of Tan.25 Lee has also document-
ed the contribution of these Chinese artists
and their studios to the development of por-
traiture in Singapore, especially portraits for
the veneration of ancestors. For this purpose,
the photograph presented a new medium for
capturing an exact likeness of the ancestor and
re-presenting the dead. The one hundred-plus
photographs and paintings that prominent
Chinese Song Ong Siang collated for his One
Hundred Years’ History of the Chinese in Singa-
pore is a venerable gallery of portraiture.26
The National University of Singapore’s
Baba House collects these portraits of Straits
Chinese as part of its visual documentation
of Singapore’s past. Pioneered by Lee, who
serves as its honorary curator, this is a very
recent museum venture. Lee donated his col-
lection of early 19th-century oil and photo-
graphic portraits of Straits Chinese to the Baba
House, which has been the subject of two ex-
hibitions.27 The Asian Civilisations Museum’s
Peranakan Museum in Singapore has also been
collecting portraits of Straits Chinese as part of
their collection policy. These portraits formed a
signifcant component of the artefacts for their
exhibition, Great Peranakans: Fifty Remarkable
Lives (May 2015–April 2016).28
These portraits are, as Baba House cura-
tor Foo Su Ling points out, “social markers” of
those portrayed.29 They are more than mirror
images or candid photos of the sitters. The pos-
tures and gestures of the sitters, their costumes
and the accessories or objects surrounding
them are not of the moment the camera shut-
ter is opened. The artist or photographer has
colluded with the sitter to produce an image
which is a “presentation of the self ” of the sit-
ter. Both Whampoa and Tan Beng Wan chose
42 Kwa Chong Guan
to portray themselves with their foreign awards
and titles, one conferred by the British and the
other by the Qing court, to claim a measure
of status in their respective communities. More
signifcant is that the format of these portraits
is European. The sitter is expected to be for-
mally dressed and standing or sitting stiffy
on a heavy chair, with a side table on which
carefully selected objects projecting the sitter’s
persona are displayed. The choice of costume
and dress is, as Foo points out, especially sig-
nifcant.30 Much can be read into the fact that
female sitters are always portrayed in formal
Asian dress, while male sitters’ costumes have
evolved from the long Chinese gown, such as
the one Tan Kim Seng chose to be portrayed
in, to formal European black-tie evening suit,
as worn by Song Ong Siang in his 1936 por-
trait. This 1936 Julius Wentscher portrait of
Song, wearing his medals and awards, seated
on a solid and heavy Straits Chinese-style
blackwood chair next to a side table on which
are displayed Song’s One Hundred Years’ History
of the Chinese in Singapore, and a row of leath-
er-bound books, including a copy of the Bible,
projects Song’s persona as a “King’s Chinese”
and, more signifcantly, how completely this
genre of portraiture has appropriated European
conventions, techniques and styles of visually
representing persons (fg. 2.7).
Should this portrait of Song have been
given a place in Victoria Memorial Hall, along
with portraits of former Governors and other
notables who had contributed to Singapore? A
number of these portraits of former Governors
were commissioned by local community elites
and leaders as a form of civic patronage. The
earliest of these civic portraits was of Governor
William Butterworth, commissioned in 1855
by a group of prominent residents led by Tan
Kim Seng, Seah Eu Chin, Tan Kim Ching,
Abraham Solomon and Syed Ali bin Moham-
med Aljunied among others. Others followed
in the remainder of the 19th century. These in-
clude a portrait of Governor Harry Ord which
24 Peter Lee, “Modern Pictures for Ancient Rites: Chi-
nese Portrait Painters in Nineteenth-Century Singa-
pore, Malaysia and Indonesia,” in Lee et al., Inherited
& Salvaged, 43–7.
25 Daphne Ang, “The Straits Chinese and Civic Portrai-
ture in Singapore, 1819–1959,” in Great Peranakans:
Fifty Remarkable Lives, ed. Alan Chong, exh. cat. (Sin-
gapore: Asian Civilisations Museum, 2015), 34.
26 Song Ong Siang, One Hundred Years’ History of the
Chinese in Singapore (Singapore: University Malaya
Press, 1967).
Whampoa led the commissioning of in 1875.
In all, 22 life-size portraits hung on the walls of
the Victoria Memorial Hall, leaving no space
for Song’s portrait in 1936 (a space was eventu-
ally made for it). As Ang notes, the space of the
Victoria Memorial Hall “can be regarded as the
frst national gallery of Singapore.”31
Conclusion
The 19th-century drawing of nature, landscapes
and persons in portraits prefgures in a way
20th-century artistic concerns of picturing a
perpetually changing landscape. In contrast to
the early 19th-century paintings and drawings
The 19th-Century “Origins” of Singapore Art
27 Peter Lee et al., Inherited & Salvaged is a catalogue
of the core 60 portraits in the collection.
28 Chong, ed., op. cit. is the write-up of the exhibition.
29 Foo Su Ling, “Introduction: Surveying the Straits Chi-
nese Portraits Collection,” in Lee et al., Inherited &
Salvaged, 22.
30 Foo, “Dressing the Baba: Portraits, Fashion and Mo-
dernity,” in ibid., 109–15.
31 Ang, “The Straits Chinese and Civic Portraiture in
Singapore,” 49.
of the landscape in which the native is absent,
the later 19th-century photographs and paint-
ings focus on the natives as the exotic other and
an underlying narrative of the civilising infu-
ence of colonialism.
Today these images shape our social
memories of imagined spaces and nostalgia of a
bygone world as captured in a new generation
of paintings of the Singapore River (fg. 2.8)
and rural scenes. Also embedded in these 19th-
century practices is a tension between Eastern
and Western artistic practices, of Asian mim-
icking of European artistic practice and con-
ventions to produce hybrid forms of art which
we live with today.
43
 2.1

352 Kwa Chong Guan

0328-Charting Thoughts.indd 352 28/3/17 2:51 PM

 2.1 Artist unknown
Sea-Almond (K’tapang, Terminalia Moluccana)
William Farquhar’s Collection of Natural
History Drawings
1803–1818
Watercolour on paper
54.2 x 37.6 cm
Gift of G.K. Goh
Collection of National Museum of Singapore
Image courtesy of National Museum of
Singapore, National Heritage Board

2.2 James de Alwis

Red Sealing Wax Palm (Cyrtostachys lakka)
c. 1891
Watercolour on paper
44 x 29 cm
Collection of Singapore Botanic Gardens,
National Parks Board

2.3 François-Edmond Pâris;

Sigismond Himeley, engraver
Sincapour (Singapore)
c. 1835
Aquatint
30.5 x 40 cm
Collection of National Museum of Singapore
Image courtesy of National Museum of
Singapore, National Heritage Board

2.2

2.3

The 19th-Century “Origins” of Singapore Art 353

0328-Charting Thoughts.indd 353 28/3/17 2:51 PM

 2.4

2.4 J.T. Thomson

The Esplanade from Scandal Point
1851
Oil on canvas
59 x 89 cm
Gift of Dr John Hall-Jones
Collection of National Museum of Singapore
Image courtesy of National Museum of
Singapore, National Heritage Board

2.5 G.R. Lambert & Co.

View of Singapore River
Early 1880s
Albumen print
14.6 x 22.3 cm
Collection of National Museum of Singapore
Image courtesy of National Museum of
Singapore, National Heritage Board

2.6 G.R. Lambert & Co.

Untitled (Karayuki-san in Singapore)
Late 19th century
Albumen print
23.8 x 28.5 cm
Collection of Mr & Mrs Lee Kip Lee

354 Kwa Chong Guan

0328-Charting Thoughts.indd 354 28/3/17 2:51 PM

 2.5

2.6

The 19th-Century “Origins” of Singapore Art 355

0328-Charting Thoughts.indd 355 28/3/17 2:51 PM

 2.7

356 Kwa Chong Guan

0328-Charting Thoughts.indd 356 28/3/17 2:51 PM

 2.8

2.7 Julius Wentscher

Portrait of Song Ong Siang
1936
Oil on canvas
214 x 142 cm
Collection of National Museum of Singapore
Image courtesy of National Museum of
Singapore, National Heritage Board

2.8 Lim Tze Peng

Singapore River (Elgin Bridge)
1979
Chinese ink and colour on paper
68 x 139 cm
Collection of National Gallery Singapore

The 19th-Century “Origins” of Singapore Art 357

0328-Charting Thoughts.indd 357 28/3/17 2:51 PM

 1 This essay reprises parts of arguments and text found
in Chapters Two and Three of my book The Asian Mod-
ern, Volume One, fnal draft 2016.
2 Sanento Yuliman Hadiwardoyo, “Genèse de la Pei-
nture Indonésienne Contemporaine: Le rôle de S.
Sudjojono” [The Genesis of Contemporary Indonesian
Painting: The Role of S. Sudjojono] (PhD diss. 3rd cycle,
École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, 1981),
14. Sanento here refers to W.P. Groeneveldt, Historical
Notes on Indonesia and Malaya Compiled from Chi-
nese Sources (Jakarta: C.V. Bhratara, 1960), 53.
3 John Crawfurd, History of the Indian Archipelago: Con-
taining an Account of the Manners, Arts, Languages,
Religions, Institutions and Commerce of its Inhabit-
ants (Edinburgh: Constable, 1820). “Indian” here re-
(3)
Colonial Art as a Space of the Asian Modern1
John Clark
Antecedents to a Modern
Southeast Asian Art
The apparent and fruitful “re-discovery” of early
or pre-modern art in different parts of South-
east Asia by contemporary artists such as Heri
Dono and FX Harsono, should not obscure the
historical presence of references to large-scale
narrative representations which are no longer
extant but for which there are reliable records.
These sources were excavated by Sanento Yuli-
man Hadiwardoyo, among others, and rein-
force that there were physically large paintings
in Southeast Asia as early as the 15th century.
Hadiwardoyo cites an apparent description of a
wayang-bèbèr, or pictorial narrative scrolls, from
Ma Huan’s 1416 Yingyai shenglan (The Overall
Survey of Ocean Shores).2 Literary references
therefore indicate the presence of paintings
44 Charting Thoughts
fers to the Indies, or parts of present-day Indonesia.
4 Attributed to Faiz Ali Khan, A Group of Dancing-Girls
and Musicians, c. 1815, opaque watercolour on paper,
Gift of Miss M. Letitia Harford, OBE, Victoria and Al-
bert Museum, London.
5 The surviving temple murals from the Ayutthaya
period (14th to 18th centuries) include:
Early Ayutthaya [15th century]
Lampang P., Wat Phra That Lampang Luang, after 1450,
Wihaan Nam Taem, after 1500
Middle Ayutthaya [King Narai, r. 1654–1688]
Ayutthaya P., Nakhon Luang, Wat Mai Phrachumphon,
c. 1625–c. 1650
Bangkok, Khet Yannawa, Wat Chong Nonsi,
c. 1650–c. 1688 [MB, 1982]
in Java with secular subjects from at least the
1400s, including picture-tales for oral narration.
Paintings or tapestries with fguration were
brought to the Indonesian archipelago by the
Portuguese in the 16th century, who also found
there were long painting scrolls, sometimes of
recent historical events, made for local rulers.
The Dutch brought paintings and many prints,
and several Dutch painters were active in Bata-
via from at least the 17th century. At the turn
of the 18th century, illustrations were also done
for a variety of British publications including
Marsden’s 1811 History of Sumatra and Raf-
fes’ 1817 History of Java, some of which were
done for Raffes in 1811–1816 by Javanese and
Anglo-Indian artists. Unfortunately, most of
these drawings were lost in the fre of Raffes’
ship Fame in 1824 at Bengkulu (Bencoolen),
Sumatra. However an extant contemporary
 Petchaburi, Wat Yai Suwannaram, c. 1702–c. 1708
Nonthaburi, Wat Chompuweg [MB, 1987]
Late Ayutthaya [1690s–1767]
Angthong, Amphoe Wiset Chai Chan, Wat Khian
[MB, 1999]
Ayutthaya, Wat Phutthaisawan, Patriarch’s Pavilion,
c. 1732–c. 1758
Ayutthaya, Wat Thom (destroyed, copies in Thai
national library)
Bangkok, Bang Khunnon, Wat Chaiyathid [MB, 1991]
Petchaburi, Wat Ko Kaeo Suttharam,
after 1743 [MB, 1986]
Nakhon Chaisri, Wat Pakklongbangkaew
Nonthaburi, Wat Prasat [MB, 1987]
Samut Prakan, Wat Klangworawihaan
illustration by a Javanese artist, in another
book by John Crawfurd, shows the mode and
level of illustrative skills among some Javanese
before 1820.3 These show recession with per-
haps some knowledge of Chinese orthogonal
or parallel perspective drawing, but with keen
interest in shading and overall modelling via
light and shade.
No major paintings survived into the 19th
century but there does exist from after the
1820s a set of fve paintings of Five Javanese
Court Offcials (fg. 3.1), which could originally
have been a screen. This early large-scale paint-
ing has intriguing similarities to the painting
of the standing, vertical fgures in a painting
done in Delhi around 1815.4 Hence it may
be deduced that Raffes’ entourage included
an Anglo-Indian painter, so one of the earliest
surviving links with European art in Southeast
Asia should also be seen through stylistic and
compositional resemblances vis-à-vis Indian
so-called “Company Painting.”
How all these different visual techniques
were communicated to 19th-century Javanese
artisans remains open to speculation. That the
Five Offcials does survive indicates a high level
of copying competence (probably associated
with textile decoration skills), and elsewhere, a
rapid ability to master European representation
Colonial Art as a Space of the Asian Modern
Thonburi, Bang Chak, Thanon Rachavithi, Wat Mai
Thepnimit [MB, 1983]
[MB: indicates a volume of a series published by
Muang Boran in Bangkok in the year given.]
6 See Alexandra Green, “From Gold Leaf to Buddhist
Hagiographies: Contacts with Regions in the East
seen in Late Burmese murals,” The Journal of Burma
Studies 15, no. 2 (2011): 305–58; Soe Thuzar Myint,
The Portrayal of the Battle of Ayutthaya in Mynamar
Literature (Bangkok: Institute of Asian Studies, Chu-
lalongkorn University, 2011), 99; Prince Damrong
Rajanubhab, Our Wars with the Burmese: Hostilities
between Siamese and Burmese when Ayutthaya was
the Capital of Siam (Bangkok: White Lotus, 2001),
356.
of the natural world. These issues suggest that
European modes of representation in a mod-
ern Asian art were neither culturally alien nor
technically unmasterable. Even if done under
the sway of a broadened colonial hegemony,
they were still capable of modifcation for lo-
cal expression and potentially, local counter-
appropriation.
The other major surviving pre-modern
pictorial form is Buddhist mural painting
which can be found throughout the Therava-
din countries, especially Siam. In present-day
Thailand, mural painting has remarkably few
surviving works from before the 18th century,
and almost none from the capital of Ayutthaya
which was sacked by the Burmese in 1767.5 We
can guess what some of the painting conven-
tions were from a paucity of surviving temples
and some manuscripts, as well as inferences
made from paintings which survive in Burma
where many painting artisans were among the
upwards of 30,000 Siamese taken captive.6
Thai mural painting as we now know it
is almost entirely the surviving reconstruction
and development of artists in Bangkok starting
from the late 1780s, with most work being done
in the 1830s. The Siamese art world was one
hierarchically governed by royal, aristocratic
and sometimes merchant patronage for mural
45
 7 See Saran Thongpaan, “Chiwit thang sangkhom
khong chaang nay sangkhom Thay phaak klaang
samay ratanakosin koon p. s. 2448” [The social life
of craftsmen in central Thai society of the Ratana-
kosin Era before 1905] (master’s thesis, Thammasat
University, 1991). For a general overview of status
organisation, see M.R. Akin Rabibhadana, The Or-
ganization of Thai Society in the Early Bangkok Period,
1782–1873, republished by (Bangkok: Wisdom of the
Land Foundation & Thai Association of Qualitative
Researchers, 1996).
8 See No Na Pak Nam, Phra Acharn Nak: The Foremost
Muralist of the Reign of King Rama I (Bangkok: Muang
decorative schemes in temples and palaces.7
There were four nameable painters before the
1850s: Pra Ajaarn Nak who worked for Rama
I (r. 1782–1809), Khong Pae and Thong Yu
who similarly did murals for Wat Suwannar-
am, Thonburi (now Bangkok Noi) circa 1831,
under Rama III (r. 1824–1851), and Khrua In
Khong, active from the 1850s to 1868, who
could well have personally known the artists at
Wat Suwannaram.8
Much may also be deduced from works by
Khrua In Khong, or those attributed to him.
He was nameable and well-regarded; despite
his position as the subordinate painter of a
king, his reputation could not have been earned
solely by virtue of his social standing. Indeed
there are anecdotes which indicate Khrua In
Khong was quite sure of his own métier, and
this changed self-consciousness of the artist as
a professional by the 1850s or slightly earlier, is
certainly one index of modernity in art.9
He would also have known of Wat Ratch-
aorot which was built late in the reign of Rama
II in the 1830s, where there were defnitely
experiments with European perspective. These
seem to have begun with the importation of
mirrors by the Portuguese ambassador in 1818,
followed by an order from Rama II for his own
mirrors shortly thereafter.
46 John Clark
Boran, 1987); See No Na Pak Nam, Khru Khongpae
& Khru Thongyu (Bangkok: Muang Boran, 1987); On
Wat Suwannaram, see No Na Pak Nam, Wat Suwan-
naram, 2nd ed. (Bangkok: Muang Boran, 1997). Other
temples with murals by Khong Pae include Wat Bang
Yikhan and Wat Dawaduengsaran, Thonburi.
9 One anecdote related by Prince Naris is that Khrua In
Khong would lock himself up in his monk’s residence
to prevent people from breaking his concentration
when planning the murals for an ubosot. See Wiyada
Thongmitr, Khrua In Khong’s Westernized School of
Thai Painting (Bangkok: Thai Cultural Data Centre,
1979), 110, quoting Saan somdet [The Princes’ cor-
Siamese visual discourses changed mark-
edly in the 1820s and 1830s. The use of the
mirror or symmetrical mirror refections pro-
duced a kind of doubled image rather akin to
one-point perspective. Some portraits from life
began to be made of famous lay people and
some monks, and the notion of a portrait sent
as an index of a person appeared in contem-
porary literature. The visualisation of common
people changed from elegant visual stereotypes
at Wat Pho to quasi-realistic and individu-
ated people in views of street activities in Wat
Suthat. Almost certainly, the wider availability
of full-size European mirrors from the 1820s
in Bangkok must have altered personal percep-
tions of physique and its pictorial representa-
tion.10
Finally, one must mention the increased
use of allegorical manifestation of life-cycle
scenes or other chosen elements to exemplify
Buddhist values. These are quasi-abstract and
analytical removals of the narrative scheme
from habitual Buddhist visual discourse
through the Jātakas, or moral narratives about
Buddha’s previous incarnations (fg. 3.2).
Interestingly, two examples of these are
by Khrua In Khong himself—the frst at the
ubosot of Wat Borom Niwat, possibly from the
later 1850s, and the second from the scenes of
 respondence] vols. III and XII (Bangkok: Khurusapha,
1962).
10 See the stimulating studies on the role of mirrors
in changes in visual representation of mural paint-
ing between Rama II and Rama III in Phanunphong
Lawhasom & Chaiyot Isawonpan, Plian phun, plaeng
phaaph: Prap ruup, pbrung laay [Vary the ground,
vary the picture; make ready the form, vary the lines]
(Bangkok: Muang Boran, BE 2549 [2006]).
11 Reports that Rama IV’s palace contained paintings
painted on its walls were mentioned by Coffman and
Vincent, as cited in Michael Smythies, Early Accounts
of Petchaburi (Bangkok: The Siam Society, 1987),
a single individual’s life at Wat Mahasamanar-
am in Phetchaburi, close to Mongkut’s sum-
mer retreat of Phra Nakhon Kiri after 1859.11
This obvious visualisation of allegory suggests
they may have been painted based on a monk-
ish text that felt secure enough to step away
from conventional representations, and whose
author one expects could have been Rama IV
himself or someone close to him.
Khrua In Khong’s work is very largely
the application of drawing and painting tech-
niques, pictorial composition and spatial con-
struction which, considering the apparent ex-
plicitness of his use of Euramerican cityscapes
for Jātakas, was derived from the illustrated
books given to Rama IV by several foreign
visitors. Khrua In Khong may also have had ac-
cess to China trade paintings, given that there
also exist in the royal collections, late Chinese
portrait paintings of Rama IV and his crown
prince, the future Rama V, which may have
been commissioned from photographs brought
to Canton in the 1860s.
Khrua In Khong’s use of Euramerican im-
agery was underpinned by changes in Siamese
thought of his time, particularly given the con-
temporary royal interest in European scientifc
ideas that must have allowed a more distanced,
rationally constructed notion of the self and by
Colonial Art as a Space of the Asian Modern
34–5, 28–9 respectively. However, none of these
paintings are visible today. Whether they were so
visible in Rama IV’s time is not known to me, but the
walls of the King’s private apartments in Petchaburi
were in 2012 decorated with French prints of the
1830s conquest of Algeria. Perhaps Rama V kept
them there during the many conficts with France
in the late 19 th century, the better to allow visitors to
perceive what he knew about Siam’s foreign enemies.
12 Dan Beach Bradley, Kamphi khantha raksa [Treatise
on midwifery] (Bangkok: A.B.C.F.M. Press, 1842). A
copy of this manual from the National Library, Bang-
kok, is in the National Library of Australia.
extension, the visualising subject. Ideas about
Buddhism changed in the period of Rama IV
and his son Rama V, with more use of Western
scholarship to understand them. Indeed, Rama
V and his offcials realised the Buddha birth
stories encapsulated many notions of king-
ship that were not compatible with, and could
present challenges to, the national state. These
were bureaucratised via models borrowed from
colonial administration. The tendency to al-
legorise stages of individual monk stories, as
seen in some schemes by Khrua In Khong at
Wat Mahasamanaram and the abstracted moral
allegories using Western imagery seen at Wat
Borom Niwat, has been unaffected by the pro-
pensity towards moral rationalism in decora-
tive narrative.
American protestant missionaries were
also active in Bangkok before 1851 and there
was one American diplomatic mission in
1832–1834. These may very well have provid-
ed American townscape prints seen by Khrua
In Khong. I should also note that in 1843, the
American missionary Dr Bradley published the
frst Thai newspaper, Bangkok Recorder, and in
the same year also published a treatise on mid-
wifery “with illustrations by a Siamese artist,”
as well as one on vaccination in 1844.12 Thus,
local Siamese appropriations of Euramerican
47
 13 See Somsak Daengphan & Wirachay Wirasukhsawat,
“Faay anurak chitrakaam faa phanang le prati-
maakaam tit thii” [Painting and sculpture preserva-
tion onsite section], in Chitrakam faaphanang nay
pratheet Thay [Mural painting in Thailand] (Bangkok:
Kong boraankhati, Krom Silpakon [Archaeology Sec-
tion, Ministry of Fine Arts], BE 2533 [1990]), series 1,
vol. 3. In English, a general guide is Gerhard Jaiser,
Thai Mural Painting, Vol. 1: Iconography, Analysis
& Guide; Vol. 2: Society, Preservation and Subjects
(Bangkok: White Lotus, 2010).
14 Ibid., 1990, 5.
images in Bangkok antedate Khrua In Khong
by around 25 years.
The habitual Western art reservation
about the Euramerican “inadequate copy” in-
terpretive position does not mean that Khrua
In Khong did not beneft from knowing how
to generate his own images more accurately
within the Euramerican tendencies he chose.
Buildings were now depicted at Wat Bowon-
niwet and Wat Borom Niwat in Bangkok and
Wat Mahasamanaram in Petchburi as larger
than people, whereas previously, human fg-
ures, especially of persons particularly endowed
with aura, were often shown to be too big to ft
into buildings.13 His compositions are distin-
guished by broad expanses of sky and outlines
sketched in black (unlike the red used even
as late as the 1830s) and then flled with col-
our, with space marked out and left within the
whole for buildings.14
A further set of antecedents should be
mentioned but is barely visible today, and as
little studied. The circulation of various kinds
of China trade paintings, including those on
glass, accompanied the vessels of the Eurameri-
can traders as well as the colonial navies. Re-
markably early, by the 1780s, Chinese glass
painters were producing works for distant Surat
on the Indian side of the Persian Gulf, and one
48 John Clark
15 For more on Chinese glass painters, see Susan S.
Bean, Yankee India: American Commercial and Cul-
tural Encounters with India in the Age of Sail, 1784–
1860 (Salem: Peabody Essex Museum; Ahmedabad:
Mapin Publishing, 2001), fg. 4., 22, 84.
16 The principal scholar to date in this feld was the late
Sasaki Seiichi. See Sasaki Seiichi et al., “Yooroppa
Yûsaiga no Nihon dotchaku katei no kenkyû—Doro-
e, Garasu-e kenkyû” [The settling-down process of
European coloured painting in Japan—Research on
gouache, glass painting], in Tama Bijutsu Daigaku
Zairyôgaku Kenkyûshitsu Kiyô [Tama Fine Arts Uni-
must assume that the glass paintings, originally
commissioned in Chinese treaty ports, were
soon followed by itinerant Chinese painter-
craftsmen.15 These paintings on glass are also
found prominently displayed in many Siamese
temples from the 1830s and decorations of
Thai subjects soon appeared in these locations,
indicating that painters and their techniques
must have moved from China.16
Early Transfer of European Discourses
The Philippines, which had been “discovered”
by Magellan in 1521, was ruled from Mexico
until 1822, when different Roman Catholic
religious orders were allocated their own geo-
graphical areas to administer. By the 1730s
some teaching of drawing was taking place
via a military engineer, and priests were be-
ing taught engraving. There was an art school
founded by local worthies from 1821 to 1834
under Damián Domingo (1796–1834), and an
art academy was authorised in 1845, regulated
in 1848 and opened from 1850 to 1898. It
was followed by the School of Fine Arts of the
University of the Philippines from 1908 to the
present day.
The Spanish arrived in the Philippines
with their very specifc use of icons for the
 versity research proceedings on materials science]
1 (1976), 2 (1978), 3 (1982), 4 (1985).
17 See Santiago Albano Pilar, A Harvest of Saints
(Makati City: Ayala Museum, 2005).
18 See Luciano P.R. Santiago, “Damian Domingo and the
First Philippine Art Academy (1821–1834),” Philippines
Quarterly of Culture and Society 19, no. 4 (1991): 264–
80. The most recent monograph on Damián Domingo
is Luciano P.R. Santiago, The Life, Art, and Times of
Damián Domingo (Manila: Vibal Foundation, 2010).
19 See Santiago Albano Pilar, “Philippine Painting:
The Early Chinese Heritage,” Arts of Asia Nov–Dec
propagation of faith, and found quite a vivid
and widespread discourse of anitos or ancestor
fgures, for which there are a number of obser-
vations by early Spanish writers.17 It is on this
base of familiarity with icons, accompanied by
a substrate of non-Catholic spiritual beliefs and
practices as well as technical facility with their
production, that the vitality and continuity of
later Philippine folk art rests.
A second element in the formation of vis-
ual discourses was the direct result of Catholic
proselytisation—not only did the use and sys-
tematic articulation of images spread, there was
from at least the early 18th century an increas-
ingly educated class of elite native Filipinos to
deploy it. The University of Santo Tomas in
Manila was founded in 1645 and by 1690, the
surnames of its graduates indicated two prob-
able natives.18
A third element was the involvement of
Chinese craftsmen as painters and printers
from the 1580s. Chinese were trained as re-
producers of Catholic imagery, and their tal-
ent was widely recognised by Catholic priests.
There were many incentives for the Chinese to
become Catholic: By doing so they could have
property rights, be recognised in a profession
and form a guild, as they did in Binondo in
1687. By 1734, “about 380 families of Chinese
Colonial Art as a Space of the Asian Modern
(1994): 62–70.
20 On glass painting in Asia, see Sasaki, op. cit.
21 On tipos del pais, see Francisco de Santos Moro, La Vida
en papel de arroz [Life on rice paper] (Madrid: Museo
Nacional de Antropología, 2007). On Damián Domingo’s
works see Jose-Maria Cariño & Sonia Pinto Ner, Álbum
Islas Filipinas 1663–1888 [Album of the Philippine
Islands 1663–1888] (Manila: Ars Mundi, Philippinae,
2004); Nick Joaquin & Luciano P.R. Santiago, The World
of Damian Domingo (Manila: Metropolitan Museum of
Manila, 1990); Stephen Ongpin, Filipino Master: Dami-
an Domingo (Manila: Intramuros Administration, 1983).
meztizos were engaged in painting, sculpture,
carpentry, and smithing.”19 The Chinese rela-
tionship with Philippines’ art is deep and long-
standing, particularly via paintings and glass
paintings done in the treaty ports which spread
to the Philippines, and via tipos del pais, or sets
of images of typical occupations.20 The latter
had reached Manila from Canton in the 1790s
and were a staple element in the production of
Damián Domingo and some of his students
from the late 1820s.21
A fourth element was natural history re-
search and drawing. This was evident from
the 1690s and reached its culmination in the
1792–1793 Malaspina Expedition, whose re-
port was only published in 1885. In addition,
there was the unillustrated publication in 1845
of Flora de Filipinas, which was republished
with luxury prints in 1879. Whilst there is
often some delay between the drawings done
during the research and their subsequent publi-
cation as illustrations, nevertheless one can see,
as elsewhere in the colonial world, a widespread
visual discourse of natural history illustration
which in most cases employed metropolitan as
well as local artists for its production.
The frst signifcant Philippines’ academy
painter was Simon Flores (1839–1902). His
visual world can mainly be seen as a series of
49
 22 See Cariño & Ner, op. cit., 114.
23 See Luciano P.R. Santiago, “At the End of the Rainbow:
The Last Will and Testament of Damián Domingo,”
Philippine Quarterly of Culture and Society 28 (2000):
78–89 and Luciano P.R. Santiago, “Damian Domingo
and the First Philippine Art Academy (1821–1834).”
24 Many of these artists are recorded in Leo Haks & Guus
Maris, Lexicon of Foreign Artists Who Visualised Indone-
sia (1600–1950): Surveying Painters, Watercolourists,
Draughtsmen, Sculptors, Illustrators, Graphic and In-
dustrial Artists (Utrecht: Gert Jan Bestebreurje, 1995).
25 Werner Kraus has studied the teaching models for
drawing in schools produced by Raden Saleh, see
the “teekenvoorbeelden” of 1863 and 1864, in Wer-
pictorial types derived from this background by
the time of his entry to the Academia de Dibu-
jo y Pintura in Manila at the age of 18 in 1857.
This brought him to a high level of formation,
enabling him to set up his own studio in about
1861 where he accepted commissions for por-
traits, religious works and trompe l’oeil paint-
ings. His uncle included a decorator of the ceil-
ing in the governor’s Malacañang Palace, where
two Italians were also active. There is specula-
tion that another uncle might have been an art-
ist who continued Damián Domingo’s studio
after his death.22 If that were the case, Flores
may have had direct links to Domingo, who
as a Chinese mestizo constitutes a link to the
whole discourse of Chinese craftsmen paint-
ers and printers which goes back to the 1590s.
It had also been Domingo who, “by declaring
painting as an object of formal instruction,
raised [it] from the level of the mechanical to
the plane of the noble arts. As a result, Filipino
artists ascended in social standing.”23
This possibility, as much a feature of Flo-
res’ own genealogy as of the whole class of
Filipino artists who entered the Academy in
Manila (where the policy of racial segregation
seems to have been abandoned around 1870),
50 John Clark
ner Kraus, Raden Saleh: Der Beginn der modernene
indonesischen Malerei [Raden Saleh: The beginning
of modern Indonesian painting], eds. Werner Kraus
& Irina Vogelsang, trans. Chris Cave & Werner Kraus
(Jakarta: Goethe Institut, 2012), 244–9. Kraus has
examined reports in the Dutch Indies’ newspapers on
drawing education in various elite teacher training
institutions; there having been no formal art school
in the Indies at the time. See Werner Kraus, “Artists,
Art Education and Exhibition of Art in 19 th Century
Java: The Evidence,” a lecture given at the Art Gallery
of New South Wales in November 2013.
26 On Payen, see Marie-Odette Scalliet, “Antoine Payen,
peintre des Indes orientales: vie et écrits d’un artiste du
points to a recurrent phenomenon of modern
Asian art. Whatever the contemporary social
origin of the artist, whatever the genealogy of
sensibilities and beliefs which links them to dis-
courses other than those of the colonial author-
ities, many have worked almost entirely within,
from, and not infrequently against those dis-
courses. We look for their modernity in what
they emphasise in their work that relates to
their situation, and in their ability to relativise
styles from the past with their own contempo-
rary absorption and re-deployment of the real
in some 19th-century cases, or of abstract défor-
mation in later 20th-century cases.
The Transfer of European
Salon Style: Raden Saleh
The transfer of European salon style was
carried out in Java by a large number of overseas
artists.24 The advent of aristocrats who became
artists like Raden Saleh (c. 1811–1880), how-
ever, raised the social status of matriculated or
certifcated craftsmen. The later process of pro-
fessionalisation of artists was drawn out in Java
until after 1949 due to the lack of professional
training except through the technical services
 XIXe siècle (1792–1853)” [Antoine Payen, painter of the
Eastern Indies: Life and writings of a 19 th-century artist
(1792–1853)] (PhD diss., Leiden University, The School
of Asian, African, and Amerindian Studies, CNWS,
1995). I am also grateful for the opportunity to see and
photograph Payen’s in situ oil sketches held at the Eth-
nology Museum in Leiden.
27 C.C.P. Marius, Dutch Painters of the 19th Century
(London: Antique Collectors’ Club, 1973), 17. First
translated into English in 1908.
28 For further exposition, see Annemiek Ouwerkerk, “‘Hoe
kan het schoone geprezen, het middelmatige erkend
en het slechte gelaakt worden?’: Nederlandse kunst-
kritiek in de eerste helft van de 19de eeuw” [How can
of the bureaucracy, and except some teacher-
training curricula, for which Saleh did model
drawings for use as pedagogical and copy aids.
These have now begun to be investigated, and
some works survive to permit analysis of the
works of Saleh’s very few Javanese students.25
The few artists trained before 1949 in the
technical services of the Dutch, such as the ar-
chaeological draftsmen, were self-taught then
trained on the job, or had suffcient social sta-
tus and resources to go to Europe. Unlike late
19th-century India, Japan or the Philippines,
there was no art school in Batavia despite an
extensive circle of expatriate art activities and
some signifcant exhibitions. This created a
situation wherein the Javanese lacked the tech-
nical certifcation through art school or work-
shop training the colonial artists had, with the
exception of Raden Saleh in the 1860s and one
or two others.
It is clear from surviving drawings that
Saleh’s visual discourse was from the outset Eu-
ropean; he received early training in drawing
from 1819 to 1820 by the then Dutch (later
Belgian) artist Antoine Payen.26 Saleh must
also have been present when Payen did some of
his in situ oil sketches of natural scenes which
Colonial Art as a Space of the Asian Modern
that which is beautiful be praised, that which is me-
diocre be recognised, and that which is bad be strongly
disapproved? Dutch art criticism during the frst half of
the 19 th century. trans. T. Berghuis] in Op zoek naar de
Gouden Eeuw: Nederlandse schilderkunst 1800–1850
[In search of the Golden Age: Dutch painting, 1800–
1850], eds. Louis Van Tilborgh & Guido Janzen, trans.
Thomas Berghuis (Zwolle: Waanders Uitgevers, 1986),
65. Ouwerkerk notes: “Before the 1830s, criticism was
innocent, but there was a narrowing of the position of
the artists after 1830 when there was an economic re-
cession and also one in art when the artist hardly got
any subsidy and the government did not buy from pub-
lic exhibitions.”
were later to be worked up by him in Europe
into formal compositions. In fact the early in
situ oil sketches of Payen should really be seen
as the originator of landscape painting in Java,
before Saleh in the 1860s or the Mooi Indië
school of the 1910s to 1930s.
In Holland, Saleh was exposed to the stu-
dio training he received between 1830 and
1831 from Cornelis Kruseman (1797–1857),
who had settled in The Hague. Kruseman
had been in Italy from 1821 to 1824 and his
works showed “the infuence of Raphael fltered
through that of Overbeck and Nazarene paint-
ing.”27 Kruseman taught Saleh drawing and
painting for six months and Saleh had access to
his earlier drawings from 1821 to 1825, includ-
ing those from his two years in Rome which
displayed his affection for warm Raphaelesque
tones.
Dutch art of the 1830s—the world of
Kruseman, and of Saleh’s other teacher from
1832 to 1833, Andreas Schelfhout (1787–
1870)—was a diffdent national representation
of middle-class values which lacked clear def-
nition or stylistic articulation, but manifested
what might be called an amalgam of “soft cri-
tique” and “soft (un-named) romanticism.”28
51
 29 Ibid., 70–1. Ouwerkerk notes that the critics “indeed
realized that their criticisms could be crucial, but of-
ten startled from the consequences. In their articles
they asked for the frst time in so many words on who
could accurately be able to distinguish good artworks
from bad artworks. Subsequently, they resorted to ex-
tensive commentaries on organisation of the exhibi-
Art criticism was in fact rather undeveloped in
Holland, and there was also general avoidance
of calling Romanticism by its name.29
From the late 1830s, Saleh had the great
advantage of dealing with a series of culturally
rich but politically small German states before
the Prussian steamroller of unifcation ran over
them all from the 1840s to 1870s. These Ger-
man states presented an acquirable culture.
Indeed, Saleh himself at times thought he had
become German, and in his lost but partially
reconstructed memoirs of 1849 expressed his
dilemma thus:
Two sides, opposite to each other and yet
both light and friendly, put their magic
spell over my soul. There the paradise
of my childhood in the bright sunshine,
washed by the Indian Ocean, where my
beloved one lives and where the ashes of
my ancestors rest. Here Europe’s luckiest
countries, where the arts, sciences and ed-
ucational values shine like diamond jewel-
lery, to where the yearning of my youth
fnally brought me; where I was lucky
enough to fnd friends within the noblest
circles, friends who replaced father, moth-
er, brothers and sisters. Between these two
worlds my heart is split. And I feel urged
to offer both sides my loving thanks. I be-
lieve that I can do that best by portraying
for my friends in Europe, the simple, in-
52 John Clark
tions, the selection committee, the overall impression
of that which was exhibited, the state of the art, and
on the public taste. [...] Compared to the sometimes
devastating comments that were made on the sub-
ject [of the behaviour of exhibition visitors], the dis-
cussion of individual works were actually really mild.”
30 Werner Kraus, “Raden Saleh (1811–1880). Ein Indo-
nocent life and happiness of my people at
home, and by outlining for my country-
men a picture of the wonders of Europe
and the nobility of the human spirit.30
We encounter here an artist–aristocrat who
identifed with two worlds, a Javanese one un-
der Dutch colonial hegemony, and a Europe-
an/German cosmopolitanism one under small
dukedoms.
By the time Raden Saleh went to Paris in
January 1845 he had been moving around in
circles for 15 years (since his arrival in Holland
and Germany) where French was commonly
spoken or writings in this language circulated.
Interestingly, a late 1860s visitor to Java men-
tions Saleh’s fuency in French and ability in
German and English. His cultural and artistic
hybridity was thus a linguistically construct-
ed one that is perplexing for Euramerican art
history. This has positioned salon painting as
one style which needed to be overturned in
his journey of artistic self-perception from the
Romantic self, a choice not truly available to
Saleh.
The mannerisms of one salon painter
Horace Vernet (1789–1863) were important
for Saleh. They evinced the soft compromise
that Saleh himself followed in his success at
establishing the transfer of a particular sub-
ject matter: The fght “with” animals or fght
“between” wild and civilised animals (fg. 4.2).
 nesischer Maler in Deutschland” [Raden Saleh 1811–
1880, an Indonesian painter in Germany], Orien-
tierungen 1 (1996): 29–62.
31 From the unpublished biography of Dozon (who
had been to the same lycée as Baudelaire), cited by
Claude Guillot & Pierre Labrousse, “Raden Saleh, un
artiste-prince à Paris” [Raden Saleh, an artist-prince
This was to become an open if allegorical ex-
pression of his own ambivalence about the
Dutch domination of Javanese culture.
Just as Saleh moved in more advanced
intellectual and artistic circles in Paris, as he
already had in Dresden and Coburg, he was
shifted back into the stylistic ambivalences
much beloved by both the new bourgeois in
the France of Louis-Phillipe, and the increas-
ingly shaky dukedoms and petty monarchies
of the German federation so put to the test
by the 1848 revolutions. At this juncture in
1845 he encountered the young linguist of
Malay, Louis Auguste Dozon, accompanied by
the poet Charles Baudelaire. They saw in his
studio a Chasse au Tigre painting (attack of a
tiger on horsemen in the forest or huntsmen
on horses while they are stalking a deer or ban-
teng), which was intended to be exposed in the
Salon of 1846.31 It is not known how much
Saleh knew of Baudelaire’s later vituperative
critiques of Vernet and his mannerisms at the
Salon.
By 1850, Saleh’s European demeanours
were being criticised at a distance among the
colonial class in the Dutch Indies, something
of which Saleh was to become only too aware
after his return to Batavia in 1853. In 1864,
W.B. d’Almeida’s Life in Java records:
I asked him whether there were any other
Javanese artists who had obtained prof-
Colonial Art as a Space of the Asian Modern
in Paris], Archipel 54 (1997): 135. For a list of works
painted or remaining in France, see ibid., 152.
32 William Barrington d’Almeida, Life in Java: Vol. 2
(London: Hurst & Blackett, 1864), 288–9.
33 See, inter alia, Kraus, The Beginning of Modern Indo-
nesian Painting, 348–9.
34 Ibid., 128–30.
ciency in the art, and he replied, not that
he was aware of, adding humorously:-
“Café et sucre, sucre et café, sont tout-ce
qu’on parle ici. C’est vraiment un air triste
pour un artiste.” [Coffee and sugar, sugar
and coffee, that’s all one talks about here.
It is truly sad-looking for an artist.]32
Saleh displayed a certain duality upon his
return to Java where, apart from one visit to
Europe from 1875 to 1878, he lived until his
death in 1880. He painted the famous arrest
of Prince Diponegoro, whose defeat in 1829
ended effective aristocratic resistance to the
Dutch in most of Java. This much-discussed
painting, now restored, shows the proud de-
fance of the ugly Dutch by the beautiful,
well-formed Javanese, among other allegorical
references (fg. 3.3).33 Simultaneously however,
he served the government as the King’s Painter
in various capacities, including a natural sci-
ence expedition in 1865 on which he painted
the live volcano Merapi (fgs. 3.4 and 3.5). The
freedom with which Saleh had moved in many
social circles in Europe was not matched in
Java where he was subject to various kinds of
prejudice in his personal life from both Dutch
and Javanese, and treated as a suspect in a re-
bellion in 1869. This prominence but relative
isolation may have accounted for the lack of
many followers save one Sundanese student he
took in 1873.34 Much of Raden Saleh’s oeuvre
53
 35 See for example, Carlos González y Ayzelá Montser-
rat Marti, Pintores Españoles en Roma (1850–1900)
[Spanish painters in Rome (1850–1900)] (Barcelona:
Tusquets Editores, 1987); Edoardo Dizy Caso, Les
Orientalistses de l’École Espagnole [The Orientalists:
The Spanish School] (Courbevoie [Paris]: ACR Edi-
tion Internationale, 1997); José Luis Díez García, La
Pintura de Historia del siglo XIX en España [History
painting of the 19 th century in Spain] (Madrid: Museo
del Prado, 1992).
was not seen in Java—his reputation there was
not one of artistic renown through circulation
of works in exhibitions but rather, the social
repute he had gained by recognition from his
European contemporaries.
Academy Mastery
The second fgure in the transfer of European
salon styles to his Asian homeland is Juan Luna
(1857–1899) from the Philippines, who was
trained by Spanish painters during the last stag-
es of his adolescence from 1873 to 1876 dur-
ing the sunset of the Spanish domination of the
Philippines. Luna went to Europe from 1877
to 1894 for further training and participation
in the art world where he was highly success-
ful, and through his brother Antonio, was an
active supporter of Philippines’ independence
struggles to overthrow the domination of Spain
from 1896 to 1897. He died very shortly af-
ter, while active as a diplomat for the nascent
Philippines’ Republic about to be bloodily
overthrown by the United States of America
between 1899 and 1902.
Something of the ironical and pictorial
position of Luna is shown by his commis-
sioned allegories of the union of Spain and the
Philippines, such as España y Filipinas (1884),
which was envisaged as two women in sisterly
embrace advancing up the well-regulated stairs
54 John Clark
36 See “The School and the Academy” in Santiago’s up-
dating of his earlier articles in Luciano P.R. Santiago,
The Life, Art, and Times of Damián Domingo, 69–84.
37 From Ambeth R. Ocampo, Rizal without the Overcoat
(Pasig City: Anvil Publishing, Inc., 2008), 148.
38 Rome au siècle d’Auguste, ou Voyage d’un Gaulois à
Rome à l’époque du règne d’Auguste et pendant une
partie du règne de Tibèr [Rome in the time of Augus-
tus, adventures of a Gaul in Rome and during a part
of the reign of Tiberius] (Paris: Librairie classique et
of progress. These works refect the desire for
an assimilationist absorption into Spain with a
parallel privileging of the Philippine elite ilus-
trado class, and perhaps the diffusion of Span-
ish as a lingua franca away from its hitherto
monopolisation in the Philippines by the fri-
ars. The complexity of Luna’s oeuvre and the
ambivalence of his reaction to colonialism, is
found by these paintings being done at almost
the same time as an indisputably anti-colonial
masterwork, Spoliarium (1884, fg. 3.6).
Over a long artistic life during which Luna
was active in Manila, Madrid, Rome and Paris,
Luna was exposed to many different stylistics.
These include the mannerisms seen in the loose
scintillating texture effects in the bottom part
of España y Filipinas, which came from then
famous but now neglected artists such as the
Barcelona painter Mariano Fortuny (1838–
1874), and the history painter Alejo Vera
(1834–1923). Luna became Vera’s studio pupil
in Madrid and followed him to Rome where
Luna lived for six years. Rome had an impor-
tant sub-society of Filipino writers and paint-
ers at the time, including the contemporary of
both Simon Flores and Juan Luna, Félix Res-
urrección Hidalgo (1855–1913). Art in Rome
was a nexus for certain types of salon art in the
mid-19th century which had escaped art his-
torical attention outside the Spanish-speaking
world due to the focus on Paris.35
 élémentaire de L. Hachette, 1835). See Patrick D. Flo-
res, “Sanguinary,” in Suri Sining: The Art Studies An-
thology (Manila: The Art Studies Foundation, 2011), 2.
Thanks for his kindly supplied typescript and notes
on the allegory, implied by Spoliarium, that, “Luna’s
opus fnds affnity with Filipino Francisco Baltazar’s
metrical romance Florante at Laura (1838; 1875)
in which its hero laments a failed homeland, in the
guise of Albania, that is suffused with and surround-
ed by a regime of deceit: All over the country/Treach-
The teaching staff of the Academia de
Dibujo y Pintura in Manila where Luna stud-
ied from 1874 were Spanish; Luna fell out
with the Spanish director Augustín Sáez and
was dismissed. This was indicative of the long-
standing dissatisfaction in ilustrado or broadly
liberal classes with Spanish art pedagogy and
codes of valuation. Philippine artists had since
the time of Damián Domingo in the 1820s
been interested in competent art teaching, at
least from a craftsman base.36 Some portraitists
and painters of church subjects like Justiano
Asuncion y Molo de San Agustin (1816–1896)
attained a very high level of competency just
before and during the period in which Luna
was studying. By the 1870s, even young artists
felt themselves able to criticise the competence,
technical teaching methods and subjects passed
on by their Spanish teachers, aware that there
was a fairly long series of very competent and
sometimes distinguished works which had been
produced since the 1790s by mostly sangley, or
specifcally Chinese-Filipino artists. But the
comparison between Spanish colonial teaching
and that in Madrid was not always unfavour-
able, and in an 1879 letter to José Rizal about
studying in Madrid, Hidalgo writes: “They are
all very good professors, but you can be very
sure that what you can study [in Manila] under
Sr. Augustin Saez is exactly the same as what is
taught here.” 37
Colonial Art as a Space of the Asian Modern
ery reigns,/While merit and goodness are prostrate,/
entombed alive in suffering and grief.” Flores cites
from eds. Patricia Melendrez-Cruz & Apolonio Chua,
Himalay: Kalipunan ng mga Pag-aaral Kay Bagatas
[Gleanings: A collection of studies on the Bagatas]
(Manila: Cultural Center of the Philippines, 1988);
John D. Morris, “José Rizal and the Challenge Of Phil-
ippines Independence,” The Schiller Institute, http://
www.schillerinstitute.org/educ/hist/rizal.html
(accessed 16 March 2016).
The move to art school in Manila and
later to Madrid privileged Juan Luna in being
able to both acquire and critically assess mid-
19th century Spanish academic technique and
its training. It also provided him with a notion
of academy style from which he would devi-
ate in 2 ways over the next 20 years: towards
dramatic, almost histrionic romantic-historical
tableaux, and towards more intimate bright-
toned pictures, sometimes with the scintilla-
tion effects of Mariano Fortuny (1838–1874),
sometimes with a proto-Impressionist touch.
Around 1888 to 1895, Luna also moved
towards expression of a socialist humanist
sympathy with urban working classes in Paris
of largely Italian origin, and with whom it is
thought he could converse freely due to his
own lengthy residence in Rome (fg. 3.7).
When Luna’s Spoliarium (fg. 3.6) won a
gold medal in 1884 at the Madrid Fine Arts
Exposition, Filipino nationalists saw this as na-
tional triumph. The painting’s theme was taken
from Charles Louis Dezobry, Rome in the Time
of Augustus, Adventures of a Gaul in Rome, and
in a speech at a later celebratory banquet, Rizal
saw Spoliarium as a refection of “the spirit of
our social, moral and spiritual life, humanity
subjected to trials unredeemed, and reason in
open fght with prejudice, fanaticism and injus-
tice.”38 The celebrated orator Graciano López
Jaena said: “The Philippines is more than a
55
 39 Santiago Albano Pilar, Juan Luna: The Filipino as Paint-
er (Manila: Eugenio López Foundation, Inc., 1980), 59.
40 Vincente L. Rafael, The Promise of the Foreign:
Nationalism and the Technics of Translation in the
Spanish Philippines (Durham: Duke University Press,
2005; Pasig City: Anvil Publishing, Inc., 2006), xvii.
41 Raquel A.S. Reyes carefully analyses Luna’s “tena-
cious” treatment of female fgures and the function of
this exploration for an ilustrado imaginary in the chap-
ter “Encountering La Parisienne: Juan Luna and the
Challenge of Modern Femininity,” in Love, Passion, and
Patriotism: Sexuality and the Philippine Propaganda
veritable Spoliarium with all its horrors! There
lie the mangled fragments, humanity massa-
cred, the rights of man perverted! There is no
semblance of justice for the common man, and
liberty is cinders, ashes, dust!”39
The intellectual historian Rafael calls
translation “the double process of appropriat-
ing and replacing the foreign while keeping
its foreignness in view;” a technique used by
the friars to make Spanish codes acceptable to
those who could not know Castilian, while si-
multaneously broadcasting the friars’ domina-
tion over the Spanish by the insertion of cer-
tain “untranslatable” Castilian words in local
languages.40 The counter-demonstration of
Filipino control over other metropolitan codes
such as cuisine, dress and art, might all be re-
garded as analogues of the acquired translation
techniques used by, and which were previously
the exclusive prerogative of, the Catholic friars.
Thus the prize-awarding in 1884 to Spoliarium
had a subversive import even as one must pre-
sume the awarding judges thought they were
privileging assimilation. Rizal’s second novel El
Filibusterismo (1891), translated as “The Sub-
56 John Clark
Movement (Singapore: NUS Press; Seattle: University
of Washington Press, 2008), 39–83.
42 An early sign of his populist sentiments sympathetic to
nationalist aspirations was his reported marching as
the banner bearer for an art association in the funeral
cortège of Garibaldi in 1882.
43 See John N. Schumacher S.J., The Propaganda Move-
ment 1880–1895: The Creation of a Filipino Conscious-
ness, the Making of the Revolution (Manila: Ateneo de
Manila University Press, 1997), 296. He concludes that
“even if all these reforms were to be attributed to the
propaganda carried on by the Filipino reformists, the
versive” by contemporaries, was part of the
ideological background which led to Rizal’s
execution in 1896, the year when both Luna
and his brother Antonio (later a revolutionary
General) were also arrested.
If there is one change in Luna’s subject
matter it is in portraiture. He is certainly one
of the frst Filipino artists to look seriously at
the urban working class rather than just assem-
ble picaresque types by occupation. Whether
within the urban working class we are also to
place his numerous studies of urban women,
including poor fower sellers, stall holders and
prostitutes, together with his erotic studies in
the Roman idyll idiom of his time, including
those of his wife, is questionable.41 These seem
to be far more part of the male studio artist’s
conventional repertory of the times. Beftting
someone trained by the Spanish academicism
against which he so often reacted, we do not
habitually see social situations pivoted against
religious fgures or elite historical subjects.
Luna had, one can deduce, a very frm idea of
what his elite public would accept, but from
the late 1880s he was certainly engaged with
 reform campaign must still be deemed a substantial
failure. For the principle behind most of the reforms
actually implemented was paternalistic colonialism,
not assimilation. Reforms professedly assimilationist
in intent, like the extension of the civil and penal codes
of the Peninsula to the Philippines, were often emas-
culated.”
44 Part of the history of the work’s return to the Philip-
pines is given in Butch Dalisay, “Restoring the Spo-
liarium,” The Philippine Star, 17 July 2006, http://www.
philstar.com/arts-and-culture/347865/restoring-
%C2%91spoliarium%C2%92 (accessed 10 February
depicting the urban working class who lived
around him in Paris (fg. 3.7).42
The art historical signifcance of Juan
Luna’s oeuvre remains cut off from his own
country until after World War II. He can be
seen as a colonial artist who successfully man-
aged counter-appropriation and to a degree,
achieved metropolitan assimilation, but as
part of a reform movement which ultimately
failed.43 This served briefy in the 1880s and
1890s as a model for other cultural transfor-
mations but only for a miniscule group, af-
fecting educated elite competent in Castilian.
The political situation in the Philippines did
not allow the foundation of a new national art,
and indeed after many vicissitudes in Spain the
work Spoliarium only entered the Philippines
in 1958.44
As Flores has indicated, Spoliarium sig-
nifcantly anticipates the novel of Rizal, Noli
me Tangere (Touch me Not, 1887).45 But after
Luna’s commission for the Batalla de Lepanto
(1887), Rizal criticised Luna for being a “His-
panophile, so […] he was never willing to
paint anything against the Spaniards.”46 Ac-
Colonial Art as a Space of the Asian Modern
2016). The work was subject to repair and re-assem-
blage on its return, and was frst shown in 1962. See
Carlos E. Da Silva, “History of the Spoliarium,” in Spo-
liarium: Unveiling Souvenir Program, exh. cat. (Manila:
Juan Luna Centennial Commission, 7 December 1962),
extracts of which I am grateful to Patrick D. Flores for
supplying.
45 Flores, op. cit.
46 Ibid., 15.
47 Ibid., 8. Translated by Flores, citing José Bantung, Epis-
tolario del pintor Juan Luna [Collected letters of the
painter Juan Luna] (Madrid: Circulo Filipino, 1955), 34.
cusation of cultural treason is very easy with
an establishment painter like Luna who had
already completed the Pacto de Sangre in 1886
(commemorating a blood oath in 1565 be-
tween the Spanish invader of the Philippines,
Miguel López de Legazpi, and the Muslim
ruler, Rajah Sikatuna of Bohol) which was
publicly unveiled in November 1887, nine
months after Noli Me Tangere was published.
It was perhaps enough for Luna to show him-
self an assimilado equal of the metropolitan
painters. Patriotic counter-appropriation of a
metropolitan discourse is a diffcult and nec-
essarily complex position for a colonial, one
which meets with cynical self-appraisal by the
artist. Later on Luna saw himself as a member
of the dissident salon Société Nationale des
Beaux Arts and had a cool eye for bourgeois
history painting, commenting: “All paintings
depicting History are false, beginning with
what is essential, which is the conception,
and those that believe that a good composi-
tion, correct drawing, brilliant colour and a
lot of period attire suffce for a fne painting
are mistaken.”47
57
 But one may ask what range of imagery
and technical expression was founded by Juan
Luna and then carried on, perhaps with differ-
ent intentions, by others. The 1896 Katipunan
Rising seems to have surprised the ilustrado class
which took part in it semi-autonomously.48 It
created the frst of two breaks with the 19th-
century tendency towards assimilated accept-
ance of Spanish “colonial enlightenment”
which one can see in Luna, and indeed Rizal,
who died proclaiming his loyalty to Spain. It
was the friars, with their anti-enlightenment
cultural restriction of Castilian as well as their
local manipulation and oppression of Filipino
congregations, who were their main enemy.
Perhaps the American conquest in 1898
came too quickly for a social space to be
opened in the new Philippine Republic—one
that could be openly critical of the friars, and
for which one would expect to see extensive
satirical imagery that Luna might well have
provided. What was passed on, probably de-
terminatively, as a former Spanish painter be-
came the frst head of the art school at the new
University of the Philippines (Rafael Enriquez,
director 1909–1925), was a re-assertion of na-
tional types and a kind of (male-centred) erot-
ics of self-determination seen above all in the
work of Fernando C. Amorsolo (1892–1972),
depicting beautiful female peasants engaged in
noble agricultural toil.
Portraits from Life
The code of verisimilitude can bewitch,
and there appear to be several cross-regional
comparisons in portraiture possible despite
the fragmentation of Southeast Asia in the 19th
century by Euramerican colonial powers.
The commanding local ruler depicted in
1879 by Raden Saleh’s pupil, Raden Kusumadi-
brata, appears to be there in reality, looking at
us as we dare to observe him (fg. 3.8). The hi-
erarchically superior position of the Regent is
fgured in photographic lighting: We think this
58 John Clark
personage is truly embodied with power, or el-
egance, or a certain ferce resolve, because the
image is linked indexically to that of whom it is
also a representation. Here perhaps, is the frst
of a long series of portraits of powerful persons
which continues into the postcolonial period in
many parts of Asia.
But let us set this aristocratic portrait
alongside the depiction of bourgeois delights
in a settled, comfortable and secure family life,
a colonial world which encloses by its comfort
and allegorises security (fg. 3.9). There had been
some antecedence for this display of colonial
safety in Saleh’s 1832 depiction of the family
in Holland of his Dutch colonial sponsor The
Baud Family in their Voorburg Country House,
but these predecessors were only implicitly
present in pictorial discourse by the 1870s to
1890s.
If in a way, the cross-regional antecedent
for representing a national, incipiently anti-
colonial hero is Saleh’s quiet, dignifed image
of Diponegoro (fg. 3.3), Fabian de la Rosa’s
portrait of the national hero (fg. 3.10) who had
been executed six years earlier on 30 December
1896 is of someone intellectually earnest and
emotionally ferce in his rejection of colonial
hypocrisy, showing a secular honesty as op-
posed to the false religiosity of the friars which
Rizal’s books ridiculed. De la Rosa’s Rizal por-
trait looks back at an only recently dead martyr
in anticipation of a future where the values he
embodied might serve as both a national refer-
ence and a template for future behaviour.
The past here becomes a personifed al-
legory about a time in the future, one where
the individual is completely Asian, having mas-
tered the West in so many ways. In a mode of
portraiture much followed later elsewhere in
Asia, it is a modern Asian allegory about what
sort of person should come to be.49 A local
meaning has thus been made implicit within
an art expression that was once borrowed—and
afterwards utterly transformed by the new sub-
jects it is mobilised to show.
48 Reynaldo Clemeña Ileto, Pasyon and Revolution: Pop-
ular Movements in the Philippines, 1840–1910 (Quez-
on City: Ateneo de Manila University Press, 1979), 79.
Ileto opines that “a serious obstacle to contemporary
understanding of the Katipunan is the established
view that the rise of nationalism culminating in the
revolution of 1896–1900 was purely a consequence
of heightened Westernization in the nineteenth cen-
tury.” However, he considers that despite the injus-
tices perceived by ilustrados after their education
abroad, the real ideological construction of Philip-
pines’ independence comes from within and below
the class of the ilustrados, and the turning of Catholic
theology to notions of redemptive revolt by the very
large bulk of the population who did not know Castil-
ian, let alone went abroad. He continues his analysis
of the conventional view of nationalism due to the
Colonial Art as a Space of the Asian Modern
Philippines being understood by ilustrados from out-
side: “It was only during their stay abroad that these
young, educated Filipinos, called ‘ilustrados’ realized
what freedom meant, heightened consciousness led
to the dissolution of the ‘aura of authority and the
halo of grace’ that has bound Filipinos to the colo-
nial order. Realizing such injustices done to them, as
forced labor, taxes, and inequality before the law, the
ilustrados began to wage a propaganda campaign
aimed to make Filipinos and Spaniards equal before
the existing colonial framework; they wanted reforms
not independence. In spite of their limited aims, how-
ever, the ilustrados are credited with having frst con-
ceived of a Filipino national community.”
49 This anticipates the manipulation of fctitious im-
ages of the young Chairman Mao as the model per-
sonality for youth in 1960s China.
59
 3.1 Anonymous
Five Javanese Court Offcials
(detail of one painting)
c. 1820–1870
Cotton (textile), oil and gold paint
(gilding) on paper
196.8 x 74.3 cm
Collection of Rijksmuseum
Image courtesy of Rijksmuseum

3.2 Khrua In Khong 3.1

Allegory of Dharma showing horse racing
c. 1850s–1860s
Mural in Wat Borom Niwat, Bangkok.
Photograph by Khun Pairin, with the
kind permission of Wat Borom Niwat.

3.3 Raden Saleh

The Arrest of Diponegoro
1857
Oil on canvas
112 x 179 cm
Koleksi Istana Presiden, Jakarta
Photographer: Susanne Erhards
Photo © Goethe-Institut Indonesien

358 John Clark

0328-Charting Thoughts.indd 358 28/3/17 2:52 PM

 3.2

3.3

Colonial Art as a Space of the Asian Modern 359

0328-Charting Thoughts.indd 359 28/3/17 2:52 PM

 3.4

3.5

360 John Clark

0328-Charting Thoughts.indd 360 28/3/17 2:52 PM

 3.6

3.4 Raden Saleh

Merapi, Eruption by Day
1865
Oil on canvas
59.5 x 92 cm
Collection of the Tan Family

3.5 Raden Saleh

Merapi, Eruption by Night
1865
Oil on canvas
58.6 x 91 cm
Collection of the Tan Family

3.6 Juan Luna

Spoliarium
1884
Oil on canvas
422 x 766 cm
Collection of National Museum
of the Philippines, Manila

Colonial Art as a Space of the Asian Modern 361

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 3.7

3.7 Juan Luna

Unknown Heroes
1891
Oil on canvas 3.8
195 x 258 cm
Collection of Biblioteca Museu Víctor
Balaguer. Vilanova i la Geltrú
Image courtesy of Biblioteca Museu
Víctor Balaguer

3.8 Raden Kusumadibrata

Raden Adipati Kusumadiningrat,
Regent of Galuh
1879
Oil on canvas
196 x 128 cm
Collection of Nationaal Museum van
Wereldculturen, coll.no. TM-A-5752

3.9 Jan Daniel Beynon

A Lazy Afternoon
1859
Oil on canvas
43 x 53 cm
Collection of National Gallery Singapore

3.10 Fabian de la Rosa

Rizal
1902
Oil on canvas
64.6 x 48.8 cm
Collection of National Gallery Singapore

362 John Clark

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 3.9

3.10

Colonial Art as a Space of the Asian Modern 363

0328-Charting Thoughts.indd 363 28/3/17 2:52 PM

 1 In Amsterdam. Raden Saleh showed Een mans Por-
trait (Portrait of a Man). See Lijst der kunstwerken
van nog in leven zijnde Nederlandsche Meesters, wel-
ke zijn toegelaten tot de Tentoonstelling van den Jare
1834 [List of artworks of living Dutch Masters, which
are admitted to the Exhibition in the year 1834]
(Amsterdam: s.n., 1834), 14, no. 377.
2 Agus Dermawan & Mikke Sutanto, Maestro seni rupa
modern Indonesia [Maestro of Indonesian modern
painting] trans. Landung P. Simatupang (Jakarta:
Kementrian Pariwisata & Ekonomi Kreatief Republik
Indonesia, 2013), 14.
3 The other two paintings in the collection of National
(4)
The Javanese Painter Raden Saleh (c. 1811–1880):
A Star in the Firmament of Indonesian Modern Visual Art
Marie-Odette Scalliet
In 19th-century history of Southeast Asian
fne arts, the Javanese painter Raden Saleh
Syarif Bustaman (c. 1811–1880, fg. 4.1) oc-
cupies a singular position. After having been
introduced to Western academic painting tech-
niques in his homeland, he was the frst artist of
Asian origin to receive professional training in
Europe. As early as 1834, he was the frst to
have shown a painting at a European Exhibition
of Living Masters.1 In the context of Indone-
sian art history, Raden Saleh is regarded as the
perintis (precursor) of seni lukis modern Indo-
nesia (modern Indonesian painting), and Der-
mawan and Sutanto opine that “the modernity
of his art obviously has connection with the
painter’s journey through life.”2
In the 21st century, no fewer than three
of his paintings were the frst to have been
60 Charting Thoughts
Gallery Singapore are Wounded Lion (c. 1839) and
Ship in Distress (1842).
4 It is not until 1898 that a second Indonesian artist
(Javanese-born like Saleh) received professional
training in Europe, specifcally Leiden and Amster-
dam in the Netherlands. It was the young “Mas Ab-
dullah” alias Abdullah Suriosubroto (1878–1941),
who became a prominent landscape painter. Also
known as “Abdullah Senior,” he was the father of the
painters Sudjono Abdullah (1911–1991) and Basoeki
Abdullah (1915–1993).
5 Saleh’s father, Sayyid Husen bin Alwi bin Awal, his
mother, Raden Ayu Syarif Husen bin Alwi bin Awal,
and Sura Adimanggala were cousins. They shared the
acquired by an Asian public museum, National
Gallery Singapore, outside of Indonesia. One
of them counts among the masterpieces of this
museum; it has passed into posterity under the
title Boschbrand (Forest Fire) (fg. 4.2), and is the
most spectacular and intriguing the artist ever
painted.3
Raden Saleh’s fame is largely due to his
numerous dramatic compositions depicting big
cats and other wild animals like deers, bantengs
and rhinoceroses. By the subject of its composi-
tion depicting tigers, bantengs, leopards and a
stag feeing the inferno of a burning Javanese
forest, and its monumental size, Forest Fire is
unique in Saleh’s artistic creation. The painting
was conceived and completed in Paris between
1847 and 1849.
Saleh’s remarkable destiny—the twists and
 same grandfather, Kyai Ngabehi Kertabasa Bustam.
On Raden Saleh’s ancestry, see Raden Adipati Aria
Kartadiningrat & Boepati Madjalengka, “Silsilah Bes-
taman” [Genealogy Bestaman], Tijdschrift voor Indis-
che Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde [Journal of linguis-
tics, geography and ethnography of the East Indies]
XLII, nos. 2–3 (1900): 135–43; H.J. de Graaf, “Het Se-
marangse geslacht Bustam in de 18e en de 19e eeuw:
afkomst en jeugd van Radèn Salèh” [The Semarang
family Bustam in the 18th and 19 th centuries: Origin
and youth of Raden Saleh], Bijdragen tot de Taal-,
Land- en Volkenkunde [Journal of the humanities
and social sciences of Southeast Asia] 135 (1979):
252–81. It was in Europe that Saleh (sometimes)
turns of his cosmopolitan life, his encounters
with the intellectual and artistic elite, his re-
lations at princely and royal courts over more
than two decades in Europe (1829–1851),
as well as his achievements—defes imagina-
tion. The singularity of his case is not com-
parable with that of other younger Southeast
Asian artists such as, for instance, the Filipinos
Juan Luna (1857–1899) and Félix Resurrección
Hidalgo (1855–1913), who also experienced
Europe.4
Encouraged by Antoine Auguste Joseph
Payen (1792–1853), his frst teacher and life-
long companion during his many years in Java,
Saleh was not just a budding artist who became
aware of a true vocation and succeeded in ful-
flling his ambition on the threshold of adult
life. Born in Central Java, he was not the free
citizen of a sovereign nation. Like his country-
men, Saleh was subjected to a colonial regime
imposed by a foreign nation: the kingdom of
the Netherlands. As a protagonist and specta-
tor of diverging and converging (if not funda-
mentally opposing) sociocultural and political
entities, from a young age, Saleh developed an
amazing gift for the acquisition of new knowl-
edge and a remarkable adaptability. Despite
the necessary compromises made under Dutch
rule, he acclimatised to the regime without ever
The Javanese Painter Raden Saleh (c. 1811–1880)
added “Syarif Bustaman” to his name to stress his
family origin and identity. In his writings, Saleh never
mentions his father, who probably died when he was
still an infant. His mother was still alive in 1853.
6 No other source corroborates this information;
Saleh himself is inconsistent. In November 1836, he
asserted being 27 years old (this implies 1809 as his
year of birth, which is more plausible than 1811), and
in a letter dated December 1865, he writes that he
was 16 when he arrived in the Netherlands (in 1829);
he would thus have been born in 1813, which is less
plausible. However for a Javanese, a date of birth
Anno Domini was then irrelevant.
losing his own sense of identity or Islamic faith.
In situations made up of paradoxes and ambi-
guities, Saleh’s personal and artistic accomplish-
ments, in his homeland and in Europe, should
therefore be regarded from both Eastern and
Western perspectives. It is imperative, though
challenging, to keep a balance between ob-
jectivity and subjectivity within diametrically
opposed colonial and postcolonial discourses
and manifold interpretations.
Born under an Auspicious Star
Saleh, the painter who would include in his
thematic repertoire, seascapes depicting ships
in distress slamming into raging seas, like the
one in the National Gallery Singapore, saw the
light close by the shores of the Java Sea, in the
residential area of Terboyo (Torbaya) situated
north-east of Semarang (Central Java), along
the road to Demak. His parents were part
of the extended household of their common
frst cousin Kyai Adipati Sura Adimanggala
(c. 1760–1827), the regent of Semarang.5 Ac-
cording to Saleh’s autographed inscription on
a small portrait of him drawn by C.C. Vogel
von Vogelstein in Dresden, 1839, he was born
in May 1811, in the year of the British invasion
of Java.6 If the month and year are accurate,
61
 7 Napoleon set up the kingdom of Holland in 1806,
placing his brother Louis Bonaparte on its throne. In
1810, Napoleon annexed Holland.
8 Undated drawings (no later than 1825) held at Tro-
penmuseum, Amsterdam, and the Collection Payen
in Museum Volkenkunde, Leiden, bear the signature
“Sarib Saleh.” The letter from 1820 is signed “Saleh”
(see note 22, infra). In his writings Payen refers to
“Saleh.” “Raden” is a predicate.
9 Peter Carey, The Power of Prophecy: Prince Dipone-
goro and the End of the Old Order in Java, 1785–1855
(Leiden: KITLV Press, 2007), 351.
the infant Saleh was subjected to the French co-
lonial empire shortly before the Franco-Dutch
administration was handed over to Lieutenant-
Governor Thomas Stamford Raffes (1781–
1826).7
From the very beginning, the little Sarib
Saleh was exposed to the paradoxes and am-
biguities of colonial rule as experienced by his
family.8 He was at the same time immersed in
a learned, literate environment. Adimanggala
was a scholar with deep knowledge of Javanese
literature, customary law, religion and civi-
lisation in its different aspects. He was open-
minded, and is known to have been one of the
few key informants for scholar administrators
like Raffes and John Crawfurd (1783–1868).
His expertise enabled them to draw on local
sources for their respective studies and ency-
clopaedic publications: Raffes’ History of Java
(1817) and Crawfurd’s History of the Indian
Archipelago (1820).9 Encouraged by Raffes, the
enlightened regent was the frst Javanese found
willing to send two of his children abroad for a
Western scholarly education. A precedent was
thus set, though Adimanggala’s sons Raden
Mas Saleh (c.1800–n.d.) and Raden Sukur
(c.1802–n.d.) were not sent to Europe but
instead, to Durrumtollah Academy, Calcutta,
in 1812. Three years later, after having suc-
cessfully passed the “annual examination,”
62 Marie-Odette Scalliet
10 “Bengal Extracts. Durrumtollah Academy, Classical,
Commercial and Mathematical,” Java Government
Gazette, 11 March 1815, 3; Carey, op. cit., 364.
11 R.M. Said’s presence in Buitenzorg is attested by an
1821 letter addressed to Reinwardt from the regent
signed off as “Adimangolo.” Years later in 1842, R.M.
Said reminded Reinwardt in another letter that he was
Reinwardt’s “anak piara di [adopted child in] Buiten-
zorg.” Letters held in Leiden University Library, Rein-
wardt Archives, BPL 2922. Saleh reveals his family
relationship with R.M. Said in a letter in Malay, using
the word kaponakan (nephew, not cousin). See details
of this in Marie-Odette Scalliet, “Raden Saleh et les
“Denmas Saleh [Raden Mas Saleh], the young
Javanese Nobleman” returned to Semarang
with “honorary rewards for his profciency
in Geometry, Algebra, and Drawing.”10 It is
tempting to imagine the elder cousin encour-
aging the child’s natural talent and guiding him
in his frst steps in the art of drawing.
First Steps towards an
Unpredictable Destiny
Saleh’s life took a turn with far-reaching conse-
quences probably in late 1819, and certainly no
later than mid-1820. He left Semarang and his
family, and was taken to Buitenzorg (Bogor),
where the governor-general’s palace and the
administrative offces were situated. A clarifca-
tion must be made regarding one point: Saleh
was not left alone to face a different life in West
Java; Raden Mas Said, a nephew of his, shared
his fate.11
In the meantime, the so-called British
interregnum in Java had come to an end: “In
1816 Java and other Indonesian posts were re-
turned to Dutch authority as part of the gen-
eral reconstruction of European affairs after
the Napoleonic wars.”12 Napoleon’s geographi-
cal and political empire belonged to the past.
New boundaries outlined the monarchies and
principalities of Europe as settled by the Con-
 Hollandais: Artiste protégé ou otage politique?”
[Raden Saleh and the Dutch: Protected artist or politi-
cal hostage?], Archipel 69 (2005): 151–258.
12 M.C. Ricklefs, A History of Modern Indonesia since
c. 1200, 3rd ed. (Stanford: Stanford University Press,
2001), 143.
13 The United Kingdom of the Netherlands equate,
grosso modo, to the modern kingdoms of the Neth-
erlands and Belgium, whose bounderies were drawn
in 1843. Dutch kings and queens are not crowned but
“inaugurated.”
14 On Reinwardt and in particular his mission in the
Dutch East Indies, see Andreas Weber, Hybrid Ambi-
gress of Vienna. The former Dutch Republic
of the Seven Provinces (Northern Low Coun-
tries) was not restored but merged with the
former Austrian Netherlands (Southern Low
Countries). William I (1772–1843), Prince of
Orange-Nassau and Sovereign Prince in 1813,
became in 1815 the frst King of the United
Kingdom of the Netherlands, and ruler of the
Grand-Duchy of Luxemburg.13
There are no sources to shed light on
the circumstances in which the decision to
send Saleh to Buitenzorg was taken, or the
exact duration of time Saleh spent there. We
do know that contact with Saleh’s family was
made when governor-general G.A.G.P. van
der Capellen (1778–1848) undertook two
offcial journeys across Java in 1817 and 1819,
and was received by Adimanggala in Terboyo.
Professor C.G.C. Reinwardt (1773–1854), di-
rector of the Department of Agriculture, Arts
and Sciences of Java and the neighbouring is-
lands, and the draughtsman Adrianus Johannes
(Jan) Bik (1790 –1872) were included in the
governor-general’s 1817 retinue.14 Rather than
speculate on the reasons for this “adoption” by
the governor-general, which suggests he wished
to ensure the fdelity of Adimanggala and his
family or wanted to use the young Saleh and
Raden Mas Said as examples of his ability to
“civilise” the natives, we must emphasise Saleh’s
The Javanese Painter Raden Saleh (c. 1811–1880)
tions: Science, Governance, and Empire in the Career
of Caspar G.C. Reinwardt (1773–1854) (Amsterdam:
Leiden University Press, 2012; originally PhD diss.,
Leiden University) https://openaccess.leidenuniv.nl/
handle/1887/18924 (accessed 15 October 2015);
Andreas Weber, “Bitter Fruits of Accumulation: The
Case of Caspar Georg Carl Reinwardt (1773–1854),”
History of Science 52, no. 3 (2014): 297–318, http://
hos.sagepub.com/content/52/3/297 (accessed 15
October 2015).
15 Note 3 and Scalliet, “Raden Saleh et les Hollandais,”
152.
recognised artistic talent. Maybe it was Rein-
wardt who was solely responsible for the mu-
tual agreement with the boys’ family. It is also
known that Reinwardt renewed contact with
Saleh’s family when he stayed in Semarang in
1818 and late 1819.15 Raden Mas Said could
assist him as a translator of Malay and Java-
nese, and Saleh could be trained to make bo-
tanical drawings of specimens of fora growing
in the Kebun Raya (Botanical Garden) Rein-
wardt had started to lay out in 1817 or col-
lected during his scientifc explorations. In any
case, three potential teachers were then based
in Buitenzorg as artists attached to Reinwardt’s
“department”: the aforementioned Jan Bik, his
young brother Jannes Theodoor Bik (1796–
1875), and the landscape painter and architect
Antoine Payen. It has been mentioned that the
younger Bik was Saleh’s frst teacher, though no
contemporary archival source corroborates this
presumption. However it was Payen who took
Saleh under his wing, and this decision resulted
for the major part in a then unpredictable out-
come. It resulted also in a relationship lasting
far beyond the mentor’s departure to Europe in
early 1826. Many years later on the occasion of
a reunion in 1847, the former pupil and com-
panion, who had since become a celebrated
painter in Europe, offered to the 55-year-old
Payen a signifcant and sensitive token of their
63
 16 Marie-Odette Scalliet, “‘Back to the Nature’ in the
East Indies,” in Pictures from the Tropics: Paintings
by Western Artists during the Dutch Colonial Period in
Indonesia (Amsterdam: Royal Tropical Institute; Wijk
en Aalburg: Pictures Publishers, 1999), 58.
17 Ibid., 48–9.
18 Payen was born in Brussels. His family was from
Tournai city in the province of Hainaut, Belgium.
19 As a matter of fact, in the absence of a colonial
government-appointed architect Van der Capellen
created for Payen the additional post of “governor-
general’s architect.” Many projects took up a great
deal of Payen’s time to the detriment of his painter’s
mission, from designing an English garden at the
rear of the Buitenzorg palace and seeing to its res-
mutual attachment in the form of a fne and so-
ber portrait (fg. 4.3) depicting the amiable face
of, according to his youngest daughter, a “true
scholar and conscientious artist.”16
According to Van der Capellen, Payen was
“a very pleasant and sociable man besides a
highly gifted one. To know him is to like him,
and he is a great favourite with my guests.”17
Payen was indeed a highly educated man.
After solid classical schooling, he studied arch-
itecture at the academy of Tournai like his fa-
ther and uncle, and landscape painting in the
studio of Henri Van Assche (1774–1841) in
Brussels.18
In Java since 1817, Payen had already
explored the region of Bogor and parts of the
Priangan (Parayangan), the volcanic heart of
the Sunda lands, before Saleh was entrusted
to him. As a landscapist appointed by King
William I, his primary mission was to execute
faithful views of Java—of its fora and fauna, of
daily life in kampungs and the felds, and also
of antiquities in Java and other islands of the
archipelago he visited.19 For this purpose, Pay-
en made hundreds of sketches, more elaborate
drawings and watercolours, oil studies and sev-
eral topographic maps he used for the composi-
tions in oil on canvas he painted in his studio.20
64 Marie-Odette Scalliet
tauration, to planning the construction of a prison
in Banyuwangi in the far eastern part of Java, and
also designing a funeral monument for Rumphius in
Amboina.
20 With the exception of a few items, Payen’s collection,
including his paintings and diaries, is held at Mu-
seum Volkenkunde, Leiden. For details pertaining to
the catalogue, biography and edition of Payen’s dia-
ries and letters, see Marie-Odette Scalliet, Antoine
Payen peintre des Indes orientales: Vie et écrits d’un
artiste du XIXe siècle (1792–1853) [Antoine Payen,
painter of the East Indies: The life and writings of
a 19 th-century artist (1792–1853)] (Leiden: Onder-
zoekschool CNWS, 1995; originally PhD diss., Leiden
University).
While reading Payen’s frst diary which covers
the years 1817–1819, one can trace his itiner-
aries, learn about the manners, customs, folk
tales and legends of the Sundanese kampung
inhabitants, and pinpoint with precision many
picturesque spots that showcased the river Cit-
arum (Tjitaroem) and its rocky, wooded banks
at its best (during sunrise or sunset). It enables
us to localise and date the painting The River
Citarum, Priangan (West Java), with Figures on
a Tree-Trunk Raft held at National Gallery Sin-
gapore (fg. 4.4). This view depicted in oil on
paper is taken upstream of the cave Sanghyang
Tikoro situated northeast of Bandung where a
branch of the river fows, nowadays a popular
tourist attraction.21
Observations of Nature and Life Lessons:
Birth of a Vocation
Saleh’s sedentary life in Buitenzorg would
not last for long. The boy would soon share
Payen’s vie errante (or wandering life), as the lat-
ter called it, and experience the hardship of long
journeys on horseback or foot, and of make-
shift camps. It is hard to imagine that their frst
expedition together lasted about six months,
an expedition in the best tradition of early
21 Payen set up camp in the vicinity of the river and the
cave between 23 May and 10 June 1819. He made
several drawings and studies in oil; see Payen’s diary
entries in Scalliet, ibid., 303–11.
22 Scalliet, “Raden Saleh et les Hollandais,” 157–9.
Saleh (as he signed) addressed a letter to Reinwardt
dated 30 September 1820 during this expedition. It is
the only extant letter written by Saleh before he left
Java in 1829.
23 It is hard to believe that Saleh was then only nine
years old, if he was indeed born in 1811.
24 By a fortunate coincidence, an anonymous draughts-
man drew a map of Bandung (c. 1825) with indica-
tion of Payen’s house, reproduced in: L. van der Pijl et
al., Bandoeng en haar hoogvlakte [Bandung and its
19th-century inland explorations that includ-
ed bearers, servants, and the assistance of the
local authorities, guides and informants. They
travelled all the way down to the shores of the
Indian Ocean across a sparsely inhabited and
inhospitable part of West Java.22 If Saleh had
not enjoyed this trying experience, rich in dis-
coveries and life lessons, one can safely assume
that he would have made clear his preference
to either live permanently in Buitenzorg or
return to his family.23 Instead, he stayed with
Payen and in early 1822 followed him to Band-
ung, which was to be their home base over the
next four years.24 Rather than the representa-
tives of colonial society in Buitenzorg, Payen
preferred the company of the local population
from whom he could learn so much, hence his
choice to reside in Bandung, situated in the
heart of the Priangan. In light of the insatiable
hunger for studying Saleh showed in Europe,
as well as his unfagging desire to become as
accomplished as possible an artist (an ambi-
tion repeatedly formulated like a mantra in his
letters), it is not superfuous to emphasise the
long and enriching years spent in West Java,
and in particular in the Priangan where he lived
until 1829, as formative and foundational to
his artistic practice.
The Javanese Painter Raden Saleh (c. 1811–1880)
plateau], ed. L. van der Pijl (Bandoeng: N.V. Visser & Co.,
1950), 11. Unfortunately, the source of the original map
is not mentioned. Bandung was then a mere village.
25 The most devastating 19 th-century volcanic eruption
in Java, with the exception of the explosion of the vol-
canic island Krakatoa (Krakatau) in 1883. This event
created a tsunami, resulting in mass casualties.
26 H.J.C. Hoogeveen, Togten naar den Merapi, in midden
Java, tijdens zijn eruptie in November en December
1865 [Expeditions to the Merapi in central Java, dur-
ing its eruption in November and December 1865]
(s.l.: s.n., 1866), 8. Author’s translation.
27 Two paintings depicting the erupting Merapi by day
and night, both dated 1865, are on loan at National
Gallery Singapore (fgs. 3.4 and 3.5).
Payen shared with Saleh his fascination for
the sweeping natural landscape and topography
of the region. He was also a devoted amateur
naturalist, surveyor, and collector of minerals
and specimens of the fauna, in particular birds,
insects and butterfies.
“Observations of nature” were indeed key-
words Saleh made his own for the rest of his
life: nature in all its forms and manifestations,
animate and inanimate, desolate and inhab-
ited, peaceful and frightening like the cata-
strophic eruption of the Gunung Galunggung
in October 1822.25 This dramatic and tragic
event leads us to the explosive eruption of the
Gunung Merapi Saleh witnessed when he
stayed in Yogyakarta in 1865. He participated
in a expedition, and, from a rather safe distance,
observed “the Merapi transformed in a true
Pandaemonium. The spectacle was terrible,
horrifying, frightening, made you shiver, but
was at the same time beautiful, splendid, mar-
vellous, and incredibly attractive.”26 Saleh must
have made sketches after nature as back in his
studio, he depicted several realistic views of the
volcano spewing ash clouds, glowing lava fows
running down its fank by day and night.27
It is more than likely that Saleh’s self-con-
sciousness as an artist “who would be painter”
65
 28 Ready-to-use tubes of oil paint had not yet been
invented.
29 As detailed in a letter sent from J.F.C. Gericke to the
Directors Board of the Dutch Bible Society, dated
4 September 1827, Semarang. Letter held in: Het
Utrechts Archief, Archives Nederlands Bijbelge-
nootschap, inv. no. 888. In a letter sent to the King
(23 January 1834, The Hague), Saleh confrms that
he had learned to paint in oil in Java. Letter held in:
Nationaal Archief, The Hague, access no. 2.10.01,
Ministerie van Koloniën 1814­–1849, inv. no. 931 (ver-
baal [minutes], 26 July 1834, no. 17).
30 Saleh disembarked on 20 July 1829 in Antwerp, home
was awakened in the company of Payen, listen-
ing to him, observing him at work and pos-
sibly helping him make oil paint by crushing
pigments and mixing them with linseed oil.28
Although there is no explicit mention that
Payen instructed his protégé in oil painting
techniques, Saleh did try his hand so well that
a traveller who called at Cianjur in 1827 noted
that he had met “Raden Saleh, a young man
who paints remarkably well.”29 Unfortunately
this visitor does not give any precise details as
to the subject of the painting(s) he saw, and
there are no surviving works from Saleh’s West
Javanese years until 1829. However, Saleh had
found his vocation and proceeded to follow his
frst teacher’s footsteps. A stroke of luck pro-
vided him with the opportunity to travel to
Europe in the company of the civil servant J.B.
De Linge, who offered him passage in exchange
for lessons in Malay and Javanese.30 Saleh was
not meant to stay more than a few months in
Antwerp but, as we know, he did indeed stay in
the Netherlands, come under the protection of
the Dutch king and move to The Hague where
he spent ten years.31 After The Hague, Saleh
lived and worked in Germany (Dresden and
Coburg), settled in Paris, which became his
home base from 1845 to 1850, travelled sev-
eral times to Germany for short and long stays,
66 Marie-Odette Scalliet
city of the Flemish family De Linge. One wonders
what Saleh did in the city of Rubens for six months,
before he moved to The Hague.
31 Saleh came under royal protection through the inter-
mediary of J.C. Baud, a protective fatherly fgure and
key presence in Saleh’s career, as well as his good
relationship with the three successive Dutch kings,
the colonial administration, and the Netherlands in
general. Baud’s numerous reports and considera-
tions, and Saleh’s letters to him (up to 1853), con-
tain a treasure trove of information. For a detailed
account of Saleh’s years in The Hague, see Scalliet,
“Raden Saleh et les Hollandais,” 167–258.
and also visited Great Britain in the summer of
1847.32 Saleh would not be back in Java be-
fore early 1852, almost 23 years after his great
departure.
Raden Saleh the Artist-Painter:
Landscapes, Tigers and Other
Wild Animals, Hunting Parties
The spectacular landscapes of the Priangan
dominated by volcanoes and the richness of
its fauna and luxuriant fora were sources of
inspiration for numerous compositions Saleh
conceived of in Europe and upon his return
to Java. So too the famous deer and stag hunt-
ing parties held in the wide plain of Bandung,
closed in from the south by a range of hills and
mountains and dominated by the Malabar vol-
cano. A selection of paintings dated between
1840 and 1849 illustrates the quintessence of
Saleh’s predilection for dramatic scenes depict-
ing wild animals, in particular the tiger. Collo-
quially known as si Loreng or the “Striped one,”
the tiger was at once Java’s most feared and
revered animal, respected for its alleged su-
pernatural powers. These paintings illustrate
as well Saleh’s skill as a landscape painter, and
bear witness to the vivid memory he had of
the regions he lived in and visited when, many
32 For an account of Saleh in Germany, see Werner
Kraus, Raden Saleh: The Beginning of Modern Indo-
nesian Painting, eds. Werner Kraus & Irina Vogelsang,
trans. Chris Cave & Werner Kraus (Jakarta: Goethe-
Institut Indonesien, 2012), 40–55; Werner Kraus,
Raden Saleh (1811–1880): Ein Javanischer Maler
in Europa [Raden Saleh (1811–1880): A Javanese
painter in Europe], ed. Julia Nauhaus (Altenburg:
Lindenau-Museum, 2013), 10–47. For an overview of
Saleh in Paris, see Claude Guillot & Pierre Labrousse,
“Raden Saleh: Un artiste-prince à Paris” [Raden
Saleh: An artist-prince in Paris], Archipel 54 (1997):
123–51, http://www.persee.fr/doc/arch_0044-8613_
years after his arrival in Europe, he chose his
subjects in his Dresden and Paris studios. Fi-
nally, a small collection of three paintings dated
1860 give insight into his production after his
return to Java, and indicate the genres that were
much in demand by his well-to-do European
and Indo-European relations.
Forest Fire (fg. 4.2) is not only the most
spectacular and astonishing picture Saleh ever
conceived, it is also the largest (300 x 396 cm)
among his recorded paintings. A representa-
tive selection of wild animals that once roamed
over large areas of both the Javanese wilder-
ness and inhabited countryside are driven by a
wildfre.33 Carried by strong gusts of wind, the
fames and glowing embers spread along trees,
tree-ferns, and alang-alang (tall-bladed grass),
causing the frantic fight of a stag, a spotted
and a black leopard, a pair of bantengs (a dark-
coated bull and a light-coated cow) and two
tigers towards a cliff overhanging a lake. Caught
between an engulfng inferno and a precipice,
these seven animals are united by the artist in a
common, desperate struggle for their improb-
able survival. The depicted scene is one of great
violence, and the sense of panic and lurking
lethal danger is almost palpable. The action is
integrated into the West Javanese mountain-
ous landscape that is devoid of human presence
The Javanese Painter Raden Saleh (c. 1811–1880)
1997_num_54_1_3419 (accessed 15 October 2015);
Marie-Odette Scalliet, “Chronique de l’année des ti-
gres: Raden Saleh entre Paris et Dresde” [Chronicle
of the year of the tigers: Raden Saleh between Paris
and Dresden], Archipel 74 (2007): 206–17, http://www.
persee.fr/doc/arch_0044-8613_2007_num_74_1_
3921?h=scalliet).
33 Many 19 th-century accounts (Payen’s being one of
them) mention tigers attacking people in the felds
and kampungs, even breaking through the thatched
roof of their houses.
34 Hence its name “talaga bodas,” or “white lake” in
Sundanese.
and shows similarities to the topography of the
Talagabodas volcano near Garut, southwest of
Bandung. The crater contains a large sulphur-
saturated lake, its steep rim covered with thick
primeval vegetation bar several barren rocky
walls on one side.34 If the situation of the Ta-
lagabodas indeed inspired Saleh, the animals
are irremediably doomed. Might an animal
survive the vertiginous fall, no salvation is con-
ceivable in the lake. There is no spark of hope.
Having fed from one hell, that of consuming
fames, the animals are about to be engulfed by
another hell, that of corrosive, deadly waters.
A strong contrast in the composition of the
painting wherein the land animals occupy its
major part, attracting the spectator’s attention,
is created by the scene simultaneously unfold-
ing in a sky partly obscured by dark billows of
smoke. Birds are gliding away with the excep-
tion of one majestic Brahminy kite (Haliastur
indus), depicted in the upper-right corner of
the picture, seeming to hold its fight while ob-
serving the dramatic scene on earth. Whatever
allegorical meaning Saleh intended to convey,
it is no coincidence that he added an extra di-
mension to the subject of his composition by
including in it this Brahminy kite. The bird is
highly symbolic in Javanese (and Indonesian)
culture due to its association with the mythical
67
 35 The Brahminy kite (elang bondol in Indonesian,
lang merah in Malay) became the offcial mascot of
Jakarta in 1986. The Garuda of the Indonesian na-
tional emblem, Garuda Pancasila, was designed
based on the Javan hawk-eagle (elang jawa).
36 As discerned from letters by Saleh to a sobat J.P.
Cornets de Groot, General Secretary of Colonial
Affairs at the Ministry of Colonies dated 17 June and
3 November 1847, Paris. Letters held in: Nationaal
Archief, The Hague, access no. 2.10.01, Ministerie
van Koloniën 1814–1849, inv. no. 4358, (verbaal [min-
utes], 11 December 1849, no. 440, Geheim [Secret]).
37 No doubt Saleh saw its impressive ruins when he
visited London in July 1847.
38 The sense of the sublime and its concepts as defned
by Edmund Burke in his treatise on aesthetics, A
Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of
the Sublime and Beautiful (1857).
semi-divine Garuda, one of the main characters
of the Mahābhārata.35
Forest Fire occupies a prominent position
among Saleh’s works depicting wild animals. In
point of fact, the main subject of fre makes the
painting even more intriguing and fascinating.
Saleh revealed this subject in two letters in Ma-
lay addressed to a correspondent at the Dutch
Ministry of the Colonies, without giving any
clue as to his motivation or source of inspira-
tion.36 Fire is a reccuring theme in the art of
painting, from the representation of hellfre
(also prevalent in Islamic art) and the biblical
burning bush to “simple” depictions of daily
life, such as villagers sitting around a camp-
fre or dancing around a bonfre. In paintings
depicting historical events, fres can be caused
by natural disasters (like the eruption of a vol-
cano), warfare on land and at sea or accidents.
A striking example of a historical accidental
fre that took place in 1834, when Saleh was
in Europe, is the fre that destroyed a large part
of the old Westminster palace: home of the
British Parliament.37 In art history, this event
is linked to William Turner (1775–1851), the
artist who sought the sublime in nature and
68 Marie-Odette Scalliet
39 In the Museums of Art of Philadelphia and Cleveland;
see http://www.philamuseum.org/collections/perma-
nent/103831.html and http://www.clevelandart.org/
art/1942.647 respectively.
40 As far as I can judge after queries and extensive re-
search in catalogues and on the web.
41 The painting was acquired in 1933 by the Ash-
molean Museum of Art and Archaelogy, Oxford;
see: http://www.ashmolean.org/ash/objects/mak
edetail.php?pmu=730&mu=732&gty=asea&sec=&
dtn=15&sfn=Artist%20Sort,Title&cpa=1&rpos=0&
cnum=&mat=&pro=&anum=&art=Piero%20di%20
Cosimo&ttl=&sou= (accessed 15 July 2014). I am
grateful to Jonathan Del Mar and Annabel T. Gallop
for drawing my attention to this painting.
42 It was inspired by Book 5 of Lucretius’ De Rerum
Natura [On the nature of things].
was fascinated by the four elements (earth, air,
fre and water) as the four animating forces of
nature.38 Turner’s two paintings, The Burning
of the Houses of Lords and Commons (1835),
count among the most famous 19th-century
pieces of art.39 However, it is not our purpose
to develop the theme of fre in art. The issue is
Saleh’s representation of a burning forest, the
starting point of his inspiration, the implica-
tion of the selected animals, and his choice of
such a subject within the context of his studies
in Europe.
Surprisingly, it appears that very few of
Saleh’s contemporaries or artists preceding him
chose this subject.40 It might seem far-fetched
to mention the Renaissance artist Piero di
Cosimo (1461–1522), but the title of his
painting, The Forest Fire (c. 1505), and the
image conjured up is too appealing to ig-
nore.41 In this narrative painting, a variety of
frightened animals are escaping a forest fre.42
Unlike Saleh’s highly dramatic and spectacular
composition, Cosimo’s realisation is complete-
ly undramatic; the fames are not threatening
and the animals merely amble away. It is even
more surprising that our search for paintings of
43 Records of Wegener’s painting may be found in
Verzeichniss der von 5. Juli 1846 an in der K.S. Akad-
emie der Künste zu Dresden öffentlich ausgestellten
Werke der bildenden Kunst [Catalogue of works of
art publicly exhibited from 5 July 1846 at the R.S.
Academy of Fine Arts in Dresden] (Dresden: s.n.,
1846), 30, no. 323; Author unknown, “Ausstellungen”
[Exhibitions], Morgenblatt für gebildete Stände/
Kunstblatt [Morning paper for cultivated classes/art
magazine] 27, no. 47 (1846): 191. Shown again at the
Dresden Salon in 1856, the painting was acquired
in 1859 by the Dresden Gemäldegalerie, as detailed
in Verzeichniss der Königlichen Gemälde-Gallerie
zu Dresden [Catalogue of the Royal Picture Gallery
in Dresden], ed. J. Hübner (Dresden: Druck von R.G.
Teubner, 1880), 461, no. 2226.
44 A smaller (120 x 171.5 cm), slightly different version
this subject leads us to Dresden, where Saleh
settled after he left Holland. In the royal capi-
tal of Saxony where he lived and pursued his
studies for more than four years, he might have
met the landscape and animal painter Johann
Friedrich Wilhelm Wegener (1812–1879).
Wegener had been a pupil of the renowned
landscape painter Johan Christian Clausen
Dahl (1788–1857), who happened to become
Saleh’s mentor. Is it just a fortuitous coincidence
that one of Wegener’s paintings representing “a
forest fre with feeing animals in the interior
landscapes of North America” was shown at the
Dresden Salon in 1846, and happened to be
praised.43 It is evident that Wegener’s approach
of the subject is totally different from Saleh’s. In
Wegener’s large composition (227 x 283 cm),
a wide selection of North American wild ani-
mals are integrated into a wooded, rocky land-
scape.44 Leaving behind the burning forest
depicted in a distant background, the animals
are not doomed. They fee towards safe refuge
found at the opposite rocky bank of a narrow
river. How interesting it would be to view both
paintings side by side, Wegener’s and Saleh’s!
The comparison and the discussion of the same
The Javanese Painter Raden Saleh (c. 1811–1880)
dated 1848 was auctioned on 31 May 2012 by
Christie’s Kensington, lot 103, see: http://www.
christies.com/lotfnder/paintings/johann-friedrich-
wilhelm-wegener-a-forest-fire-5566868-details.
aspx (accessed 15 July 2015).
45 John Clark, “Hybridity and Discursial Placement: The
Case of Raden Saleh,” 3. This paper was presented at
the Raden Saleh symposium in Jakarta, 9–10 June
2012.
46 Jean Couteau, Srihadi Soedarsono: The Path of the
Soul, vol. 1 (Jakarta: Lontar, 2003), 5.
47 Dorotheum Auctions, Vienna, 12 April 2011, lot 39,
“Von Feuer glosender Wald” [Forest consumed by
fire], see: https://www.dorotheum.com/auktionen/
aktuelle-auktionen/kataloge/list-lots-detail/
auktion/11363-gemalde-des-19-jahrhunderts/
lotID/39/lot/1916218-johan-christian-clausen-dahl.
html (accessed 15 July 2015).
subject treated by two artists of about the same
age who shared the same cultural and artistic
environment over several years would bring to
light what a diffcult and precarious task it is
to interpret Saleh’s painting. It is impossible to
guess the painter’s motivations, although For-
est Fire could be interpreted as symbolising the
forces of evil unleashed by a colonial system. As
John Clark pointed out: “The internal mean-
ings of Saleh’s work, in the absence of his own
recorded opinions or those of his peers remain
to be deduced from the context of his works in
the discourses of the time, to and from which
he moved.”45 In this context, the remark
uttered by the painter Srihadi Soedarsono
(b. 1931) is particularly wise: “It is never an
easy task to evaluate an artist’s relative contribu-
tion in an objective manner. The task becomes
even more diffcult when we place ourselves in
an international, multicultural perspective, so
that the evaluation might be free of any ethno-
centric bias.”46
Another striking coincidence is that Dahl
also treated the subject of a burning forest in
1846, in a small study in oil (20 x 25.5 cm).47
A remarkable landscapist and rightly much
69
 48 Saleh to a sobat J.P. Cornets de Groot, General Sec-
retary of Colonial Affairs at the Ministry of Colonies.
Letter held in: Nationaal Archief, The Hague, access
no. 2.10.01, Ministerie van Koloniën 1814–1849, inv.
no. 4358, (verbaal [minutes], 11 December 1849, no.
440, Geheim [Secret]).
49 Scalliet, “Chronique de l’année des tigres,” 216–8.
50 Algemeen Handelsblad [General trade newspaper],
no. 5839, 20 August 1850, 2.
51 See the early description of Forest Fire in W.R van
Hoëvell, “De tijger op Java” [The tiger in Java], De Gids
16 (1852): 502. The lithograph was made in Het Loo
by the painter and lithographer J. van der Maaten
(1820–1879), whose name is not mentioned on the
plate. See testimony by Papageno (pseudonym of
acclaimed, Dahl treated his composition—a
rocky hill covered with burning bushes and
scattered trees—and its light in a manner that
prefgure Impressionism. It is amazing that
this work shows affnities with some studies of
particular spots of the Fontainebleau Forest by
Théodore Rousseau (1812–1867), one of the
founding members of the School of Barbizon.
Saleh did not go back to Dresden after
he left Saxony in 1844, and therefore could
not have seen Wegener’s and Dahl’s paintings.
However, he did meet Dahl in Paris a few weeks
before he mentioned in his letter, dated 17 June
1847, that he was “going to start quickly a big
painting [representing] a forest on fre and
animals feeing in terror.”48 It is tempting to
imagine that both artists discussed the subject
and that the former mentor had an infuence
on Saleh’s choice.
Started in 1847, Forest Fire was not com-
pleted before the end of 1849, after the demise
of King William II on 17 March 1849, for
whom it was intended. Eventually, “the paint-
ing of extraordinary size” was delivered at the
Ministry of the Colonies in The Hague in early
1850. After having viewed it, King William III,
successsor of his father, gave orders to have it
placed in his summer residence in Apeldoorn
70 Marie-Odette Scalliet
S. Kalff), “Lets over Raden Saleh. II” [Something about
Raden Saleh. II], Java-bode [The messenger of Java],
14 December 1892. Kalff, then a schoolboy, visited
Het Loo when Van der Maaten was at work.
52 De Indische Archipel. Tafereelen uit de Natuur en het
Volksleven in Indië. Uitgegeven En Gelithographieërd
Ter Koninklijke Steendrukkerij Van C.W. Mieling, Te ’S-
Gravenhage, 1865[–1876], [The Indian archipelago:
Scenes from nature and people living in the East
Indies. Issued and lithographed at Royal Lithographic
Printing Offce by C.W. Mieling, The Hague, 1865–
1876], issues 3–4 (The Hague, 1868).
53 Guillot & Labrousse, op. cit., 138, 153.
54 Letter by Saleh to sobat J.C. Cornets de Groot,
22 February 1847, Paris. Letter held in: Nationaal
(Gelderland province), Palace Het Loo. Nei-
ther description nor the transport of Forest Fire
were mentioned in offcial ministerial and royal
records from 1850.49 Nonetheless, its presence
in Het Loo was attested by an anonymous cor-
respondent of a Dutch newspaper who had
visited the palace in the same year.50 Despite
a description published in the Dutch literary
magazine De Gids as early as 1852 by an author
who had met Saleh in The Hague in 1851, and
had seen the painting in Apeldoorn, Forest Fire
remained as good as unnoticed until it was lith-
ographed.51 In 1868, a chromolithograph Een
Boschbrand (A Forest Fire) was issued by C.W.
Mieling. It was included in a series of plates
published between 1865 and 1876, to be com-
piled in an album titled De Indische Archipel.52
The plate was however reserved for subscrib-
ers who could afford a costly work of art, and
its black and white reproduction was not pub-
lished before the beginning of the 20th century.
No photograph of the original painting had
ever been published until 2015, when its image
was disclosed by National Gallery Singapore.
The scale and complexity of the composi-
tion Forest Fire doubtessly refects Saleh’s ambi-
tion as a painter. Saleh’s ambition was also to see
his paintings enter prestigious collections, and
 Archief, The Hague, access no. 2.10.01, Ministerie
van Koloniën 1816–1849, inv. no. 4358, (verbaal [min-
utes], 11 December 1849 no. 440, Geheim [Secret]).
55 The painting was shown in The Hague in 1847.
See Lijst der Schilder–en Kunstwerken van levende
Meesters welke zijn toegelaten tot de Tentoonstelling
te ’s-Gravenhage van den Jare 1847 [List of artworks
of living masters, which are admitted to the Exhibi-
tion in The Hague in the year 1847] (’s-Gravenhage:
H.J.S. de Groot, 1847), 29, no. 371: De hertenjagt in
Indië. It was auctioned by Christie’s Singapore on 31
March 1996 and in 2000, shown at an exhibition in the
Singapore Art Museum, see Ahmad Mashadi et al.,
Visions & Enchantment: Southeast Asian Paintings,
exh. cat., eds. Ahmad Mashadi & Keong Ruoh Ling
his wishes were amply fulflled thanks to his roy-
al and princely protections and his relationships
in high society; this fruition he owed not only to
circumstances but also to talent and personality.
When he announced in June 1847 that he was
about to start working on a composition that
would become Forest Fire, he was at the height
of his fame in Paris. His painting Deer Hunt on
the Island of Java (fg. 4.5) caused a sensation at
the Paris Salon, held at the Louvre in the spring
months. Art critics wrote eulogistic reviews, an
engraving made after the painting was pub-
lished in the weekly magazine L’illustration and,
as a supreme reward, the painting was acquired
by King Louis-Philippe.53
Before the opening of the exhibition, the
painting had been fulsomely praised by Horace
Vernet (1779–1863) and several other paint-
ers who had seen it in Saleh’s studio.54 We can
imagine how proud Saleh must have been to
receive such a token of appreciation from the
great Vernet who had become his mentor and
guide, and who had invited him to work in
his vast studio at Versailles. In this impressive
and large composition (239 x 346 cm), Saleh
displays his inventiveness by chosing a beater
mounted on a buffalo as the main subject of a
hunting party and concentrating the attack of
The Javanese Painter Raden Saleh (c. 1811–1880)
(Singapore: Singapore Art Museum in association
with Christie’s International Singapore, 2000), 70–1,
pl. 6.
56 Sharing of Saleh’s success by the Dutch in Paris
was reported by the ambassador to J.C. Baud, then
Minister of the Colonies; see Scalliet, “Chronique de
l’année des tigres,” 209, 220. Examples of newspaper
reports include Algemeen Handelsblad, 19 February
1848; Journal de La Haye [Journal of The Hague],
20 February 1848.
57 One should realise that 1848 is also the year of the
abolition of slavery in the French colonies.
58 J.C. Baud in a report on Saleh; see Scalliet, “Raden
Saleh et les Hollandais,” 255. The original quote is in
French and has been translated by the author.
a tiger on him. He inversed conventional roles
and broke with his more “traditional” composi-
tions as seen in The Deer Hunt in the East Indies
he fnished in 1846 and offered to King Wil-
liam II: disturbed by the attack of a tiger, the
group of horsemen occupy the major part of
the composition while the beaters are relegated
to the distant background.55
Saleh’s success in Paris was shared by the
Dutch living there, and was also documented
in the Dutch newspapers.56 It might not be
a coincidence that Saleh was appointed as a
member of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in
Amsterdam the following year, on 2 February
1848. At about the same time, the 1848 French
Revolution, which lasted from 22 to 25 Febru-
ary, was about to break out.57 Unfortunately,
there is no extant letter by Saleh to elucidate his
experience of this political upheaval.
The records are too summary to provide
an accurate picture of the exact relationship
between Vernet and Saleh in Paris. On one
important point, however, we are informed:
Vernet did encourage Raden Saleh to concen-
trate his efforts on depicting “oriental hunting
parties and fghts [of animals],” and specifed
that “the scenes [should be] located in Java.”58
Saleh’s fame in Dresden before moving to Paris
71
 59 Kraus, The Beginning of Modern Indonesian Painting,
262–9; Kraus, Raden Saleh (1811–1880), 14–5, 74–5,
78, 80–1.
60 Van Ham Kunstauktionen, Cologne, 14 November
2014, lot 530; see: https://www.van-ham.com/daten
bank-archiv/datenbank/raden-saleh-ben-jaggia/
kampf-zwischen-einem-javanesischen-rhinozeros-
und-zwei-tigern.html (accessed 15 December 2014);
Christie’s King Street, London, 29 October 2015, lot
14; see: http://www.christies.com/lotfinder/paint
ings/raden-sarief-bustaman-saleh-a-lion-and-593
was largely due to his compositions depicting
hunting parties with Arabs and Bedouins, at-
tacks of lions and fghting lions, situated in a
fctitious North African landscape.59 As an am-
bitious and enthusiastic artist, Saleh explored
themes and an “Orient” completely strange to
his own oriental world. The lion provided him
with a formidable topic of study and practice
of his art. Ironically, the landscape in the small
painting representing a lion and lioness attack-
ing a crocodile (fg. 4.6) does not evoke the habi-
tat of those African big cats. It is almost identi-
cal to the tropical landscape in the (also small)
composition depicting a Sundanese rhinoceros
attacked by two tigers (fg. 4.7). The only no-
table difference is the horizon, in the former
closed in by a range of bluish mountains, in
the latter, by a group of trees. Both are dated
1840, and could be considered as two pendants
if they had the same dimensions. A remarkable
occurrence is that they appeared recently on
the market in 2014 and 2015 respectively, and
are, so far, the only extant paintings depicting a
crocodile and a rhinoceros—two wild animals
which can be added to Saleh’s bestiary.60 As far
as I know there is no mention of a painting
with a crocodile in published records, although
the one with a rhinoceros might be Rhinoceros
Overmastered by Tigers, which a German art
writer saw in Dresden before 1955.61 Let us
72 Marie-Odette Scalliet
5367-details.aspx?pos=6&intObjectID=5935367&si
d=&page=1&lid=1 (accessed 20 October 2015).
61 Hans Geller, Curiosa. Merkwürdige Zeichnungen aus
dem 19. Jahrhundert [Curiosities: Strange drawings
from the 19 th century] (Leipzig: VEB E.A. Seeman Ver-
lag, 1955), 71. Geller records: “Wir kennen […] ein von
Tigern überwältigtes Nashorn” [We know … a rhinoc-
eros overmastered by tigers].
62 International Exhibition 1862: Offcial Catalogue of
the Fine Art Department, exh. cat. (London: Truscott,
Son & Simmons, 1862), 212, no. 1300.
hope that Rhinoceros-Hunting by Saleh, which
was displayed in 1862 at the International Ex-
hibition in London, is not lost forever.62
In his memoirs, James Loudon (1824–1900)
tells of hunting parties in which he took part
in the 1840s in “the famous plain of Bandung
[…] 10 miles long and 4 miles wide, where
thousands [of ] deers and wild animals like
tigers and rhinoceroses were hidden in the
alang-alang (long grass) and glaga (high
reed).”63 It is the same Loudon who was
governor-general in 1872–1875, and appreciat-
ed Saleh as a person but was not charmed by his
paintings.64 After all, there is no accounting for
taste. Luckily his judgement was not shared by
one man in particular: the Scottish trader, con-
sul and landowner Alexander Fraser.65 Fraser
commissioned four views of Java, of which
three are reproduced: Six Horsemen Chasing
Deer (fg. 4.8), Javanese Jungle (fg. 4.9) and Forest
and Native House (fg. 4.10). The fourth, Java-
nese Temple in Ruins, represents a view of Candi
Mendut which Saleh visited in 1852. They are
all approximately the same size, and all but one
(Javanese Jungle) are dated 1860. After 33 years
in Java, Fraser left the island for good in 1879
and settled in London, where he died in 1904.
The collection was fortunately not dispersed
and eventually donated to the Smithsonian Na-
tional Museum of Natural History in 1925.66
63 Henk Boels, Janny de Jong & C.A. Tamse, Eer en for-
tuin: Leven in Nederland en Indië 1824–1900: Auto-
biografe van Gouverneur-Generaal James Loudon
[Honour and fortune: Life in the Netherlands and
the Indies 1824–1900: Autobiography of Governor-
General James Loudon] (Amsterdam: De Bataafsche
Leeuw, 2003), 115–6. In the Dutch East Indies, the
distance between two mileposts equalled 1506 m.
64 Ibid., 306.
65 Compiled by Alexander Dingwall Fordyce, Family
Record of the Name of Dingwall Fordyce in Aberdeen-
In 1985, they were tranferred to the American
Art Museum. The archives pertaining to the
gift reveal a valuable detail: Fraser paid 1000
guilders for each painting. They illustrate per-
fectly the major part of Saleh’s production after
his return to Java—his love of nature and of
his country, his deep knowledge of its fora and
fauna, his interest for Javanese antiquities and
his sense of detail. We see here the landscape
painter at work, and it reminds us of his years
in the company of Payen, his studies under An-
dreas Schelfhout in The Hague, his discovery
of the School of Dusseldorf, and his experience
with Johan Dahl in Dresden. In his letters from
Paris, Saleh mentions very few names of paint-
ers besides Vernet. Most of the extant paintings
from his Javanese years are, besides portraits,
landscapes, including the erupting Merapi.
It would be unfair to consider them as sim-
ple topographic views. The contrast between
Fraser’s irenic landscapes and Saleh’s European
compositions overwhelmed by violence (Forest
Fire being an example taken to the extreme) is
remarkable.
Forest Fire was a royal gift. As such, it re-
mained for some 160 years a royal affair. It left
its royal abode twice at the end of the 19th cen-
tury: once in 1883 to be displayed at the Inter-
national Colonial and Export Trade Exhibition
in Amsterdam, the other in 1894 at the World’s
The Javanese Painter Raden Saleh (c. 1811–1880)
shire, Showing the Descent of the First-Known Pro-
genitor of Either Name—Both Direct and Collateral
(Fergus: s.n., 1885), 142.
66 Smithsonian Institution Archives, access no. 86022,
record unit 305.
67 “Graf van Raden Saleh wordt gerestaureerd” [Raden
Saleh’s grave to be restored], Algemeen Indisch dag-
blad: De Preangerbode [General newspaper of the
East Indies: The messenger of the Priangan], no. 160,
4 December 1952, 2.
Fair in Antwerp. After this last event, the paint-
ing was stowed away, never shown again and
nearly forgotten. Nearly but not entirely; Saleh’s
auspicious star was keeping watch over it. It is
fortunate that it found its way to National Gal-
lery Singapore and a broad public is now able to
see this masterpiece.
Raden Saleh: Son of the Indonesian Nation
and Pioneer of Modern Indonesian Painting
Raden Saleh, the Schilder des Konings (King’s
Painter), passed away in Bogor on 23 April
1880. Saleh was proud of his title, but with
the emergence of the Indonesian Republic it
henceforth belonged to an abhorred past.
In 1952, President Sukarno paid a visit to
Saleh’s grave in Bogor. He was so dismayed by
its dilapidated state that he subsequently gave
orders to his Minister of Education and Cul-
ture Mohammad Yamin to see to its restora-
tion.67 About a year later, the restoration was
completed. On Monday 7 September 1953,
an offcial ceremony took place to mark this
achievement and pay renewed hormat (respect)
to Raden Saleh. In his speech, Yamin
insisted on the signifcance of Raden Saleh
in the frst place as a painter and as an art-
ist, then as a nationalist and fnally as an
73
 68 Yamin confuses this with the painting Fight between
an African Buffalo and Two Lions (1848), also known
under the title Struggle between Life and Death
(Antara Hidup dan Mati). “President over Raden Saleh”
[The President on Raden Saleh], Java-bode, no. 320,
8 September 1953, 2. Author’s translation.
69 “Raden Saleh, kunstenaar, nationalist en ideal-
ist, geëerd door nageslacht” [Raden Saleh, artist,
nationalist and idealist honoured by posterity],
Het nieuwsblad voor Sumtra [The newspaper for
Sumatra], no. 1520, 15 September 1953, 2.
70 The Indonesian term “Orde Baru” was introduced by
Suharto, second president of Indonesia, when he
came to power in 1966. It has become synonymous
idealist. He sympathised with the uprising
of Diponegoro, and he expressed his feel-
ings in three of his best-known paintings:
“Boschbrand” [Forest Fire], “A Buffalo
Hunt in Java” (which symbolises the strug-
gle between the Indonesian buffalo and
the Dutch lion), and the “Arrest of Dipon-
egoro in Magelang.” 68
President Sukarno then took the foor:
I wish to point out that we are here on
[the] sacred ground of our fatherland, in
front of the grave of a great Indonesian.
[…] Not that I am such an art lover but
because I speak here on behalf of the
Republic of Indonesia, on behalf of the
people of the whole country, I honor the
memory of one of our great sons.69
The tone of nationalist appropriation was
set. This appropriation might be debatable but
is certainly understandable in the context of a
nation that had gained its sovereignty fairly re-
cently, after a long and painful struggle. Saleh’s
life and paintings have thus been reinterpreted
74 Marie-Odette Scalliet
with Suharto’s regime (1966–1998), see Ricklefs, op.
cit., 284.
71 Jacques Leclerc, “The Political Iconology of the In-
donesian Postage Stamp (1950–1970),” trans. Nora
Scott, Indonesia no. 57 (1993): 20. Originally pub-
lished in French in 1973.
72 “Petisi Bersama 2015 kepada Presiden Jokowi”
[Joint petition 2015 to President Jokowi] Petisi Raden
Saleh 2005 [Petition Raden Saleh 2005] https://
petisiradensaleh2005.wordpress.com/2015/02/26/
petisi-bersama-2015-kepada-presiden-jokowi/
(accessed 7 July 2015).
73 Dermawan & Sutanto, op. cit., 13. To be precise, Saleh
“plunged into the profession” in the early 1830s. Der-
mawan assigns this position to Saleh in Indonesian
within a nationalist framework, particularly
under the Orde Baru (New Order).70 A sig-
nifcant example is the “two stamps of ‘wild
animals fghting’, by the painter Raden Saleh
Sarif Bustaman (1813–1880) [that] were issued
in October 1967, without any particular rea-
son for honouring him, no anniversary being
near.”71 The two stamps reproduce Forest Fire
and Fight between an African Buffalo and Two
Lions. It is amazing that an African animal is
associated with the banteng which represents
democracy, the fourth principle of the Garuda
Pancasila (the national emblem of Indonesia);
equally that Forest Fire, a painting nobody had
ever seen in Indonesia and known only through
the black and white reproduction of the chro-
molitograph, became an icon—a symbol of
nationalist struggle and Saleh’s supposed na-
tionalism. In 1969, Raden Saleh was again
posthumously honoured when he was be-
stowed with the Piagam Anugerah Seni, a certif-
icate of offcial recognition reserved for artistic
contributions. The ultimate form of national-
ist recompensation was bestowed by President
H. Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono in 2011 when
Saleh was awarded with the Bintang Mahaputera
 modern art history, versus regional “classic” and “tra-
ditional” art (seni klasik dan tradisional).
74 Mustika and Slamet Sukirnanto describe Saleh as
“pelukis legendaris dalam kurun waktu abad 19,
beliau kita kenal sebagai perintis dan bapak seni
lukis Indonesia Modern” [the legendary 19 th-century
painter we know as the pioneer and father of In-
donesian modern painting] in Seni Rupa Indonesia
Modern dalam Kritik dan Esei [Criticism on modern
Indonesian Art] (Jakarta: Sanggar Krida Jakarta,
1996), 15. The title of Baharudin Marasutan’s mon-
ography, Raden Saleh 1807–1880: Perintis Seni Lukis
di Indonesia [Raden Saleh 1807–1880: The Precursor
of Painting in Indonesia] (Jakarta: Dewan Kesenian,
1973) is likewise eloquent. Setianingsih Purmono
Adipradana (Star for a Great Son). This might
not be the pinnacle of Saleh’s posthumous hon-
ours; the next step would be to award him the
highest status of Pahlawan Nasional (National
Hero), as pushed for by some of his most fer-
vent admirers in a petition addressed to Presi-
dent Joko Widodo in 2015.72
Notwithstanding the exploitation and se-
lective interpretation of Saleh’s facts of life and
artistic production within a political and na-
tionalist context, and the many misconceptions
concerning his “real” personality and achieve-
ments in the context of his time, the most re-
warding recompense came in Jakarta in 2012
from the National Gallery of Indonesia. For
the frst time in history, a solo exhibition Raden
Saleh: The Beginning of Modern Indonesian
Painting (Raden Saleh: Awal Seni Lukis Modern
Indonesia) was dedicated to Saleh and his works.
The title of the aforementioned 2012 ex-
hibition perfectly summarises the position
assigned to Saleh in the context of Indonesian
(modern) art history by Indonesian art histori-
ans and art critics like Agus Dermawan T., who
in his introductory essay titled “Indonesian Art
and Raden Saleh” opined:
The Javanese Painter Raden Saleh (c. 1811–1880)
places Saleh as the “founder” in “The Emergence
of New Indonesian Art” in Dari Mooi Indië hingga
Persagi [From Mooi Indië to Persagi], ed. Museum
Universitas Pelita Harapan (Kawaraci: Museum Uni-
versitas Pelita Harapan, 1998), 10.
75 See, for instance, Pemerintah DKI Jakarta, Raden
Saleh: Pelukis Terkenal yang Dilupakan [Raden
Saleh: The Forgotten Famous Painter], ed. Dinas
Museum dan Sejarah (Jakarta: Dinas Museum dan
Sejarah, 1979), 1; I Ketut Winaya, Lukisan-Lukisan
Raden Saleh: Ekspresi Antikolonial [Raden Saleh’s
paintings: Anticolonial expressions] (Jakarta: Galeri
Nasional, 2007; originally PhD diss. Universitas
Udayana), vii.
As history has it, modern Indonesian
painting begins with the painting activity
of Raden Saleh […]. The painter plunged
into the profession in the 1840’s. So, it
can be said presently, in the early peri-
od of the third millennium, Indonesian
painting is 170 years of age. And as the
history of Indonesian art recognizes that
Indonesian modern art of various kinds
starts with painting, we can say that In-
donesian modern art is also 170 years old
now.73
Saleh, “the legendary 19th century painter,”
is indeed regarded as the precursor or pio-
neer of modern Indonesian painting and “the
founder of Indonesian modern art.”74 The fact
that Saleh is simultaneously seen as the bapak
(father) of Indonesian modern art is merely a
question of terminology.75 The “paternity” of
Indonesian modern art is variously attributed
to Affandi (1907–1990), S. Sudjojono (1913–
1986) and Hendra Gunawan (1918–1983)
though generally with a preference for Sudjo-
jono, co-founder in 1938 of the Association of
Indonesian Drawing Masters (Persatuan Ahli-
75
 76 For a discussion on the paternity of Indonesian
modern art, see Astri Wright, “Painting the People,”
in Modern Indonesian Art: Three Generations of Tra-
dition and Change 1945–1990, exh. cat., ed. John
Fisher (Jakarta: Panitia Pameran KIAS; New York:
Festival of Indonesia, 1990), 121; Trisno Sumard-
jo, “Sudjojono Bapak Seni Lukis Indonesia Baru”
[Sudjojono father of the new Indonesian paint-
ing], in Seni Rupa Indonesia dalam Kritik dan Esai
[Indonesian Art Criticism and Essays] eds. Bambang
Bujono & Wicaksono Adi (Jakarta: Dewan Kesenian
Jakarta, 2012), 29; Wang Zineng, “Curatorial Notes.
Strategies towards the Real: S. Sudjojono and Con-
temporary Indonesian Art,” in Strategies towards the
Real: S. Sudjojono and Contemporary Indonesian Art,
exh. cat. (Singapore: National University of Singa-
pore Museum, 2008), 8, 11, note 4; Suwarno Wise-
trotomo, “Introduction. Modern Art in Indonesia” and
“Raden Saleh (1807–1880),” in Modern Indonesian
Ahli Gambar Indonesia, PERSAGI, literally
“picture experts”).76
It is in any case no coincidence that Saleh
and Sudjojono were reunited on the image
adorning the cover of the weekly magazine
Tempo in 1976 (fg. 4.11). Works of both art-
ists were shown at the inaugural exhibition
1876 –1976. 100 Years of Fine Arts in Indonesia
of the Museum of Fine Arts in Jakarta.77 The
irreverent but not disrespectful cartoonist paid
homage to two “fathers of modern Indonesian
art” sitting next to each other. They are facing
the reader while their eyes are turned in each
other’s direction, as if ignoring the discussion
regarding their fatherhood.
It is, however, undeniable that Saleh was
the “solitary precursor of those now regarded as
the ‘fathers’ of the present [Indonesian] mod-
ern art movement.”78 Saleh had no direct fol-
lowers; he died in 1880 without having initi-
ated a new school, but paved the way for the
generation who contributed to the emergence
of a distinctive Indonesian artistic identity
76 Marie-Odette Scalliet
Art: From Raden Saleh to the Present Day, eds. Koes
Karnadi & Garrett Kam, 2nd ed. (Yogyakarta: Koes Art-
books, 2010), 14, 25.
77 Three paintings by Saleh were shown: see the cata-
logue Pameran Se-Abad Seni Rupa Indonesia 1876–
1976, 20 Agustus 1976–28 Nopember 1976 di Balai
Seni Rupa Jakarta [Centennial Indonesian Art Ex-
hibition 1876–1976, 20 August 1976–28 November
1976 at the Museum of Fine Arts, Jakarta] (Jakarta:
Pemerintah Daerah Khusus Ibukota Jakarta, 1976).
78 Claire Holt, Art in Indonesia: Continuities and Change
(Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1967), 192. Holt’s
words in her pioneering study on Indonesian modern
art are still accurate.
79 Dermawan & Sutanto, op. cit., 16.
80 John Clark, “The Worlding of the Asian Modern,” in
Contemporary Asian Art and Exhibitions: Connec-
tivities and World-Making, eds. Michelle Antoinette &
Caroline Turner (Canberra: ANU Press, 2014), 71.
amidst the nation’s struggle for independence.
If we consider the artist’s legacy from a purely
Euro-American centric academically and sty-
listically art historical point of view, it would
be inappropriate to classify Saleh as falling
into the category of “modern painters.” In the
words of Indonesian art critics, “the modernity
presumed to exist in Raden Saleh’s paintings is
not an appropriate term if put in the historical
perspective of Western modern painting in the
West. Such a viewpoint doesn’t need [to] make
us feel inconvenient; doesn’t Indonesia have the
right to defne the historical route of its own art
amid [the] world’s art?”79
As a strong-minded individual and inde-
pendent artist who took his destiny into his
own hands in colonial times, the Javanese-born
Saleh can assuredly be considered a modern
man. Although John Clark refers to the 19th-
century Siamese muralist Khrua In Khong in
this quote, one could also say of Saleh that the
“self-consciousness of the artist as a profession-
al is certainly one index of modernity in art.”80
The Javanese Painter Raden Saleh (c. 1811–1880) 77
 4.1

4.2

364 Marie-Odette Scalliet

0328-Charting Thoughts.indd 364 28/3/17 2:52 PM

 4.1 Raden Saleh
Self-Portrait
1841
Oil on millboard
22.5 × 17.7 cm
Collection of Nationaal Museum van
Wereldculturen, coll.no. TM-6448-1
Image courtesy of Tropenmuseum

4.2 Raden Saleh

Boschbrand (Forest Fire)
1849
Oil on canvas
300 × 396 cm
Collection of National Gallery Singapore
This work of art has been adopted by the
Yong Hon Kong Foundation

5.1 4.3 Raden Saleh

Portrait of the Painter A.A.J. Payen
1847
Oil on canvas
73 × 61 cm
Collection of Nationaal Museum van
Wereldculturen, coll.no. RV-5030-1
Image courtesy of Museum Volkenkunde

4.4 Antoine Auguste Joseph Payen

4.3
The River Citarum, Priangan (West Java),
with Figures on a Tree-Trunk Raft
1819
Oil on paper laid down on panel
24 × 29.5 cm
Collection of National Gallery Singapore

4.4

The Javanese Painter Raden Saleh (c. 1811–1880) 365

0328-Charting Thoughts.indd 365 28/3/17 2:52 PM

 4.5

366 Marie-Odette Scalliet

0328-Charting Thoughts.indd 366 28/3/17 2:52 PM

 4.7

4.5 Raden Saleh

Deer Hunt on the Island of Java
1847
Oil on canvas
239 × 346 cm
Collection of the Musée du Louvre,
coll.no. 10109, on permanent loan to
the Saint-Amand-Montrond town hall
Image courtesy of Mrs Beatrice Bascou
Photographer: Alexis Hoang

4.6 Raden Saleh

Fight between a Crocodile, a Lion
4.6
and a Lioness
1840
Oil on canvas
28.5 × 38.5 cm
Private collection
Image courtesy of Yu-Chee Chong
Fine Art, London

4.7 Raden Saleh

Fight between a Sundanese Rhinoceros
and Two Tigers
1840
Oil on canvas
48 × 60 cm
Private collection, Jakarta
Image courtesy of Van Ham
Kunstauktionen, Cologne
Photographer: Saša Fuis

The Javanese Painter Raden Saleh (c. 1811–1880) 367

0328-Charting Thoughts.indd 367 28/3/17 2:52 PM

 4.8

4.9

4.8 Raden Saleh

Six Horsemen Chasing Deer
1860
Oil on canvas mounted on fberboard
106 × 188 cm
Gift of Mrs Sally Burbank Swart
Collection of Smithsonian American Art Museum

4.9 Raden Saleh

Javanese Jungle
Undated
Oil on canvas mounted on fberboard
105.1 × 186.7 cm
Gift of Mrs Sally Burbank Swart
Collection of Smithsonian American Art Museum

368 Marie-Odette Scalliet

0328-Charting Thoughts.indd 368 28/3/17 2:52 PM

 4.10 Raden Saleh
Forest and Native House
1860
Oil on canvas mounted
on fberboard
105.1 × 187 cm
Gift of Mrs Sally Burbank Swart
Collection of Smithsonian
American Art Museum

4.11 Raden Saleh and S. Sudjojono

on the front cover of Tempo
magazine, 11 September 1976
4.10

4.11

The Javanese Painter Raden Saleh (c. 1811–1880) 369

0328-Charting Thoughts.indd 369 28/3/17 2:52 PM

 1 British curator John Falconer has notably contrib-
uted to studies on early photography in Burma,
Singapore, Malaya and Brunei and Southeast Asia
in general. The Netherlands has a strong history of
bilingual publication since the 1980s on early pho-
tography in the former colonial Dutch East Indies,
and the Alkazi Foundation in New Delhi has pub-
lished since the 1990s on the British Raj photogra-
phers and 19 th-century Indian photographers. The
Musée National des Arts Asiatiques – Guimet, Paris,
has published a number of bilingual texts on pho-
tography in Indochina since the late 1980s. Ameri-
(5)
Towards a History of the Asian Photographer at Home and Abroad:
Case Studies of Southeast Asian Pioneers Francis Chit,
Kassian Céphas and Yu Chong
Gael Newton
Southeast Asia, a vast peninsula and insula
chain of lands, peoples and cultures stretch-
ing from Myanmar (Burma) to the Philip-
pines and on to New Guinea in the Melanesian
west Pacifc, is an elusive entity for historical
photography surveys. English-language “world
histories” of photography published in Euro-
America between the 1930s and 1980s largely
treat the region as a minor subset of the 19th-
century global diaspora of Western technology.
Their greater focus has been on colonial India,
Hong Kong and the treaty ports of China and
Japan. These older studies also favour careers
of expatriate Euro-American photographers in
Asia. Over the last two decades, foreign and re-
gional postcolonial-era scholars have paid more
attention to how photography was received in
the region as a modern medium, and what role
78 Charting Thoughts
can scholarship covering Southeast Asia has been
signifcant in the last decade or so, see, James L.
Hevia et al., Photographies East: The Camera and its
Histories in East and Southeast Asia, ed. Rosalind C.
Morris (Durham: Duke University Press, 2009). The
online peer-reviewed journal Trans Asia Photography
Review, http://tapreview.org/ by Hampshire College
in collaboration with the Michigan Publishing, a di-
vision of the University of Michigan Library, provides
an accessible and current path to texts and issues in
Southeast Asian photography. The number of region-
al photohistorians in Southeast Asia remains small.
locals, including Asian-born as well as foreign
photographers, have played in the medium’s ac-
climatisation in Southeast Asia.1
Most 19th-century pioneer practitioners
in Southeast Asia were European but from
the mid-century onwards, immigrant overseas
Chinese prevailed. From around 1900, Chinese
studios were numerically dominant in British
Singapore (which had a majority population of
Chinese), Java and French colonial Indochina
(with their substantial Chinatowns). A few
Thai photographers were at work in Bangkok
by the early 1860s, but Vietnamese, Malay,
Burmese, Indonesian and Filipino-run studios
were atypical in these lands before the mid-20th
century. Japanese studios appeared in small
numbers throughout Southeast Asia.2
Indian- or Muslim-named studios were
2 The extent and impact of the diaspora of Chinese
and Japanese photographers across mid- 19 th to 20 th
century Southeast Asia and the Pacifc has yet to be
studied. Japanese studios date chiefy from the early
to mid-20 th century.
3 Modern texts are inconsistent as to whether his
name should be reproduced in accented form. This
essay retains the accent, in part because it derives
from Képhas, the Greek transliterated form, which
was itself a translation of the old Syrian/Aramaic
word for “rock” or “stone.” This was the name given by
Jesus to the apostle Simon Peter, signifying his role
rare in Southeast Asia despite the presence of
affuent Indian and Muslim merchant commu-
nities in Singapore that might have supported
them. This absence is puzzling given that by
the late 19th century there was a fourishing
Indian-run studio culture in British India. Cur-
rently, the history of 19th-century photography
in Southeast Asian lands is distinctive for the
relative paucity of indigenous photographers.
The two most prominent frst-generation
Asian photographers in Southeast Asia com-
bined commercial studio practice with duties as
offcial court photographers. Thai Francis Chit
(1830–1891) in Bangkok was court photogra-
pher to Rama IV and V, and Javanese Kassian
Céphas (1845–1912) was offcial photographer
to the Yogyakarta Sultanate in Java.3 Chit and
Céphas had considerable regional and some
international profle in their lifetimes and are
exceptional as the frst native professionals in
their lands. Both had sons who carried on with
their businesses into the 20th century.
Also considered in this essay is the Chi-
nese miniature painter and photographer Yu
Chong (studio active c. 1889–1915) in Hanoi.
Yu Chong had only a modest profle in colonial
Indochina but is representative of the signif-
cant role played by Chinese studio operators in
developing commercial photography in South-
east Asian ports from the late 19th century to
the early 20th century.4
Towards a History of the Asian Photographer at Home and Abroad
as the rock of the church (John 1:42). Additionally,
Céphas consistently used the accent in his profes-
sional signature, his images in the negative, his stu-
dio imprint (sometimes barely visible or left off in the
capitalised form) and in signing his personal letters.
4 See Sylvie Aubenas et al., Des photographes en In-
dochine, Tonkin, Annam, Cochinchine, Cambodge et
Laos au 19e siècle [Photographers in Indochina—
Tonkin, Annam and Cochinchina, Cambodia and Laos
in the 19 th century] (Paris: ed. Réunion des musées
nationaux, Éditions Marval, musée Guimet, 2001),
241.
Background
Soon after their public debut in Euro-America
in the 1840s and 1850s, daguerreotype and
glass plate photography on paper processes ap-
peared in the busiest port cities of Southeast
Asia. A number of Euro-American commercial
daguerreotypists circulated between China,
Hong Kong, Singapore, Java and Manila, but
none seem to have reached the mainland Straits
Settlements, Bangkok, Saigon or Rangoon. A
few residents across Southeast Asia imported
cameras and succeeded in teaching themselves.
In these formative decades, the new cam-
era professionals from abroad had to move
from port to port. The tiny communities of
affuent foreign and elite indigenous and im-
migrant Chinese customers in Southeast Asian
ports buying one-off daguerreotype plates,
were insuffcient to sustain permanent studios.
Newspaper reports indicate that thousands of
daguerreotypes were made but less than 200
examples survive. However, some lost originals
can be traced as they were used as the basis for
engraved illustrations in Euro-American publi-
cations in the late 1850s and 1860s.
On the whole it might seem from the sur-
viving artefacts that the new imaging medium
at this frst stage of its evolution had limited
quantifable impact in Southeast Asia. The po-
tential, however, was obvious to the locals.
79
 5 At the beginning of the 19 th century, Southeast Asia
had a third of the overall population of Europe. By
the early 20 th century, Mandalay, Rangoon, Bangkok,
Hanoi, Saigon, Cholon, Georgetown, Singapore, Bata-
via, Surakarta, Surabaya and Manila each had over
100,000 inhabitants. See T.G. McGee, The Southeast
Asian City (London: G. Bell and Sons, 1967), 53–8.
6 Title taken from an article by D.K. Griffth, “A Celestial
Studio,” in The Photographic News: A Weekly Record
of the Progress of Photography, vol. 19, ed. G. Wharton
Simpson (London: Piper & Carter, 1875), 260.
7 Confict and unstable economics in China were fac-
tors in migration, especially from Southern China to
Hong Kong and Southeast Asia. Additionally, the 1860
Convention of Peking allowed Chinese to seek employ-
ment overseas. Some 20,000 Chinese, for example,
settled in Indochina between the 1870s and 1890s.
Royal courts in Thailand and Java for example,
were among the frst patrons to seek out pho-
tographers and to have courtiers trained in the
new art (fg. 5.1).
Resident studios only developed in Asia
in the 1860s with the arrival of the British wet
plate process on glass negatives of 1851 that
provided reproducible and thus easily market-
able photographs on sensitised albumen-coated
paper. The wet plate was easier and cheaper
than the daguerreotype, and its replication
and portability facilitated more entries into the
profession, as well as a wider range of products
and thus customers. The multiple-print process
sustained the establishment of permanent stu-
dios offering portraits and views.
Affuent locals and travellers could afford
to buy likenesses as well as prints of scenic
views and “native types,” available singly or
packaged in elaborate travel albums. One of
the most widely adopted new formats in the
1860s was the miniature carte de visite (calling
card-sized) portrait which was within reach of
even those of modest means. A food of nov-
elties accompanied the new process, including
lockets, embossed leather family carte de visite
and travel albums, and vivid three-dimensional
80 Gael Newton
8 Data on the clientele and exact economies of 19 th-
century Chinese studios have yet to be studied.
American anthropologist Karen Strassler’s Refracted
Visions: Popular Photography and National Modernity in
Java (Durham: Duke University Press, 2010) while con-
cerned with a later century, provides insight into late
19 th-century Chinese studio photographers in Java.
9 Thomson was not the frst wet plate travel photogra-
pher at work in East and Southeast Asia. His contem-
poraries, the Swiss professional Pierre Rossier in 1858
to 1862 and Austrian Wilhelm Burger (1844–1920) in
1868 to 1870, covered considerable territory in South-
east Asia but did not publish the lavish popular nar-
ratives that made Thomson famous. Germans August
and Herman Sachtler were established in Singapore
in 1862 to 1874, and Dane Kristin Feilberg in Singa-
pore and Penang in 1863 to 1864.
stereographs. Stationers and pharmacies in large
ports became emporiums of imported and local
photographic goods, and the mass production
of prints also found a ready market in illustrated
travel magazines appearing from the 1860s on-
wards in Euro-America. Photography became
collectible.
The photographic trade in Southeast Asia
was not limited to the exports to colonial heart-
lands and metropolises abroad; there was also
a growing domestic market. European plan-
tation, mining and mercantile development
brought investors, settlers, administrative staff
and labourers. The opening of the Suez Canal
in 1869 trebled trade and brought in a constant
stream of travellers, explorers and tourists, as
well as set Southeast Asian countries on a path
of rapid growth in terms of the number of resi-
dents able to afford or make use of photogra-
phy.5 Studio numbers increased steadily over
the next decades, particularly from the 1880s
to the 1890s when mass-produced commercial
dry plate processes and other quality refne-
ments made photography better, easier, cheap-
er and more versatile for both commercial and
amateur photographers. The picturing of Asia
could begin.
10 J. Thomson, The Straits of Malacca, Indo-China, and
China or, Ten Years’ Travels, Adventures, and Resi-
dence Abroad (London: S. Low, Marston, Low & Searle,
1875), 9.
11 John Thomson, “Hong Kong Photographers,” The Brit-
ish Journal of Photography 29, November (1872): 569.
This refrain of natives fearing photography as black
magic was a favourite anecdote of early travel pho-
tographers, and while true in some cases, was prob-
ably exaggerated to play up to armchair audiences
at home. Lai Afong, Kai Sack, Nam Ting, Pun Lun, Ye
Chung and See Tay are known names of Chinese stu-
dios which operated in Hong Kong in the early 1870s.
See Jeffrey W. Cody & Frances Terpak, Brush & Shut-
ter: Early Photography in China (Hong Kong: Hong
Kong University Press, 2011), 37.
12 The Chinese population in Hong Kong was over
“A Celestial Studio”6
From the mid-1860s, Chinese-operated painter-
photographer studios sprouted up across Asia
Pacifc port cities producing oriental and West-
ern-style views and portraits for foreign as well
as domestic clients.7 As well as photographs,
these studios specialised in paintings from or
over photographs that were fnished as minia-
tures or enlargements on card, canvas, paper
and ivory. Their technical fexibility allowed for
the production of quality work for the more
affuent, and cheaper products for the bulk of
clients. The dominance of the Chinese studios
over other ethnic operators, and their success-
ful competition with foreign operators, would
seem to arise from the adoption of the century-
old model of Chinese painting studios across
Asia.8
The frst to publicly comment on the
phenomenal growth of Chinese photographic
studios was Scottish professional John Thom-
son (1837–1921), who made extensive pho-
tographic sorties in East and Southeast Asia
between 1862 and 1872.9 When operating one
of the frst studios in Singapore in 1862 Thom-
son found he had to train “two Madras men […]
Towards a History of the Asian Photographer at Home and Abroad
100,000 but had remained stable over the decade.
The opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 trebled trade.
Improved relations between the British colonial
government and the elite Chinese merchants in the
1860s also encouraged Chinese investment and im-
migration, see Christopher Munn, “‘A Social Revolu-
tion’: Forming a Colonial Relationship, the 1860s and
Beyond,” in Anglo-China: Chinese People and British
Rule in Hong Kong, 1841–1880 (Richmond: Curzon,
2001), 69, 329–73.
13 Thomson, op. cit. Larissa N. Heinrich dissects the
characterisation of Chinese as mere copyists in her
essay, “Handmaids to the Gospel: Lam Qua’s Medi-
cal Portraiture,” in Tokens of Exchange: The Problem
of Translation in Global Circulations, ed. Lydia H. Liu
(Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1999),
239–42.
to act as my printers and assistants, the Chinese
having, at that time, refused to lend themselves
to such devilry as taking likenesses of objects
without the touch of human hands.”10 Based
in Hong Kong a decade later, Thomson found
that the Chinese studios were well established:
It may not be generally known that the
Chinese in Hong-Kong and other parts
of China have “taken kindly” to photogra-
phy. In Queen’s-road, the principal street
of Victoria, there are a score of Chinese
photographers, who do better work than
is produced by the herd of obscure dab-
blers who cast discredit on the art in this
country [Britain].11
Thomson did not speculate on the causes
of the rise of Chinese studios.12 For him, it was
technical aptitude: “There is something about
the mystery of photographic chemistry, the
nicety of manipulation implied in its various
processes which suits the Chinese mind.”13
However he was not impressed by the Chinese
studios in Hong Kong churning out painted
portraits based on photographs, worked up
within a day or so for travellers.
81
 14 Lam Qua, from a family of painters whose elders had
mastered Western painting, was the frst Chinese
painter of the Western style to exhibit internation-
ally in Europe and America. Lam Qua was probably
the frst Chinese artist to make a realist self-portrait
in 1853 but was not tempted to add photography to
his studio practice. Lam Qua passed away only a few
years after the frst commercial daguerreotypists ar-
rived in Canton in 1857.
15 Itier records Lam Qua’s interest in “Cet instrument
admirable qui dessiné tout seul et dont les peintres
de Canton sont fort préoccupés,” in his Journal d’un
Voyage en Chine en 1843, 1844, 1845, 1846 [Jour-
nal of a Voyage to China in 1843, 1844, 1845, 1846],
vol. 2 (Paris: Dauvin et Fontaine, 1848–1853), 74. As
cited by Gilles Massot, “Jules Itier and the Lagrené
Thomson included a plate showing a typi-
cal Hong Kong painter-photographer at work
in the frst of his four-volume series featuring
photographs of China and the Chinese (fg.
5.2). The image was not of an actual studio
but staged by Thomson in Hong Kong for
one of his stereoscopic views. His text implies
that the model for this type of studio-factory
was that of the Cantonese painter Lam Qua
(1801–1860), celebrated for his skill in making
highly detailed Western-style portraits in oil,
some of which had been exhibited at the Royal
Academy in London.14 Thomson knew of Lam
Qua only by reputation (the artist had died
in 1860), but he could have seen Lam Qua’s
paintings in Hong Kong or Canton.
Lam Qua has the distinction of being the
frst Chinese artist to be photographed. In
Canton in 1842, he sought a demonstration
of “the admirable apparatus that can draw by
itself ” from visiting French customs inspector
and amateur daguerreotypist, Jules Itier (1802–
1877), one of the heads of the Franco-Chinese
trade treaty signed at Whampoa in 1842.15
Itier made a portrait of Lam Qua which he pre-
sented to the painter in a green leather case. A
week later Lam Qua returned with a gift for
82 Gael Newton
Mission,” History of Photography 39, no. 4 (2015):
319–47. Thanks are due to Gilles Massot, Singapore,
for drawing my attention to Itier’s exchange with
Lam Qua.
16 The portrait was loaned by Itier to the Exposition d’
échantillons et de modèles rapports de la Chine et
de L’Inde [Exhibition of samples and models brought
from China and India] mounted by the Ministry of
Commerce in Paris in August 1846 displaying trade
goods, gifts and souvenirs collected by the del-
egation of the 1843–1845 French trade mission to
China.
17 Đặng Huy Trứ reputedly died in 1874 fghting against
the French invasion of Hanoi. Truong Van San, who
opened Vietnam’s second photo lab in Hue in 1878,
evidently studied in France. See Nguyen Ðức Hiệp,
Itier: a miniature copy painted on ivory, set
in a matching case. Both originals are lost but
the image of their exchange as equals is vivid.
Lam Qua’s gift was lent by Itier to an exhibi-
tion in Paris on his return, and an engraving
of it appeared in L’illustration: Journal universel
(fg. 5.3).16
Just as Thomson singled out Lam Qua for
praise in distinction from his imitators, he un-
reservedly praised the quality of Chinese pho-
tographer Afong (c. 1839–1890) whose studio
was in the same street as his own in Hong Kong.
Thomson’s appreciation of the best Chinese
painter and photographer is notable; he recog-
nised that they, like himself, were far above the
general run of artisans.
Few Chinese studio photographers ac-
tive in Southeast Asia had the public profle
of Afong or the Pun Lun studio of Cantonese
brothers Wan Chikhing and Wan Leong-hoi,
established in Hong Kong from the 1860s to
circa 1900 and unusual in also maintaining
branches in Foochow, Singapore and Saigon.
Images by the Pun Lun studio are among
the earliest surviving records of Saigon. The
earliest-known professional photographer in
Vietnam is Đặng Huy Trứ (1825–1874), a
 “Photography in Vietnam from the End of the
Nineteenth,” Trans Asia Photography Review 4, no. 2,
Spring (2014), http://quod.lib.umich.edu/t/tap/797
7573.0004.204/--photography-in-vietnam-from-
the-end-of-the-nineteenth?rgn=main;view=fulltext
(accessed 12 December 2014).
18 Khánh Ký is nationally regarded as the “father of
photography” in Vietnam. The scale of his operations
with studios in Hanoi, Guangzhou, Haiphong, Nam
Định and Saigon matched those of European and
Chinese frms elsewhere in Asia. See Nguyen, ibid.
19 Various names appear on or at Yu Chong’s studio
addresses at 79, 88, 91 and 92 Rue des Paniers, in
the form of Y-Tsung, Luong Loi Tchiou, Luong-yiou-Ky
and Yu-Tchuong. One instance includes the double
credit “‘Yi Tcheung’ et ‘Y. Tsung’ photographes et pei-
former mandarin in the Nguyễn Dynasty. He
learnt photography in Hong Kong in 1865 and
opened the first studio in Hanoi in 1869 with
a camera bought from Guandong, China. The
literal meaning of the name of his studio Cảm
Hiếu Đườn is “the road to flial piety,” suggest-
ing his early adoption of memorial portraiture
for Chinese customers.17
Among the earliest local studios in Hanoi
in the 1890s were those of Du Chương, Đông
Chương and Mỹ Chương—whether these are
Chinese- or Vietnamese-operated is not clear.
Their clients were the French colonial com-
munity and travellers, as well as immigrant
Chinese wanting portraits to send home. Vi-
etnamese Nguyễn Văn Xuân (1884–1946), the
most notable indigenous photographer in In-
dochina, began work in Hanoi in 1890 as a
pupil of Du Chương before opening his own
studio in 1892 under the name Khánh Ký.
He relocated to Saigon in 1907, forming large
and successful studios and branches on a par
with that of the Armenian Onnes Kurkdjian
(1851–1903) in Surabaya.18 Khánh Ký also
bucked trends by immigrating to the West; he
had a studio in Paris in the early 20th century.
One successful and sophisticated Chinese
Towards a History of the Asian Photographer at Home and Abroad
ntres sur ivoire à Hanoi,” suggesting at some point
there may have been partners in the business.
20 For the role of this publishing house, see Marie-Hélène
Degroise, “Schneider, François-Henri,” Photographes
en Outre-Mer (1840–1944), http://photographesenou
tremerasie.blogspot.sg/2009/11/schneider-fran
cois-henri.html (accessed 9 July 2015) and http://
alain.j.schneider.free.fr/schneider_vietnam.htm
(accessed 9 July 2015).
21 The prevalence of hand-coloured, photorealistic
painted portraiture in Southeast Asia extending
into the 20 th century warrants further study. British
photohistorian Terry Bennett’s current work on pho-
tography in 19 th-century Indochina may bring more
information and collections of the Yu Chong studio
to light.
painter-photographer-run studio in Vietnam
was that of Yu Chong who operated in Ha-
noi from circa 1889 to 1915.19 His studio was
atop a shophouse in the old quarter where
many Han Chinese businesses were located. Yu
Chong produced the usual range of European-
style portraiture but promoted his specialty
of portraits on ivory, which gave a luminous
softness to the portraits especially suitable for
women’s complexions (fgs. 5.4 and 5.5). The shift
of the Indochinese colonial capital to Hanoi in
1902 would have been a boon for Yu Chong
who also worked for François-Henri Schneider,
the energetic businessman, printer, photog-
rapher and publisher of the frst postcards in
Indochina.20 Yu Chong appears to have been
successful but had little international presence
comparable with the name recognition for Chit
and Céphas in publications, travel accounts
and picture magazines. It appears his studio
produced mostly portraits rather than having a
range of views and souvenir images of local life,
by which photographers in Asia became known
in the West. His work may also have been un-
credited in Schneider’s various publications.
The few surviving examples of Yu Chong’s
hand-coloured work attest to his skills.21
83
 22 See “Jean Baptiste François Louis Larnaudie,” and
“Jean Baptiste Pallegroix,” Missions Etrangères de Par-
is Archives, http://archives.mepasie.org/notices/not
ices-biographiques/larnaudie, http://archives.mepa
sie.org/notices/notices-biographiques/Pallegroix
(accessed 14 July 2015). Pallegroix’s scholarly book,
Description du Royaume Thai ou Siam [Description
of the Thai Kingdom or Siam] (Paris: Au proft de la
mission de Siam, 1854), appears to have made use
of daguerreotypes as the basis for the illustrations.
Joachim K. Bautze provides evidence of Larnaudie
as the maker of the royal daguerreotype portraits
sent overseas in 1856 in his essay “Photography in
Majestic Pioneers in the Royal Courts:
Francis Chit and Kassian Céphas
The two most prominent frst-generation indig-
enous professionals in 19th-century Southeast
Asia were from Thailand (then known as the
independent Kingdom of Siam) and Indonesia
(then the colonial Dutch East Indies). Francis
Chit (1830–1891) was court photographer to
Kings Mongkut (Rama IV, r. 1851–1868) and
Chulalongkorn (Rama V, r. 1868–1910) in
Bangkok from circa 1861 to 1891 and Kassian
Céphas (1845–1912), royal photographer to
the Yogyakarta Sultanate in Java from 1875 to
circa 1908.
Chit and Céphas are distinctive for their
identifable oeuvres and regional profles from
the 1870s to early 1900s. Their Western edu-
cation and English-language skills as Catholic
and Protestant Christian respectively, favoured
their entrée into the business of operating
commercial studios for foreign and local cli-
ents. No other Southeast Asian photographers
held equivalent royal rank in the 19th or early
20th centuries. The national roles of Chit and
Céphas are akin to that of their contemporary
Raja Deen Dayal (1844–1905) in India, al-
though the latter’s enterprise was on a greater
scale and of higher international profle. Both
Chit and Céphas are celebrated today as found-
84 Gael Newton
Siam—The Crucial Years,” in Siam through the Lens of
John Thomson 1865–66 including Angkor and Coastal
China (Bangkok: River Books, 2015), 12.
23 See copy of letter “Requesting a daguerreotype op-
erator for Chau Fa” written on 24 October 1845, from
American missionary in Bangkok, Reverend Jessie
Caswell to Henry Hill, Treasurer, American Board of
Commissioners for Foreign Missions, held at Zimmer-
man Library, University of New Mexico. See also Wil-
liam L. Bradley, “Prince Mongkut and Jesse Caswell,”
Journal of the Siam Society 54 (1966): 39, which cites
this letter. Further evidence of Chau Fa’s desire for
a camera comes from a report in the British Journal
ers of the photographic profession in their
modern nations.
In Southeast Asia, encouragement of in-
digenous photographers was pursued most
actively in the royal court of Thailand. Da-
guerreotype activity was introduced to Bang-
kok in 1845 when Monsignor Jean-Baptiste
Pallegroix (1805–1862), Vicar Apostolic of
Eastern Siam for the French Société des Mis-
sions Etrangères, asked Father Jean Baptiste
François Louis Larnaudie (1819–1899) to
bring a daguerreotype apparatus with him
from Paris. Pallegroix was a naturalist with in-
terest in the latest scientifc advances, a linguist
and scholar. He shared scientifc interests and a
friendship with the young Prince Chau Fa, an
heir to the throne then serving as a Buddhist
priest, to whom he taught Latin. The prince
became Rama IV, King Mongkut in 1851.
Father Larnaudie was an expert in chemistry,
watchmaking and electromagnetic devices, and
instructed several young Thai men in the op-
eration of the daguerreotype camera. The frst
was Homot (Mot Amatyakun) (1821–1896),
a talented metalworker who became the frst
director of the Royal Mint in 1860, earning
him the title of Luang Wisutyothamat. He was
also the frst to work in the wet plate process
and is regarded as the frst Thai photographer
(fg. 5.6).
 of Photography 1 October (1861): 350, which states:
“His Royal Highness the King of Siam is about to be-
come a practical photographer, and is impatiently
awaiting the arrival of a complete set of apparatus
manufactured for him by Messrs. Negretti and Zam-
bra, and has, beside, engaged the services of a gen-
tleman to initiate him in the principles and practice
of photography.”
24 In the foreword to his book, The Kingdom and Peo-
ple of Siam; With a Narrative of the Mission to that
Country in 1855 (London: John W. Parker and Son,
1857), treaty negotiator Sir John Bowring records
that the illustrations were from photographs he had
The French clerics’ interest in importing
the new photographic process was in line with
their role as purveyors of Western science and
technology, including printing, which was ea-
gerly sought after by the Chakri kings and their
courtiers. Pallegroix and Larnaudie succeeded
in making daguerreotype portraits from 1845
until the late 1850s.22 While reigning mon-
arch Phra Nangklao (Rama III, r. 1824–1851)
refused to be photographed, his other ministers
and royal princes were keen. Prince Chau Fa
(who would become Rava IV, King Mongkut)
was interested in Western science and technol-
ogy, printing and photography, but Pallegroix
was unwilling to part with his apparatus, and
Chau Fa unsuccessfully sought the help of Rev-
erend Jesse Caswell in 1845 to secure him an
apparatus from America.23
This furry of imaging was accelerated
by King Mongkut after his accession in 1851,
when he commissioned royal portraits to be
used as diplomatic gifts and granted sittings
to visiting foreign photographers. This action
allowed Mongkut to establish an appropriate
visual equality with Western monarchs. His
brother Vice-King Pinklao and several courti-
ers were also supporters of modern technolo-
gies including photography. The diplomatic
exchanging of portraits was impelled by the
British Bowring Treaty of 1855 that allowed
Towards a History of the Asian Photographer at Home and Abroad
commissioned. The photographer is unnamed.
25 When Wisutyothamat sent examples of his photog-
raphy to America in 1865, he said he had learnt how
to operate the apparatus sent to Bangkok by Queen
Victoria from a photographer associated with the
Prussian embassy. See Patterson Dubois, “Photog-
raphy in Siam,” The Philadelphia Photographer, 21
September 1865, 151. Carl Bismark was the offcial
photographer of the Prussian diplomatic and com-
mercial mission to China, Japan and Thailand led
by Friedrich Albrecht zu Eulenburg, but there were
other photographically adept members including the
young telegraphist Auguste Sachtler.
free trade by foreigners in Bangkok, and the
Treaty of Amity, Commerce, and Navigation
of 1856 that opened the ports of fve Japanese
cities to trade.24
King Mongkut received and reciprocated
gifts of daguerreotype portraits from Pope Pius
IX, French Emperor Napoleon III, Queen
Victoria and the American President James
Buchanan. He fnally received his own da-
guerreotype apparatus from Queen Victoria
and possibly a stereographic apparatus from
Napoleon III in 1855. When frst received, the
cameras from Queen Victoria could not be
operated by the King’s court photographers.
Their instruction waited until 1861 and the ar-
rival of Swiss professional photographer Pierre
Rossier (1829– c. 1899). Rossier was making
stereograph images in Asia for the London op-
ticians and stereograph publishers Negretti and
Zambra (fg. 5.7), and while in Bangkok under-
took a commission from the French zoologist
Firmin Bocourt.25
Daguerreotype portraits of Mongkut, his
Queen and children sent to Queen Victoria
and the American President in 1856 survive
in Windsor Castle and the Smithsonian Insti-
tution in Washington, variously attributed to
Pallegroix, Larnaudie or Wisutyothamat, and
a number of wet plate albumen prints sent to
Emperor Napoleon III in France and to Pope
85
 26 Mongkut’s letter is quoted in Caverlee Cary, “In the
Image of the King: Two Photographs from Nineteenth-
Century Siam,” in Southeast Asian Art: Essays in Hon-
or of Stanley J. O’Connor, ed. Nora A. Taylor (Ithaca:
Cornell University Press, 2000), 125.
27 It is unlikely he received any instruction from Thom-
son but may have observed the royal sittings with
King Mongkut. Thomson makes no mention of Chit.
28 In Chit’s time, Kudi Chin (now also known as Kadee-
jeen) was home to the small community of some
500 resident Portuguese merchants, Catholics of
Portuguese descent as well as Chinese, Laotian and
Cambodian immigrants. It is misleadingly named
after an old Chinese temple but is not the Chinese
Quarter now known as Yaowarat, located on the east
Pius IX in 1861 are in the Vatican and Missions
Etrangères de Paris collections. The latter por-
traits on paper can now be attributed to Luang
Wisutyothamat as letters to Queen Victoria
from King Mongkut state they were made by
“our native photographers.”26
It is likely that Francis Chit (fg. 5.8) learnt
wet plate photography from both Luang Wisu-
tyothamat and Rossier around this time.27 Chit
Chitrakani was born in 1830 in the Kudi Chin
west bank district of Bangkok, near the San-
ta Cruz Catholic Church and adjacent to the
Foreigners’ Quarter. He took the name Francis
upon baptism and as part of his professional
name. Kudi Chin was home to descendants
of Portuguese and Catholics from the former
royal capital of Ayutthaya, north of Bangkok,
and Christian immigrants from Laos and Vi-
etnam.28 Chit may have been descended from
both groups as few full Thai converts were ever
recruited by foreign missionaries.29
By 1863, Chit was clearly skilled enough
to set up a commercial studio under his own
name in a raft-house on the canal in front of
his Kudi Chin residence. Foreigners, traders
and visitors had arrived in great numbers as a
consequence of the 1855 Bowring Treaty, and
this made the English-speaking Chit’s business
86 Gael Newton
bank. Yaowarat dates back to the foundation of the
new Krungthep Maha Nakhon (Bangkok) capital in
1782. Immigrants from Southern China formed a
signifcant community in the old capital at Ayutthaya
and by Chit’s era, were almost equal in numbers in
Bangkok to the Thai. The Chinese were more inte-
grated than in other Asian port cities, and like the
Portuguese-Asian Christians, served the palace and
comprised a majority of the merchant class.
29 Confrmation is sought as to the identity of Chit’s
father being Teng, a Chinese Christian soldier. This
theory was proposed in December 2011 in an article
by Angela Camila Castelo-Branco, “‘O Império Invi-
sível’ da fotografa Portuguesa na Tailândial” [The
invisible empire of Portuguese photography in Thai-
viable. His advertisements in the local English-
language newspapers were confdent and ex-
pertly expressed, and promised all the latest wet
plate photographic specialities.
Chit served everyday clients with portrait
services and also sold cartes de visites of Thai
royalty. The 1864 six-part panorama of Bang-
kok with which Chit announced his public ca-
reer, is comparable with the best productions
of the era.30 In 1866 King Mongkut honoured
him with the title “Khoon Soondr Sadis Lacks”
(Offcer for Fine Likeness Image). Chit prompt-
ly added the title and his role as “Photographer
to his Majesty the King of Siam” to the back of
his cartes de visites and advertisements.
Chit continued the role of royal photog-
rapher under Mongkut’s heir King Chulalong-
korn after his accession in 1868, and covered
the king’s second coronation in 1873 (fg. 5.9)
as well as various offcial events in the life of
Crown Prince Vajirunhis in the 1890s (fg. 5.10).
Chit accompanied King Chulalongkorn on
an inland expedition to observe the Transit of
Venus in 1874 and possibly on royal visits to
Burma, India, Singapore and the Dutch East
Indies. His role as royal photographer was not,
however, exclusive. In 1874 Mongkut made
German Henry Schüren (active c. 1870–1880)
 land] http://grandmonde.blogspot.com.au/2011/12/
o-imperio-invisivel-por-ocasiao-do.html (accessed
11 October 2015). Chit’s name change is referred to
in his obituary by K.S.R. Kulap in the Siam Praphet,
20 January 1899, and cited by Anake Nawigamune,
“Francis Chit: Portraying the Great Photographer,”
http://www.sarakadee.com/feature/2002/03/fran-
cis.htm (accessed 11 October 2015). The suggestion
of additional Chinese descent could have arisen from
Chit’s residency in Kudi Chin.
30 Discussed in Pipat Pongrapeeporn, The Panorama
of Bangkok in the Reign of King Rama IV: A New
Discovery Photographs by Francis Chit (Bangkok:
Muang Boran Publishing House, 2002). Principally
in Thai with English supplement.
an honoured offcial photographer, a role soon
after assumed by the frm of German G.R.
Lambert from Singapore. By 1880, Chit had
done well enough to move from his canal boat
to a shophouse in Bangkok’s Charoen Krung
(New Road), a mall precinct for foreign trad-
ers built by Mongkut in the 1860s. That same
year, King Chulalongkorn bestowed upon Chit
the rank of Luang Akani Naruemitr. “Akani”
translates as fre and the title likely relates to
Chit’s role in the illuminations managed by the
Gas Division for celebrations at the palace.
Chit’s fellow practitioners and photo-
graphic enthusiasts in his lifetime included his
own sons and both the Chakri Dynasty kings
Rama IV and VI, their families, entourage and
descendants down to the present day—a level
of royal participation in the new medium ar-
guably unmatched by any royal photographers.
Chit & Sons was awarded a Bronze Medal at
the 1893 World’s Colombian Exhibition by
which time his sons were managing the busi-
ness following their father’s death in 1891.
Unlike their contemporaries such as G.R.
Lambert & Co. in Singapore and Woodbury &
Page in the Dutch East Indies, Chit & Sons did
not seek to have an inventory of scenic views
and images from outside the Bangkok region.
Towards a History of the Asian Photographer at Home and Abroad
31 Maurizio Peleggi’s Lords of Things: The Fashioning of
the Siamese Monarchy’s Modern Image (Honolulu:
University of Hawaii Press, 2002), is a good introduc-
tion to Chit and the politics of court photography. The
following Thai publications with English summaries
and captions, are excellent pictorial introductions:
Sakda Siripant, King & Camera: Evolution of Photog-
raphy in Thailand, 1845–1992 (Bangkok: Darnsutha
Press, 1992), H.M. King Chulalongkorn: The Father of
Thai Photography (Bangkok, Darnsutha Press, 2012).
Joachim K. Bautze’s book, Unseen Siam: Early Pho-
tography 1860–1910 (Bangkok: River Books, 2016)
was not available at the time of writing, but will be a
major reference work.
Chit’s career over his nearly three decades of
work has been covered in a number of Thai
publications, but the full international appre-
ciation of his substantial career awaits a major
English-language monograph.31
Kassian Céphas
Several itinerant daguerreotypists visited Java
in the 1850s, of whom the most signifcant
was Swedish adventurer Cesar Düben (1819–
1888). Düben’s travel memoir, published in
Stockholm in 1886, included a number of
lithographic plates made after his Asian da-
guerreotypes. Within his memoir, Düben re-
lated how after photographing the family of
Sultan Hamengkubuwono VI (r. 1855–1877)
at Kraton Yogyakarta in 1857, the sultan asked
Düben to instruct a court member in the pho-
tographic process. The sultanate was effectively
under Dutch control and managing his status
as a native ruler was an ongoing challenge. Like
his contemporary King Mongkut in Thailand,
Hamengkubuwono saw the potential of using
the new art to achieve visual parity with West-
ern rulers. Düben found the courtier lacked
aptitude but presented his camera to the sultan
as a parting gift.
87
 32 For an introduction to photography in colonial Indo-
nesia, see Gael Newton, Garden of the East: Photog-
raphy in Indonesia 1850s–1940s (Canberra: National
Gallery of Australia, 2014).
33 A search of the National Gallery of Australia collec-
tion with “Céphas” in the title tab will retrieve exam-
ples of these images.
34 Karen Strassler, “Seeing the Unseen in Indonesia’s
Public Sphere: Photographic Appearances of a Spirit
Queen,” Comparative Studies in Society and History
56, no.1 (2013): 98–130.
35 A similar phenomenon can be seen in the work of
Céphas’ Indian contemporary Deen Dayal, whose
portraits of Indian dancers have presence and per-
There is no record of the fate or usage of
Düben’s apparatus.32 Hamengkubuwono VI
had to wait six more years to secure the services
of an offcial court photographer from Wilhelm
Camerik (1830–1897), a Dutch East Indies
military sergeant major and a drawing master-
turned-photographer based in Semarang on
the north coast of Java. In 1864 Camerik mar-
keted a set of cartes de visite of the principal
“native grandees” of Surakarta, Yogyakarta and
Magelang. This must have had offcial blessing
from the sultan as Camerik continued as off-
cial photographer for the next few years.
Possibly with encouragement from the sul-
tan, the young Céphas, then serving in a minor
administrative position at the Kraton, learnt
photography from Camerik around 1867. He
was Javanese but in 1860 had taken “Céphas,”
the Aramaic name for “rock” given by Jesus to
the apostle Simon Peter, when he was baptised
into a small Christian church run by the Dutch
Protestant lay teacher Mrs Christina Phillips-
Stevens in Purworejo, southern Central Java.
After Camerik’s departure, Céphas set up
his own studio in 1871 in his home in Yogya-
karta, where he lived in a mixed quarter of ar-
tisans and colonial administrators. A few years
later the Céphas studio card imprints proudly
88 Gael Newton
sonality compared to the usual “native types.”
36 See John Clark, “The Worlding of the Asian Modern,”
in Contemporary Asian Art and Exhibitions: Connec-
tivities and World-Making, eds. Michelle Antoinette &
Caroline Turner (Canberra: ANU Press, 2014), 70–3. E-
book available at http://press.anu.edu.au/wp-conte
nt/uploads/2014/10/ch026.pdf. Chit belongs to the
cadre of “Type I” artists who never travelled but had
contact with foreign discourses and models via a pa-
tron in the 1850s–1890s, a period defned by Clark
as “transitions to Modernity.” Chit’s late work merges
with the succeeding period of “Academy Realism, Sa-
lon Art and the National, 1880s–1910s.”
listed his role as “Photographist to the Sultan.”
As well as royal commissions, Céphas collabo-
rated in the 1880s and 1890s with the sultan’s
Dutch physician Isaac Groneman (1832–1914),
an amateur archaeologist and ethnographer.
Their projects included photographing the
ancient Hindu temple complexes of Borobu-
dur and Prambanan in Central Java, as well as
a complete performance of classical Javanese
dance dramas at Kraton Yogyakarta in 1884.
In later life, when aided by his son Semuel,
Céphas noticeably placed himself in some three
dozen images of Javanese antiquities and sites
of cultural signifcance that were sold by the
Céphas studio.33 These include a self-portrait
with him reverently touching the base dome
encasing the Buddha sculptures on the top tier
of the Borobudur complex (fg. 5.11).
That Céphas was intentionally placing
himself in images is supported by a quite ex-
traordinary series of examples that have no
need of a fgure for scale. In one charming im-
age, shaded by an umbrella with his trousers
rolled up, Céphas smiles towards the camera
whilst paddling in the surf on the west coast
(fg. 5.12). For his Javanese and more literate
Dutch colonial viewers, the signifcance of the
beach is apparent. This is the coast where the
Yogyakarta sultans of the Mataram dynasty re-
enact a marriage ceremony with the Queen of
the Southern Ocean, from whom their dynasty
is legitimised.34
These images seem to mimic the informal-
ity of the new era of amateur snapshots in the
1890s. But the kinds of expensive glass plates
used by Céphas, even after the introduction
of the convenient dry plate in the 1880s, do
not favour spontaneity. Plates are not wasted.
Exposures require careful planning, timing and
arrangement. The practice of placing fgures to
denote scale and distance at different planes
within a photograph was common in 19th-
century topographical views. The consistency
of Céphas’ presence in his late images, however,
is unprecedented in the work of any compa-
rable photographer at the time in Asia. John
Thomson does not appear repeatedly in his
China work, nor does Isidore van Kinsbergen,
the Dutch commercial photographer in Jakarta
who was employed to make archaeological re-
cords for the Batavian Society of Arts and Sci-
ences in the 1860s and early 1870s. Céphas
intended the images to say something by his
presence: they are clearly titled, signed, dated
and marketed as prints, and exist in a number
of collections.
The 1890s were peak years wherein
Céphas’ heritage work for Groneman gained
offcial recognition and reward. He was able to
secure Dutch citizenship in 1891 for himself
and his sons, which was symbolically signif-
cant but also had practical and legal benefts
for the family. Céphas joined the Masons in
1892, the same year he was made an extraor-
dinary member of the Batavian Society of the
Arts and Sciences. In 1896 he was also made
an honorary member of the Royal Netherlands
Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean
Studies in Leiden, and in 1902 received an
Honorary Gold Medal of the Royal Dutch Or-
der of Orange-Nassau from the Dutch Crown
in recognition of his work on Javanese cultural
heritage. Only Deen Dayal in British India re-
Towards a History of the Asian Photographer at Home and Abroad
ceived a comparable level of offcial recogni-
tion. The honours shown to Céphas refected
the new Ethical Culture policy aimed at devel-
oping a class of Indonesian leaders loyal to the
Crown. An examination of his work from this
period, evinced by his self-portrait series, sug-
gests he sought a new sense of self as a Chris-
tian and as a Javanese and possibly an incipient
nationalist spirit.
The Céphas studio became known around
1900 for its charming series of Javanese beau-
ties circulated as postcards. These have a re-
laxed charm as compared with the blank stares
and soft-porn aesthetic of other publishers.35
Having a Javanese photographer must surely
have affected the local models’ degree of relaxa-
tion in front of the camera and infuenced the
way they were posed (fg. 5.13). One of Céphas’
images of a dancer was chosen by the founders
of proto-nationalist magazine Bintang Hindia
in 1905 as a promotional image.
Céphas retired from the studio in 1905,
and his son Semuel managed the studio until
his own accidental death in 1918. Céphas’ enig-
matic work, intellectual background and recog-
nition received as an artist remain to be studied
in greater depth.
Céphas, like Chit, joins a handful of indig-
enous Southeast Asian photographic artists for
whom we have personal images and basic biog-
raphies. They are the exceptions that highlight
the general absence of indigenous studios in
Southeast Asia outside of the as yet still poorly
known history of the region’s immigrant and
locally born Chinese and mixed-race photog-
raphers.
Both Chit and Céphas have signifcant
positions as the vanguard of transitional fg-
ures in the “worlding” of the Asian Modern as
characterised by Australian art historian John
Clark.36 The current National Gallery Singa-
pore research programme and young scholars
of today will assuredly round out the picture
of the photographic heritage of Southeast Asia
and its photographers over the coming decades.
89
 5.1 Attributed to Father F-L. Larnaudie
(also attributed to Bishop Pallegroix)
King Mongkut and Queen Debsirindra
1855
Daguerreotype, colour dyes
10 x 7.5 cm
Harris Treaty Gift, Photographic History
Collection, National Museum of American
History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington

5.2 A Hong-Kong Artist (a painter-photographer)

As published in John Thomson, Illustrations of
China and its People: A Series of Two Hundred
Photographs, with Letterpress Descriptive of the
Places and People Represented, vol. 1 (London:
Sampson Low, Marston, Low, and Searle,
1873), plate IV.

5.1

5.2

370 Gael Newton

0328-Charting Thoughts.indd 370 28/3/17 2:52 PM

 5.3 Portrait of Chinese painter Lam Qua
An engraving based on Lam Qua’s miniature
painting after Jules Itier’s daguerreotype
of Lam Qua made in Canton in 1845; as
published in L’illustration: Journal universel 7,
no. 182 (22 August 1846): 393.
Image courtesy of HathiTrust and
University of California Libraries

5.4 Yu Chong (also known as Yi Tcheung and

variants) (studio active c. 1889–1915, Hanoi,
Vietnam)
Portrait of a European Woman
c. 1900
Oil on ivory plate
12.7 x 8.5 cm
Private collection, Singapore

5.3 5.4

Towards a History of the Asian Photographer at Home and Abroad 371

0328-Charting Thoughts.indd 371 28/3/17 2:52 PM

 5.5

5.5 Yu Chong (studio active c. 1889–1915, Hanoi, Vietnam)

Logo of the Yu Chong Studio, Hanoi, on cabinet print
(verso)
c. 1900
16.7 x 10.7 cm 5.6
Private collection, Singapore

5.6 Attributed to Luang Wisutyothamat

(Mot Amatyakun, Thailand)
Portrait of King Mongkut and Queen Debsirindra
1861
Albumen print
20 x 15 cm
Collection of Mr and Mrs Lee Kip Lee

5.7 Pierre Rossier

(No. 3) Siamese Prince, Luhang Wongsa
1861
Stereograph on glass
13 x 17.4 cm
Gift of Mr and Mrs Lee Kip Lee
Collection of National Gallery of Australia

5.8 Francis Chit

Self-Portrait with Multi-Lens Carte de Visite Camera
c. 1863
Albumen silver photograph
Collection of National Archives of Thailand
Image courtesy of Anake Nawigamune,
as published in Anake Nawigamune,
Early Photography in Thailand (Bangkok: Sang Dad
Publishing, 1987).

372 Gael Newton

0328-Charting Thoughts.indd 372 28/3/17 2:53 PM

 5.7

5.8

Towards a History of the Asian Photographer at Home and Abroad 373

0328-Charting Thoughts.indd 373 28/3/17 2:53 PM

 5.9 Francis Chit
His Majesty King Chulalongkorn, Rama V,
on his Second Coronation, October 1873
1873
Albumen silver photograph
27 x 21.5 cm
Collection of National Gallery of Australia

5.10 Francis Chit

Prince Vajirunhis was Escorted to the Grand
Palace for his Investiture as Crown Prince,
Bangkok, 14 January 1886
1886
Albumen silver photograph
21.1 x 27.2 cm
Collection of National Gallery of Australia

5.11 Kassian Céphas, attributed to Semuel Céphas

Borobudur
Self-portrait of Kassian Céphas
c. 1890
Albumen silver photograph
16.7 x 21.8 cm
Collection of National Gallery of Australia

5.9

374 Gael Newton

0328-Charting Thoughts.indd 374 28/3/17 2:53 PM

 5.10

5.11

Towards a History of the Asian Photographer at Home and Abroad 375

0328-Charting Thoughts.indd 375 28/3/17 2:53 PM

 5.12 A

5.12 A Kassian Céphas, attributed to Semuel Céphas

Kassian Céphas in the Sea in Front of the
Gatehouse at Mantjingan, Parangtritis
1897
Gelatin silver photograph
16.8 x 22 cm
Collection of National Gallery of Australia

5.12 B Detail of Kassian Céphas

5.13 Kassian Céphas

Young Javanese Woman,
Probably in Jakarta
c. 1885
Albumen silver photograph
13.7 x 9.8 cm
Collection of National Gallery of Australia

376 Gael Newton

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 5.12 B 5.13

Towards a History of the Asian Photographer at Home and Abroad 377

0328-Charting Thoughts.indd 377 28/3/17 2:53 PM

 1 As pointed out by Wu Hung, a renowned art historian
and tenured professor at Harvard University, one of
the most signifcant developments in art historical
research over the last 20 to 30 years is that visual
sources, such as folk murals in temples, pictures in
newspapers and periodicals, illustrations for operas
and novels, commercial advertisements in magazines
and so on, are being covered in the newer general his-
tories of Chinese art. See Wu Hung, Meishushi shi yi
[Ten discussions on art history] (Beijing: SDX Joint
Publishing Company, 2008), 56, 67.
2 My research mainly draws from newspapers: Lat Pau,
Sing Po, Thien Nam Shin Pao, Chong Shing Yit Pao, Chin
Nam Poh, Union Times, Morning Post, Nanyang Siang
(6)
Pre-war (1886–1941) Art Activities of the Chinese Community in
Singapore through a Narrative Framework of Diasporic Bonds
Yeo Mang Thong
Visual culture encapsulates the politics, econ-
omy and culture of its time, and refects the
historical phenomena of different periods. In
recent decades, art historians have come to in-
clude a wide variety of visual images as objects
of study in their writings.1 Similarly, this es-
say is also diverse in its scope of inquiry, which
ranges from traditional lyrical poetry exchanges
among the literati, commercial advertisements,
plaques of temples and Chinese guild halls, to
seal carvings, allegorical illustrations in newspa-
pers, as well as cartoons and woodcuts. How-
ever, the main sources of my research are the
Chinese-language daily newspapers of pre-war
Singapore, which are essential in this study.2
Through my use of diverse visual materials, I
hope to broaden and deepen our exploration
and understanding of the art activities of the
Chinese community in pre-war Singapore.
90 Charting Thoughts
Pau, Sin Chew Jit Poh and Sin Kok Min Jit Pao. When
studying pre-war art, there is absolutely no way to
clearly map the development of cartoons in Singa-
pore without perusing Chong Shing Yit Pao’s supple-
ment Fei Fei, Sin Chew Jit Poh’s pictorial supplement
Xingguang [Starlight], Lat Pau’s pictorial supplement
Yehui [Coconut splendour], Sin Kok Min Jit Pao’s sup-
plement, the Union Times’ supplement, as well as
Wenman Jie [The world of literature and cartoons]
and Jinri Yishu [Art today], supplements of the Nan-
yang Siang Pau and its Sunday edition respectively.
3 The calligrapher Zhong Dexiang arrived in Singapore
in 1886—see Yeo Mang Thong, “Qiu Shuyuan yu zhan-
qian Xinjiapo huashe meishu—Yi Qiu Shuyuan houren
The period under study herein begins in
1886, the year that the Chinese calligrapher
Zhong Dexiang began selling his calligraphic
pieces in Singapore, and ends in 1941.3 After
that, Singapore fell under Japanese Occupa-
tion, from 15 February 1942 to 5 September
1945. During this time, all art activities were
controlled behind the scenes by Japanese mili-
tary and government offcials, as well as Japa-
nese cartoonists. Instead of serving traditional
visual aesthetic functions, cartoons and art
exhibitions were used as propaganda tools by
the Japanese to broadcast decrees and keep the
local populace ignorant.4
This essay approaches its subject from the
perspective of the Chinese migrants in pre-war
Singapore. Living in a foreign land, these Chi-
nese bore diasporic sentiments, longing for
their homeland and maintaining frequent in-
 jiacang huawen ribao wei sucai de kaocha” [Khoo
Seok Wan and the arts of the Chinese community in
pre-war Singapore—An investigation based on the
Khoo family’s collection and Chinese-language daily
newspapers], New Century Journal (August 2014):
24–5. An announcement titled “Shufa mingjia” [Mas-
ter of calligraphy], published in Lat Pau (30 October
1889), pertains to Wei Zhusheng, who had travelled to
Singapore in September 1889 at the invitation of Tso
Ping Lung, the Chinese Consul to Singapore. It was not
long before Wei, at the suggestion of Lat Pau’s chief
writer Yeap Jit Yun, advertised his calligraphy in the
newspapers for proft. Since then, similar advertise-
ments from calligraphers and painters also appeared
teractions with her. This underlies the unique
character of pre-war art by the Chinese com-
munity.
The art activities of the Chinese commu-
nity viewed in terms of the complex emotional
diasporic experience can be explicated in two
ways: Firstly, the Chinese diaspora never severed
their cultural connections with their country of
origin. Hoping to practise and promote the cul-
ture of their motherland overseas, they intro-
duced, in newspapers, masterpieces of Chinese
calligraphy and calligraphic models. They also
bolstered the rich diversity of art forms that had
been developed in the course of China’s long
history by engaging in activities such as poetic
exchanges, composing poems of specifed sub-
jects, inscribing plaques and exchanging paint-
ings as gifts, and seal carving.
These Chinese migrants were emotion-
ally attached to their motherland and were
concerned with the political situation and eco-
nomic developments in China. This can be
seen in “allegorical pictures” that were critical
of current affairs in China, such as commercial
advertisements with slogans that emphasised
the need to “reclaim China’s rights; promote
Chinese goods”; even art schools were founded
with the mission to “invigorate [China’s] indus-
tries.” By the Second Sino-Japanese War follow-
Pre-war (1886 –1941) Art Activities of the Chinese Community in Singapore
occasionally in the newspapers. See Yeo Mang Thong,
“You gulao de yinzhang yanyi chuanqi: Yi Qiu Shuyuan
yincun wei li” [Unfolding a legend from old seals: The
case of the compilation of Khoo Seok Wan’s seal im-
pressions], Asian Culture 36 (August 2012).
4 Yeo Mang Thong & Wei Ailan, “Xinjiapo rizhi qijian
(1942–1945) meishu huodong yanjiu” [A study of the
art activities in Singapore during the Japanese Oc-
cupation (1942–1945)], Journal of Chinese Cultural
Studies 1, no. 3 (June 2014), edited and published by
the Taiwan Society of Nanyang Culture.
5 “Huweisi baozheng gongwen yilüe” [An offcial gov-
ernance report from the Chinese protectorate, trans-
lated in brief], Lat Pau, 6 March 1889, sheet no. 5.
ing the Marco Polo Bridge Incident, cartoons
had become a tool used by the Chinese in the
resistance movement against the Japanese. Art
exhibitions travelled south from China to raise
funds for war-relief efforts, and art activities of
the Singapore Chinese community were liveliest
during this period in a show of spirited support.
Continuing the Many-Splendoured
Legacy of the Chinese Arts
Calligraphy Models and Masterpieces
After the founding of Singapore in 1819, its lo-
cal Chinese population grew steadily, and num-
bered 164,300 by 1888.5 While most of the
Chinese who migrated to Singapore were uned-
ucated labourers, some were traditional literati;
regardless, they were all culturally orientated to-
wards China. An example of this can be seen in
Chinese-language newspapers Sing Po and
Thien Nam Shin Pao, which were founded
in 1890 and 1898 respectively. Apart from
reporting news from the motherland, these
newspapers also occasionally published cal-
ligraphy and paintings by renowned artists,
as well as announced the sale of calligraphy
couplets (ready-mounted or otherwise), paper
and brushes, and templates for calligraphic
91
 6 Yeo Mang Thong, “Shijiu shiji mo (1887–1899) Xinji-
apo huashe meishu huodong yanjiu” [A study on the
art activities of the Singaporean Chinese community
in the late 19 th century (1887–1899)], Journal of Chi-
nese Cultural Studies 1, no. 2 (December 2013).
7 Lü Xicun (also known as Lü Shiyi) was a Qing cal-
ligrapher famous in Fujian, China and Taiwan. He
is hailed as a grandmaster of Taiwanese epigraphy.
See Yeo, “Qiu Shuyuan yu zhanqian Xinjiapo huashe
meishu,” 4–7.
practice. In fact, the business of mounting
paintings and calligraphy was competitive,
demonstrating that the traditional literati
in Singapore were indeed avid supporters of
these arts.6
Khoo Seok Wan (1874–1941), the found-
er of Thien Nam Shin Pao, was a key fgure in
the cultural activities of the Chinese commu-
nity in Singapore from the late 19th century to
the 1920s. Not only did he highly recommend
the Kuaixuetang Fatie (Model for calligraphy
practice from the Court of Quick Snow) in
his newspapers, he also published a selection
of calligraphic masterpieces (from his own col-
lection) by renowned Qing dynasty master Lü
Xicun (fg. 6.1), for the beneft of calligraphy
enthusiasts who were eager to copy the works
of the eminent virtuoso.7 In addition, Khoo
introduced the works of Korean calligrapher
Yin Xishi (fg. 6.2), Chinese calligrapher Xu
Lunting, calligrapher Pan Feisheng (who was
based in Hong Kong then), and the poet Lin
Qizeng (then living in Singapore) to readers in
Singapore, and even set the rates for their cal-
ligraphy commissions.8 These activities helped
to enhance the knowledge of and appreciation
for calligraphy and painting amongst the local
literati; indirectly advance the development of
92 Yeo Mang Thong
8 Yin Xishi (also known as Yun Kye-sok and Yin Qun)
had been travelling in the Jiangnan region of China
since 1887. Indications of his whereabouts and his
calligraphy advertisements could frequently be seen
in Shanghai’s Shen-Pao.
9 The Malaya Borneo Exhibition was held to welcome
the Crown Prince of Britain on his visit to Singapore.
Exhibits included merchandise from various places,
artworks by Chinese and foreign artists as well as
traditional paintings and calligraphy by students. For
the art of calligraphy in Singapore; and foster a
connection between overseas Chinese and their
cultural roots. Notably, at the beginning of the
20th century, local Chinese children were given
the opportunity to study calligraphy in school.
At the 1922 Malaya Borneo Exhibition, even
calligraphy pieces by students received com-
mendation, as published in an article: “Both
the offcial and regular scripts are written with
an archaic vigour and exquisiteness, presum-
ably the result of the habitual copying of
rubbings of stone inscriptions and other cal-
ligraphic models.”9
In 1927, Li Jian from Shanghai held a
fundraising exhibition at the Singapore Chi-
nese Chamber of Commerce. Proceeds from
the sale of poetry, prose, calligraphy, paintings
and seal carvings were used to establish a Con-
fucianist university. The event was highly rec-
ommended by the Chinese in Singapore who
were eager to support the educational activities
of their motherland.10 Another case in point is
the Nanyang Society of Calligraphy and Paint-
ing, which was founded by a group of cultured
individuals with the intention of sustaining
Chinese culture in the “southern wildlands,”
that is, to promote and cultivate the interest in
Chinese arts among Chinese immigrants. Not
 a review of the exhibition, see Lat Pau, 4 April 1922.
10 See Sin Kok Min Jit Pao, 17 January 1927.
11 “Zhanqian Xinma meishu: Cong Nanyang Shuhuashe
dao Huaren Meishu Yanjiuhui” [Art in pre-war Singa-
pore and Malaya: From the Nanyang Society of Cal-
ligraphy and Painting to the Society of Chinese Art-
ists], in Yeo Mang Thong, Xinjiapo zhanqian huaren
meishushi lunji, [Essays on the history of pre-war
Chinese art in Singapore] (Singapore: Singapore So-
ciety of Asian Studies, 1992), 33–9.
only did members of the Society study Chinese
calligraphy and painting, they also exhibited
their works, all for the aim of popularising the
traditional Chinese arts.11
Literary Exchanges between
Cultured Individuals
During this period, traditional literati residing
in Singapore were known to have engaged in
literary exchanges with their literati contempo-
raries in China. Fengyue qinzun tu (Painting of
Zither Romance), an album in the collection
of Khoo’s descendants, is most representative of
this. This work which was created by a painter
in China was commissioned by Khoo after
the failure of the Hundred Days of Reform
in 1898. The work depicts a boat at rest in a
grassy cove; the man in the boat, believed to be
Khoo Seok Wan, plays a zither placed atop his
bent knees. A light breeze brushes across the
water’s surface, and in a food of moonlight,
the drinking vessels on the low table appear
to wobble. The entire picture suggests Khoo’s
dispiritedness; he presently yields to the pleas-
ures of the breeze, the moon, poetry, wine and
music (fg. 6.3). After the painting was complet-
ed, Khoo invited local and overseas literati to
Pre-war (1886 –1941) Art Activities of the Chinese Community in Singapore
12 Yeo, “Qiu Shuyuan yu zhanqian Xinjiapo huashe
meishu,” 10–2.
13 Yan Yiyuan was a physician at the Thong Chai Medi-
cal Institution. According to “Yibang jiexiao” [A pub-
lished list of individuals who passed the entrance
examinations to medical school] in Sin Kok Min Jit
Pao, 31 July 1923, Yan was ranked frst among all the
examinees from the Hokkien community who sat for
the exams at the Institution in May 1923.
write poetic responses to it, and subsequently
compiled these poems into an album. Many of
these poems were also published in Thien Nam
Shin Pao and Chin Nam Poh. Fengyue qinzun
tu is a testament to the close interaction and
exchange of ideas between the local Chinese
and the cultured intelligentsia in their home-
land. The painting also offers us a glimpse of
the artistic sophistication in calligraphy made
by celebrated men of letters from the Guang-
dong and Fujian region. Indeed, it allows us to
appreciate remarkable calligraphy produced in
Singapore over a hundred years ago by tradi-
tional Chinese literati, including Lin Qizeng,
Huo Chaojun, Tan Biao, Kang Fengji and
Li Jichen.12
As early as the end of the 19th century,
literati societies, a continuation of the tradi-
tion of literati gatherings, were emerging in
Singapore. A work to consider in light of this
is Shoumei tu (Plum Blossoms of Longevity)
in Khoo’s collection (fg. 6.4), which was a
birthday present to him from Yan Yiyuan (also
known as Yan Wenhao or Yan Diyuan), a fel-
low member of the Singapore Tan Poetry Soci-
ety (Tan She).13 According to poems inscribed
on various paintings by members of the Soci-
ety, Sun Peigu (1892–1945), was a literatus,
93
 14 As seen in, for example, Venerable Shi Chichan’s “Ti
Sun Peigu Xingqi tu” [For Sun Peigu’s painting titled
Begging], “Ti Sun Peigu jushi hua zeng molian” [For
the ink painting of lotuses painted and given by Sun
Peigu the lay Buddhist], and He Guanren’s “Ti Yan Yi-
yuan Sun Peigu zuo meihua tu” [For the painting of
plum blossoms created by the respected Yan Yiyuan
and Sun Peigu]. Sun Peigu was an art educator. He
taught at the Tuan Mong School in 1915, and made
some contributions to art education during his stay
in Singapore. After returning to China in 1924, Sun
taught at various schools in Jieyang, Chaoyang and
Shantou, cultivating students far and wide. See Sun
Shuyan, “Minguo Lingdong huatan de qizhi—Tansuo
Sun Peigu” [A standard in the Lingdong art scene in
skilled in poetry, painting and seal carving, but
who unfortunately has no extant works for us
to admire.14 This underscores the great his-
torical signifcance of Shoumei tu, for it speaks
of the bonds of friendship between poets in
Singapore in the 1920s: Here, the poet wishes
a friend happy birthday in a traditional man-
ner, by means of inscribing a painting with po-
etry. The receiver of the painting treasures the
gift, and shows it to friends who had travelled
from afar. Together they appreciate the work
and he invites them to contribute additional
calligraphic inscriptions.
Executed in the pomo (splashed ink) tech-
nique, the aged plum bough in Shoumei tu ex-
tends horizontally to the left, bearing a spray of
cold, delicate blossoms. The leading seal, the
impression of which reads “shijiu pi” (poetry-
and-wine addict) was carved by Zhu Yugu,
who came to Singapore in 1928 to sell his cal-
ligraphic works.15 The seal imprinted at the
bottom corner which reads “leilei luoluo” (open
and upright) was carved by Sun Peigu and gift-
ed to Yan Diyuan in 1923. Being adept at both
poetry and painting, Khoo knew very well that
94 Yeo Mang Thong
the Republican Period—An exploratory look at Sun
Peigu], http://www.artcn.com/artblog/?uid-2328-
action-viewspace-itemid-9867 (accessed 12 De-
cember 2013).
15 See the Union Times, 11 August 1928.
16 This may be illustrated by Lin Zexu mobao ceye [A
leaf from an album of Lin Zexu’s calligraphy] from
the collection of Khoo Seok Wan’s family. The friends
who had viewed this page, along with their dates of
viewing, are as follows: Jiang Kongyin (1910), Kang
Youwei (9 April 1910), Hoo Wei Yin (1914; the Re-
public of China’s Consul-General to Singapore), Qin
Ruqin (1924; Republican China’s Vice-Consul to Sin-
gapore), Yan Wenhao, Cai Mengxiang (1925), Li Jian
(December 1926), Xu Beihong (1927), Lin Zhuzhai
the placement of these two seals would be criti-
cal to the overall balance of the composition.
With this in mind, he stamped the seal that
reads “poetry-and-wine addict,” a gift from
Zhu Yugu, on the painting. The poem on the
lower left of the painting was inscribed by fel-
low Tan Poetry Society member Chen Yuxian,
while the inscription on the far left was writ-
ten by Li Jian in 1929, after a viewing of the
painting.
These refned traditions, of celebrating
birthdays with poetry and painting, and the
sharing of masterpieces in one’s art collection
with fellow enthusiasts, were brought to Sin-
gapore and Malaya by the Chinese literati. To
the diasporic Chinese, such masterpieces be-
came something of an unusual medium that
brought them together, and an effective balm
that soothed their homesickness.16
Plaque Inscriptions and Compilations of Seals
The cultural phenomenon of inviting calligra-
phers or illustrious people to inscribe on plaques
or signboards of temples, guild halls and shops
 (1927; one of the founders of Tao Nan Primary School
and at one time Vice President of the Nanyang Con-
fucian Association in Singapore), Yang Daoji (1928;
also known by his sobriquet Xiangxue, Yang was
from Bing Village, Mei County, Guangdong Province,
China, and was once secretary to Chen Cheng, a
senior general of the Kuomintang), Ho Hsiang-ning
(October 1929).
17 See Lin Xiaosheng et al., eds., History of the Chinese
Clan Associations in Singapore (Singapore: Xinjiapo
Xinwen yu Chuban Gongsi, 1986).
18 See Lat Pau, 24 August 1929.
19 Yu Dafu, who came to Singapore in 1938, wrote
the name-bearing plaque inscription for Xingzhou
Bookstore, as well as couplets to be hung on pil-
was unique to the Chinese and quite common
practice in the Ming and Qing dynasties. Early
immigrants to Singapore who came from dif-
ferent parts of China actively built places of
worship for their deities, and also formed com-
munity guilds based on their dialect groups or
localities of origin.17 As the leaders of these
immigrant communities would typically hope
that their temples and associations could have
their plaques inscribed by eminent individuals,
there are plaques that have been inscribed by
individuals such as the Guangxu Emperor, Tso
Ping Lung the Qing government’s frst Con-
sul to Singapore (fg. 6.5), and Consul-General
Huang Zunxian, some of which still survive.
Other examples include Teochew Poit Ip
Huay Kuan’s plaque inscription by Li Jian,
which bears the name of the clan association
itself, as well as one by calligrapher Tan Hengfu
that was inscribed on the completion of the
Nanyang Khek Community Guild (fg. 6.6).18
In the latter example, the four large characters
“li junzi zhen” (advantageous for upholding the
frm respectability of a gentleman) had been
executed elegantly with strokes charged with
Pre-war (1886 –1941) Art Activities of the Chinese Community in Singapore
lars for Haw Par Villa and the Jing Lu School. (See
Yeo Mang Thong, Yu Dafu lü Xin shenghuo yu zuopin
yanjiu [A study of Yu Dafu’s life in Singapore and his
works], volume 4 of Xinjiapo Xinshe xueshu congshu
[The academic collection of Xinshe, Singapore] (Sep-
tember 1987), 242; and Yeo Mang Thong, “Yu Dafu,
Huang Menggui yu Jinglu Xuexiao” [Yu Dafu, Huang
Menggui and the Jing Lu School], in Asian Culture 4
(October 1984). The name-bearing plaque of Hai Inn
Temple was inscribed by Xu Beihong.
20 See Yeo Mang Thong, “Ershi shiji chu (1900–1929)
Xinjiapo huashe meishu huodong yanjiu” [A Study on
the art activities of the Singaporean Chinese Com-
munity in the early 20 th Century (1900–1929)], Xinji-
apo yishu [Singaporean Art] Issue 2 (August 2014).
breadth of spirit. The adjacent congratulatory
message reads: “Given the wisdom and civility
of our guild members, as they act with reso-
lution, and get along harmoniously with every
sector of society, our guild will surely fourish.”
When we look back in history, these inscrip-
tions are akin to ties that connect us to the past.
They refect folk religion, politics, the everyday
life of the people and cultural philosophies of
the time. Up to the 1930s, esteemed individu-
als such as the renowned writer Yu Dafu and
painter Xu Beihong continued to leave inscrip-
tions for plaques in Singapore.19 These traces
of the past add to the heritage in urban Singa-
pore, constituting quite a splendid sight.
From the late 19th century, there were
calligraphy and painting studios in Singapore
that would inscribe signboards for businesses.
In the early 20th century, Chang Shu Nai, the
chief writer of the Sin Kok Min Jit Pao, often
published advertisements for calligraphy (fg.
6.7). This indicates a close relation between cal-
ligraphy and commerce. It should also be noted
that signboards for shops were mostly written
in Chinese.20
95
 21 See Yeo, “Shijiu shiji mo (1887–1899) Xinjiapo huashe
meishu huodong yanjiu” [A study on the art activities
of the Singaporean Chinese community in the late
19 th Century (1887–1899)], Journal of Chinese Cul-
tural Studies 1, no. 2 (December 2013): 102.
22 See Yeo Mang Thong, “Qiu shuyuan yinshi” [Khoo
Seok Wan’s and his Seals], in Asian Culture 7 (April
1986): 29–37.
23 Shihanzhai yincun is currently in the collection of
the renowned Singaporean painter Tan Kian Por. I am
grateful to him for providing access to the material.
24 My thanks to Professor Wu Yongliang from the Chi-
na Academy of Art for his review of impressions of
Another set of artefacts to note are seals of
personal names and shop names which were to-
kens of authentication for individuals and busi-
nesses. With the arrival of Chinese immigrants,
the tradition of using seals as a practical object
of authentication was introduced to Singapore.
As early as the 1860s, there was a seal carving
shop here by the name of Zuishi Xuan (The
Studio of Drunken Stones). Traditional seals
were known to take on local elements to meet
the needs of the immigrant communities. For
instance, English, Indian or Malay scripts were
sometimes engraved onto seals, as requested by
customers.21
At the end of the 19th century, collecting
seals was also an activity of the traditional lit-
erati, who took pleasure in carving and gifting
them to friends.22 Such practices enriched the
art activities of the Chinese community dur-
ing this period. Lat Pau’s chief writer Yeap Jit
Yun (1859–1921, also known as Yong Weng)
was a skilled seal carver, as evidenced by his
surviving work Shihanzhai yincun (a com-
pilation of impressions of his seals, which
he titled after his residence, Shihanzhai).23
Considering that the album was completed
in 1898 and that Yeap’s seal carvings (fg. 6.8)
96 Yeo Mang Thong
seals carved by Yeap Jit Yun. Yeap has been hailed by
scholar Tan Yeok Seong as the Southern Seas’ lead-
ing newspaperman. See Tan Yeok Seong, Nanyang
diyi baoren [The leading newspaperman in Nanyang]
(Singapore: Xingzhou Shijie Shuju, 1958).
25 See Tan Kian Por’s foreword to Xinjiapo yinren zuopin
ji [A collection of works by Singaporean seal carvers]
(Singapore: Siaw-Tao Chinese Seal-Carving Callig-
raphy & Painting Society Si Bao Zhai & The Drawing
Gallery, March 2004), unpaginated.
26 See the preface to Peigu Shanren qianyin [The seals
of Peigu the mountain recluse], dated 10 October, the
11th year of the Republic of China (i.e., 1922), writ-
are “characterised by an ancient quality of ro-
bustness and simplicity, and infuse a cultural
energy into others,” I believe he deserves to
be recognised as the leading seal carver in
Singapore.24
Four of Yeap’s seals are featured in Xinji-
apo yinren zuopin ji (A collection of works by
Singaporean seal carvers), published in 2004.
In the accompanying foreword, Tan Kian Por
notes that the signifcance of the publication
lies in “saluting the contributions made by the
early seal carvers, remembering them, and also
fnding the beginnings and tracing the devel-
opment of seal carving in Singapore.”25 Ex-
plicitly articulated here is the transmission of
the culture of seal carving.
Another case in point is Sun Peigu, who
came south to teach at Tuan Mong School in
1915, and was an adept poet, painter and seal
carver. During his sojourn in Singapore, he
“painted occasionally, but was troubled by the
lack [of seals] to use [in his paintings]; so [he]
carved quite a number of seals on [his] own,
and when [he] had some spare time, [he] play-
fully compiled the impressions of these seals
into a book.”26 From this we know that Sun,
too, compiled impressions of his seals.
 ten by Sun Peigu himself at Singapore’s Tuan Mong
School. Access to this source material was provided
courtesy of Sun Shuyan, from Jieyang.
27 After the founding of its Republican regime, China
bustled with activities that invigorated its domestic
industries and promoted Chinese goods. Gestures
that refected patriotism by the industrial and com-
mercial sectors spread to the society in Singapore.
Schools became infuenced. For example, the Yeung
Ching School established its own Students’ Society
of Arts and Crafts in 1919, which held an exhibition in
the following year with the purpose of “fulflling the
students’ moral obligation to promote Chinese mer-
Interactions Brought about by China’s Political
Situation and Economic Development
Advertisements to Promote Chinese Goods,
Art Schools to Invigorate Industries
The majority of advertisements at the end of
the 19th century were purely textual; any images
that were featured were mostly photographs of
actual objects. Only from the early 20th century
onwards did Chinese-language daily newspa-
pers gradually begin to publish advertisements
of commercial products that included a combi-
nation of both images and text. These mostly
expressed their artistry through forms and lines,
and the resultant visual effect possessed the
qualities of both advertisement and illustration.
Due to specifc historical circumstances at
the time, the notion of “invigorat[ing] China’s
industries and promot[ing] Chinese goods”
was incorporated into advertisements of vari-
ous commercial products.27 The message of
these texts and images in advertisements was
very clear: in the course of everyday life, any
activity, even smoking and drinking, could be
considered an act of patriotism as long as one
was consuming Chinese products. Inherent in
Pre-war (1886 –1941) Art Activities of the Chinese Community in Singapore
chandise.” (See Lat Pau, 5, 7 and 12 January 1920.)
Local newspapers called for the resident Chinese
community to purchase Chinese products, so as to
help reclaim the mother nation’s rights and profts.
(See Sin Kok Min Jit Pao, 11–12 March 1921.)
28 Cited from Zhang Dianyuan, “Zhengzhi jingjixue
pipan: Guanggao chuanbo yanjiu de linglei shijiao”
[A critique of political economics: An alternative per-
spective on the study of the propagation of advertis-
ing], in Zhejiang daxue xuebao [Journal of Zhejiang
University] 36, no. 1 (Jan 2006).
29 See the Yi Shi Art School’s enrolment advertisement
in Sin Kok Min Jit Pao, 15 March 1921.
the kind of emotional appeal here was a strong
sense of national identity. When Chinese im-
migrants consumed merchandise that had been
artfully packaged in this manner, the aware-
ness of economic rights draining away and of
the need to reclaim these rights seeped into
their lives (fg. 6.9). Advertisements thus func-
tioned as an effective medium, subliminally re-
expressing the hopes of the people. “Not only
did [they] not feel that anything was forcibly
imposed upon them, but actually came to agree
with the viewpoint presented in the advertise-
ments. The advertisements were thus shaping
people’s behaviour and thinking.”28
The Chinese characters in fgure 9 are basi-
cally saying: why spend money on foreign ciga-
rettes when Great Wall is an excellent brand of
cigarettes? The underlying message is that the
consumption of Chinese products would lead
to the recovery of China’s economic rights. This
advertisement was created by Yi Shi, the head of
the Yi Shi Art School, for the Nanyang Broth-
ers Tobacco Company Limited in Singapore.29
Its image is humorous and as far as its aesthet-
ics, underlying thought and language are con-
cerned, the advertisement would have attracted
the interest and attention of consumers.
97
 30 According to “Xinjiapo gongbuju hukou diaocha” [The
Singapore Municipal Commission’s household sur-
vey], Lat Pau, 30 April 1931, 4.
31 See Lat Pau, 25 October 1922.
32 Yeo, “Cong Zhongxing Ribao shang de manhua tanqi”
[Beginning with the cartoons in Chong Shing Yit Pao], in
Zonghui shi nian [Ten years of the SFCCA] (Singapore:
Singapore Federation of Chinese Clan Associations,
1995), 79–85.
33 See Lao Shanghai manhua tuzhi [A Pictorial Record
of Old Shanghai’s Cartoons] (Shanghai: Shanghai
In 1911, the Chinese population in Singa-
pore numbered 255,611, and grew to 350,355
by 1921.30 With this tremendous increase
in population, art schools began to emerge.
In 1906, Su Binting established a portrait-
painting workshop in the belief that art could
develop the minds of the people and help to
strengthen the country. In October 1922, Sun
Peigu co-founded Singapore’s frst fne art acad-
emy—the Singapore Academy of Fine Arts for
Overseas Chinese. In his speech at the inaugu-
ration of the institution, Sun noted: “Sales of
the products of our country have been poor
in recent years because they are poorly made
and lacking in fne artistry. This is why we
have fallen behind foreign goods and are at a
huge disadvantage.”31 The establishment of art
schools was thus also associated with the idea
of invigorating the motherland, and increasing
the wealth and strength of the nation and its
people.
Discourses of this sort highlight, frstly,
that art educators in Singapore worried about
the gradual weakening and impoverishment of
their motherland; secondly, that they hoped to
catch up with foreign countries and power up
the industries “back home” through the use of
artistic design and packaging. Their motiva-
tion was markedly different from that behind
Lim Hak Tai’s founding of the Nanyang Acad-
98 Yeo Mang Thong
Kexue Jishu Wenxian Chubanshe, July 2010), 12–4.
34 Lim Cheng Tju, “Tong Meng Hui, huaren zai tuxi-
ang zhong de zhiwo zaixian, yiji 20 shiji chu Xinji-
apo huawen manhua de lanshang” [Tong Meng Hui,
Visual Self-Representations of the Chinese and the
Birth of Chinese Cartoons in Early 20 th Century Sin-
gapore], translated from English by Chew Wei Li &
Chan Cheow Thia, in Tangent 6, no. 2 (2007): 172.
35 Ibid., 169–79.
36 Chen graduated from the Tuan Mong School, and was
at one time a clerk at Tuan Mong Branch School. See
emy of Fine Arts in 1938. Lim believed that
Singapore, being geographically situated as a
transport hub between Europe and Asia, was
blessed in its arts with a tropical ethos and a
complex ethnic consciousness.
Allegorical Pictures that Critiqued Current
Affairs, Cartoons that Called for Resistance
against Japan and to Save China
Between 9 September 1907 and 21 March
1908, Fei Fei, the supplement to Chong Shing
Yit Pao, published a total of 41 allegorical pic-
tures, most of which were reprinted from for-
eign newspapers.32 Two of these bore the name
of Ma Xingchi, a well-known frst-generation
cartoonist from China.33 Ma’s works published
in Fei Fei are likely to be political cartoons
drawn while he was in Singapore with Sun Yat-
sen on revolutionary business.34 These allegor-
ical pictures, which were critiques of current
affairs presented visually, opposed the Manchu
government and supported the revolution in
China. For example, “Manqing guanli, guiguo
huaqiao” (Qing bureaucrats, returning overseas
Chinese, fg. 6.10) by an unknown illustrator,
depicts how, after having worked very hard
abroad for a living, overseas Chinese returned
to their motherland only to be exploited by
corrupt bureaucrats.
 Duanmeng Xuexiao ershiwu zhounian jiniankan [Tuan
Mong School’s 25th anniversary souvenir magazine]
(Singapore, 1931). In addition, Zhang Bohe, Zheng
Zhaowu and Wang Yunsheng wrote forewords for
Chen Kunquan manhua ji [The collected cartoons of
Chen Kunquan]. See Duanmeng yuekan [The Tuan
Mong Monthly] 2, no. 2 (15 December 1932).
37 See “Dai Yinlang bian Nanyang Shangbao Xingqi Kan
Jinri Yishu xilun” [Analyses of Art Today in the Sunday
edition of Nanyang Siang Pau], in Yeo, Xinjiapo zhan-
qian huaren meishushi lunji, 59–70.
The satirical political cartoons that were
published in Fei Fei to comment on current
affairs and educate the public were the frst
of their kind in Singapore’s Chinese-language
daily newspapers. Soon after, the shifting politi-
cal situation in China brought about cartoons
of a different nature. For example, shortly after
its founding in 1914, Kok Min Jit Pao began
to feature a series of cartoons that censured the
aggressively ambitious Yuan Shikai. Between
September and October 1918, there were also
combinations of images and texts produced by
the Singapore-based cartoonist Zhu Mingxin
that exposed the fatuousness and incompetency
of the warlords in China while consolidating
support for the Kuomintang.35 The emergence
of such political cartoons evidenced the con-
cern the overseas Chinese had for the political
situation back in China.
Political cartoons appeared sporadically in
the Chinese-language daily newspapers there-
after. The editors of the supplements to these
newspapers focused on expressing sentiments
and new ideas primarily through texts. By the
1930s, however, cartoons as a means to edu-
cate the people to resist the Japanese invasion
gradually gained importance. In 1930, satirical
cartoons by Tchang Ju Chi and Chen Kunquan
were featured from time to time in Lat Pau’s pic-
torial supplement Yehui (Coconut splendour),
Pre-war (1886 –1941) Art Activities of the Chinese Community in Singapore
38 As seen in Dai Yinlang’s “Yige tigong—Xian gei xinxing
de muke zuozhe” [An option—For emerging woodcut
artists], “Lun muke yishu” [On the art of woodcuts]
and “Lun ticai” [On subject matter], which puts forth
eight “isms” as guidelines for taking the woodcut-
and-cartoon movement forward and as a set of
standards for evaluating the works of the move-
ment. See “Huajia Dai Yinlang” [Dai Yinlang the art-
ist], in Yeo, Xinjiapo zhanqian huaren meishushi lunji,
199–212.
the Union Times’ supplement and Xingguang
(Starlight).36 Chen Kunquan’s “Zhe shi women
weiyi de mudi” (This is our sole objective, fg.
6.11), for example, lays bare the Japanese mili-
tary’s ambition to take over Manchuria. Such
cartoons which expressed concern over current
affairs and revealed ugly realities were a manner
of art prevalent in pre-war Singapore.
In the 1930s, the Chinese diaspora fervent-
ly responded to the resounding cries to resist
Japanese aggression and save the motherland.
The art community at the time collectively re-
lied on the use of cartoons as a publicity tool
to educate the public and motivate the masses
to take action. Dai Yinlang, the editor of Nan-
yang Siang Pau Wenman Jie (The world of lit-
erature and cartoons) as well as Nanyang Siang
Pau (Sunday Edition) Jinri Yishu (Art today),
believed that woodcuts and cartoons were ef-
fective weapons in the Chinese people’s war of
resistance, comparable to airplanes and tanks,
or at the very least a bullet or javelin.37 These
two periodicals played an important role in
promoting cartoons and woodcuts in pre-war
Singapore for they not only provided a platform
for people who enjoyed cartooning or making
woodcuts to express themselves, they allowed
Dai—due to his skill in drawing, talent in carv-
ing and rich creative experience—to come up
with a set of art theories (fg. 6.12).38
99
 39 See “Xinjiapo zhanqian wu nian (1937–1941) man-
hua yanjiu” [A study of Singapore’s cartoons in fve
pre-war years (1937–1941)], in Yeo, Xinjiapo zhanqian
huaren meishushi lunji, 174–85.
40 See Sin Kok Min Jit Pao, 17 January 1927.
41 Because Ho Hsiang-ning’s political stance was at
odds with Chiang Kai-shek’s, Ho’s exhibition was
given a rather low-profle treatment by some of
the local Chinese leaders and groups. Although the
original plan was to invite the wife of the Governor
of Singapore and that of the Chinese Consul-General
to Singapore to co-host the opening of the event,
both women ultimately did not show up, nor did Aw
Notably, in its manifesto publicised in
1937 at the First Malayan Chinese Cartoon
Exhibition, the Nanyang Youth Lee Chee As-
sociation stated that political cartoons, when
done correctly, often could be more powerful-
ly and widely effective than an argumentative
essay on politics.39
In 1939 and 1940, cartoons about the on-
going Sino-Japanese War were always promi-
nently featured on the front page of Nanyang
Siang Pau. Among these was 1939’s Dadi hui-
chun (Spring returns to the earth), created by
the newspaper’s graphic editor Tay Kong Han.
The cartoon expresses conviction in China’s
eventual victory over Japan and the successful
establishment of the Chinese regime that was
to come.
Calligraphy and Painting Events
to Raise Relief Funds
The earliest fundraising calligraphy and paint-
ing event in Singapore took place in 1927, from
22 to 23 January. It was an exhibition organ-
ised for the sale of poetry, prose, calligraphy,
paintings and seal carvings, held by Li Zhong-
qian (also known as Li Jian) at the Singapore
Chinese Chamber of Commerce, in support
100 Yeo Mang Thong
Boon-Haw, the Chairman of the exhibition’s organis-
ing committee. This goes to show that art exhibitions
were affected by the political climate in China at that
time. See “He Xiangning zai Xinjiapo” [Ho Hsiang-
ning in Singapore], in Yeo, Xinjiapo zhanqian huaren
meishushi lunji, 13–21.
42 See “Xu Beihong: Cong Xinjiapo zhanqian (1930–
1941) huawen ribao suo kanzai ziliao kan qi zai hai-
wai de meishu huodong” [Xu Beihong: A look at his
overseas art activities, based on materials published
in Chinese-language daily newspapers in pre-war
Singapore (1930–1941)], in Yeo, Xinjiapo zhanqian
huaren meishushi lunji, 98–108.
of the founding of a Confucianist university.40
Li was the frst painter from China to hold an
art exhibition at the venue. Another exhibition
of a similar nature, this time of Ho Hsiang-
ning’s works, was held at the same premises on
7‒9 November 1929, ostensibly to raise funds
for the Chung Kai Agricultural and Industrial
School.41
From the 1937 Marco Polo Bridge Incident
to 1941, a total of 19 exhibitions to raise relief
funds were held (fg. 6.13). This fully demon-
strates the overseas Chinese’s intense interest in
China’s war effort against the Japanese. Thanks
to the Chinese immigrants’ fervent enthusi-
asm, a committee would typically be formed
prior to such art shows to prepare for the event,
taking charge of everything from publicity to
installation and reception. Prices of the exhib-
ited artworks ranged from tens to thousands
of dollars. The organisers would form teams
and travel far and wide to sell vouchers to be
used for purchasing these artworks, to local
Chinese businessmen. This was a distinctive as-
pect of the pre-war art exhibitions. The various
Chinese-language daily newspapers not only
reported these fundraising exhibitions in thor-
ough detail, but also issued special publications
to promote these events. Examples include
43 Lim Loh was a renowned architect who engaged in
architectural work and the manufacturing of bricks
and tiles. In 1901, he took on a commission to con-
struct the Victoria Memorial Hall with the lowest bid,
and caused a stir in Singapore when he completed
the building in fve years. Lim Bo Seng was his 11th
child. Zhao Xun and Wang Ying founded the New Chi-
na Theatre Troupe in Singapore on 6 April 1940, and
went on to give performances at various locations in
Singapore and Malaya. Fangxia ni de bianzi (Put down
your whip) was a sensational street play at the time.
44 See Yeo Mang Thong, “Situ Qiao fufu zai Xinjiapo”
[Mr and Mrs Situ Qiao in Singapore], in Yeo, Xinjiapo
Kunmingwen xiehui manhua zhanlan tekan (A
special publication on the cartoon exhibition
of the Kunming Branch of the All-China Re-
sistance Association of Writers and Artists) and
Liu Haisu xiansheng huazhan tekan (A special
publication on Mr Liu Haisu’s painting exhi-
bition). A remarkable number of visitors at-
tended these events. A Xu Beihong show, for
instance, attracted 20,000 visitors and ran for a
long duration, raising as much as 15,398 Straits
dollars.42 Cultural societies, schools and radio
stations frequently invited exhibiting artists to
give talks, and their insightful understanding
and profound discussions of art nourished art
lovers in Singapore. Xu’s “Zhongxi hua de fen-
ye” (The divide between Chinese and Western
painting) and “Yishu de fangxiang” (The direc-
tion of art), as well as Liu’s “Zhongguo hua yu
yanghua zhi yidian” (Differences between Chi-
nese and Western painting) and “Xiandai yishu”
(Modern art), for example, helped Westerners
become better acquainted with Chinese art.
The painters who came south were warm-
ly welcomed by the local Chinese community,
with which they would frequently interact. Xu,
for example, was invited to write on the title la-
bels of books and leave inscriptions for plaques.
He painted full-length portraits of the then
Pre-war (1886 –1941) Art Activities of the Chinese Community in Singapore
zhanqian huaren meishushi lunji, 112–7; Yao Meng-
tong [Yeo Mang Thong], “Artistic Scene under Speci-
fed Historical Structure: Situ Qiao’s Put Down Your
Whip,” Art Journal 95, no. 2 (2016): 70–6, published by
the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts.
45 The original Hanjiang dudiao tu was lost or destroyed
during the Japanese Occupation of Singapore. In
1948, however, Tan Ean Kiam’s son wrote a letter to
Xu Beihong, requesting him to re-create the work.
Recognising that Tan was “not lacking in flial senti-
ments,” Xu thus painted Hanjiang chuidiao tu and gave
it to him. See Hanjiang chuidiao tu [Angling in winter],
published by the Tan Ean Kiam Foundation in 1988.
Governor of Singapore Sir Shenton Thomas
in military attire and Lim Loh (fg. 6.14); Han-
jiang dudiao tu (Fishing Alone in Winter) for
Tan Ean Kiam; a portrait for Lee Choon Seng,
a full-length portrait of Miss Jenny, paramour
of the Vice-Consul of Belgium in Singapore; as
well as the famous tableau Fangxia ni de bianzi
(Put Down Your Whip, fg. 6.15) which is based
on a performance of the titular street play by
actors Zhao Xun and Wang Ying.43 Incidental-
ly, in relation to the last work, the painter Situ
Qiao, who was sojourning in Singapore at the
time, had at one point specially invited the two
said actors to his studio. With the conditions
of the stage performance replicated (in terms of
lighting, as well as Zhao’s and Wang’s appear-
ances), Situ completed another famous paint-
ing associated with the Second Sino-Japanese
War, also titled Put Down Your Whip.44
After Xu painted Hanjiang dudiao tu (Fish-
ing Alone in Winter) for Tan Ean Kiam, Tan was
known to have invited fellow poets—including
Lee Choon Seng, Venerable Shi Chichan, Guan
Zhenmin, Xu Yunzhi, Chen Tianxiao, Khoo
Seok Wan, Huang Menggui and Wu Ruifu—
to contribute inscriptions to the work.45 This
was a continuation of the tradition of inscrib-
ing poems on famed paintings that was in prac-
101
 tice at the end of the 19th century. Furthermore,
not only did Xu create a good number of cal-
ligraphy works and paintings, he also left the
Chinese literary circles in Malaya with many
pieces of fne literature. Xu’s notes about his
travels in India, his poetry exchanges with
Huang Mengkui, along with poetic inscrip-
tions for his paintings by Yu Dafu and other
fellow poets enriched the art activities of the
pre-war Chinese community. (In addition, Yu
Dafu also inscribed a good number of poems
for Liu Haisu’s paintings.)46
The Society of Chinese Artists in Singa-
pore contributed considerably towards the war
relief. In its exhibitions, the favour of Nanyang
(the South Seas) was recurrent. Artists who by
then had resided in Singapore for a long time
had developed a deeper attachment to the Nan-
yang region, and thus unconsciously included
elements from their surroundings in their
paintings. Shown at the Society’s exhibition in
1939, Tchang’s oil painting Mila and Jena (fg.
6.16), for example, depicts two girls, one seated
and the other standing; rough-edged and un-
sophisticated in appearance, they gaze into the
distance ahead, seemingly absorbed in thought.
The rose-red tones and the overall pictorial
composition leave an exuberantly tropical im-
pression, a sincere expression of the artist’s feel-
ings about life in the region. Another example
is Untitled (Still Life) (fg. 6.17), which depicts
fruits commonly seen in Southeast Asia, such
as mangoes, mangosteens, rambutans and jack-
fruit. On the right, behind the footed fruit bowl
hangs a Sumatran batik that sports a pattern of
dots and lines on a dark brown background.47
Through artistic collaging, the artist has vivi-
fed the overall image with vibrant colours and
a sense of three-dimensionality.
Conclusion
The unique character of pre-war Singaporean
art was shaped and informed by the immigrant
Chinese’s manifold emotional bonds to their
102 Yeo Mang Thong
homeland. Creating cartoons and advertise-
ments was a way to connect with the social
dynamics of their homeland. These were also
mediums that inspired and deepened patriot-
ism. The traditions of composing poetry for
paintings, seal carving, calligraphy and inscrib-
ing plaques were brought south to Singapore.
These cultural artefacts, which speak of de-
lightful, ancient historical stories, allow a grad-
ual understanding of the steady transmission of
cultural heritage.
With the unfolding of the Second Sino-
Japanese War (during which the fate of the Chi-
nese nation hung in the balance), painters and
calligraphers from China as well as those resid-
ing in Singapore held one fundraising art exhi-
bition after another. Frequent art exhibitions,
in the fve pre-war years from 1937 to 1941
in particular, were unusual for this region. The
artists’ insightful talks and the assistance given
by students to such exhibitions contributed to
an unprecedented artistic atmosphere in pre-
war Singapore. The war destroyed everything,
yet it also catalysed the development of art on
this island. As calligraphers and painters ar-
rived frst in Singapore, and subsequently trav-
elled north to different parts of Malaya to hold
exhibitions—as in the case of Ho Hsiang-ning,
Gao Jianfu, Shen Yibin, Ong Schan Tchow, Xu
Beihong and Liu Haisu—Singapore became a
relay station for the propagation of art by Chi-
nese at home and abroad.
The materials discussed in this essay have
provided us with a wonderful perspective, al-
lowing us to witness the visual artistic diversity
that arose within a specifc historical context.
This essay was originally written in Chi-
nese by Yeo Mang Thong, translated by Wang
Yitong and edited by Ng Kum Hoon.
Chinese proper nouns and terms in this es-
say are given in its most commonly used form;
where there is none, these are transliterated in
the hanyu pinyin romanisation system.
46 See “Yu Dafu yu Liu Haisu” [Yu Dafu and Liu Haisu], ings during the nascence of the Nanyang Style], in
Asian Culture 3, (April 1984). the “Crossroads” (Xin huidian) section of Singapore’s
47 See Zhang Xinghong, “Zai shuo Zhang Ruqi hua zai Lianhe Zaobao, 16 June 2014.
Nanyang feng chuqi shi” [On Tchang Ju Chi’s paint-

Pre-war (1886 –1941) Art Activities of the Chinese Community in Singapore 103
 6.1

6.2

378 Yeo Mang Thong

0328-Charting Thoughts.indd 378 28/3/17 2:53 PM

 6.1 Lü Xicun (also known as Lü Shiyi)
Calligraphic model, in emulation
of Su Shi’s script
Collection of Mr Ong Cheng Kian

6.2 Yin Xishi (also known as Yin Qun

and Yun Kye-sok)
A section of Taohuayuan ji
(An Account of the Peach Blossom
Spring) in cursive script
1898
Collection of Mr Ong Cheng Kian

6.3 Yu Tao
Fengyue qinzun tu
(Painting of Zither Romance)
1898
Chinese ink and colour on paper
Collection of Mr Ong Cheng Kian

6.4 Yan Yiyuan (also known as

Yan Wenhao and Yan Diyuan)
Shoumei tu
(Plum Blossoms of Longevity)
6.3 1924
Ink on paper
Collection of Mr Ong Cheng Kian

6.4

Pre-war (1886 –1941) Art Activities of the Chinese Community in Singapore 379

0328-Charting Thoughts.indd 379 28/3/17 2:53 PM

 6.5 Tso Ping Lung
Xian che youming (Prominence
throughout the spiritual and
mortal worlds), a plaque
inscription for Thian Hock
Keng Temple
1886

6.6 Tan Hengfu

Li junzi zhen
(Advantageous for upholding
the frm respectability of
a gentleman), a plaque
inscription to commemorate
the completion of the Nanyang
Khek Community Guild
1929
Image courtesy of Mr Xue
Zhenchuan

6.5

6.6

380 Yeo Mang Thong

0328-Charting Thoughts.indd 380 28/3/17 2:53 PM

 6.7 Chang Shu Nai
An inscription on a signboard for a
commercial business.
c. 1930s

6.8 Yeap Jit Yun (also known as Yong Weng)

Shihanzhai Seals
As published in Xinjiapo yinren zuopin ji
[A collection of works by Singaporean
seal carvers] (Singapore: Siaw-Tao
Chinese Seal-Carving Calligraphy &
Painting Society, Si Bao Zhai & The
Drawing Gallery, March 2004).

6.7

6.8

Pre-war (1886 –1941) Art Activities of the Chinese Community in Singapore 381

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 6.9 Yi Shi
Advertisement as published in Lat Pau,
24 December 1921
The Chinese characters at the top read:
“Hey, buddy! When we have excellent
Great Wall cigarettes and you are not
buying them—your purse is hanging
upside down!”
Image courtesy of the National
University of Singapore Libraries

6.10 Artist unknown

Manqing guanli, guiguo huaqiao (Qing
bureaucrats, returning overseas Chinese)
As published in the Chong Shing Yit Pao
supplement, Fei Fei, 24 February 1908
Image courtesy of the National
University of Singapore Libraries

6.9

6.10

382 Yeo Mang Thong

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 6.11 Chen Kunquan
Zhe shi women weiyi de mudi
(This is our sole objective)
As published in the Sin Chew Jit Poh
supplement, Xingguang (Starlight),
12 May 1930

6.12 Dai Yinlang

Dai zhe guangming lai (Arriving
with light)
As published in the Nanyang Siang
Pau (Sunday Edition) supplement,
Wenman Jie (The world of literature
and cartoons), 8 November 1936

6.11

6.12

Pre-war (1886 –1941) Art Activities of the Chinese Community in Singapore 383

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 Description of Exhibition
1 A calligraphy and painting
exhibition to raise funds for
refugees organised by the
Society of Chinese Artists
2 An exhibition of works by
Jiang Xiuhua organised by The
Cantonese Community’s China
Relief Fund Association
3 The Save-China Cartoon
Exhibition by the Society of
Chinese Artists
4 The Society of Chinese Artists’
Annual Exhibition
5 An exhibition of works by
Wang Jiyuan
6 An exhibition by The Singapore
Commercial Art Society
7 The Nanyang Academy of Fine
Arts’ Student Exhibition
8 An exhibition of works by
Hu Chengxiang
9 An exhibition of works by
Chang Tan Nung
10 An exhibition of works by
Shen Yibin
11 An exhibition of works by
Xu Beihong
12 An exhibition of works by
Ong Schan Tchow
384
Exhibition Venue Date Remarks
Great World Park 1–3 October 1937 Oil paintings, traditional
Chinese paintings were exhibited
New World 3–6 December 1937 Traditional Chinese paintings
Amusement Park were exhibited
New World 3–6 December 1937 Exhibition presented cartoons
Amusement Park
Young Women’s 4–6 July 1938 Half of the proceeds donated
Christian Association to relief efforts; 230 works
exhibited: oil paintings,
Singapore Chinese 8–10 July 1938 watercolours, sculptures,
Chamber of Commerce traditional Chinese paintings
Singapore Chinese 9–12 April 1938 104 works exhibited: traditional
Chamber of Commerce Chinese paintings, oil paintings,
watercolours
New World 5 August 1938 Watercolours, charcoal portraits,
Amusement Park commercial graphic designs, oil
paintings were exhibited
Singapore Chinese 19–21 August 1938 Over 200 works exhibited:
Chamber of Commerce watercolours, traditional
Chinese paintings
Singapore Chinese 14–18 August 1938 130 works exhibited: traditional
Chamber of Commerce Chinese paintings, watercolours,
woodcuts, sketches
Singapore Chinese 8–15 October 1938 170 works exhibited: traditional
Chamber of Commerce Chinese paintings, woodcuts,
sketches, epigraphy
Singapore Chinese 6–14 January 1939 Works exhibited: traditional
Chamber of Commerce Chinese paintings, calligraphy
Victoria Memorial Hall 15–16 March 1939 171 works exhibited: traditional
Chinese paintings, oil paintings
Singapore Chinese 18–26 March 1939
Chamber of Commerce
Singapore Chinese 17–26 June 1939 Works exhibited: traditional
Chamber of Commerce Chinese paintings
6.13
Yeo Mang Thong
 6.13 A list of calligraphy and painting
exhibitions (1937–1941) organised
to raise funds for war relief

Description of Exhibition Exhibition Venue Date Remarks

13 An exhibition of works by Singapore Chinese 27–31 October 1939 Over 300 works exhibited:
Yu Shihai and Ning Hanzhang Chamber of Commerce woodcut cartoons, photography

14 The Society of Chinese Artists’
Annual Exhibition
Victoria Memorial Hall 11–13 December Over 200 works exhibited:
1939 pastels, traditional Chinese
paintings, oil paintings,
Singapore Chinese 16–18 December watercolours, woodcuts, etc.
Chamber of Commerce 1939

15 The United Calligraphy and Singapore Chinese 9–15 February 1940 For raising relief funds; over
Painting Exhibition Chamber of Commerce 300 works exhibited: traditional
Chinese paintings, calligraphy

16 An exhibition of works by Singapore Chinese 27 September– Over 500 works exhibited:

Wang Aiduo Chamber of Commerce 1 October 1940 traditional Chinese paintings,
calligraphy

17 An exhibition of works by Singapore Chinese 9–11 November 180 works exhibited: traditional
See Hiang To Chamber of Commerce 1940 Chinese paintings, calligraphy

18 An exhibition of works by Raffes Hotel 21–24 November For the aid fund of Britain and
Li Feihong 1940 relief funds for war refugees in
China; 100 works exhibited: oil
paintings, traditional Chinese
paintings

19 An exhibition of works by Liu Singapore Chinese 23 February– Over 200 works exhibited:
Haisu Chamber of Commerce 4 March 1941 traditional Chinese paintings,
oil paintings

6.13

Pre-war (1886 –1941) Art Activities of the Chinese Community in Singapore 385
Copyright not available

6.15

6.14

386 Yeo Mang Thong

 6.14 Xu Beihong
Portrait of Lim Loh
1927
Oil on canvas
114 x 76 cm
Gift of Lim family in
memory of Lim Loh
Collection of National
Gallery Singapore

6.15 Xu Beihong
Put Down Your Whip
1939
Oil on canvas
144 x 90 cm
Private collection

6.16 Tchang Ju Chi

Mila and Jena
1939
Oil

6.17 Tchang Ju Chi

Untitled (Still Life)
6.16 Undated
Oil on canvas
94 x 130 cm
Collection of Chang Si Fun
(Shewin Chang)

6.17

Pre-war (1886 –1941) Art Activities of the Chinese Community in Singapore 387

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 1 Katharine Sim, Malayan Landscape [with an intro-
duction by Sir Richard Winstedt] (London: Michael
Joseph, 1946), 28. Published in 1946, Malayan Land-
scape is presented as a recollection of Sim’s expe-
rience in Malaya, that was in all likelihood originally
penned as private correspondence. We are reminded
by the author that much of the content of the book,
from which this excerpt was taken, was derived from
the notes and letters sent during the period 1938 to
1942 to close friends or relatives.
2 See her foreword in the second edition of Malayan
(7)
A “Forgotten” Art World:
The Singapore Art Club and its Colonial Women Artists
Yvonne Low
In 1938, Katharine Sim, a newly wed artist
who accompanied her husband, Stuart Sim,
from England to Parit Buntar, wrote:
The Malays were good to paint. The men
have that little-boy look which is so attrac-
tive, and the women bashfully droop their
heads, shy and demure. I could not offend
the modesty of Moslem Malay women by
asking them to pose in the nude; but it was
a disappointment not to be able to do any
studies of Malay nudes.1
In thinking about the relationship between
colonial women artists and their subjects, and
the kinds of roles they might play in the colony,
there are various things observable in this brief
autobiographical description. First, the Malays
made “good” painting subjects to the colo-
nial painters; second, qualities of deference in
the colonised (“that little-boy look”; “shy and
demure”) appeared to appeal to colonial sub-
104 Charting Thoughts
Landscape published in 1969 (Singapore: Donald
Moore for Asia Pacifc Press), 6–8. Sim went on to
pursue deeper knowledge of the Malay language (and
culture) and became one of very few British women
who wrote about pantuns. For more on this subject,
see Krishnavanie Shanmugam, “Pantun Translations
into English in Women’s Writings in Twentieth Cen-
tury British Malaya,” Journal of Modern Languages 20
(2010): 80–93.
3 If we accept the view that colonisation was not pri-
marily concerned with transposing cultural values
jectivity and taste; and third, the “disappoint-
ment” of not being able to do nude studies tell-
ingly placed the author among the pedigree of
academically trained artists.
Katharine Sim belonged to a long history
of colonial women artists who painted the trop-
ics during their intermittent stay in the British
Colony, no less due to their privileged status as
the spouse of colonial expatriates and offcials.
What perhaps set Sim apart from the others
was her deep fascination and love for Malayan
peoples and the Malayan culture which germi-
nated during an initial three-year stay (what
she called her “three youthful, glib years”) that
ultimately led to her making a conscious and
concerted effort to embrace the different cul-
tures in Malaya upon her subsequent return
following the end of the war.2
Colonial women and men formed the pre-
cursors of Singapore’s history of self-moderni-
sation.3 Yet their histories were often excluded
in nationalistic discourses of art. The work and
 but whose real objectives were related to trade, eco-
nomic exploitation and settlement, then it might be
useful to consider Singapore’s modernisation beyond
the nationalist frame, but as possibly one of self-
modernisation, and as having been shaped by colo-
nial conditions of modernity. See for example Robert
Young, Postcolonialism: An Historical Introduction
(Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2001), 22–4.
4 This was particularly clear in Sim’s revised foreword
written for the second edition of Malayan Landscape,
6–8.
contribution of privileged colonial women art-
ists, such as Katharine Sim, belonged to a no
man’s land—as part of the colonial community,
they were distanced from their own commu-
nity where they belonged, and marginalised
in anti-colonial histories in spite of how many
may well have acknowledged the colony to be
their second home.4
This essay discusses the cultural institu-
tions that were in place during colonial rule and
the signifcant roles colonial women played. By
tracing the long process of cultural remodelling
in Malaya, it is possible to observe how cultural
institutions such as social art clubs were later
inherited and continued by post-Independent
Malaya, opening up participation within them
to various excluded groups. Far from a homoge-
nous or an undistinguished mass, “colonial art-
ists” themselves comprised professional, offcial
and amateur artists, who also operated under
uniquely colonial conditions. They introduced
not merely a new form of visual representation,
but a secular artist-spectator system that made
the production and reception of modern visual
representations comprehensible as a profession-
al or amateur art practice.
The Little-Known Singapore Art Club
and the Very Social World of Art
Postcolonial discourses of art were problemati-
cally devoid of colonial references. Where colo-
A “Forgotten” Art World
5 Kwok Kian Chow, Channels and Confluences: A
History of Singapore Art (Singapore: Singapore Art
Museum, 1996). See chapter on “Amateur Drawing
Association and the Low Brothers,” 10–2.
6 In taking a revisionist approach to fll a gap in history,
the author of this essay is aware that advances in tech-
nology have increased accessibility to sources and
improved the speed at which information is obtained.
In this instance, the digitisation of newspapers by the
Singapore National Library Board has signifcantly en-
hanced the research process for present researchers.
nial infuence, if any, was believed to have tak-
en place, it could be traced to the rise of formal
art education in public schools and later to the
appointment of an Art Superintendent, Rich-
ard Walker, in 1928. This explicit occlusion of
colonial infuence is most markedly discernable
in the canonical text, Channels and Confuences:
A History of Singapore Art, in which the author
chose to begin the narrative with the Amateur
Drawing Association founded by the Straits
Chinese community. Here, Kwok Kian Chow
wrote:
Although there is some scanty information
on an art club established in Singapore
around 1882, a good starting point for a
survey of twentieth-century Singapore art
history is 1909—the year when the Ama-
teur Drawing Association was established.5
The opening chapter paid little attention
to the wider cultural contexts of the Amateur
Drawing Association, its historical precedents
or the relations of its members within the
nascent art world. Instead, it drew exclusive
attention to the association’s existence as the
evidence for local agency as seen in the works
of a few members, the much celebrated “Low
brothers” for example. However, the “scanty in-
formation” of this art club does in fact reveal an
earlier history.6 As records of this art club and
artworks produced by the artists may have been
105
 7 See Kelvin Chuah, “The Practice of Watercolour at the
Dawn of Modern Art in Malaya,” in Imagining Identi-
ties: Narratives in Malaysian Art Volume 1, eds. Nur
Hanim Khairuddin & Beverly Yong with T.K. Sabapathy
(Kuala Lumpur: RogueArt, 2012), 52–80.
8 “Art Critics,” Straits Times Weekly Issue, 18 October
1884, 8.
9 For example, Guido, “The Art Club,” The Straits Times,
12 January 1884, 3.
10 See for example the following published in The
destroyed during World War II, I was unable
to successfully fnd any catalogues or reproduc-
tions of exhibited artworks.7 Instead, I found
over 200 articles of varying length and qual-
ity describing the activities, exhibitions and
artworks published in a number of local daily
newspapers between 1883 and 1941. These
have yet to be referred to in any way by writers
or scholars on this subject. These articles have
since been maintained by the National Library
Board of Singapore as archival material, and are
publicly available.
The Art Club, which was also sometimes
called the Singapore Art Club to differenti-
ate from art clubs in neighbouring states, was
purportedly started in the early 1880s by “a few
ladies and gentlemen having a turn for draw-
ing and painting” with the aim of encouraging
amateur painting and sketching.8 Reports of the
club and its activities in the form of announce-
ments and reviews were mostly written by com-
mittee members, newspaper correspondents or
by members of the public addressing the editors.
In the absence of any visual evidence, such
reports provide critical insights to the early art
developments of British Malaya. They provide
some clues as to how local art societies such as
the Amateur Drawing Association came to be,
and the social conditions in which the art of
the Low brothers was produced and received.
In the unravelling of this forgotten art club, the
106 Yvonne Low
Straits Times: “Singapore Art Club,” 5 March 1883, 2;
Nemo, “The Art Club Exhibitions,” 6 September 1883,
2; “Untitled,” 29 February 1884, 2.
11 “Singapore Art Club,” The Singapore Free Press and
Mercantile Advertiser (1884–1942), 22 May 1914, 7. In
“Singapore Art Club: Exhibition at the Memorial Hall,”
The Straits Times, 27 May 1914, 9, there was mention
of “Mr Ben Brown,” a member of the Singapore Art
Club who resided at Rangoon and had also partici-
pated in the Rangoon Art Club exhibition.
many “hidden” roles that women played in the
nascent art world of British Malaya as patrons,
artists, committee club members and the view-
ing public, also came to light.
The Singapore Art Club was initially a pri-
vate club, but it eventually grew in size and rep-
utation, becoming somewhat public from 1883
onwards. Its activities were undertaken serious-
ly and the members were careful not “to neglect
the interests of a society so eminently calculat-
ed to promote the cultivation of all that is en-
nobling and purifying.”9 The club appeared to
have lasted for 60 years in spite of long periods
of inactivity before it fnally ceased operation
during the Japanese Occupation. Although
the leadership of the club was inconsistent and
information about the club from secondary
sources is scarce, throughout this period it was
not by any means a low-profle club, for it was
well-patronised by personalities belonging to
the upper classes of colonial society.
The club gained prominence around the
region and frequently enlisted participation
from neighbouring states such as Perak and
Penang, until they too started their own clubs.
By 1883, the club had about “ffty active mem-
bers” based in settlements across the Straits, a
small running subcommittee of 12 in charge
of organising the club’s activities, including the
publishing of regular announcements and re-
ports of their activities in the local daily news-
12 “Fine Art Exhibitions,” Straits Times Weekly Issue, 13
August 1884, 6.
13 Ibid.
14 Tan Kok Tiong, Chua Choon Seng and Lee Chim Kuan
were also invited to participate.
15 See “Singapore Art Club,” The Straits Times, 5 Feb-
ruary 1906 and “The Art Exhibition: An Interesting
Collection,” Eastern Daily Mail and Straits Morning
Advertiser, 3 February 1906.
16 It is presently unknown if other states that were part
paper The Straits Times and others.10 Initially,
when their seasonal exhibitions were held at
the Upper Room in the Town Hall, they were
well-attended by people in society and the rul-
ing elite, for example, the Governor and his
family, who were also amateur painters who
would participate in the exhibitions.
The Singapore Art Club must have en-
joyed much publicity and stature, for news
regarding its activities, reputation and success
spread to other colonies. In its later years, the
club was able to garner entries regularly from
the Federated Malay States (FMS) as well as
from Rangoon and Ceylon.11 One 1884 re-
port discussed the “art club model” as ideal.
It described Singapore as taking “the lead” in
the matter of Art Club exhibitions in the “Far
East,” with even Shanghai, its “elder and more
aspiring settlement,” following its example
for having also “produced an Art Club, which
exhibits, at stated seasons, a fair collection of
sketches in crayon and water colours, and even
more ambitious efforts.”12 The writer went on
to propose that the Art Club “might advance a
step further in the direction of popularising art”
by “constitut[ing] themselves a sort of acade-
my,” drawing as an example the Simla Fine Art
Society in Calcutta. It was the “liberality of the
members” that the article drew specifc refer-
ence to as worthy of modelling after, in which
prizes and medals within sections were offered
A “Forgotten” Art World
of the FMS might have had similar art clubs but if
there were, they did not participate in these events.
The Penang Impressionists Art Club was thought to
be exclusively female and was described as a wom-
en’s club in modern Penang art history, but this is
untrue. There were male participants namely Mr H.A.
Neubronner and others. See for example, “Singapore
Art Club: Exhibition at Government House Yester-
day,” The Straits Times, 16 March 1905, 5 and “The
Art Exhibition: An Interesting Collection,” ibid.
to the amateurs divided into categories: the na-
tive artist, warrant and non-commissioned of-
fcer and the commissioned offcer.13
This unfortunately did not materialise. The
Singapore Art Club kept to its original structure
and remained generally closed to non-European
members, though it did conduct regular non-
member competitions and on a few occasions
invited non-European members to exhibit and
compete, for example members of the Ama-
teur Drawing Association including Low Kway
Song.14 There were also rare occasions when lo-
cals participated in the exhibitions, such as stu-
dents of the Kuala Kangsar Malay Art School
and the “little Chinese boy” by the name of Fam
Seh Goha, who was commended for his picture,
Battle of Trafalgar, painted in a technique he
had invented, using a piece of bamboo bitten at
the end and dipped in ink.15
To boost diversity and stimulate interest
and motivation within the community, the
Singapore Art Club reached out to fellow Euro-
pean members in art clubs from the region. For
instance, members of the FMS art clubs (name-
ly in Perak, Selangor and Negeri Sembilan) and
the Penang Impressionists Art Club were regu-
larly invited to take part in their annual exhibi-
tion, sometimes competing for prizes, and vice
versa.16 Their support was especially crucial
when key members of the club were absent and
participation in the exhibitions dipped.
107
 17 “The Art Exhibition: An Interesting Collection,” ibid.
18 Norman Edwards, The Singapore House and Resi-
dential Life 1819–1939 (Singapore: Oxford University
Press, 1990), 9.
19 Graham Saunders, Tropical Interludes: European Life
and Society in South-East Asia (Kuala Lumpur: Ox-
ford University Press, 1998), 153.
Given the social limitations in a foreign
environment such as the tropics, it was to be
expected that the European community at-
tended events for mostly social reasons with
only a small group dedicated to advancing ar-
tistic developments. Descriptions of the club’s
activities and reception conformed with ac-
counts of the general way of life in colonial
circles, where men and women partook in ten-
nis parties, picnics, balls and evenings at the
club.
This seemed especially the case in the
early days of the club when its meetings and
exhibitions turned out to be massive social af-
fairs with some exhibitions initially held at the
Town Hall, and later at the Government House
or Victoria Memorial Hall (and elsewhere).
At these exhibitions, apart from the display
of paintings and art objects for competition
(sometimes open to non-members), there was
also the display of works on loan, which aimed
to showcase artworks by famous artists or note-
worthy craft and antiques.
The viewing of works was often con-
ducted to the accompaniment of refreshments
and music. There was usually a miscellaneous
concert that included vocal and instrumental
music. The events became increasingly sophis-
ticated in later years and the club catered from
Hotel de l’Europe Syndicate, and hired the ser-
vices of music groups such as the Band of the
Sherwood Foresters.17
Norman Edwards reminds us that the
European population consisted not only of
members from suburban England, but also the
108 Yvonne Low
20 “The Year 1883,” [reprinted from The Straits Times,
31 December] Straits Times Weekly Issue, 5 January
1884, 5.
21 Lynn Hollen Lees, “Being British in Malaya, 1890–
1940,” The Journal of British Studies 48, no. 1 (Janu-
ary 2009): 76–101.
British settlers in India. It was from the ranks
of the new English middle-class suburbanites
that most of the colonial offcials sent out to
manage affairs in India were drawn. This lat-
ter group, he argues, went from being part of a
socially mobile class aspiring to the norms of a
landed aristocracy to being a minority but elite
group in a less advanced foreign world, on the
fringe of a rural-based agricultural economy.
They were on the one hand wary of “going na-
tive” and on the other, experienced the pressure
to interact with the native community in order
to adapt in a foreign environment.18 Both Brit-
ish India and Malaya witnessed an interchange
of ideas between the local and British commu-
nities—much more than in other British colo-
nies; the fear of losing their identity and social
position did much to justify their need for con-
servatism, order and conformity.
As the ruling minority in a foreign set-
tlement, the European community was a
close-knit one and settling into the colony
required learning how to live within such a
community. The club, which was usually ex-
clusively European in membership, has been
described by Saunders as the “centre of Euro-
pean activity”; it was a place where the Euro-
peans could relax among their fellows and for
many women (usually wives or relatives), who
were typically provided domestic help and
found time heavy on their hands, club activi-
ties formed a critical component of their social
and everyday life.19
One 1883 annual report revealed that so-
cial life and entertainment in Singapore con-
22 For example, it was reported in “Art in Singapore:
Successful Exhibition at the Tanglin Club,” The
Straits Times, 15 February 1908, 7, “the Hon. Secre-
tary, Mrs Evatt, is to be congratulated upon having
induced so many amateurs to forward their pictures
for exhibition.”
sisted of balls, club events, including exhibi-
tions organised by the Teutonia Club and Art
Club, cricket and lawn tennis tournaments,
and various forms of dramatics such as English
opera, minstrels, circuses—all of which were
“fairly well patronised.”20 Although rare, up-
wardly mobile “natives” who were suffciently
naturalised as British subjects were rewarded
membership to such clubs, but even so, the
distinction between the European and non-Eu-
ropean fractions was kept consistent. A good
example was how Haji Abdul Majid, the frst
Malay assistant inspector of schools, was him-
self a member of the Ellerton Club in Kuala
Kangsar, a club organised for “lower-ranking
colonial offcials and clerks from various ethnic
groups.”21
Beginning in 1887, both James Miller
and Major Manners Kerr were remembered
for leading and driving the Singapore Art Club
during the early period. Then there was W.F.
Nutt and W.R. Collyer who avidly supported
the club by serving as its President during the
frst decade of the 20th century. They were well-
supported by Mrs Evatt.22 Sir Frank Swetten-
ham, then Governor and Commander-in-
Chief of the Straits Settlements, supported the
club as a keen competitor and patron, offering
as well the Government House as the venue for
several successful exhibitions. The subsequent
decade reached a new milestone in terms of the
quality and scale of the exhibitions under a pre-
dominantly female-led committee. News about
the club’s success was frequently reported, such
as the following:
A “Forgotten” Art World
23 “Singapore Art Club: Exhibition at Government House
Yesterday,” 5.
24 “Art in Singapore: Annual Exhibition of Local Club,”
The Straits Times, 13 March 1912, 7.
25 “Singapore Art Club,” The Straits Times, 31 January
1912, 6.
In fact there were more exhibits and on-
lookers than there was space for either […]
the guests gathered together and trod on
each other’s toes with the utmost affabil-
ity and variously praised and criticised the
exhibits—intelligently and otherwise—as
is the happy and praiseworthy fashion at
all such assemblages […] and the demand
for catalogues demonstrated the excellence
of the show.23
Under the leadership of Lady Evelyn
Young, from 1912, the club underwent a pe-
riod of success. Reports were glowing with
accolades with regard to both the quality and
quantity of the exhibits:
The current exhibition, which opened
yesterday afternoon in the Tanglin Club
premises and extends over today, surpasses
all previous events of the kind, and, apart
from the fact that it contains twice as
many exhibits as last year’s, the standard of
work is distinctly better all over.24
Lady Evelyn Young served as the President
from 1912 till possibly 1915 and was assisted
by an all-female committee team in 1912.
These members were known only by their last
names, and they included Mrs Owen, Mrs
W.L. Watkins, Mrs Darby, Mrs F.M. Elliot,
Mrs Money and the honorary Secretary and
treasurer, Mrs Felkin.25 Young was herself very
competent in the category of Applied Arts and
submitted a Limerick lace collar for exhibition,
109
 26 “Singapore Art Club: The Annual Exhibition,” The Sin-
gapore Free Press and Mercantile Advertiser (1884–
1942), 6 June 1918, 357.
27 “Singapore Art Club,” The Singapore Free Press
and Mercantile Advertiser (1884–1942), 6 Septem-
ber 1929, 9.
28 Denis Santry & “Claude,” Salubrious Singapore (Sin-
gapore: Kelly and Walsh, 1920).
29 See for example “Local Art Club’s Exhibition,” The
Straits Times, 4 November 1929, 14 and “Pictures
among other items.26 In 1919, the Governor
and Lady Young completed their service and
left the colony.
It was a good decade before more news
of the freshly revived Singapore Art Club ap-
peared, with reportage of its founding to have
taken place in January 1929.27 This fnal in-
carnation of the Singapore Art Club before the
Japanese Occupation was led by Denis Santry,
who appeared popular and was elected presi-
dent of the club consecutively for several years.
Santry was also the co-author of a colourful
book entitled Salubrious Singapore, in which
many samples of his ink drawings and satiri-
cal cartoons (fgs. 7.1 and 7.2) of the European
community based in Singapore were printed.28
Figure 1 shows a black and white caricature of
Mr F.S. James, then Colonial Secretary of Sin-
gapore, whose dress sense became the subject
of Santry’s mockery. In these cartoons of what
were scenes observed by the artist, women were
very much part of the social milieu of the time.
Black and white ink drawings of such type was
one of several categories in which members
could contribute their works to for the exhi-
bitions. A member, Mr W. Stirling, was par-
ticularly adept in this medium; his works were
given special mention and reproduced in the
local papers (fg. 7.3).29
Under the leadership of Santry, the overall
110 Yvonne Low
from the Recent Singapore Art Club Exhibition,”
Malayan Saturday Post, 7 December 1929, 37.
30 “Singapore Art Club,” The Straits Times, 25 January
1929, 10.
31 “Local Art Club’s Exhibition,” 14.
32 “Healthy Art: Singapore Club’s Refreshing Exhibi-
tion,” The Singapore Free Press and Mercantile Ad-
vertiser (1884–1942), 3 November 1931, 16. See as
well, “Singapore Art Club: Exhibition by Local Artists,”
The Singapore Free Press and Mercantile Advertiser
(1884–1942), 15 November 1932, 7.
conduct of the club remained generally simi-
lar to its previous incarnations, which saw the
club making attempts to organise monthly ex-
hibitions, art appreciation sessions, and weekly
drawing sessions.30 Like previously, the vast
majority of the club’s members were amateurs,
with only a handful who were professional art-
ists. Nonetheless, the quality of the exhibits,
which spanned oils, watercolours, black and
white drawings, etchings and bas-relief model-
ling, was praised by a writer to have reached a
“high amateur standard.”31
This period also saw the active participa-
tion of the prominent Government Art Su-
perintendent, Richard Walker, whose works,
especially in watercolours, were frequently
mentioned for their excellent execution and the
high price they commanded.32 A poor repro-
duction of his rendition of a young fsherman
heading back to his rumah panggung (house on
stilts) was published in the Malayan Saturday
Post (fg. 7.4).33 In particular, the annual exhi-
bition of 1932 was noted for its “high stand-
ard” and saw the participation of neighbouring
clubs from Penang and Kuala Lumpur, includ-
ing artists such as the famed watercolourist,
Abdullah Ariff.34
Under the relatively short-lived leadership
of Santry, arrangements were also made for the
circulation of art magazines amongst members
33 “Pictures from the Recent Singapore Art Club Exhibi-
tion,” Malayan Saturday Post, 7 December 1929, 37.
34 “Healthy Art: Singapore Club’s Refreshing Exhibi-
tion,” 16.
35 See “Singapore Art Club: Good Progress Reported at
Annual Meeting,” The Straits Times, 9 March 1931,
18; “Singapore Art Club: Encouraging Progress Dur-
ing the Year,” The Straits Times, 26 March 1932, 19.
36 There was a 1948 public announcement seeking old
members of the club. See “Art Club Seeks Old Mem-
bers,” The Straits Times, 7 November 1948, 5.
and to develop the drawing skills of its members,
an aspect that Santry emphasised as leader of the
club.35 Whilst the club already offered weekly
life drawing classes, Santry, an amateur sculp-
tor himself, was keen to develop the activities
of the club pedagogically in a broad range of art
forms. Plans were made to acquire plaster casts,
photographs of posed models, and a skeleton.
There were few reports after 1932 and though
attempts were made to revive the club in 1937,
it never regained its past glory, and was almost
unheard of after the end of World War II.36
It is clear from this brief illustration that
the Amateur Drawing Association did not
emerge from a vacuum, but was in fact part of
an existing art world circuit made up of pre-
dominantly colonial artists (amateur and pro-
fessional), patrons, and an English-speaking
viewing and reading public. Though he was
not a member of the Singapore Art Club, Low
Kway Soo himself had participated occasional-
ly in the Singapore and F.M.S. Art Club exhibi-
tions and, like other members of the Amateur
Drawing Association, was part of a nascent art
world and art market that was modelled after
the social art clubs of the colonial world. His
portrait of Mr Loke Chow Thye shown at the
1913 F.M.S. Art Club exhibition was described
as showing “much promise.”37 Whether the
Low brothers were indeed, as some records
A “Forgotten” Art World
37 “F.M.S. Art Club,” The Singapore Free Press and Mer-
cantile Advertiser (1884-1942), 11 December 1913,
380.
38 It is presently uncertain whether this is the frst such
studio, however, based on existing records, this seems
to be the case. Details of how the studio was run re-
mains unclear, but it seems likely that it was a public
space that enabled Low to paint regularly, and to re-
ceive patrons as implied from the many commissions
later in his painting career.
have it, the frst locally born artists or otherwise
is likely a matter of defnition and technicality.
They were certainly among the frst in the Ma-
laya region to have made the individual work
of an artist an aspired and professional vocation
that was modelled after a European one.
Singapore in the early 20th century was fast
becoming an important city and trading port.
It became the world’s seventh largest port, and
by 1914 its trade had multiplied by a factor of
eight, further securing its position as an impor-
tant Southeast Asian entrepôt for the import
of Western manufactured goods and the export
of raw materials. This indicated a burgeoning
economy that was becoming increasingly affu-
ent and likely more receptive to such activities
of high culture. Low Kway Song, for example,
could have found himself a publishing frm
that would employ his artistic skills, but he
must have been relatively reassured by contem-
porary conditions to have considered making a
living as a professional artist. He consequently
took the advice of Mr Philip, his former school
principal, and opened a studio, which he called
the Raffes Art Studio, along Bras Basah Road
in the heart of the Singapore metropolis.38
The “studio” as an integral component of an
artist’s practice fnds roots in a well-established
European tradition, as a space for the artist to
develop and gain mastery of his or her artistic
111
 39 “Brothers who Blazed the Trail of Art in Malaya,” The
Straits Times, 19 July 1953, 4. The article provided
details of his early struggles and later successes,
including commissions for paintings by a number of
government offcials.
40 See for example, Chew Teng Beng, “History of the
Development of Art in Penang,” in Penang Artists
1920’s–1990’s, ed. Tan Chee Khuan (Penang: The Art
Gallery), 5–7. Chew mentions another “local talent”
who was part of the group, the wife of a wealthy Chi-
nese millionaire, Mrs Lim Cheng Kung.
41 Little was mentioned about the type of work they did
in Chew’s account, save for the anecdote that their
instructor was a Malay watercolourist, Abdullah Ar-
experience. It was a bold commitment on the
part of Low Kway Song but one which despite
a diffcult start eventually paid off.39
Amateurism and the “Accomplished
Women” of the Early Art Clubs
The Penang Impressionists appeared to be the
only known colonial art club and is often de-
scribed in postcolonial narratives as being made
up of mostly “English housewives.”40 None of
them, save for one other non-European member
of the group, the wife of a Chinese millionaire,
Mrs Lim Cheng Kung, was identifed, together
with the instructor, Abdullah Ariff. Nor was
there signifcant interest given to research the
type of works produced by the members.41
The marked absence of female participa-
tion in the historical treatise, Channels and
Confuences, was also telling. Brief mention
was made of an early exhibition, organised by
the Young Women’s Christian Association in
1931, which the author claimed was “probably
the frst all-women art and craft exhibition in
Singapore.”42 This was also the only instance
where he made any mention of women art-
ists outside of a chapter that he had dedicated
to women artists.43 This 1931 exhibition was
112 Yvonne Low
iff. Abdullah later became commemorated as a pio-
neer Malaysian artist in Malaysian art discourse.
42 Drawing on the writings of Yeo Mang Thong, Kwok
did however qualify that until further research re-
veals otherwise, this was one of few important early
art exhibitions. The others being the Amateur Draw-
ing Association exhibition of 1913 and the exhibition
on the work of Chinese art students from France of
1927. See Kwok, op. cit., 16.
43 Ibid.
44 See chapter, “The Legacy of Women in Singapore Art
History,” in Bridget Tracy Tan, Women Artists in Sin-
gapore (Singapore: National Heritage Board, Singa-
pore, 2011), 11–6.
further taken up by Bridget Tracy Tan, author
of Women Artists in Singapore, as a starting
point to survey exhibitions of women artists
“between 1931 and 1991” and as the point of
beginning for discussing the legacy of women
artists in Singapore.44
It is clear in both examples that the pur-
pose of staging these historical events—of
amateur beginnings—served to open up a dia-
logue about the present: to set the stage for the
modern art world of professional artists. Such
historical delineations serve to reify the ama-
teur–professional divide by tracking its course
of development chronologically and by privi-
leging a discourse that mapped the ideological
progress of a nation’s art and the progress of
women, respectively. Whereas in fact, there is
little correlation between the two.
The colonial art clubs, as discussed, devel-
oped out of circumstances that were unique to
the colonial social life and were generally dis-
tinct in the form, structure and intent of hobby
classes. Though there is a tendency to view art
club members, in the present-day context, as
“Sunday painters,” it seems more likely that
most of the Singapore Art Club members were
amateurs that grew from an important and dis-
tinct European tradition.45
45 In David Y.S. Liew’s thesis, “Shifting Images: Women
& Art in Singapore” (unpublished honours thesis,
National University of Singapore, 1995), he claimed
that “Sunday painters” abounded among the West-
ern community, “but there are apparently no records
to indicate whether professional artists existed
within this group.” This is a common misconception,
and one which this chapter hopes to correct.
46 See Amanda Isaac, “Ann Flower’s Sketchbook: Draw-
ing, Needlework, and Women’s Artistry in Colonial
Philadelphia,” Winterthur Portfolio 41, no. 2/3 (2007):
141–60 and Kim Sloan, “A Noble Art”: Amateur Art-
ists and Drawing Masters c.1600–1800 (London:
British Museum Press, 2000), 41–3, 217.
From as early as the 18th century, drawing
was deemed “a noble art, a signature of artistic
genius, and a mode of mental and moral im-
provement for gentlemen and ladies.” It gained
gradual but widespread acceptance as a skill
that needed to be developed in one’s formative
education so much so that by the 19th century,
it was viewed as “a useful art” for it was the
“basis of sound military reconnaissance and en-
gineering, scientifc description and classifca-
tion, and the design of superior manufactured
goods, from silks and lace to pottery and fur-
niture.”46
Kim Sloan’s essay discusses the historical
signifcance of these terms to show that, at least
in the 17th century, attitudes toward amateur
artists and professional artists were the reverse
of the present understanding that amateur
work did not meet professional standards. Pro-
fessional artists were frequently described as
“mere artifcers” whilst the amateurs were “gen-
tlemen” and “ladies.”47
Nonetheless, “amateur artist” as a descrip-
tive term generally referred to a person who
loved and practised one or more of the arts
without expectation of payment and this seems
closest to how the members of the Singapore
Art Club were described in the many reports
A “Forgotten” Art World
47 Sloan, ibid., 7.
48 “Singapore Art Club: Exhibition at Government House
Yesterday,” 5.
49 “Singapore Art Club: A Good Exhibition,” The Singa-
pore Free Press and Mercantile Advertiser (1884–
1942), 13 March 1912, 7; in other reports mention
was made of the quality of this category of work:
“There are a fair number of exhibits of applied arts,
in needle work, metal work, plaster, tapestry, and
lace, some of it very delicate and excellent work.”
See “Singapore Art Club,” The Singapore Free Press
and Mercantile Advertiser (1884–1942), 27 May
1914, 6.
and announcements. Viewed in this context,
though “amateurs,” the members of the Singa-
pore and FMS art clubs appeared to be skil-
ful in a range of arts, which they would readily
apply in various social (including charitable)
occasions. It did not appear that they were
pursuing art-making with the intensity of a
professional artist which often required them
to expend energy in the promotion and sale of
their art.
At the art clubs, at least a handful of the
women members so impressed their audience
with their fne craftsmanship in the applied and
domestic arts that they were mentioned in the
exhibition reviews. One lady, Mrs Romenij,
gained a reputation for excelling in a rare and
diffcult art form, repoussé in brass and silver.
She was an active member of the Singapore Art
Club during her residence in the early 1900s,
and competed frequently in the categories of
Oils and Applied Arts.48 The latter was not un-
usually dominated by female participants, and
because it represented an extensive range, judg-
ing was reported to have been diffcult. In one
instance, four ladies were all given “equal frsts”
for their works which included a “smock frock,”
a “berthe of Point Renaissance,” a “metal box,”
a “leather box” and a “painted gauze.”49
113
 50 Sloan, op. cit., 7–8.
51 “Singapore Art Club: Exhibition at Government
House,” The Straits Times, 4 December 1901, 3. The
participating contributors in this event from the Sel-
angor and Perak art clubs were all female. Instances
like these were not exceptional. The two male mem-
bers were R. Dunman and Frank Swettenham.
52 Caroline Jordan, Picturesque Pursuits: Colonial Wom-
en Artists and the Amateur Tradition (Melbourne:
Melbourne University Press, 2005), 12.
The “traditional vague perception” that
most amateurs were solely women, as Sloan has
shown in the frst London exhibition on ama-
teur artists, is not true; there were, she affrmed,
as many, if not more, male amateur artists
than female.50 Here at the colonies’ art clubs,
women did seem more active than men as par-
ticipants. One suspects, even without the avail-
ability of full members’ records, that female
members far outnumbered their male coun-
terparts in representation in most of the clubs.
This can be inferred from the names published
in regular reports of the participants’ works,
the committee members of the clubs and lists
of judges and winners. At the 1901 year-end
exhibition, for example, of the 100 exhibits on
display, with the exception of a handful sub-
mitted by two male members, the exhibits were
predominantly by women.51
Caroline Jordan’s study on Australian colo-
nial women demonstrated that women sketched
whenever they had the opportunity in the col-
ony, and speculated it was likely they needed
to do that more than ever in the new country:
Sketching was a way to learn about the
fora and fauna, to record their colonial
dwellings and children for their distant
families, to ward off ennui and depres-
sion when they felt isolated, to cling to the
things that defned a “lady” in a rough-
114 Yvonne Low
53 Saunders, op. cit., 19.
54 See Isabella Bird, “Letter VII,” in The Golden Cher-
sonese and the Way Thither (New York: G.P. Putnam’s
Sons, 1883), 108–16.
55 Edwards, op. cit., 30. The number of Europeans in
the Peninsula also increased substantially. Between
1891 and 1931, for example, the European population
of the Straits Settlements grew from 4,422 to 10,003
while that of the FMS (formed in 1895) increased
from 719 to 6,350 (of which Pahang accounted for
only 390). On the other hand, there were only 1,295
and-ready society that seemed to many to
care little for the arts, even to make a little
money on the side.52
One does get a similar sense of the “ennui”
that is shared by women who have accompa-
nied their husbands to the tropical colonies of
Malaya in travel and biographical descriptions.
Isabella Bird was among a handful of Europe-
an women who left behind written records of
their travels and experience of colonial South-
east Asia and Asia during the 19th and early
20th centuries. Her books Unbeaten Tracks in
Japan (1880) and The Golden Chersonese and
the Way Thither (1883) helped establish her
reputation and contributed to her election as
the frst woman fellow of the prestigious Royal
Geographical Society.
Graham Saunders shrewdly pointed out
that it was to the womenfolk of colonial so-
ciety, who were unemployed and “burdened
with lonely domesticity,” to whom we are now
indebted for insightful accounts of colonial
life.53 It seemed that many women did write
to alleviate the monotony in the tropical colo-
nies—as attested by Bird, who made the fol-
lowing observation:
It is a dreary, aimless life for them—scarce-
ly life, only existence. The greatest sign of
vitality in Singapore Europeans that I can
 Europeans in the FMS in 1931.
56 See letters in Harriette McDougall, Sketches of our
Life at Sarawak (London: Society for the Promotion of
Christian Knowledge, 1882).
57 See for example, “Singapore Art Club,” The Singapore
Free Press and Mercantile Advertiser (1884–1942),
27 May 1914, 6 and “Art in Singapore: Annual Exhi-
bition of Local Club,” 7. Unfortunately, examples of
their works were not published in the newspapers;
neither were catalogues (if any were printed) or re-
productions of exhibited artworks located. However,
see is the furious hurry in writing for the
mail. To all sorts of claims and invitations,
the reply is, “But it’s mail day, you know,”
[…] The hurry is desperate, and even the
feeble Englishwomen exert themselves for
“friends at home.”54
By the end of the 19th century, the Euro-
pean population, though still a minority, had
grown signifcantly and was no longer confned
to the Straits Settlements.55 In particular, the
opening of the Suez Canal also signifcantly
reduced the travelling time and improved the
development of infrastructure in the colonies so
that as a consequence, more European women
were able to travel to and reside safely in parts
of the colony.
With the increase in female presence and
overall population, the gap between the Eu-
ropean community and the local Asian com-
munities actually widened. The differences in
social behaviour of women in the communities
was marked—whilst European women accom-
panied their husbands in social settings, Asian
wives rarely did so. The European community
itself was still very much governed by notions
of proper conduct among the social classes.
Harriette McDougall’s letters for example, de-
scribed her inability to mix with other Euro-
pean women in Sarawak because they were of a
lower social class.56 If that were the case, there
A “Forgotten” Art World
National Gallery Singapore has in its collection
works by two foreign women artists, Eleanor Watkins
and Margaret Felkin, completed during the 1940s
and 1920s respectively, which show highly compe-
tent sketches and watercolours by them that are not
dissimilar to the descriptive accounts of such news-
paper articles. It is presently unclear if both women
were members of the Singapore Art Club, or if the
works had been exhibited in any of the exhibitions
by similar clubs in Singapore or the FMS.
would be even less mingling between the female
European and the more inferior “native” classes.
Certainly, the woman’s role in establish-
ing familiarity in a place was heightened by the
central role she already played in middle-class
Western societies as the mistress of the house
and the overseer of domestic stability. In re-
creating what was familiar to their social world,
they introduced what would necessitate the
conduct of proper behaviour across the social
classes and across the genders. In this regard,
the art and culture that was introduced, insti-
tuted and displayed did more than help the
gentlemen and especially the ladies pass their
time or “adjust to life” in the tropics. How they
conducted themselves around these objects of
culture did much to reinforce their cultural
identity and social position.
In the occasional descriptive accounts of
the Singapore Art Club exhibitions, it is evident
that members of the club travelled regularly and
sought out scenic locations in and around Malaya
to paint and sketch. Common subject matter for
their sketches, watercolours and oils included
seascapes, inland scenes, and genre scenes in and
across Malaya. This can be discerned from the
titles given to the exhibited paintings deemed
exemplary: for example, Silver Sea from Malaya
by Miss Abel, Pasir Panjang by Mrs Barnard,
Kuala Kangsar by Mrs Stephenson, and Hadji’s
Home and Perak River by Mrs Hargeaves.57
115
 58 This image was later reproduced in J.M. Gullick, Old
Kuala Lumpur (Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University
Press, 1994). It was frst published in Cuthbert Wood-
ville Harrison, An Illustrated Guide to the Federated
Malay States, 4th ed. (London: Malay States Informa-
tion Agency, 1923).
59 These images were later reproduced in Gullick, op.
cit. They were frst published in Philip C. Coote, Peeps
at Many Lands: The Malay States (London: A&C
Black Publishers, 1923).
60 We may assume that these works (fgs. 5–7) be-
longed to both “Mrs Aldworth” and “Mrs Barnard.”
“Mrs Aldworth” won awards for her drawings and
special mentions for watercolours. See “The Singa-
pore Art Club,” The Singapore Free Press and Mercan-
Given their prominence in the colonial ar-
tistic circuit, it was not entirely unlikely that
some of them may well have contributed as
illustrators to the many publications on the
Malay States for the print industry back home.
For example, an example of a fne watercolour
depicting the abandoned mining pits by Mary
Barnard (fg. 7.5) was reproduced in Cuthbert
Woodville Harrison’s An Illustrated Guide to the
Federated Malaya States (1923).58
Similarly, two other fne watercolours (fgs.
7.6 and 7.7) depicting the everyday street scenes
of Kuala Lumpur by Dorothea Aldworth were
published in Philip Coote’s Peeps at Many
Lands: The Malay States (1923).59 Both “Mrs
Barnard” and “Mrs Aldworth,” as they were
represented in the local dallies, were after all
active during that period and had won prizes
for their watercolour contributions to the Sin-
gapore Art Club exhibitions.60 It was therefore
not surprising if they had indeed contributed
their paintings for illustrative purposes.
Praise and accolades published in the
daily newspapers were awarded not only to
particularly talented individuals, but also to
cooperative or conscientious members as well.
For example, Mrs Aldworth was singled out
for submitting pastel drawings, a seemingly
116 Yvonne Low
tile Advertiser (1884–1942), 15 February 1908, 12;
“The Singapore Art Club,” The Singapore Free Press
and Mercantile Advertiser (1884–1942), 4 March
1911 and “Art in Singapore: Annual Exhibition of Lo-
cal Club,” 7. “Mrs Barnard” won frst prize for her wa-
tercolour in the 1914 exhibition. See “Singapore Art
Club,” The Singapore Free Press and Mercantile Ad-
vertiser (1884–1942), 27 May 1914, 6.
61 “Art in Singapore: Successful Exhibition at the Tan-
glin Club,” 7.
62 Ibid.
63 “Singapore Art Club: Exhibition at Government
House,” 3.
64 The article also provided further information about
“unpopular” medium; they were described as
“excellent and conscientious specimens” and it
was hoped that her success in the use of this
medium would “induce others to take up pas-
tel work.”61 She did not excel in merely pas-
tels, but also in watercolours and oils, which
showed her versatility and talent.62 Similarly,
women who participated in the Applied Arts
category were frequently mentioned for their
“dainty” and “exquisite” work. The famed Mrs
Watkins also impressed her audience with her
repoussé copper work which was unanimously
viewed as a “diffcult branch of art.”63 Neither
was it uncommon for articles to express a gen-
eral appreciation of exquisitely executed works
by professional artists. For instance, the min-
iatures by Miss Eva Ward were accorded the
“highest praise” by one writer.64
Committee members who performed ex-
ceptionally in the area of public relations, ad-
ministration and management at exhibitions
deemed successful were similarly given public
recognition. Mrs Evatt, who held the role of
Secretary for several years, and her team (“the
other ladies”) were frequently commended for
having “so ably worked to make the exhibition
the success it proved to be.”65 The complexity
of her work and responsibilities were variously
 Miss Ward’s commission by Mrs Lee Choon Guan,
wife of an elected member of the Legislative Council
then, to paint her portrait. See “Singapore Art Club:
The Annual Exhibition,” The Singapore Free Press and
Mercantile Advertiser (1884–1942), 31 May 1918, 10.
65 “Singapore Art Club: Exhibition at Government House
Yesterday,” 5.
66 “The Singapore Art Club,” The Singapore Free Press
and Mercantile Advertiser (1884–1942), 15 February
1908, 12; “Singapore Art Club,” The Singapore Free
Press and Mercantile Advertiser (1884–1942), 12
May 1915, 10.
67 “Singapore Art Club: Exhibition at Government House
Yesterday,” 5.
noted. It was she who handled the submissions,
prepared the catalogue and oversaw the hang-
ing of the works at the designated venue, a task
that was described as “far from simple work” for
it required the “discrimination and a sense of
artistic balance and harmony.”66 Mrs Evatt did
so whilst continuing to be an active competitor
whose oil paintings were commended on sever-
al occasions.67 There are of course many other
examples of female participants holding simi-
lar such positions, such as Mrs Felkin in 1912,
Mrs Tomlin in 1915 and Mrs M.A. Bateman
in 1917—all variously given credit and public
acknowledgement.68
Of the clubs affliated to the Singapore Art
Club, the Penang Impressionists and the Perak
branch generally recorded the best results and
most activity. The former submitted 30 exhibits
for competition in 1905, mostly by the follow-
ing members known only by their last names—
Mr Neubronner, Mrs J.A. Brown, Mrs McI-
ntyre and Mrs Wolferstan, all of whom were
regular competitors during that period.69
The Perak Art Club too invited neighbour-
ing clubs to compete.70 The vibrancy of the
club depended on the leadership and manage-
ment committee; in this case, the club thrived
with the assistance of a lady identifed as “Mrs
A “Forgotten” Art World
68 “Singapore Art Club: Annual Exhibition,” The Straits
Times, 1 June 1917, 10; “Singapore Art Club,” The Sin-
gapore Free Press and Mercantile Advertiser (1884–
1942), 12 May 1915, 10.
69 “Singapore Art Club: Exhibition at Government House
Yesterday,” 5 and also “Singapore Art Club,” The Sin-
gapore Free Press and Mercantile Advertiser (1884–
1942), 16 March 1905, 2.
70 “The Perak Art Club,” The Singapore Free Press and
Mercantile Advertiser (1884–1942), 10 December
1900, 3.
71 See “Perak Art Exhibition,” The Straits Times, 5 April
1900, 2; “Untitled,” The Straits Times, 3 December 1900,
2; “Perak Art Club,” The Singapore Free Press and Mer-
cantile Advertiser (1884–1942), 27 December 1900.
Bird,” their Honorary Secretary who was cred-
ited for increasing the club’s activities during
the early years of the 20th century. The club held
two exhibitions annually, one at Ipoh and an-
other at Taiping. They too invited neighbour-
ing clubs to compete, and in one year, offered a
Satsuma jar as prize for the best painting shown
by the members of the Selangor, Singapore and
Penang art clubs. This was awarded to James
Millar, then ex-president of the Singapore Art
Club, for “a very good watercolour,” New Har-
bour, Singapore (1900).71 The structure of the
Perak Art Club and categories for competition
were similar to the Singapore Art Club, with
prizes offered in the following subjects: oil, wa-
tercolour, photograph and needlework.
The media’s role in bringing out the best
of these colonial women during their brief
residency in the colony was particularly signif-
cant during times of crisis. Stories of women
participating actively in fund-raising events
and charities were readily spotlighted by local
newspapers, especially during World War I and
in the lead-up to World War II, when distant
colonial societies were co-opted to show their
political allegiance and provide support ideo-
logically and materially in the form of remit-
tance and resources.
117
 72 Mary Heathcott, “Free French Women Raise Funds
for their War Work Party,” The Singapore Free Press
and Mercantile Advertiser (1884–1942), 2 July 1941,
5.
73 “Art in Singapore,” The Straits Times, 4 March 1911, 9.
74 “Singapore Art Club Yesterday’s Opening,” The Sin-
gapore Free Press and Mercantile Advertiser (1884–
1942), 24 May 1916, 7.
75 See chapter, “An Ornamental Education,” by Jordan,
op. cit., 11–50.
76 For further discussion on this issue, see my essay,
“Becoming Professional Artists in Postwar Singa-
pore and Malaya: Developments in Art during a Time
of Political Transition,” Journal of Southeast Asian
Studies 46, no. 3 (2015): 463–84.
77 Michael Sullivan, “Ten Years of Singapore Art,” in
This need to show political solidarity was
exemplifed in all facets of social outlets and for
the elite womenfolk who did not work—unlike
the men who were able to obtain gratifcation
or demonstrate responsibility vis-à-vis their
rank and employment, this was a rare opportu-
nity for the women to display their patriotism
and their social worth. A typical social gath-
ering of bridge and mahjong was transformed
into a fund-raising event by a group of French
women who pooled their contacts and resourc-
es together to raise over 300 dollars for the Free
French Forces in Britain.72
The Singapore Art Club with its large fe-
male membership held numerous successful
exhibitions with similar objectives. The par-
ticipants were given the option to put up their
works for sale, with either a portion or all of
the proceeds going to charities.73 Depending
on the gravity of the situation at home, local
organisations in the colony would respond ac-
cordingly. The mid-year exhibition in 1916 for
example was confgured for such a purpose;
there were no prizes or judging of works, and
proceeds obtained from the admission went
to the charity. Participation was particularly
strong, with over 400 artworks submitted to
help raise funds for war charities such as the
118 Yvonne Low
Ten Years of Art in Singapore 1946–1956 (Singapore:
Singapore Art Society, 1956), unpaginated.
78 Ibid.
79 See Sloan, op. cit., 7–10.
80 For example Frank Swettenham’s Stories and Sketches
[selected and introduced by William R. Roff] (Kuala
Lumpur: Oxford University Press, 1967) and more
recently Sarena Abdullah’s article, “The Early Draw-
ings of Malaya (1880–1894) by Frank Swettenham,”
in 1st Malaysian International Drawing Marathon,
eds. Safrizal Shahir, Izmer Ahmad & Shahrul Anuar
Shaari (Penang: School of the Arts, University Sains
Malaysia, 2011), 75–85.
81 The latter was the founder of the YMCA Art Club,
whilst the former resumed his role as the Art Inspec-
tor of Government English schools after the war.
Red Cross, Star and Garter, as well as King
Albert Civilian Hospital Funds.74
These anecdotal accounts of colonial
women artists based in Malaya nonetheless cor-
roborate the views offered by Caroline Jordan
in her study of colonial women artists based in
Australia in the 19th century, many of whom
had an ornamental education to equip them
with a set of accomplishments consisting of
music, drawing, dancing, fancy work, recita-
tion, Roman languages and taste in dress.75
She further showed that out of necessity, the
women’s ability to do this had depended largely
on the skills and resources they had already de-
veloped elsewhere. Thus, what and how they
came to paint in colonial Australia was in fact
grounded in their British drawing education
and experiences.
Such accounts also provide insightful
glimpses into the kinds of gender-based restric-
tions colonial women artists encountered in
British Malaya. Along with the privileges that
they shared with the class of the men they mar-
ried came social obligations of a different na-
ture from the working class (for example, social
work). Most of the women discussed here were
not professional artists. They did not “work” as
professional artists, but their fne art works were
very much a part of the wider exhibitory circuit
of the upper-class colonial public.
Brief Concluding Remarks
Toward the end of the British Empire, a para-
digm shift took place and one of the many
strategies undertaken by the transiting state
was to perform a narrative of nationalist histo-
ry, of oppression to emancipation. In particular
the impetus to set up the Singapore Art Society
(SAS) grew out of this intention to establish a
non-discriminatory art society aimed at foster-
ing the practice and appreciation of art in Sin-
gapore, for the common man and woman.76
The urgency to recognise the skills and signif-
cance of the role of an artist was augmented
by the call to see in the work of the “Malayan”
painters an answer to the imminent question,
“What is Malayan culture?”77
Art historian Michael Sullivan argued that
it was in the minds and imaginations of the
Malayan people—artists, writers, and musi-
cians—that the Malayan culture was created;
this, he stressed, was a recent phenomenon
that had occurred in the “ten years since Lib-
eration.” As he traced the history of artistic
development in Singapore, he highlighted only
the founding of the Society of Chinese Artists
in 1936, the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts
in 1938 and more recently (after the war) the
Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA)
Art Club and the Chinese YMCA Art Club for
developing the art scene and “awakening” an
interest in the visual arts in Singapore.78
Eager to elevate the position of the artist
to a useful profession, Sullivan’s account sought
to locate the role and importance of the pro-
fessional artist historically. Not unlike other
constructions of Singaporean art histories, it
was chronological, primarily focused on the
achievements of those perceived to have con-
tributed to a progressive history of art.79 Art-
ists, styles, genres and possibly types of art (for
example, needlework) that had not contributed
A “Forgotten” Art World
to this progress of the arts were inevitably ex-
cluded. There was no mention of the Singa-
pore Art Club, nor the many “amateur” artistic
activities that had taken place before the war,
such as the St Andrews Sketching Club, started
by Francis Thomas in 1936.
Generally, attention given to colonial art
has inevitably focused on individuals who held
some kind of offcial position in the region (not
wives!), and this was most certainly occupied
by men.80 In taking a gender perspective, I
have shown that colonial women artists clearly
contributed to the rich colonial cultural infra-
structure. Relatedly, in the course of recover-
ing their histories, it has also become clear that
the social art world of the colonial community
preceded later artistic developments in the ex-
colony, and may well have served as a model in
which subsequent clubs and societies could be
structured after.
Whilst this is a subject open to future re-
search, there is no denying that at least two old
and quite prominent members of the then de-
funct Singapore Art Club, Richard Walker and
C.G. Jackson, played central roles in develop-
ing the post-war local art scene. Both were key
members of the prominent SAS.81 To what ex-
tent the SAS was modelled after the Singapore
Art Club remains to be examined, suffce to say
here that its precedence in already establishing
a nascent art world and art market for local art-
ists such as Low Kway Song and Low Kway Soo
cannot be ignored.
This essay has brought to the fore a much
forgotten past of Singapore’s early cultural de-
velopments. It seeks to ask how artistic practic-
es carried out by the colonials and wives of off-
cials have impacted local developments, and to
question the oversimplifcation of their role in
the scripting of later post-independent narra-
tives. In the course of discussing the conditions
and relations critical for artistic production and
reception within the community, this essay has
also recovered the histories of many colonial
women artists based briefy in British Malaya.
119
 7.1

7.2

7.1 Denis Santry

Untitled
Undated
Pen and ink
As published in Salubrious Singapore
(Singapore: Kelly and Walsh, 1920).

7.2 Denis Santry

Untitled
Undated
Pen and ink
As published in ibid.

388 Yvonne Low

0328-Charting Thoughts.indd 388 28/3/17 2:53 PM

 7.4

7.3

7.3 W. Stirling
Teochew Boy Actor
1929
Ink
© W. Stirling
As published in “Pictures from the Recent
Singapore Art Club Exhibition,” Malayan
Saturday Post, 7 December 1929.
Image courtesy of National Library
Board, Singapore

7.4 Richard Walker

Full Tide
1929
Watercolour
© Richard Walker
As published in ibid.
Image courtesy of National Library
Board, Singapore

A “Forgotten” Art World 389

0328-Charting Thoughts.indd 389 28/3/17 2:53 PM

 7.5 Mary Barnard
Untitled
c. 1910
Watercolour

7.6 Dorothea Aldworth

Untitled
c. 1910
Watercolour
As published in Philip C. Coote, Peeps at
Many Lands: The Malay States (London:
A&C Black Publishers, an imprint of
Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 1923).

7.7 Dorothea Aldworth

Untitled
c. 1910
Watercolour
As published in ibid.

7.5

390 Yvonne Low

0328-Charting Thoughts.indd 390 28/3/17 2:53 PM

 7.6 7.7

A “Forgotten” Art World 391

0328-Charting Thoughts.indd 391 28/3/17 2:53 PM

 1 Claire Holt, Art in Indonesia: Continuities and Change
(Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1967), 195; M. Agus
Burhan, Masterpieces of the Indonesia National
Gallery, trans. Johanes Suyono, language ed. Umi
Hartati (Jakarta: Galeri Nasional Indonesia, Kemente-
rian Pendidikan dan Kebudayaan, 2012). My thanks to
Matt Cox for discussion of some of these connections
in relation to his PhD thesis.
2 S. Sudjojono, Seni Lukis, Kesenian, dan Seniman
[Painting, the arts and the artist] (Yogyakarta: Yayasan
Aksara Indonesia, 2000), 22.
3 Adrian Vickers, Balinese Art: Paintings and Drawings
of Bali 1800–2010 (Singapore: Tuttle, 2012), 112.
4 Lee Man Fong, Lukisan-Lukisan dan Patung-Patung
Kolleksi Presiden Sukarno dari Republik Indonesia
[Paintings and statues from the Collection of Presi-
dent Sukarno of the Republic of Indonesia], vols.
(8)
Balinese Modernism
Adrian Vickers
The stories of modern art in Southeast Asia
are national stories. The trajectories of Raden
Saleh (c. 1811–1880) and the other pioneers
of modern art in the region are tied to narra-
tives of emerging national consciousness, and
how that awareness produced art forms that
were self-consciously new and engaged with
other phenomena of modernity. In the case
of Indonesia, the narrative quickly moves
from Raden Saleh’s allegorical “native” versus
Dutch representations, to the fgure of S. Sud-
jojono (1913–1986) and the Association of
Indonesian Drawing Masters (Persatuan Ahli-
Ahli Gambar Indonesia, PERSAGI) movement
founded in 1938. PERSAGI was strongly na-
tionalist, challenging the Dutch-dominated
mode of representing the colony in what Sud-
jojono derisively called Mooi Indië (beautiful
Indies) art. Claire Holt and others have specif-
cally shown the links between PERSAGI and
120 Charting Thoughts
I–V (Jakarta: Publishing Committee of Collection of
Paintings and Statues of President Sukarno, 1964).
5 Apinan Poshyananda, “The Problems of Tradition in
Southeast Asian Modern Art,” in New Art from South-
east Asia 1992, exh. cat. (Tokyo: The Japan Founda-
tion, 1992), 55.
6 Jim Supangkat, “Ethnicity Now,” in Ethnicity Now: In-
donesian Contemporary Art by I Wayan Bendi, I Made
Djirna, Heri Dono, Nasirun, Samuel Indratma, Angki
Purabandono, Indieguerillas and Yudi Sulistya, ed. Jim
Supangkat (Jakarta: Garis Artspace, 2010), 14–33.
7 Ibid.
8 Richard Katz, Heitere Tage Mit Braunen Menschen:
Ein Südseebuch [Cheerful days with brown men]
(Berlin: Ullstein, 1930); Rudolf Bonnet, “Beeldende
Kunst in Gianjar” [Plastic arts in Gianyar], Djåwå 16
(1936): 59–72.
nationalist thought, going back to at least the
Taman Siswa education system of Ki Hajar De-
wantårå (1889–1959).1 Famously, Sudjojono
proclaimed that “an artist must be a national-
ist.”2 The idea of binding the diverse ethnic
and cultural groups of the archipelago into a
national entity thus required artistic forms that
could express a modern way of being equal to
the precedent established by the West.
From PERSAGI, according to all accounts,
the chief school of Indonesian art developed as
political art, notably as practised by Sudjojono
and colleagues in the leftist Institute of Peo-
ple’s Culture (Lembaga Kebudayaan Rakyat,
LEKRA). LEKRA art was mainly based in
Yogyakarta and associated with the art school
there. LEKRA’s chief rivals came from the city
of Bandung, and their tendency to formalism
was derided by LEKRA artists for being too
“Western.” Bandung art came to dominate
after the post-1965 purge of the left from all
aspects of Indonesian politics and society. From
both Bandung and Yogyakarta came the 1970s
New Art Movement (Gerakan Seni Rupa Baru,
GSRB) which manifested contemporary art in
Indonesia, meaning their inauguration of the
diversity of globally oriented practices su-
perseded the quest for formal newness that
was the hallmark of modernism. There is no
place in such a story for the alternative model
of modern art that fourished in Bali between
1928 and 1942, the period during which the
Western art world discovered that new forms
of representation were emerging on the island.
The discovery came via the new industry of
tourism, although the frst reports of modern
art on Bali were written in 1928, and the Japa-
nese Occupation changed the mode of artistic
production on the island.3
Part of the diffculty in discerning modern-
ism beyond the national is that all other forms
of art, including Balinese, are generally placed
in the category of “tradition” by both exponents
of art movements and art historians. In standard
publications on modern art, including the fa-
mous Sukarno collection catalogue, the Balinese
works are published preceding any others, even
when this is chronologically incorrect.4 Apinan
Poshyananda extrapolates from the Thai case to
the wider context of how “tradition” provided a
residual category for the “modern”:
When painting became [a] vehicle for
national identity it was manipulated and
controlled to the extent that its standard
and criteria screened and rejected subjects,
themes, and styles that did not ft into the
national conventions.
In relation to visions of serene, tran-
quil and bucolic scenes, tradition became
part of the intention of exotic splendour
and enchanted paradise in Southeast Asia.5
Certainly Bali, the most exoticised part of exo-
tic Indonesia, is also most easily classed as pro-
Balinese Modernism
viding conventional and superfcial stereotypes
of ethnicity in its art.
Leading Indonesian art critic Jim Supang-
kat has, however, questioned the separation
of the “ethnic” from high art, and in a 2010
exhibition attempted to challenge the exact
categorisation that Apinan says underpins
the national modern and its contemporary
successors.6 This is not a problem specifc to
Southeast Asia, but one related to the inter-
national categories used by art institutions.
Supangkat points out that the exclusion of
“ethnic” art from the galleries that form the
temples of modern art constitutes exclusion
from the category of “global” art, a category
created by the passage from modern to con-
temporary art.7 In such schemes as Supangkat
wishes to break down, the “ethnic” is defned
as local; the “modern,” national; and the “con-
temporary,” global. Modern Balinese art shows
that these categories are tenuous, and easily
undermined.
Ubud and Pre-War Balinese Modernism
Modernism—new modes of representation
that responded to the new conditions of a
world increasingly dominated by capitalist
relations—had been going on in Bali before
1928. That year marks the moment during
which new audiences began to connect mod-
ernism with the emerging markets for art. In
1928 the frst Western observers recorded the
art of a priestly family from Tampaksiring, one
member of which was Ida Bagus Putu Mukuh
who was producing exciting new composi-
tions based on representations of ceremonies.8
The same people who recorded that moment
became brokers for growing numbers of tour-
ists to the island; the latter’s demand for port-
able souvenirs prompting Balinese to search
for something novel that would communicate
with this burgeoning audience.
Mukuh himself did not produce a lot
of works but a cousin of his in Tebesaya, Ida
121
 Bagus Kembeng (1897–1952), took up his in-
spiration and became one of the teachers for
a growing number of young men in the area,
which included the nearby village of Ubud.
Included amongst Kembeng’s students were
his sons, especially Ida Bagus Made, known as
“Poleng” (1915–1999).9
The new art was “modern” in many ways.
It made use of new technologies, notably paper,
acrylics and other recently developed types of
paint. It was also experimental, based on novel
ways of presenting space, bodies, and colour.
This art was formed from the rapid transi-
tion to modernity, during which colonial rule
and unfamiliar power structures were imposed
upon Bali. The style pioneered by Ida Bagus
Kembeng became most closely associated with
the village of Ubud as presenting one mode of
that modernity, although hundreds of artists
from all over the island were drawn into the
new forms of art. While dozens of other artists
continued to produce works within traditional
modes, even these were drawn into the indus-
try of creating for tourists.
Following Kembeng, one Ubud family
of lower aristocrats rose to particular promi-
nence. Two cousins from this family were Anak
Agung Gede Meregeg (c. 1908–2001), and
Anak Agung Gede Soberat (1912 or 1917–
1992), and others included A.A. Raka Turas
(1917–1992). Other notable Ubud artists were
Dewa Ketut Ding (1912 or 1920–1996), Dewa
Made Sek, his relative Dewa Nyoman Leper
(1917–1984), I Wayan Tohjiwa (1916 –2001)
and Ida Bagus Made Nadera (1915–1998).
An illustration of what is both distinctive
to Meregeg’s works and general to the Ubud
style is a work showing an episode from the
Hindu Ramayana epic (fg. 8.1). The content,
showing Rama leading his wife Sita by the
hand with Laksmana following, is “traditional”
in the sense that it is based on the fat fgu-
ration of the wayang, or shadow puppet thea-
tre. He maintains wayang iconography for the
headdresses of the characters but their sarongs
122 Adrian Vickers
are new, and conform to everyday attire at the
time of painting (the early 1930s). The sleep-
ing fgures below these three are rendered in
a different type of stylisation—not precisely
naturalism, but using the rounded fguration of
Kembeng’s work to integrate fgures and back-
ground. Meregeg works with two types of line
here: The zigzag of the ridge and mountains,
and the wavy line of the river reinforced by
what became the conventional mode of depict-
ing water as a set of ripples. Breaking these up
is the use of foliage, which proliferated and was
perfected by him and his contemporaries in the
1930s. While the work has a basis in traditional
colouring, the heavy use of blue tones against
the ochre colours is unprecedented.
Meregeg’s cousin Soberat became the best
known of the modernists, and developed his
own version of the style shown by taking to-
wards a more naturalistic mode that became the
hallmark of Ubud art after 1950. On the way
to developing this new variation of the style,
Soberat produced scenes of performances; a
cockfght work has also been attributed to him
(fg. 8.2). Again, these paintings show features of
the way of depicting bodies that Kembeng and
others of his family developed, but with more
complex overlaying of fgures. In this example
the square of the cockfght ring is an internal
frame that is deliberately crossed and disap-
pears under the crowd of fgures, emphasising
the liveliness of the men’s gathering. Soberat’s
earliest works are based on wayang fgures, but
he very quickly moved to depicting dance-dra-
ma performances.10
The other famous Ubud artist was I Gusti
Nyoman Lempad (1862 or 1875–1978), who
came from a long career in architecture. Lem-
pad’s work was linear, mainly pen drawings
on paper with sparse use of colour (fg. 8.3).
Approximately 1,000 works by Lempad are
known, most of these sketches.11 The best of
his work was that done in the 1930s, when his
contact with other artists provided a stimulus
towards experimentation. Part of Lempad’s
9 Kaja McGowan et al., Ida Bagus Made: The Art of De-
votion (Ubud: Ratna Wartha Foundation, 2008).
10 One work very close to the style of Soberat is attrib-
uted to Walter Spies in John Stowell, Walter Spies: A
Life in Art (Jakarta: Afterhours Books, 2011), 313. A
very similar work once owned by Miguel Covarrubias
success as an artist, like the other greats of
the period, was that he was able to channel
Balinese ideas of the magical manipulation of
power through images into his work. He, like
Soberat and others, began from the drawings of
power called rerajahan, designed to effect both
good and bad outcomes. In his depiction of
Hindu-Buddhist mythology, Lempad demon-
strated how the power of images related to no-
tions of movement through life into the other
world. As well, his imagery was concerned with
workings of gender differences and concepts of
nature within Balinese philosophy.
Multiple Sites of Modernism
Ubud may now be synonymous with Balinese
modernism, but it was one of many sites in the
1930s. A number of individual modern artists
sprang up in different areas. There were small
groups clustered around particular teachers,
notably the students of Chinese photographer
Yap Sin Tin, the most famous of which was I
Gusti Made Deblog (1906–1986, fg. 8.4). Two
villages each produced more artists than Ubud
and also provided a wider variation in modes of
art: Sanur and Batuan.
The coastal village of Sanur became a cen-
tre for rapid production of works of art, but
this all but disappeared at the beginning of the
Japanese Occupation in 1942. Those involved
were usually teenagers or young men, and they
came from a variety of backgrounds. Notable
amongst them were members of priestly hous-
es, such as Ida Bagus Sunia (c.1906–1990) and
Balinese Modernism
raises questions about the relationship between the
two artists, Miguel Covarrubias, Island of Bali (New
York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1937; repr., Kuala Lumpur;
Singpore: Oxford University Press, 1972), 202–3.
11 Bruce Carpenter et al., Lempad of Bali: The Illuminat-
ing Line (Singapore: Editions Didier Millet, 2014).
Ida Bagus Nyoman Rai (1915–2000). Ida Ba-
gus Nyoman Geria (1901–1982) was the frst
of this caste to paint, and his collaboration with
a new tourist outlet in the village provided the
economic stimulus for his fellow villagers. This
new tourist outlet was an aquarium started by
two German brothers, Hans and Rolf Neu-
haus, and the brothers quickly realised they had
a ready supply of local art to sell as souvenirs to
the tourists who landed in Bali from the cruise
ships that had started visiting the south.
In the case of the Sanur artists, many of
the dozens who took up painting only did
one or two works. Their brief involvement
refects the novelty of art at the time—it was
something with which they experimented, and
provided a playful venue in which to repre-
sent the rapidly changing world around them.
The more fantastical of these artists produced
bizarre sexual imagery that may have its roots
in Tantric Hindu-Buddhist practices, nota-
bly in the work of Sunia. Others, such as Ida
Bagus Made Pugug (1919–2006), were con-
cerned with more serious issues such as mo-
ments of life and death when various forms of
intervention were required. He, like Lempad
and other artists of the time, thus produced a
series of scenes of women giving birth, assisted
by balian or healers (fg. 8.5).
Pugug was one of the few artists who
continued to work into the post-war peri-
od, like his close friend Rai. From the south
of the village came a group of closely related
young men. The best of these, I Made Sukarya
(1912–1988) and his brother-in-law Gusti
123
 12 Vickers, op. cit.
13 Ibid.
14 Ushiroshoji Masahiro, The Birth of Modern Art in
Southeast Asia: Artists and Movements, eds. Ushi-
roshoji Masahiro & Toshiko Rawanchaikul, exh. cat.
(Fukuoka: Fukuoka Art Museum, 1997), 70.
Rundu (1918–1993), also continued to work
into the post-war period. Rundu, like Sukarya,
used theatrical themes but excelled at bringing
animal motifs into his compositions. Sukarya
is one of the artists who made good use of col-
our as a way to develop depth in compositions
and highlight the variety of forms of foliage
that were integral to paintings of the time (fg.
8.6). The colour may not always have been his
own, however, since the Neuhaus brothers paid
a talented Sanur artist, I Pica (c. 1915–1946),
to colour the black-and-white works of others.
Rai’s work showed similar kinds of com-
positional play but his major concern was to
depict the world around him, including the
Westerners with whom he interacted. Rai was
more of a history painter in the sense that he
wanted to represent major and minor events of
the village—from the eruption of Bali’s volcano
and the beaching of a whale (fg. 8.7), to the
Japanese invasion and the lives of his post-war
patrons: the Wawo Runto family and the Aus-
tralian artist Donald Friend.
The art of the villagers of Batuan was more
profound, and more disturbing, than that of
their coastal colleagues and relatives. While a
few of the best Batuan works were coloured,
again mainly by the Sanur workshop of the
Neuhauses, the signature of Batuan painting
was the use of black ink washes to produce
strong images of darkness and witchcraft. The
Batuan artists extended the range of subject
matter created by the painters and draftsmen of
Ubud and Sanur, depicting ceremonies, perfor-
124 Adrian Vickers
15 Holt, op. cit., 181; Vickers, op. cit., 59–62.
16 Hildred Geertz & Ida Bagus Madé Togog, Tales from a
Charmed Life: A Balinese Painter Reminisces (Hono-
lulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2005).
mances and all aspects of village life, but mix-
ing these with mythological subjects.
As with Sanur, Batuan produced a remark-
able number of artists. Only a few of these
were women, one of whom was the remarkable
Desak Putu Lambon (1922–1980) who came
from a small family of craftsmen and artists. A
member of that extended family, Dewa Putu
Mura (1877–1950), was the frst artist other-
wise working in the classical style based on the
wayang theatre style to launch into modern art
in Batuan. The stimulus towards the modern,
however, was primarily inspired by an entrepre-
neurial commoner who had been a student of
Mura, I Nyoman Ngendon (1914–1946, fg.
8.8). Ngendon followed the lead of his cousin,
I Patera (1901–1935), in experimenting with
art and, most importantly, in experimenting
with fnding Western audiences for art. Mem-
bers of Brahman families began to be involved
in art with Ngendon’s encouragement. These
included Ida Bagus Diding (1915–1990) and
the prolifc Ida Bagus Made Bala (1920–1942),
whose works ranged from fantastical magical
talismanic works to depictions of aspects of
village life. While not as prolifc, one of the
strongest artists was the famous dancer I Ny-
oman Reneh (1910–1976, fg. 8.9). The artist
who did the most to develop features of the
Batuan style—the elaborate foliage and com-
positions based on abstractions from architec-
ture and nature—was Dewa Kompiang Kandel
Ruka (1916–1975, fg. 8.10).
In Batuan, a signifcant number of artists
stopped working with the advent of World
War II and the ensuing social and political dis-
ruptions. Kandel Ruka was one of those who
gave up art, in his case to become a furniture
manufacturer. One of the few to keep produc-
ing art for many decades was Ida Bagus Made
Togog (1911–1989), who switched from paper
to canvas and from black-and-white to colour,
but otherwise continued to develop the themes
of pre-war modern art.
Precedents and Promotion
The basis of the work of the modernists in
more ancient modes of representation shows
that the new art of the 1930s was also old. The
examples cited above demonstrate the conti-
nuity of art based on the wayang theatre, the
highest form of which was practised by the
painters of Kamasan, Klungkung, hence of-
ten known as wayang painting. The art of Ka-
masan, while adhering to classical standards,
was always undergoing internal changes and
was not immune from innovation, despite be-
ing placed in the category of “tradition.” Other
forms of wayang-based art were already pro-
ducing new modes of composition in the late
19th century.12
The new artists of Ubud and the related
village of Peliatan were directly connected to
wayang art, as their early work shows. Some
of the early modernists from Peliatan, nota-
bly Cokorda Oka Gambir (1902–1975), had
themselves studied with a group of traditional
artists from Rangkan, to the south. Other art-
ists report having studied with or at least seen
the work of older artists, and it appears there
were many working throughout the island.13
More attention has been paid to the role
of Western artists on Bali than to Balinese
precedents for the new. Ushiroshoji Masahiro,
one of the pioneers in the study of Southeast
Asia-wide art phenomena, provides a nuanced
version of the conventional way of viewing
the Balinese modernists’ connections to Walter
Balinese Modernism
Spies (1895–1942) and Rudolf Bonnet (1895–
1978). These were respectively German (or
Russian) and Dutch artists who lived in Ubud
from the late 1920s.
Under the infuence of Spies and Bonnet,
they began using daily life and landscapes
as subjects. However, that stance, which at
frst glance seemed realistic, also refected
the everyday spiritual world of Bali gov-
erned by magic. Original, detailed paint-
ing methods developed in Batuan as well
as in Ubud. In this and other respects, Ba-
linese art, which thoroughly digested the
infuence of the West and transformed it
into their own world, is truly unique in the
history of modern Southeast Asian art.14
The meaning of “infuence” here remains open.
There were other Western artists on Bali be-
fore Spies and Bonnet arrived, notably W.O.J.
Nieuwenkamp (1874–1950), who defnitely
had contact with Balinese artists. The prior
existence of innovation in colour, form and
media indicates that these were not elements
introduced by Spies and Bonnet. Even the rep-
resentation of “daily life,” which is described by
Claire Holt as coming from this Western pair,
was clearly present not only in the work of art-
ists such as Mukuh, but in Kamasan paintings
showing narratives such as the Brayut, the story
of a commoner couple and their domestic and
ceremonial activities.15
What Spies and Bonnet did was to pro-
vide materials to artists and, more importantly,
to act as mediators of Western taste, since the
artists who came into contact with these two
were interested in selling to the tourists that
were beginning to come to Bali. One of these
artists, Ida Bagus Made Togog, explained later
that he would try out different topics on Spies
and Bonnet to see what was of interest.16 Oth-
ers, notably Soberat, took advice from both
and looked for elements to adapt. While So-
berat’s style took on elements of Spies’ work
125
 in particular, the majority of Balinese artists
working at the time show very little in the way
of direct incorporation of elements of tech-
nique from either the modernist Spies or the
conservative Bonnet.
Ngendon from Batuan made contact with
Spies and Bonnet, who appear not to have liked
him that much personally, but who certainly
provided him with ideas about marketing and
different styles. This contact stimulated Ida
Bagus Made Togog, the young Brahman from
the same village, to go to Ubud and, in turn,
encourage his own relatives to be involved in
art. Via Spies and Bonnet, a pair of Western
anthropologists who worked on Bali between
1936 and 1939, Gregory Bateson and Margaret
Mead, became interested in modern art. Their
collection of 1,288 paintings and drawings was
dominated by works from Batuan, and they
became the major patrons of the village in the
late 1930s.17
More important were the promotional ac-
tivities undertaken by the two, particularly by
Bonnet. Both Spies and Bonnet were involved
in the Bali Museum (now the Museum Bali) in
Denpasar which provided a platform for artists
to sell their work, with Bonnet exercising qual-
ity control. Spies took more of a back seat while
Bonnet used his networks in the art world to
organise exhibitions of Balinese artists on oth-
er islands in the Dutch colony. In 1936, Spies
and Bonnet were involved in the establishment
of an artists’ society, Pita Maha, which at-
tempted to bring together artists and sculptors
of Bali (with a focus on new artists). Pita Maha
hence became synonymous with the new art of
the 1930s, although it came late to the scene
and lasted only four years. Bonnet, building on
the precedent set by another associate of Spies,
Willem Stutterheim, also published an article
outlining the developments in art at the time.18
In the same year that Pita Maha was
founded, Bonnet organised two exhibitions
of this association in the Kunstkring or Art-
ists’ Circles in Batavia and Bandung, as well as
126 Adrian Vickers
exhibitions in other venues in Balikpapan and
Yogyakarta.19 These exhibitions predate the
frst exhibition by Sudjojono’s PERSAGI; its
frst exhibition was held in 1938 in the pub-
lishing house Kolff in Batavia.20 Bonnet was
more ambitious than this: he then organised
exhibitions of Balinese modernists in Europe,
beginning with a 1937 exhibition at the Mu-
seum van Aziatische Kunst in Amsterdam, the
Pulchri Studio in the Hague, and then in 1938,
the Kunstzaal van Lier in Amsterdam and the
Gallery Calmann in London.21
Thus through Bonnet, Balinese modern-
ism achieved international recognition. The
well-known Dutch art critic Kasper Niehaus
devoted a chapter of his book on modern
Dutch art to the modern Balinese artists, and
referred to modern Balinese art as “an orna-
ment of our time” in a Pita Maha exhibition
catalogue.22 Niehaus worked closely with the
leading art dealer Carel van Lier, whose gallery
sold European as well as Balinese modernists,
and Bonnet clearly included both in the net-
works he mobilised for his exhibitions. Sud-
jojono would defnitely not have approved of
the Dutch appropriation of Indonesian artists
implicit in Niehaus’ book chapter, and some
of the Balinese would also have been at best
bemused by his characterisation of Balinese
art. Nevertheless, in the colonial context of
the 1930s, Balinese art had an easier entry
into the world of modernism than the mod-
ern art of PERSAGI. This was in part due to
the mediation of Bonnet and other Westerners,
which created greater familiarity with Balinese
art amongst Dutch audiences. This mediation
was based in paternalistic colonialism that pre-
sented Balinese art as exotically “primitive,”
and therefore unthreatening to Western art.
PERSAGI art was, however, unmediated, and
the Dutch critics perceived that its independ-
ent positioning in the realm of the modern was
a direct challenge to the domestication of the
colony in Mooi Indië art. PERSAGI art thus
was derided as “derivative” of the West.
17 Hildred Geertz, Images of Power: Balinese Paintings
Made for Gregory Bateson and Margaret Mead (Hon-
olulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1994).
18 Bonnet, “Beeldende Kunst in Gianjar,” op. cit.; W.F.
Stutterheim, “Een Nieuwe Loot Aan Een Oude Stam”
[A new shoot on an old branch], Elsevier’s Geïllus-
treered Maandschrift XLIV, no. 6 (1934): 391–400.
19 Balische-Kunst Van “Pita-Maha” [Balinese art from
“Pita-Maha”], ed. Bataviasche Kunstkring, exh. cat.
(Batavia, 1936); R. Bonnet, “Pita Maha: [Tentoon-
stelling] 22 tot en met 28 November 1936” [Pita
Maha: Exhibition, 22 to 28 November 1936], exh. cat.
(Bandoeng: Bandoengsche Kunstkring, 1936); “Pita-
maha: 29 Januari 1936–29 Januari 1940” [Pitama-
ha: 29 January 1936–29 January 1940], Mededeel-
ingen van de Kirtya Liefrinck-van der Tuuk 11 (1940):
18–21.
A Modernist Legacy
Artists such as Soberat, Lempad, Ida Bagus
Rai and Ida Bagus Togog represented a strong
thread of continuity between pre-war modern-
ism and Balinese art in the post-war period,
but the Japanese Occupation and the subse-
quent Indonesian Revolution changed the role
and perception of Balinese art. Nationalist art-
ists played a role in the Revolution and, most
importantly, its representation to the nation.
Ngendon travelled to Yogyakarta, received
Japanese sponsorship, and apparently joined
PERSAGI. He was killed by pro-Dutch forces
in 1946, as was Pica of Sanur. The possibili-
ties of connecting Balinese and national mod-
ern art were forestalled with their deaths, and
subsequently the art that became best known
was decorative scenes of Balinese lifestyles and
landscapes, content closest to the colonial Mooi
Indië mode of art. This development occurred
largely because the re-establishment of what
was still a tourist market required less risky,
and less experimental, kinds of art. Ubud be-
came the centre of this art, and identical with
art production on the island.23
Balinese Modernism
20 Holt, op. cit., 197. Holt here states that PERSAGI was
founded in 1937, while most other sources give 1938,
although in the original edition of Sudjojono’s book
Seni Lukis, the cover note on the author gives the
founding date as 1939.
21 “Pitamaha: 29 Januari 1936–29 Januari 1940,” 18.
22 Kasper Niehaus, Levende Nederlandsche Kunst, 2nd
ed. (Amsterdam: Bigot & Van Rossum, 1941), 102–6;
“Pitamaha: 29 Januari 1936–29 Januari 1940,” 21.
23 Adrian Vickers, “Bali Rebuilds its Tourist Industry,”
Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 167, no.
4 (2011): 459–81.
24 Ushiroshoji Masahiro, “The Labyrinthine Search for
Self-Identity—The Art of Southeast Asia from the
1980s to the 1990s,” in New Art from Southeast Asia
1992, exh. cat. (Tokyo: The Japan Foundation, 1992),
21–4.
Subsequent histories of contemporary
Indonesian art, therefore, have focused on the
post-war style of Balinese art as representative
of the entirety of its modern history, leading to
the confusing identifcation of 1930s Balinese
modernism with what Balinese now call “tradi-
tional” art when referring to Ubud-dominated
art. Ushiroshoji Masahiro, in a discussion of
the relationship between contemporary and
modern Southeast Asian art, also notes how
“tradition” has become a problem for South-
east Asian art in that many writers often take
it for a sentimental stereotyping veering into
self-orientalising:
“[T]he unique expression peculiar to
Southeast Asian art,” is actually composed
of many levels: superfcial depictions of
Southeast Asian customs, life styles, or
landscapes; representations of Islamic,
Buddhist or Hindu religious episodes and
views of the world; and applications of tra-
ditional art techniques or styles.24
The “traditional” in the contemporary involves,
in his characterisation of this form of represen-
127
 tation, “uncritical repetitions of tradition or
the eclecticism which introduced the frame of
Western art into Oriental elements.”25 Classi-
fying Balinese art as “exotic” has contributed to
this double blockage in art discussions which
exclude Bali from the rest of Indonesia.
Artists from Bali, however, played two
different roles in the Indonesian context. One
group went to other parts of Indonesia, prin-
cipally Yogyakarta, to study and become part
of the national art scene. This was a trend that
developed in the 1960s, with artists such as Ny-
oman Gunarsa (b. 1944), who taught at the In-
donesian Academy of Fine Arts (Akademi Seni
Rupa Indonesia, ASRI; later Institut Seni Indo-
nesia, ISI) in Yogyakarta. Gunarsa founded the
Balinese artists’ network Sanggar Dewata, which
supported and facilitated the development of a
number of generations of Balinese in the Yog-
yakarta art scene, the prime site of modern and
contemporary Indonesian art. Contemporary
artists such as Nyoman Erawan (b. 1958), Pan-
de Ketut Taman (b. 1970), Putu Sutawijaya (b.
1970) and Nyoman Masriadi (b. 1972) became
prominent through the Sanggar Dewata net-
work.26 There were other Balinese who studied
at the Institute of Technology Bandung (Insti-
tut Teknologi Bandung, ITB), the other major
site of national art. The pioneer in this case
was Nyoman Tusan (1933–2002), and later
Balinese from the ITB include Willy Himawan
(b. 1983).
Bali has continuously been an important
place for modern Indonesian art. The leading
artists of Indonesia, Sudjojono amongst them,
all spent various amounts of time on the island,
and many artists travelled there early in their
careers. Between the 1970s and 1990s, Bali
was one of the only places in Indonesia where
aspiring artists could see examples of major
works on display, especially at prominent pri-
vate galleries in Ubud, notably the Neka Mu-
seum. This experience was important for art-
ists involved in the New Art Movement and its
development of contemporary art, as attested
128 Adrian Vickers
by Hardi, one of the Movement’s key fgures.27
Other important artists who have engaged with
Balinese visual culture include Heri Dono, who
was a member of Sanggar Dewata. Balinese
visual culture has thus pervaded Indonesian
modern and contemporary art. Balinese artists
such as Gusti Kadek Murniasih (1966–2006)
demonstrate a high level of accomplishment as
contemporary artists, talent developed outside
the Java-based art schools, and paradigms of
national modernism. In Murni’s case there is
important continuity between her art and that
of her teacher Dewa Mokoh (1934–2010), a
Peliatan artist whose teaching genealogy goes
back to Cokorda Oka Gambir.
Consequences
Balinese modernism embarrasses the historio-
graphy of Indonesian art, not least because it
is equally a source of important contemporary
art. Attempts to explain Balinese art away as
“craft,” “folk art” or even worse, “tourist art,”
neglect the power of the art and its varieties
of representation. The alternative to ignoring
or marginalising Balinese art is to say that it is
unique, as Ushiroshoji Masahiro does.
But is Balinese art a “unique” modernism?
While the evidence is patchy for other parts
of Southeast Asia, the survival of fragments of
other traditions show that forms of natural-
ism and novel ways of representing the world
were present in other visual arts traditions from
before the time of Raden Saleh. A Javanese-
illustrated manuscript of the Damar Wulan
text dated to the 18th century shows representa-
tions of humans and animals that depart from
the wayang tradition, as does the 1804 Serat
Selarasa manuscript, in particular with its rep-
resentations of Dutch ships.28 European col-
lections show fragments of adventurous Java-
nese art from a variety of locations.
Nor is the presence of varieties of repre-
sentation unique to Java. Sumatra has a strong
visual tradition as evidenced by its textiles,
25 Ibid.
26 Putu Sutawijaya, interview with Adrian Vickers,
27 August 2015.
27 Hardi, interview with Adrian Vickers, 6 September
2015. Later contemporary artists who have spent
time on Bali include Arahmainani, interview with
John Clark, T.K. Sabapathy & Adrian Vickers, 1 Sep-
tember 2015.
28 Serat Damar Wulan (MSS Jav. 89) and Serat Selarasa
(MSS Jav. 28) are available at the British Library. Fully
digitised versions can be viewed at http://www.bl.uk/
manuscripts/FullDisplay.aspx?ref=MSS_Jav_89
and http://britishlibrary.typepad.co.uk/asian-and-
notably the ship cloths of Lampung.29 The
drawings made for Sir Stamford Raffes dem-
onstrate that there were representational artists
working for the British East India Company in
Bengkulu at the beginning of the 19th century,
although we do not know whether they were
Indian, Chinese, Malay or local.30 Most im-
portantly, from the end of the 19th century a
set of watercolours by Acehnese artist Tengku
Teungoh represent festivals and other scenes
of religious life in north Sumatra.31 Examples
of alternative modes of representation could
be multiplied for Thai, Cambodian, Lao and
Balinese Modernism
african/2014/12/javanese-manuscript-art-serat-
selarasa.html respectively.
29 Adrian Vickers, “From Bali to Lampung by Way of the
Pasisir,” Archipel 45 (1993): 55–76.
30 Annabel Teh Gallop, Early Views of Indonesia: Draw-
ings from the British Library (London: The British Li-
brary, 1995).
31 Francine Brinkgreve & Retno Sulistianingsih, eds.,
Sumatra: Crossroads of Cultures (Leiden: KITLV Press,
2009), 116–7.
32 No Na Paknam, Mural Paintings of Thailand Series:
Wat Somanat Wihan (Bangkok: Muang Boran, 1995).
Burmese temple mural painting, but these lack
the Western patronage so integral to Balinese
modernism, which may account for the relative
abundance of Balinese art.32
The Balinese case reveals alternative devel-
opments of modernism that can lead directly to
contemporary forms, avoiding conventionally
defned pathways of modernity. Drawing atten-
tion to the role of parallel histories of art across
Southeast Asia, it prompts a re-evaluation of
accepted categories and prevailing trajectories.
Balinese modernism, therefore, asks signifcant
questions of Southeast Asian art history.
129
 8.1

392 Adrian Vickers

0328-Charting Thoughts.indd 392 28/3/17 2:53 PM

 8.2

8.1 Anak Agung Gede Meregeg

Rama, Sita and Laksmana in the Forest
1934
Pen and black ink, watercolour and
8.3 tempera on board
89 x 59 cm
Collection of National Gallery
Singapore

8.2 D.G. Soberat

A Cock Fight
Undated
Tempera on cloth laid down on
cardboard
79.5 x 59.5 cm
Collection of National Gallery
Singapore

8.3 I Gusti Nyoman Lempad

Battle at Alengkapura
c. 1960s
Ink on paper
46.2 x 54.6 cm
Collection of National Gallery
Singapore

Balinese Modernism 393

 8.4

8.5

394 Adrian Vickers

0328-Charting Thoughts.indd 394 28/3/17 2:53 PM

 8.4 I Gusti Made Deblog
Forest Scene (Gusti Wayan?)
c. 1938–1942
Ink on paper
31 x 37 cm
Cetus Collection
Image courtesy of Cetus Collection

8.5 Ida Bagus Made Pugug

Birth Ritual
c. 1937
Pencil on paper
25 x 32.5 cm
Collection of National Gallery
Singapore

8.6 I Made Sukarya

The Story of Rajapala
c. 1937
Tempera on paper
8.6 23 x 30.5 cm
Collection of National Gallery
Singapore

8.7 Ida Bagus Nyoman Rai

Beached Whale at Sanur
1973
Ink and paint on paper
70 x 140 cm
Cetus Collection
Image courtesy of Cetus Collection

8.7

Balinese Modernism 395

0328-Charting Thoughts.indd 395 28/3/17 2:53 PM

 8.8 I Nyoman Ngendon
Yama, the God of Hell Punishment
1935–1939
Washed pen and ink with
cinnabar and yellow on paper
33 x 49.5 cm
Singapore Batuan Collection
Image courtesy of Leo Haks

8.9 I Nyoman Reneh, but attributed

to I Ketut Ngendon
Bima Rescuing his Parents
c. 1928–1942
Watercolour on board
58.7 x 44 cm
Collection of National Gallery
Singapore

8.10 Dewa Kompiang Kandel Ruka

Fishing
8.8
c. 1928–1942
Watercolour on paper
29.8 x 22.8 cm
Collection of National Gallery
Singapore

396 Adrian Vickers

0328-Charting Thoughts.indd 396 28/3/17 2:53 PM

 8.9 8.10

Balinese Modernism 397

0328-Charting Thoughts.indd 397 28/3/17 2:53 PM

 1 See Jim Supangkat, “The Emergence of Indonesian
Modern Art,” in The Birth of Modern Art in Southeast
(9)
The Birth of ‘Fine Art’ in Southeast Asia, 1900–1945
Ushiroshoji Masahiro
At the beginning of the 20th century, Southeast
Asia was on the cusp of the birth of ‘fne art.’
Almost all of Southeast Asia was under West-
ern colonial rule then. The Philippines, having
emerged from a long period of Spanish control
at the end of the 19th century, was now under
American authority. Java and the Indonesian
archipelago comprised the Dutch East Indies.
The peninsula states of Vietnam, Laos and
Cambodia formed French Indochina; Myan-
mar was annexed as part of British India, while
Singapore became part of the British Straits
Settlements along with Penang, Malacca and
Labuan. The Malay Peninsula and North Bor-
neo were also British colonies. Only Thailand
escaped colonisation in the power struggle be-
tween England and France.
The concept and institutions of ‘fne art’
were non-existent in Southeast Asia before this
juncture, and it was amidst this political climate
that the system of ‘fne art’ was frst introduced
from the West and gained traction. Needless to
say, diverse forms of art-making already existed
in the region. The daily lives of people were
coloured and adorned by a myriad of creative
forms, beginning with the well-known exam-
ples of Borobudur and Angkor Wat, and rang-
ing from murals and sculptures in Thai temples
and icons in Filipino churches to folk and ver-
nacular art. However, such objects would not
130 Charting Thoughts
Asia: Artists and Movements (Fukuoka: Fukuoka Asian
Art Museum, 1997), 225–8.
have been understood or produced according
to the Euro-American holistic value system and
concepts associated with ‘fne art.’ While the
term ‘fne art,’ as used in a Western art histori-
cal context, can be largely defned as modern
art, initial notions of ‘fne art’ stirring in vari-
ous parts of the region were not in accord with
this Western understanding.
With the introduction of the system of
‘fne art’ from the West, new terms were in-
vented and added to the lexicons of local lan-
guages, gradually taking root in each area. In
Chinese, this term was meishu; in Indonesian,
seni rupa; in Malay, seni lukis; in Thai, silpa; in
Vietnamese, mỹ thuật; in Tagalog, sining, and
so forth. These nativised terms came to be used
interchangeably with the Western terms ‘art’ or
‘fne art.’ It was thus in the frst half of the 20th
century that the overarching notion of ‘fne art’
came to exist in Southeast Asia, engulfng any
closely related indigenous words and concepts
that had previously existed in the region (as,
for example, Jim Supangkat has discussed with
regard to the Javanese word kagunan).1
Individuals began consciously identifying
themselves as painters or artists—those who
produced works as expressions of the self that
were targeted towards spiritual values centred
on aesthetics and beauty, and presented them
at exhibitions and in other public forums to-
gether with others who shared their aims. This
phenomenon could be seen occurring in the
various cities of Southeast Asia that served as
colonial administrative centres from the 1920s
to the 1930s. One of the earliest cities in which
this was manifest was Manila.
Manila, 1928
In the Philippines, where the tradition of
Christian art had been cultivated under more
than 300-years of Spanish colonial rule, West-
ern-style art education was introduced relative-
ly early. Art schools such as the Academia de
Dibujo y Pintura in Manila were established in
the 19th century, and local painters were pro-
ducing Western-style portraits. Additionally, in
the second half of the 19th century, some privi-
leged youths in the colony who had studied at
art schools in Manila also received formal art
education in Europe. Of note among them was
Juan Luna (1857–1899), who studied at the
Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando
in Madrid and, in 1884, received a gold medal
at the Madrid General Exhibition of Fine Arts.
This achievement, along with Félix Resurrec-
ción Hidalgo’s (1855–1913) receipt of a silver
medal, greatly inspired a sense of nationalistic
pride among the people of the Philippines.
In the 1920s, Fernando C. Amorsolo
(1892–1972), who had also studied at the Real
Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando in
1919, gradually gained widespread popular-
ity for his sweetly sentimental portrayals of
pastoral landscapes and coquettish female fg-
ures. His work, along with that of Fabián de
la Rosa (1869–1937) and others, popularised
the image of the Philippines as an ideal tropi-
cal paradise abroad. His paintings of rice plant-
ing scenes were charged with everything that
people visiting the country could wish for (as
well as anything anyone wishing to visit could
dream of ): rice paddies, people planting rice,
charming young women, a man playing songs
of labour on a guitar and, in the far distance, an
The Birth of ‘Fine Art’ in Southeast Asia, 1900–1945
old stone church and a brewing tropical storm.
However, there was also something that was
completely absent from his depictions: any sign
of urban life, which was just starting to surface
in the city of Manila.
Victorio C. Edades (1895–1985) went
to the United States in 1919 and studied ar-
chitecture and painting at the University of
Washington, Seattle, in the 1920s. He returned
to the Philippines in 1928 and at the end of
that year held a solo exhibition at the Philip-
pine Columbian Club in Ermita, a centre for
the association of students who had studied
abroad in America. The show which presented
highlights of Edades’ oeuvre developed during
his study in America, reportedly shocked the
Philippine art world. Although Amorsolo had
studied in Madrid around 1920 and had also
visited New York, he had not been moved by
the tide of new art that was developing in 20th-
century Western Europe and, stylistically, his
works never strayed from 19th-century natu-
ralism. In contrast, although Edades’ studies
were based in Seattle, which would then have
been considered on the periphery of the Paris-
centred art world of the day, he was exposed to
Post-Impressionism and the later development
of modernism in 1920s America.
The works on show that Edades produced
during his stay in America appeared heavily
infuenced by Cézanne, but the piece that at-
tracted the most attention was probably The
Builders (1928, fg. 9.1). The painting depicts
male labourers working to build a city. Where
Amorsolo’s work features coquettish women
bathing, Edades’ powerful image is flled with
sweat-drenched men. In place of the romantic
countryside, the work is set in a symbolic city-
scape that represents the reality of the emerging
metropolis of Manila of the time.
Edades later collaborated with Galo B.
Ocampo (1913–1985) and Carlos “Botong”
Francisco (1914–1969)—a young prodigy
who later achieved national popularity under
the nickname “Botong”—to paint Art Deco-
131
 style murals on various modern architectural
structures being built in Manila. The three
came to be called the “Triumvirate of Modern
Philippine Art” and together produced several
murals, starting with Rising Philippines (1935),
which adorned the lobby of the Capitol Theat-
er in Manila. Unfortunately, however, almost
all their representative works were entirely de-
stroyed during the war. Later, Edades became
an instructor at the University of Santo Tomas
and further advanced the activities of the Tri-
umvirate, establishing the Atelier of Modern
Art in Malate, Manila, together with Ocampo
and Diosdado Lorenzo by 1938. This group
further expanded to become the “Thirteen
Moderns,” in order, according to Edades, “to
form a stronger body to promote modern art
in the country.”2 They held regular meetings
and were acknowledged for being “the frst to
attempt to create a single, tightly knit organi-
sation of modern Philippine artists.”3 Before
long, however, the Japanese army invaded Ma-
nila and the group’s activities came to a stand-
still. The full-scale blossoming of their efforts,
as signifcant within an art historical context,
would come later in the post-war period when
the group’s members resumed their pursuits via
new forms of activity.
As the leader of this group of modern-
ists, Edades incited conficts with conservative
painters and sculptors like Amorsolo. This too
resumed after the war, specifcally in a polemi-
cal debate on modernism between Edades and
the sculptor Guillermo E. Tolentino in 1948.
A portion of Edades’ bitter critique against the
conservative faction reads as follows:
Prejudice, personal taste, and even a pre-
dilection for sentiment still govern our
judgment and appreciation. We in the
Philippines are still slaves to accuracy, to
photographic delineation and to pretti-
ness of surface colouring. It is a common
thing to hear a landscape praised if it ap-
proaches the naturalistic appearance of its
132 Ushiroshoji Masahiro
subject. If one can paint a pretty girl with
suffciently vivid color as to be worthy of
decorating a calendar or the top of a candy
box is forthwith a new “master”. If one or
two of our countrymen win prizes abroad
for historical knickknacks which are good
only for documentary purposes, or win
recognition with an alien subject-matter
and style, then we are satisfed and believe
we are internationally reconized [sic] for
our art.4
Batavia, 1938. S. Sudjojono’s Manifesto
In Batavia (now known as Jakarta), Java, the
stronghold of the Dutch East India Company
in the Dutch East Indies, S. Sudjojono (1917–
1986) was attempting to perform the role of a
midwife in assisting the birth of modern art.
During the frst half of the 20th century
in the Dutch East Indies, artisan painters were
producing tropical landscapes suffused with
exotic sensibilities. To Sudjojono, such land-
scapes represented no more than meaning-
less pandering to the tastes of the Dutch and
other travellers from Europe. He called these
landscapes Mooi Indië (beautiful Indies in
Dutch) paintings and fercely criticised them:
The paintings we see nowadays are mostly
landscapes: rice felds being plowed, rice
felds inundated by clear and calm water
[…] with the inevitable coconut palms
[…] or bamboo groves with blue-shim-
mering mountains in the background.
Similarly there are paintings of women
who must have red shawls futtering in the
wind, or, shaded by an umbrella, wear a
blue jacket—everyday lebaran [celebra-
tions following Ramadan] poetry.
Everything is very beautiful and ro-
mantic, paradisical, everything is very
pleasing, calm, and peaceful. Such paint-
ings carry only one meaning: the beautiful
Indies.5
2 The members of the Thirteen Moderns were: Arsenio
Capili, Bonifacio Cristobal, Demetrio Diego, Victorio
C. Edades, Carlos “Botong” Francisco, Cesar Legaspi,
Diosdado Lorenzo, Anita Magsaysay-Ho, Vicente
Manansala, Galo B. Ocampo, Hernando R. Ocampo,
Jose Pardo and Ricarte Purugganan. Edades’ views
are taken from Cid Reyes, “Victorio Edades,” in Con-
versations on Philippine Art: Interviews by Cid Reyes
(Manila: CCP, 1989), 7–8.
3 Purita Kalaw-Ledesma & Amadis Ma Guerrero,
Edades: National Artist (Manila: Security Bank and
Trust Company and Filipinas Foundation, 1979).
4 Victorio C. Edades, “Liberating ourselves from Acad-
Sudjojono began his essay titled “Seni
Loekis di Indonesia Sekarang dan jang Akan
Datang” with the aforementioned quote, which
could be considered a manifesto of modern art
in Indonesia. Following this opening salvo,
he vehemently attacked contemporary Indo-
nesian painting—represented by Mooi Indië
landscape painting—as hollow images “devoid
of spirit,” of “people who live outside our real
life sphere,” images that only indulge the ex-
pectations of foreigners who “have never seen
a coconut palm or a rice feld.” Moreover, he
rejoiced in the fact that a new generation was
fnally being born and that they were moving
away from this tourist-oriented souvenir-type
art. In its stead, he advocated the necessity of
paintings “that look reality straight in the eye,”
enjoining the artist to “not seek beauty […] in
the mental world of the tourist,” but simply to
paint the world as it exists:
Because high art is work based on our daily
life transmuted by the artist who is himself
immersed in it, and then creates. […] Art
may not follow some group of moralizers
or become the handmaid of this or that
party. It must be absolutely free, liberated
from all moral bonds or tradition in order
to be fertile and vital.6
The Birth of ‘Fine Art’ in Southeast Asia, 1900–1945
emism,” This Week, 19 September 1948, as published
in Rod. Paras-Perez, Edades and the 13 Moderns
(Manila: Cultural Center of the Philippines, 1995), 35.
5 S. Sudjojono, “Seni Loekis di Indonesia Sekarang
dan Jang Akan Datang” [The art of painting in In-
donesia now and in the future], in Keboedayaan
dan Masjarakat, October 1939 in Seni Loekis, Kes-
enian dan Seniman [Painting, the arts and the art-
ist] (Yogykarta: Indonesia Sekarang, 1946), as cited
in Claire Holt, Art in Indonesia: Continuities and
Change (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1967), 195.
Abstracts translated by Claire Holt.
6 Ibid., 196.
This statement by Sudjojono reveals an ex-
tremely modern image of the artist and a philo-
sophical understanding of art, staring hard at
the reality of one’s own foundation and creating
an individualised aesthetic of beauty inspired
by one’s own internal beliefs and feelings.
The essay in which these statements were
made was released in Keboedayaan dan Masja-
rakat magazine in October 1939. However, this
was not simply an attempt to incite the younger
generation. In October of the previous year, he
had already rallied what he called a “new genera-
tion of artists” (consisting of about 15 people,
including Ramli, Otto Djaya, S. Tutur, Emiria
Sunassa and Suromo) in Jakarta, positioning
Agus Djaya Suminta as the chairman and as-
suming for himself the position of secretary in
the formation of a group of Indonesian painters
known as the Association of Indonesian Draw-
ing Masters (Persatuan Ahli-Ahli Gambar In-
donesia, PERSAGI, fg. 9.2). It was through this
group that Sudjojono strove to realise his own
artistic philosophy.
PERSAGI has been positioned as the frst
modern art movement in the history of Indo-
nesian art, although we do not know with cer-
tainty much about the works that were likely to
have been presented at PERSAGI exhibitions
at the time. Exactly how well the members’
133
 7 Barli Sasmitawinata, interview with Ushiroshoji
Masahiro, 24 September 2004.
8 Ibid.
works satisfed Sudjojono’s expectations or to
what extent the artists comprehended his harsh
words and took them to heart is uncertain. Re-
gardless, Sudjojono called for painting to be
a medium of personal expression that looked
reality straight in the eye, even if one’s reality
was a poor and pitiful one, painting it as it was
rather than producing lifeless souvenirs that
catered to foreign tastes. In his own work, he
attempted to put his ideas into practice as well.
The Bandung Group of Five
Bandung, a city in the western part of Java
in the Dutch East Indies, was a highland me-
tropolis developed by the Dutch and one of
Southeast Asia’s leading modern cities. A de-
partment store was established in 1910, and
other modern buildings designed by Dutch
architects in the Art Deco style stood side by
side on its streets. A group of artists known as
the Bandung Group of Five (Kelompok Lima
Bandung) formed and established their base
here in 1935, three years before the formation
of PERSAGI. The fve members were Affandi
(1907–1990), who would later gain national
popularity for his “tropical expressionism,”
Hendra Gunawan (1918–1983), the milk-
man Sudarso (1914/1916–2006), Wahdi Su-
manta (1917–1996) and Barli Sasmitawinata
(1921–2007). Affandi was the eldest member
at 28, and the youngest, Barli, was just 14
years old.
134 Ushiroshoji Masahiro
9 Wahdi, interview with Ushiroshoji Masahiro, 22 Jan-
uary 1995.
10 Sudjojono, as quoted in Holt, op. cit., 196.
11 Ibid.
This group did not wield the same infu-
ence as PERSAGI, but at a time when land-
scape paintings had always been painted from
memory by artists indoors, they introduced to
Indonesia for the frst time an Impressionist-
style plein-air painting practice. According to
Barli, they sought to capture reality in their
works by going to the actual location they were
painting.7 They were also said to have been the
frst to paint not only landscapes but fgures as
well.8 In fact, many fgure paintings by Affandi
survive from the years 1938 and 1939.
One could argue that the efforts of the
Bandung Group of Five to pursue a real con-
nection with the ground beneath their feet,
rather than paint idealised romantic scenery,
could be seen as the stirrings of modern art.
Because they had no spokesman like Sudjo-
jono was for PERSAGI, their names were not
etched as deeply into the narrative of art his-
tory. Nonetheless, it is worth refecting on their
activities which preceded those of PERSAGI,
even if in a limited way.
In light of the group’s contribution to mod-
ern art in Indonesia, however, Wahdi’s presence
as its member is curious. Wahdi (fg. 9.3) is an
artist whose oeuvre was known to be dominat-
ed, almost in its entirety, by Mooi Indië paint-
ings. From conversations with him, it is clear
that Wahdi originally considered himself a tu-
kang gambar (artisan draughtsman), and it was
only when the term pelukis (painter) was coined
during Japanese military rule (1942–1945) that
he came to see himself, for the frst time, as an
artist.9 Wahdi had trained for fve months under
Abdullah Suriosubroto (1878–1941), an estab-
lished painter of Mooi Indië landscapes, before
striking out on his own. At an open-call exhi-
bition under the Japanese military government,
Wahdi claimed that his master’s son, Basoeki
Abdullah (1915–1993), who had recently re-
turned from his studies abroad in Europe, had
denounced him as a thief and accused him of
stealing his father’s style. Wahdi’s paintings were
sometimes also mistaken as Affandi’s: Having
collaborated with Affandi on several projects,
Wahdi seemed to have also absorbed his part-
ner’s style.
From these examples it seems apparent
that to Wahdi, who held the perspective of a
tukang gambar, paintings were artisanal crafts
that could be copied. However, to Basoeki, who
had just returned from Europe, and to Sudjo-
jono, who extolled the aesthetic individualism
of the artist, paintings were executed in a style
unique to the individual artist. It is here that we
can perhaps identify a historical turning point.
The Pledge of Youth
Let us return to Sudjojono’s manifesto. In
its last paragraph, Sudjojono’s words take on a
still more impassioned tone:
Painters of Indonesia!
If there is still any of your own blood
in your breast, carrying seeds of visions
from your Goddess of Art, leave your
tourist-like sphere, break the chains that
restrain the freedom of your blood, so that
the seeds I have spoken of become a large
Garuda with strong wings who can carry
you up to the blue sky.10
He then closes his essay with this: “Probably
you will suffer, be burned by the heat of the
sun […] but when you die you’ll not journey in
vain to the palace of the Goddess of Art in the
The Birth of ‘Fine Art’ in Southeast Asia, 1900–1945
land of eternity […] the Goddess will open the
door and joyfully invite you herself to enter.”11
I would like to call attention to the fact
that Sudjojono addressed his fervent call to the
painters of “Indonesia,” because the Republic
of Indonesia did not yet exist at this point in
time. In fact, at the time in the Dutch East In-
dies, the faint shadow of a sovereign Indonesia
was just raising its head, defning itself in oppo-
sition to the exoticised East Indies of the West-
ern imagination. In 1928, a group of nation-
alist youth leaders (including Sukarno, who
would later become the nation’s frst president)
declared the Youth Pledge (Sumpah Pemuda),
vowing to uphold an Indonesia of “one moth-
erland, one people, and one language.” It was
an indubitably symbolic event, using the term
“Indonesia” as a slogan signifying independ-
ence from Dutch colonisation. Sudjojono’s call,
then, made pointed reference to this slogan in
anticipation of the future state that was begin-
ning to emerge even amidst colonial rule.
The establishment and activities of PER-
SAGI represented an artistic movement and, at
the same time, signifed a form of activism that
looked proudly towards national independence.
Bangkok, 1933
In Thailand, which had preserved its independ-
ence from the aggressions of major powers, ‘fne
art’ was a system to be institutionalised by the
government. Thailand had pursued modernisa-
tion since the second half of the 19th century,
during the reigns of King Mongkut (Rama IV)
and King Chulalongkorn (Rama V). As criti-
cism of the autocratic monarchy intensifed, a
constitutional revolution was sparked in 1932,
changing the political system from an absolute
monarchy to a constitutional monarchy.
As modernisation through Westernisation
advanced, the government invited Europeans
to Thailand and tried to import various West-
ern institutions, including that of ‘fne art.’ The
fgure who came to play a major role in this
135
 feld was Corrado Feroci (1892–1962), an Ital-
ian national who adopted Thai citizenship in
1944 and took the Thai name Silpa Bhirasri.
Feroci was brought in by the Thai government
in 1923 to teach Western sculpture at the Fine
Arts Department; in 1933 he established the
School of Fine Arts (reorganised as the Praneet
Silpakam School the following year). In 1943,
the status of the school was elevated and it be-
came Silpakorn University.
Unlike other colonial regions, ‘fne art’ in
Thailand was, more than anything, introduced
in emulation of the West and a means of re-
inforcing national authority through the crea-
tion of national monuments and sculpture. For
this reason, sculptors were more essential than
painters. Feroci, together with the frst genera-
tion of students of the Silpakam School, were
responsible for the production of statues of
the King, such as Rama I (1932), and national
monuments, such as the Democracy Monument
(1939) and the Victory Monument (1941, fg.
9.4). Before long, Feroci was nurturing young
artists who would go on to write the history of
modern art in Thailand.
After the war, Feroci inaugurated a nation-
wide open-call competition that culminated
in the National Exhibition of Art in 1949, ex-
panded the provisions of Silpakorn University,
and authored many books on the history of
Thai art. Through such initiatives, he played
a major role in forming the concept of and es-
tablishing a basis for ‘fne art’ institutions in
Thailand.
Early graduates of his school came to be
heralded as pioneers of Thai modern art. Na-
tional demand dictated that many of them,
unlike artists in most other Southeast Asian
countries, be sculptors. In addition to the
Western-style art curriculum, learning from
nature and studying traditional Thai arts were
encouraged at the school. Feroci taught that
originality was of foremost importance to a
modern artist, although he did not advocate
formalism or strict universalism:
136 Ushiroshoji Masahiro
The laymen who are usually so attached
to traditional art do not accept new forms
easily; it is an understandable sentimen-
talism which is gradually overcome only
through new aesthetic appreciation arising
from the same modern surroundings as
those of the artist. To appease the layman’s
anxiety, it is important to understand that
if a Thai (or any artist belonging to a dis-
tinct ethnic group) does not purposely
imitate works of foreign artists, he will
always express, under any new style, the
individuality of his race, which is formed
by peculiar natural temperament, climate,
religion, atavistic feelings and thoughts,
and other factors.12
Feroci’s tutelage produced exceptional sculp-
tors such as Khien Yimsiri (1922–1971), who
fused the grace and refnement of Sukhothai
Buddhist statuary with the rational realism of
Western sculpture.
Hanoi, 1925
In 1921, French painter Victor Tardieu (1870–
1937) visited French Indochina, an entity
which at the beginning of the 20th century com-
prised Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. Tardieu’s
entry to the Paris Salon had received the colo-
nial art prize, the Prix de l’Indochine, in 1920,
awarding him a stipend for his deployment to
Indochina. Recipients of the prize received free
passage between Paris and Indochina and travel
within the French territory, but the allowance
for expenses incurred during travel was fairly
limited, so it was customary for stays to be cut
relatively short. In Tardieu’s case, construction
of the University of Indochina (l’Université
Indochinoise) was being planned at the time
of his visit and he took on the project of pro-
ducing a large mural for one of the buildings
immediately after arriving in Hanoi, allowing
him an extended stay. As a result, he was able
to gain an understanding of the state of Viet-
12 Silpa Bhirasri, Contemporary Art in Thailand (Bang-
kok: Promotion and Public Relations Sub-Division,
Fine Arts Department, 2001), 11, frst published in
1959–1960.
namese art and come into contact with local
artists (fg. 9.5). Tardieu commented: “I had the
opportunity to interact with eager young Viet-
namese artists who wished to revive traditional
Vietnamese arts and at the same time sought
ongoing instruction in Western arts.”13 Tar-
dieu must have cherished the same hope him-
self, because he later received approval from the
colonial government to establish the School of
Fine Arts of Indochina (l’École des beaux-arts
de l’Indochine) in 1925 with the support of the
painter Nguyễn Nam Sơn (1890–1973). The
stated objective was to train locals to produce
handicraft items for export, but the school pro-
vided an art education that followed a stand-
ard Western-style curriculum. The frst batch
of students graduated from the school in 1930
and over the course of the 1930s, alumni of the
programme established the institution of ‘fne
art’ in Indochina. At the same time, a form of
“tradition” inherent to Vietnam was discovered
and forged under the guidance of their French
instructor. Nguyễn Phan Chánh (1892–1984)
and Nguyễn Gia Trí (1908–1993) were both
instrumental in negotiating this strand of “tra-
dition” in the mediums of silk and lacquer
painting respectively.
Singapore, 1935
While there were oil and watercolour paintings
produced by European artists who travelled the
Malay Peninsula in the 19th century, the trans-
fer of ‘fne art’ from the West to the local com-
The Birth of ‘Fine Art’ in Southeast Asia, 1900–1945
13 See “Futsuin no Bijutsu Gakko—Sandai Bijutsu Gak-
ko no Enkaku to Soshiki—” [Art schools of French In-
dochina: History and organisation of the three major
art schools], in Kokumin Bijitsu [National art], trans.
Horiuchi Masakazu, 2, no. 1 (January 1942).
munity came late. Apart from the traditional
paintings and calligraphies produced by the
Chinese in the British Straits Settlements of
Singapore, Malacca and Penang, only a mini-
mal number of oil paintings were made. By
the 1930s, however, Chinese who had studied
art in France and China came to settle in the
Straits Settlements, and others journeyed to
Shanghai to further their education in art. As
more artists gathered in Singapore, the Society
of Chinese Artists (formerly the Salon Art Soci-
ety) was formed in 1935 (fg. 9.6) and began to
hold annual exhibitions the following year. In
1938, the frst tertiary art school in the British
territory of Malaya, the Nanyang Academy of
Fine Arts, was founded for the purpose of edu-
cating young immigrant Chinese in the arts.
Lim Hak Tai (1893–1963) served as the frst
principal of the school, and its establishment
further stimulated other artistic activity in Ma-
laya. The oil paintings by members of the So-
ciety of Chinese Artists were heavily infuenced
by Post-Impressionism and the School of Paris,
due to the large number of members who had
studied in France and Shanghai. They, along-
side other ethnic Chinese artists in Malaya,
were sometimes categorised as belonging to
the Nanyang School of art. “Nanyang” (South
Seas) was the Chinese term for the Southeast
Asian region, suggesting that those living there
did not yet consider Singapore their homeland.
Lim leveraged this condition unique to Singa-
pore to create a Nanyang art that was neither
wholly dongfang (Eastern) or xifang (Western).
137
 The Greater East Asia War, 1941–1945
At the end of 1941, when ‘fne art’ was ger-
minating and on the very verge of blossoming
in Southeast Asia, the Japanese Army invaded.
The army rapidly occupied the greater part of
the region, laying down military governments
and exerting Japanese infuence. Although this
occupation lasted for a relatively short period
of time—it was slightly over three years before
the war ended in Japan’s defeat—it nonetheless
created great disturbances within the region.
The Japanese occupation policy was not
consistent in all localities due to the differing
objectives of each of the occupation armies as
well as the distinctive features of each area, and
it is not beftting to speak of them together in
general. However, it is safe to say that through-
out the region the Japanese enlisted the coop-
eration of residents in the military government
and deployed “pacifcation strategies” (or less
euphemistically, propaganda) with the goal of
mobilising locals in the war effort. In addition
to the establishment of the Keimin Bunka Shi-
dosho (Cultural Centre, Poesat Kebdedajaan,
fg. 9.7) in Java, where art classes were also held,
regular open-call art competitions and other
kinds of exhibitions were organised. In Manila
and Hanoi, the Japanese sponsored nationwide
public art exhibitions and competitions, and ex-
hibitions of local artists were held in Singapore
as well. Japanese cultural centres were also es-
tablished in various parts of Southeast Asia and
Japanese artists were dispatched to staff them.
While such cultural components of oc-
cupation policies made certain contributions
to the process by which ‘fne art’ was able to
take root in Southeast Asia, it is undeniable
that there were also ways in which the Japanese
Army and its occupation crushed the germinat-
ing seeds of ‘fne art’ and largely inhibited its
growth. One obvious example of this was the
execution of the central fgure of the Society
of Chinese Artists in Singapore, Tchang Ju Chi
(1905–1944) and his associates.
138 Ushiroshoji Masahiro
Importing ‘Fine Art’ and the Search for
Individuality, then Redefning ‘Fine Art’
Victor Tardieu wrote the following on the oc-
casion of the construction of the l’École des
beaux-arts de l’Indochine:
The most urgent task for the founder of
this school and his collaborators is to as-
sist the artists and handicraftsmen of An-
nam to discover the deep meaning of their
own tradition and fnding [sic] fundamen-
tal inspiration. In order to achieve these
ends, numerous models of old Annamese
art should be displayed before their eyes.
This return to the past, however, can be
productive only if it serves as a departure
point to new researches and only when we
confront the present exigency to cultivate
a path leading to future developments. In
short, the issue lies at how we are going to
achieve a modern development along the
continuing line of tradition.14
This question of “how we are going to
achieve a modern development along the
continuing line of tradition” was a common
concern throughout Southeast Asia and, un-
doubtedly, the Asian continent as a whole. For
example, although at a slightly later date than
Tardieu, the aforementioned Feroci, who estab-
lished the School of Fine Arts in Bangkok under
the national policy of the Thai government and
worked tirelessly to establish the system of ‘fne
art,’ similarly stressed the importance of West-
ern-style art education while also encouraging
learning from nature and the traditional arts.
He asserted that “If sincerely expressed, a work
done by a Thai or by any other Eastern artist
must be different from one made by a European.
The difference will correspond to the individu-
ality of race.”15 While respecting the originality
of the artist, he called for art that refected the
traditions and characteristics of the artist’s own
people. Even Edades, the quintessential Philip-
14 Quang Phong & Quang Viet, The Fine Arts of the
Capital Hanoi in the 20 th Century (Hanoi: Editions des
Beaux Arts, 2000), 407.
pine modernist who studied in America, advo-
cated “fnd[ing] pleasure in the visible qualities
of even the commonest objects of everyday life”
and the importance of “integrat[ing] all of our
impressions with our own Oriental heritage and
our traditional Christian culture.”16 Meanwhile
in Indonesia, Sudjojono fervently insisted upon
beauty that conformed to the personal aesthet-
ic of the individual artist while maintaining a
spirit that looked reality straight in the eye, to
achieve artworks that are based on our daily life
as transmuted by the artist and that must be ab-
solutely free.17
In the frst half of the 20th century, under
the colonial rule or strong infuence of Europe-
an powers, Southeast Asian artists learnt about
the new concept and medium of ‘fne art’ as
imported from the West and used it within the
context of rising nationalism to fx their gaze
upon their individual reality, tradition and cul-
tural heritage, seeking to discover their own
‘fne art’ in the process.
The birth of ‘fne art’ also engendered def-
nitions of what was not considered ‘fne art.’
The process by which ‘fne art’ was imported
from the West and became entrenched in the
The Birth of ‘Fine Art’ in Southeast Asia, 1900–1945
15 Bhirasri, op. cit., 16.
16 Edades, as published in Paras-Perez, op. cit., 36.
17 Sudjojono, as cited in Holt, op. cit., 195.
various localities was, by the same token, also a
process of marginalising and disqualifying the
diverse creative arts that had previously existed
in this region and fell outside the umbrella of
‘fne art.’ Any discussion of the concept of ‘fne
art’ today in the 21st century is also necessar-
ily an act of re-examining these marginalised
forms of creation, in order to redefne once
more what constitutes ‘fne art.’ This essay has
provided an overview of the process by which
‘fne art’ was imported to Southeast Asia, but I
believe that the ultimate task for National Gal-
lery Singapore and those of us concerned with
the art of this region is, more importantly, to
re-examine that which has been discarded and
forgotten in the process of defning ‘fne art’ in
this region.
This essay was originally written in Japa-
nese, translated by Maiko Behr and assisted by
Horikawa Lisa.
This essay uses single quotation marks to
highlight the term ‘fne art,’ as an equivalent
of the Japanese punctuation 「」( ) used by the
author.
139
 9.1

9.2

398 Ushiroshoji Masahiro

0328-Charting Thoughts.indd 398 28/3/17 2:53 PM

 9.1 Victorio C. Edades
The Builders
1928
Oil on fbreboard
128 × 321 cm
Collection of the Cultural Center
of the Philippines
Image courtesy of the Cultural
Center of the Philippines

9.2 Association of Indonesian Drawing

Masters (Persatuan Ahli-Ahli
Gambar Indonesia, PERSAGI)
Image courtesy of Indonesian
Visual Art Archive

9.3 Wahdi in his studio

22 January 1995
Photo © Ushiroshoji Masahiro

9.3

9.3

The Birth of ‘Fine Art’ in Southeast Asia, 1900–1945 399

0328-Charting Thoughts.indd 399 28/3/17 2:54 PM

 9.4

9.5

400 Ushiroshoji Masahiro

0328-Charting Thoughts.indd 400 28/3/17 2:54 PM

 9.6

9.7

9.4 Victory Monument,

Bangkok, Thailand
Photo © Ushiroshoji Masahiro

9.5 Victor Tardieu, seated in the centre,

pictured with the staff and students of
l’École des beaux-arts de l’Indochine
(School of Fine Arts of Indochina).
Photo courtesy of Institut national
d’histoire de l’art (Paris), fonds Victor
Tardieu (Archives 125, 9)

9.6 Members of the Society

of Chinese Artists
1935
Image courtesy of the Society
of Chinese Artists

9.7 First meeting between the Japanese and

Indonesian members of Keimin Bunka
Shidosho (Cultural Centre, Poesat
Kebdedajaan) in Java, April 1943.
Image courtesy of Indonesian Visual
Art Archive

The Birth of ‘Fine Art’ in Southeast Asia, 1900–1945 401

0328-Charting Thoughts.indd 401 28/3/17 2:54 PM

 1 Paul Zafaralla, “Genesis,” in A Portfolio of 60 Philip-
pine Art Masterpieces (Manila: Instructional Materi-
als Corporation, 1986), 175.
2 Department of Fine Art and Photography, the Minis-
try of Culture and Information, Vietnam & The Sankei
(10)
Conditions of Freedom, Contingencies of Art
Patrick D. Flores
If war were to mark a turn in the history of art
in Southeast Asia, what would it wage? And
how might it turn art-historically in a locality
of countries that contrives a region? It would
perhaps provoke at the outset a confrontation
with the oftentimes ruthless, though suppos-
edly civilising, colonial force that had mapped
out the territories of nation and culture, and the
geographies of art and its histories. These for-
mations were carved out from islands, archipel-
agoes, trade routes, kingdoms, land masses, and
border crossings spanning Taiwan to the Pacifc.
It would reveal the fragility of this world, torn
asunder by the radical evil of the Holocaust and
the atomic bomb. It would also nearly in the
same breath sense the expectations of recon-
struction, a reconstitution of the world, and a
world order, under the auspices of the United
Nations and the Bretton Woods Conference—
these instruments that conceived of a world af-
ter war with sweeping visions of change.
The Philippine painter Hernando R. Oc-
ampo (1911–1978), also a distinguished poet
and fctionist, was one artist who was able to
scan the shifting landscape of art and society
after World War II and through the other wars
140 Charting Thoughts
Shimbun, Cultural Promotion Division, 50 Years of
Modern Vietnamese Paintings: 1925–75, exh. cat., ed.
Ushiroshoji Masahiro (Tokyo: The Sankei Shimbun,
2005), 190.
later. As early as 1940 he did The Contrast (fg.
10.1), a scene in which a man on his hunches
scoops out what appears to be a measly meal
from a nearly empty plate. A kerosene lamp
shapes his sunken and rawboned body that is
set against the severe silhouette of buildings,
high-rise and hard-edged. In 1946, a similar
solitary fgure reappears, composed as a stark
contrast to a looming city in the work Ang Pu-
lubi [The Beggar]. In Calvary (Three Crosses),
the same dispossessed body surfaces across
three crucifed fgures as if in Christ’s scene of
death but are actually amid the smoke stacks
of factories. From this phase characterised by
historians and critics as “proletarian,” Ocampo
would venture into abstraction, the kind that
was keen on formal rhythm and the changing
constitution of natural and human life. He is
believed to have seen The Beginning or the End
(1947), a “documentary flm on the explosion
of a hydrogen bomb at the Bikini atoll” and
was haunted by its memory:
After the atomic explosion, the fsh from
the nearby ocean crawled their way on
land and climbed trees, and then died due
 to asphyxiation. Turtles, instead of going
to the ocean, walked toward the desert and
also died. The flm disturbed me and made
me apprehensive about the future. On the
other hand, I was convinced that human-
ity will persist in spite of any number of
atomic or hydrogen wars, but perhaps no
longer in our present form and lifestyle,
but in some other mutant forms.1
From this experience arose his mutant series
(fg. 10.2). This suite of abject fgures testifes
to the grisly and morbid time of the post-war
era that also evoked a heady climate of thrilling
mutations.
This essay seeks to explore the period of
the 1950s and 1960s in Southeast Asia through
three themes: the struggle with successive colo-
nialisms, the coming to terms with independ-
ence, and the process of belonging to the in-
ternational world. These travails, subtended by
three wars (the Pacifc War, the Cold War, and
the Vietnam War), will be feshed out by trans-
formations in the production of art through
particular stylistic rubrics that tangentially
speak to them: Post-Impressionism to School
of Paris, including Art Nouveau and Art Deco,
and the various realisms in the 1950s and inter-
nationalism in different registers (abstraction,
social realism, Pop Art, and an incipient avant-
garde) in the 1960s. While these styles may be
viewed as derived from the West, their media-
tion in localities across Southeast Asia gave rise
to idiosyncrasies of expression; alternatively,
some artists in the region also thought that
these so-called Western styles had been shaped
by a certain turn towards Eastern philosophy,
however this notion of the Eastern was reck-
oned. To be discussed alongside these themes
and styles are encompassing formations that
tried to bind the region through the Greater
East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere in 1940; the
Asian-African Conference in Bandung, Indo-
nesia in 1955; and the formation of the As-
sociation of Southeast Asian Nations in 1967.
Conditions of Freedom, Contingencies of Art
Broadly, the essay contributes to the conver-
sation on art after war; the investment in the
imagination of nation-states through nation-
making in the form of revolution or nation-
building in the name of modern development;
and the mapping of a region, a collective mo-
ment in an increasingly international system.
The procedure of this refection takes the
form of an analysis of the practical logic of the
artistic proposition. It tries to identify tenden-
cies in how form would congeal through cer-
tain modes of depiction and focuses on tropes
or ways of imagining reality in the sphere or
ecology of art. This relationship between me-
dium and trope may be able to draft the basis
of a method of making the modern beyond its
protean phases.
War
In the explication of the lifeworld of war,
three tropes are salient: reconstruction, revo-
lution, and independence. These three modes
of remaking the country that was a colony also
shaped the production of art that responded to
the devastation of war in the Pacifc, the need
to found a nation through a revolution, and the
assertion of sovereignty in the form of an inde-
pendent nation-state. Even if a country had not
gone through colonisation in the strict sense,
it might have had to mimic colonial devices if
it had desired to become postcolonial in rela-
tion to other places in the region. War, there-
fore, was a pervasive presence in this period in
art history. In fact, in Vietnam, the arts “dur-
ing the ten-year period between the two wars
(anti-France resistance and anti-US resistance)
initially depicted memories of anti-France re-
sistance war, which helped the citizens share
their common history […]. At the same time,
the town undergoing development was another
popular subject. Both subjects refected the
ambience of those days in Vietnam where peo-
ple strived to build the country by overcoming
the damages of war.”2
141
 In this scheme of the war, the “reality” of
the social world became a contentious condi-
tion. How to embody such a reality that was
disfgured by war and was being transformed
into a certain level of wholeness through the na-
tion structured an aesthetic problematique. The
shifts in the mind of S. Sudjojono (1913–1986),
who was a philosopher and polemicist as much
as he was a painter, may be a good place to start
discussing this energy called the real. Amir Sid-
harta tracks the changes of the artist’s calibra-
tion of the “real” from the Dutch term realiteit,
which Sudjojono transposed as realitas, to real-
ism. Sidharta quotes him during his years as part
of the Association of Indonesian Drawing Mas-
ters (Persatuan Ahli-Ahli Gambar Indonesia,
PERSAGI), saying: “This is our life condition
and what we want at this present time,” which
is by turns ethnographic and programmatic.3 In
1949, however, through the painting Sekko (Per-
intis Gerilya) in which a guerrilla fghter roams
the ruins of a Prambanan village, Sudjojono re-
vealed “a marked difference from his previous
works” that aspired to the truth through the
depiction of the beautiful. In the said painting,
painstaking attention was “given to paint the
fgure and the surrounding realistically.”4 From
the quest for truth, it thus became a quest for
verisimilitude, confating realism with natural-
ism: “Draw a spoon as a spoon, a bamboo bench
as a bamboo bench,” Sudjojono would preach.
In the course of time, Sidharta interjects, Sud-
jojono would feel trapped in this kind of real-
ism. Key in this swerve of thought would be the
painting Perusing a Poster (fg. 10.3) in 1956 the
background of which is left incomplete, even in-
choate, marked with “sketches and strokes that
indicated his desire to express himself.”5 It
was the critic Trisno Sumardjo who acutely dis-
cerned the tension in Sudjojono’s impasse, and
therefore an opportunity to revise in the face of
the real; it is worth quoting him copiously as his
comments are emblematic of the predicaments
of Southeast Asian artists who have had to grap-
ple with the vexed condition of the real:
142 Patrick D. Flores
Sudjojono wants to express a realistic
attitude to life (for example, to see and
experience the struggle, suffering of the
people) with realistic paintings. But it
turns out that what is meant is just a meth-
od of drawing (a spoon precisely as a spoon)
and not an inner sense (for example: colo-
nisation is evil, the fatherland is fertile, I’m
sad, the guerrilla is brave), even though
these too are realistic sensations […]. Such
a method is actually naturalistic; although
realism can in fact borrow this method
from naturalism, it is not necessary for a
realist to have to use that method […]. So
what Sudjojono propagandizes as realism
is to take motifs from what exists based
on the fve senses, and to paint them in
a naturalistic manner. He forgets that a
person can be a realist by painting what is
felt by the inner self and with any method
at all, as long as its content remains real-
istic. He is also unaware that in so doing
becomes an advocate for people to become
slave of the lincak, slaves to the spoon, by
thoughtlessly copying whatever nature
and circumstances present. He is unaware
that this too is contrary to the psychologi-
cal development of Indonesians today.6
While Sumardjo’s critique may be astute, it can
also be argued, on the other hand, that Sudjo-
jono’s realism or instinct for the real was ethi-
cally requisite, prompted by what he was wit-
nessing around him and how he thought his
people grasped reality. Speaking of his paradig-
matic Indonesian: “His reality is the reality of
rice. He also perhaps understands when it is a
vision, but if his family is hungry, he plunders.
Modern theory remains theory, it is rice that’s
needed.”7
For sure, various means of realism indexed
a world after war amid all the rubble. But such
a realism was not suffcient. There was the de-
mand to prefgure as well a new world being mus-
tered and swept away by revolutionary passion
3 Amir Sidharta, “S. Sudjojono: The Artist, Realiteit
and Truth,” in Strategies Towards the Real: S. Sudjo-
jono and Contemporary Indonesian Art (Singapore:
National University of Singapore Museum, 2008), 42.
4 Ibid., 43.
5 Ibid.
and a fulsome commitment to independence.
This relay generated an aesthetic that revealed
the limits of “realism” as a legacy of the colonial
academy and contacts with Western paradigms
of art-making and its concomitant pedago-
gies. With the limit ex-posed, as it were, the
artists strove to trans-pose it through varia-
tions beyond the language of realism. It is at
this point that “realism” would be surmounted,
sometimes belabouredly so, and was redefned
through a problematisation of thought, so
transforming inevitably into a problematique.
Finally, realism had to shed off its supposedly
preordained skin to reveal the layers of “reality”
and perhaps the “real.” It was at this punctum
that the visual space opened up to other ways
of organising space, delineating form, and so
on. The dimension of the canvas, therefore,
was challenged, its plasticity demystifed, and
its fatness relieved of its illusions.
The war would be simultaneously remem-
bered in art as an event and a morality tale.
The 1950s offered the chance for artists to
revisit the consequences of this moment and
the lives that it changed in the course of time.
Here, realism persisted but only to the degree
that it challenged the idealisation of both land
and people. A vital part of this critique of the
ideal is the representation of people, specifcal-
ly rendered as characters and even as partisans,
coming together to form a common culture or
a political consensus. Certain intersections in
social life would be marked like the village, for
instance, or the street corner as generative of
a shared sentiment or a responsibility to act
Conditions of Freedom, Contingencies of Art
6 Aminudin TH Siregar, “S. Sudjojono’s Pendulum,” in
Strategies towards the Real, 76–7.
7 Ibid., 79.
8 Redza Piyadasa, “Modernist and Post-Modernist
Developments in Malaysian Art in the Post-Inde-
pendence Period,” in Modernity in Asian Art, ed. John
Clark (Sydney: Wild Peony Press, 1993), 172.
upon the world. The heterogeneity of the so-
cial then condenses, incarnated by types and
typifcations, signifed by recognisable codes of
ethnicity and gender, and made to comprise a
polity or a culture. The realism extracting the
“type” or the “typical” is ethnographic in ori-
entation, but its relationship with other types
becomes allegorical, transcending the anecdo-
tal and conveying an ethical attitude towards
a cause or a predicament in the socius. This
condensation of the type fnally promises a
nexus into the possibility of social comment
in which the type could be appropriated to
intimate contradiction, confict, sympathy,
solidarity, and the other utterances of (dis)
identifcations.
An exemplary instance is how the Nanyang
artists in Malaya endeavored to construe the
mélange of methods as a “sophisticated” and
“syncretic” approach to the reality of the place
and the culture of the “Southeast” by way of
Bali, a trope for both culture and geography, at
once orientalist and nativist, describing an eth-
nographic terrain and staking out a plot of uto-
pian paradise. For the artist–curator–historian
Redza Piyadasa, for instance, the 1959 work
Tropical Life (fg. 10.4) by Cheong Soo Pieng
betrays the layers of this palimpsest: Chinese
ink, gouache techniques, rice paper as ground,
Cubism as style, hand-scroll orientation, and
peripheral vision. Piyadasa fnds this admixture
“truly innovative,” refecting “considerations
that were peculiar to a group of Chinese artists
attempting to arrive at modern art productions
that were linked to the place itself.”8
143
 9 Kevin Chua, “Painting the Nanyang’s Public: Notes
toward a Reassessment,” in Eye of the Beholder: Re-
ception, Audience, and Practice of Modern Asian Art:
This notion of the “place itself ” is un-
doubtedly complicated primarily because it
reinserts into the discourse of another form of
idealisation that supplants the colonial idealisa-
tion. That being said, this new form is at the
same time a negation, but one that requires a
third moment to fulfll its potential as a cri-
tique. The critique, therefore, bears multiple
codes of the normative and the alternative. The
historian Kevin Chua deepens this dialectic
when he raises the issue of the public of the
Nanyang artists in relation to their insistence
on place. In this equation, the place gains ron-
dure because the agency of a public inhabits it
and this agency fnally becomes a mode of ad-
dress: locative and demonstrative. According to
Chua, the realism of the Nanyang coterie was
critical to the degree that it implicated the peo-
ple to which they supposedly belonged and for
which the pictures were meant either to raise
the consciousness of or to affrm their birth-
right. It was in the same vein critical because
it risked its artistic vocation for the “will of the
popular.” And fnally, it was critical because it
dared to insist on a dream of a “better future,
with the word ‘Malayan’ written on the sands
of a lost island.”9
Tracking such a public is tricky because it is
in fux and, as a social formation, it is constant-
ly restyled by forces around it; also, it refuses to
be monolithic. Rather, it is suffused with dis-
parate subjectivities that relate to each other in
a highly volatile, intersubjective space. When
contingency demands it, the public becomes a
critical mediation of the form. The situation in
Vietnam during the war with the United States
yields some insights in terms of how both the
144 Patrick D. Flores
Reception and Audience for Modern Asian Art (Syd-
ney: Wild Peony Press, 2007), 86.
10 50 Years of Modern Vietnamese Paintings, 198.
traditional and the reprographic would refer-
ence the folk and the popular through media
like lacquer, silk and the print. As theme or
subject matter, the public fgures prominently
as labour force in the trenches of resistance and
in work places. As material, the public is in-
terpellated through a technology that reaches
its mass. A cogent example would be anti-
American posters that were “put up deep be-
hind the frontlines. Flyers were also distributed
[…]. Those artists engaged in actual guerrilla
fghting also drew paintings and sketches when
they had time in the battle feld.”10 Painter and
painted are, therefore, enmeshed.
In this contemplation of people and the
uncertain but also decisive times they fnd
themselves in, the work of Sudibio (1912–
1981) and Ricarte Puruganan (1912–1998)
prove germane. While the people are evoked
quite compellingly, they are also troubled by
some kind of phantasm and agitated by an
immediate or impending turmoil of sorts; in
other words, they are restive. This feeling un-
derlies as well the series of Galo B. Ocampo
(1913–1983) on the fagellants, in which
hooded fgures wander into a wasteland of dis-
crepant detritus. Sudibio, for instance, would
integrate characters from Javanese and wayang
(shadow puppet theatre) mythology to infect
social commentary in Kekau Penduduk Jogja
(To You People of Jogja) (1949, fg. 10.5). And
in Purugunan’s Give Us This Day (c. 1974, fg.
10.6), the class structure of society lays itself
bare in the face of imminent catastrophe.
It is in this nerve-wracking context that
we can propose a second phase of modernism
that was largely wrought by the War and the
world that survived it. This phase moved away
from academic realism and the critique of the
idyll. The distinction of this critical moment
was further honed by the experience with Japa-
nese rule in the region that introduced modern
art, orientalism, and nationalism as part of a
wider refusal of the “Western,” the “American,”
or the “European.” While the latter were not
entirely forsaken, they were to be mediated by
an Asian moment via the Japanese and its own
investments in the modern.
In the Philippines, for instance, there was
a marked shift from the Post-Impressionism of
Cezanne and Gauguin to the Fauvism of Ma-
tisse, Cubism, the experiments of the School
of Paris, and Surrealism. These artistic move-
ments are invoked as ciphers and should not
be construed as direct sources of the local aes-
thetic. In the wake of the War and the frenzy of
reconstruction, there was a recollection of the
past as a dream and a fantasy. The impulse of
this form was fragmentation, thus the preva-
lence of the Cubistic form in Southeast Asia as
a vector of the effect of the war on a place and a
polity. This fragmentation, however, would not
lead to the total disintegration of the fgure. In-
stead, the latter would be dramatically and lyri-
cally enhanced by rhythm so that the fragments
would cohere at a certain level through a design
that dramatises the ambiguity of the fgure and
the possibility of its recomposition into a vacil-
lating synthesis akin to a kaleidoscope.
The fantasy of nation was further mani-
fested in the mythology of history and the
folklore of nationalism through the mural of
flmic aspirations as may be discerned in Carlos
“Botong” Francisco’s (1912–1969) efforts to
depict the foundations of modernist discours-
es like history, nation, culture, medicine, and
commerce. This imagination that crystallised
in the mural and extended to the cinema is best
gleaned in his collaboration with the flmmaker
Manuel Conde. Among their projects, the flm
Genghis Khan (fg. 10.7) stands out. Done in
1950, it was screened at the Venice Film Fes-
Conditions of Freedom, Contingencies of Art
tival and the Museum of Modern Art in 1950,
annotated by the American playwright-critic
James Agee, and translated into around 16 lan-
guages. It speaks of a fedgling but resolute Te-
mujin who would transmogrify into Genghis
Khan, the overlord whose dominion stretched
from the Pacifc to the Danube; it mingles the
epic, the metrical romance and Russian flm-
making techniques, among others, to limn the
saga of a stalwart conqueror, architect of much
of the modern world.
Furthermore, the post-war period meant a
further engagement with the West, underwrit-
ten by the yearning to belong to a more ample
ambit of art. Such an aspiration may be char-
acterised as internationalist: to move beyond
the nation and to relate with other nations with
their own histories of art-making. This meant
that artists from the region would partake of
the tutelage in Western institutions and seek
validation through critique, exhibition, and the
acknowledgment of peers. From the purview
of the geopolitical, the post-war was the scene
of the postcolonial theatre of nation-states in
Southeast Asia; they tried to confgure them-
selves into a region in more or less the same
season that the “contemporary” in Western art
history was cohering as a corpus of practice, a
break from the modern and the formalist. The
emergence of Southeast Asia geopolitically and
of contemporary art historically created a hos-
pitable climate for both the form of creative life
and the form of the post-independent nation-
state. In this respect, it must be mentioned that
the Cold War may have enhanced aspirations
to belated modernisms in some parts of the re-
gion. For while in the Philippines and Indone-
sia, for instance, the modernist aesthetic found
frm ground beginning in the frst half of the
20th century, it was only after the Pacifc War
that the modern secured a more stable space in
places like Cambodia and Burma. What should
be of interest in this aspect of the modern in
the region was the role of America in foster-
ing the conditions for modernism to thrive. In
145
 Burma, the Burma-American Institute in 1963
underwrote the one-person exhibition of Paw
Oo Thet, spurring what may well have been
the “modern art movement” in the country.11
Such an initiative followed through similar ef-
forts as early as 1952 when the United States
Information Service (USIS) supported the All
Burma Competition, which was won by the
painter Aung Khin, regarded as one of the
pioneers of modernism in Burma. In Cambo-
dia, the exhibition titled Scenes de la Vie Cam-
bodgienne under the auspices of the USIS at
the American Library in Phnom Penh around
1960 was pivotal in putting up a platform for
Cambodian painters. Another iteration of this
mode of exposure came by way of Peintre Cam-
bodgiens, described as the third annual exhibi-
tion of Khmer Artists presented by the USIS at
the American Library around 1962. The artist
Nhek Dim was also sent to the United States
through USIS and studied cartooning with
Walt Disney. In 1965, the Royal University of
Fine Arts was established under the patronage
of King Norodom Sihanouk (then Head of
State) with the architect Vann Molyvann as its
founding Rector. The mandate of the institu-
tion oscillated between heritage and the con-
temporary, tradition and renewal. According to
Molyvann in an essay in 1965:
The method adopted is to introduce the
student to examples of classic art, and to
instruct him in the conventions observed
in their production, while opportunities
are given him—concurrently—to familiar-
ize himself with modern research methods.
Thus the forms evolved by the potter and
metal-worker in ancient times are exam-
ined by the student with a view to releas-
ing his creative instinct, and enabling him
to devise forms of his own invention.12
In Thailand, artists like Fua Haribhi-
tak and Sawasdi Tantisuk “endowed Western
methods of painting with local themes to ex-
146 Patrick D. Flores
press their impressions of modern Thai life
and environment.”13 The Silpakorn school of
modernism, in fact, encouraged students to
weave strands of the local tradition into the
larger fabric of modern art. Its frst Thai stu-
dent to receive an undergraduate degree from
the university, Chalood Nimsamer, was sensi-
tive to both “national identity” and the lure
of experiment. He later nurtured an oeuvre
around environmental art, outdoor sculpture,
and installation.
What is overlooked in this phase of con-
tracting Western style and methodology is the
contribution of design in the mediation of
the contract. An argument can be made that
design mediated the dominant Western styles
and reinvented their forms for the local con-
texts. Design was a pliant modality, addressing
the broader sphere of popular culture and the
industrial complex. On the other hand, it was
cognisant of the traditions of ornament in cus-
tomary forms. Design, therefore, widened the
audience of modernism, assimilating it into the
schema of objects beyond the privilege of the
academy.
The other vital element in the mixture
that shaped the mediation of the Western and
the international was the urgency of context,
regardless of how this context would be inter-
preted in terms of radical action or the remem-
brance through art of a symptom of a histori-
cal moment. In the context of the recollection
of art, or its historicisation, the process of
memory would fnd a cogent expression in the
aestheticisation of heroism, the iconography
of independence, and the commemoration of
what is deemed, cherished, and overinvested as
a rupture from a panoply of dominations that
had brought forth monuments and its offcial
rituals.
The strain between the two legacies of
pedagogy in Jogjakarta and Bandung height-
ens a productive difference between subscrib-
ing to or resisting the Western, sustained by
the festering debates between the Insitute of
11 Andrew Ranard, Burmese Painting: A Linear and Lat-
eral History (Chiangmai: Silkworm Books, 2009), 215.
12 Vann Molyvann, “New Life Infused into the Arts in
Cambodia,” in Cultures of Independence: An Introduc-
tion to Cambodian Arts and Culture in the 1950’s and
1960’s, eds. Ly Daravuth & Ingrid Muan (Phnom Penh:
Reyum Publishing, 2001), 330.
13 Apinan Poshyananda, Modern Art in Thailand: Nine-
teenth and Twentieth Centuries (Oxford: Oxford Uni-
versity Press, 1992), 84.
People’s Culture (Lembaga Kebudayaan Rakyat,
LEKRA, 1950) and the Manifes Kebudayaan
(Cultural Manifesto, 1963) and, by extension,
between abstraction and realism. Tradition
would also become a crucial aspect of the fac-
ture of the modern by way of the appropriation
of batik in Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore,
and lacquer and silk in Vietnam. The presence
of Fua Haribhitak and Affandi in Śāntiniketan
provides another trajectory or lineage of mo-
dernity and tradition quite independent of the
Western academic institution or the modern art
museum.
As the form moved away from “reality”
and to a certain extent freed itself from the
overwhelming burden of social context, it was
able to articulate something that slipped away
from the demands of realism and the fgura-
tive. This turn towards the abstract may have
been incited by the search for the elusive es-
sence, which may in turn recursively reference
the social context that has become so over
determining when translated in terms of real-
ism and the fgurative. It is at these points of
contact that the desire for autonomy touches
the unconscious of culture, engendering the
thought that Abstract Expressionism, to cite a
case, is not alien to the local artist; rather, it
is intrinsic. According to Syed Ahmad Jamal:
“The main impact of Abstract Expressionism,
that of the emotive and mystical qualities of the
exteriorisation of the feelings and the senses,
as a kind of direct form of mediation which
Conditions of Freedom, Contingencies of Art
14 Safrizal Shahir, “Abstract Themes in Malaysian
Modern Art,” in Narratives in Malaysian Art, Volume
1: Imagining Identities, eds. Nur Hanim Khairuddin
& Beverly Yong with T.K. Sabapathy (Kuala Lumpur:
RogueArt, 2012), 244–5.
15 Ibid., 245.
16 Syed Ahmad Jamal, Senilukis Malaysia—25 Tahun
(Malaysian Art—25 Years) (Kuala Lumpur: Balai
Seni Lukis Negara, 1982), unpaginated.
17 Ibid.
telegraph the intenseness of feeling, of thought
and imagination through plastic means.”14
This investment in feeling and intensity, as
well as in directness and mysticism, would
be elaborated on by the New Scene artists in
1969 when they frst held their exhibitions.
This cohort, which included Redza Piyadasa
and Sulaiman Esa who later co-organised the
Towards a Mystical Reality project in 1974, was
“concerned with making original contributions
to the existing international movement in art
which aims at an intellectual, impersonal, non-
symbolic approach.”15 The motivation to be
simultaneously “original” and “international,”
whether in the vein of Abstract Expressionism
or conceptualism, could only be reinforced by
a double movement of being distant and be-
ing intensely true to intuition. Jamal continues
that the Malaysian artists gravitated around
Abstract Expressionism because its “immediacy
and mystical quality” suited what he formulat-
ed as the “Malaysian temperament, sensitivity
and cultural heritage, and with the tradition of
calligraphy found the idiom the ideal means
of pictorial individuation.”16 He would men-
tion Kline, Soulages, Hartung, among others,
and say that the “gestural quality of their works
have obvious affnity with the traditional art
of calligraphy, which is a cultural heritage of
Malays and Chinese; a visual language imme-
diately felt and perceived by Malaysians.”17 He
considered Abstract Expressionism a “catharsis,
a direct form of release” and that it was not a
147
 18 Ibid.
19 See Yin Ker, “Unpacking the Legacy of an Exceptional
Artist from Myanmar: Bagyi Aung Soe (1923–1990),”
published in this anthology.
20 “A Conversation with Vann Molyvann,” in Cultures of
Independence, 15.
21 Ken Tadashi Oshima & William Whitaker, “Characters
of Concrete,” in Crafting a Modern World: The Archi-
tecture and Design of Antonin and Noémi Raymond,
ed. Kurt G.F. Helfrich & William Whitaker (New York:
“borrowed idiom” but rather a “natural means
[…] a natural development from the loose at-
mospheric forms of the early water-colours.”18
Such a back and forth between sympathies, and
the internalisation of what previously was seen
as extraneous or foreign, may have generated
a certain kind of exceptionality, the sense of
the native and the natural, as distilled in the
wondrous oeuvre and practice of the Burmese
Bagyi Aung Soe. Three years after bursting into
the scene in Yangon in 1951, the eccentric art-
ist was sent to Śāntiniketan to infuse liveliness
into Burmese traditional art. The artist’s com-
mitment to manaw maheikdi dat (painting of
the fundamental elements through heightened
mental concentration) was thoroughgoing; it
was an art achieved in terms of spiritual trans-
formation through mental nurturing.19
In this pursuit of the ineffable in the ar-
tifce of art, the attraction to the term “non-
objective” of Philippine artists may have been
instructive. Early abstraction may have cohered
around this disposition, spelled out concretely
in an exhibition in 1953 titled First Non-Objec-
tive Art Exhibition in the Philippines and later
annotated in a monograph by Aurelio Alvero
titled The First Exhibition of Non-Objective Art
in Tagala. This sense of the non-objective was
a mediation of the abstract, informed by the
requirements of plasticity and intuition inde-
pendent of literature and the reference to re-
148 Patrick D. Flores
Princeton Architectural Press, 2006), 66.
22 Carlos Romulo, “Full Text of the Final Communiqué of
the Conference,” in The Meaning of Bandung (Chapel
Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1956),
98.
23 George McTurnan Kahin, The Asian-African Confer-
ence Bandung, Indonesia, April 1955 (Ithaca: Cornell
University Press, 1956), 39.
24 Jean de Baroncelli et al., The Performing Arts in Asia,
ed. James Brandon (Paris: Unesco, 1971), 10–1.
ality. What supplements the so-called natural
state of the “non-objective” is its cognate condi-
tion in the “native” as indexed by the position
of Alvero to rename the Philippines to Tagala,
perhaps a postcolonial critique of the enduring
colonialism embedded in the appellation “Phil-
ippines.”
Aside from the non-objective, the other
mode of mediation that had the capacity to ad-
dress the imperatives of the local and the worldly
was the material of concrete. The latter was the
main material that built two important Catho-
lic churches in the Philippines: the Chapel of St
Joseph the Worker at the Victorias Milling in
Negros Occidental in the Visayas in 1950 and
the Parish of the Holy Sacrifce at the University
of the Philippines in 1955 in Quezon City out-
side the old city of Manila. In Cambodia, Vann
Molyvann (fg. 10.8) relates that he used “cement
so that the houses would last longer. When I
made molds for the cement columns and posts,
I used wooden boards so that the grain of the
wood is imprinted in the cement […] I used a
wooden mold and poured cement into it. What
results is true to the nature of the two materi-
als.”20 As an architectural critic would put it:
“Concrete is a truly international material used
worldwide. From another perspective, it is a re-
gional material through the use of locally found
aggregate and the techniques and ideals of its
builders. Concrete, as a liquid that becomes a
solid, can be further considered ‘more a process
than a building material.’”21
Levels of the Collective
Besides war as a defning condition and con-
tingency of artistic production, the formation
of a collective was vital in ensuring that “art”
achieved the competence to critique a sense
of totality that was dominating the world. In
many ways, this form of domination was con-
fgured as a result of a history of resistances that
ultimately led to wars. An exceptional moment
in this regard was the 1955 Asian-African Con-
ference held in Bandung. This conference was
organised by Burma, Ceylon, India, Indonesia,
and Pakistan, and attended by 29 countries
including Afghanistan, China, Ethiopia, Libe-
ria, Libya, Sudan, South Vietnam and Yemen,
among others. It brought together fgures like
Nasser of Egypt, Chou En-Lai of China, Siha-
nouk of Cambodia, and Nehru of India. It
was a seminal moment for what would later be
called the Non-Aligned Movement in Belgrade
in 1961.
The Conference agreed “frst, in declaring
that colonialism in all its manifestations is an
evil which should be speedily be brought to an
end; Second, in affrming that the subjection of
peoples to alien subjugation, domination and
exploitation constitutes a denial of fundamen-
tal rights.”22 Sukarno, the President of Indo-
nesia, said in his speech that: “This is the frst
intercontinental conference of colored peoples
in the history of mankind.” He talked of the
lifeline of imperialism: “This line runs from
the Straits of Gibraltar, through the Mediter-
ranean, the Suez Canal, the Red Sea, the In-
dian Ocean, the South China Sea and the Sea
of Japan. For most of that enormous distance,
the territories on both sides of this lifeline were
colonies, the peoples were unfree, their futures
mortgaged to an alien system.”23
With this event convened in Southeast
Asia, the region found itself at the forefront of
Conditions of Freedom, Contingencies of Art
a third force beyond the bipolar hegemony of
the United States and the Soviet Union. This
geopolitical collective would be articulated as a
geo-poetic as well through gatherings of artis-
tic agents, for instance, in Manila. Testaments
to this were the First Asian Music Conference
(or the First Southeast Asian Regional Music
Conference) and the First Southeast Asia Art
Conference and Competition in 1956 and
1957 respectively. In these instances, music
and visual art across Asia were mapped out
and made to cohere at some level of belong-
ing. In 1966, the conference Musics of Asia
was organised in Manila, with the Philippine
musical artist and scholar Jose Maceda working
with the likes of Iannis Xenakis, Ravi Shankar,
and Prasidh Silapabanleng, among others. In
1969, a conference on the performing arts in
Asia took place in Beirut. According to the or-
ganisers, the major question before the Beirut
Round Table was “the relationship between the
indigenous performing arts and the new mass
arts of flm, radio and television […] and the
response of the artist to the needs of an ever-
growing public which is no longer bounded by
national cultures or frontiers.”24
The more systematic formation of a re-
gional consciousness was undertaken by the
founding of the Association of Southeast Asian
Nations or ASEAN in 1967. Its precursors in-
cluded the Southeast Asian League (an infor-
mal organisation of Thailand, Vietnam, Cam-
bodia, Laos, Burma, Malaya, Indonesia, and
the Philippines) in 1947; the Southeast Asia
Collective Defence Treaty (which included the
United States, the United Kingdom, Australia,
France, New Zealand, Pakistan, the Philip-
pines, Thailand) and the Manila Pact in 1954,
which was the basis of the Southeast Asia Trea-
ty Organization (SEATO) in 1962; and fnally
the Maphilindo (Malaya, Philippines, Indone-
sia) in 1963).
The geopolitical impulse of these initia-
tives was clear. For instance, SEATO’s central
purpose was to “to halt China’s long-term as-
149
 pirations for the domination of Asia.”25 Before
China became a threat, the formidable hegem-
on was Japan. Goscha and Ostermann write:
The Japanese overthrow of Western em-
pires across Southeast Asia during World
War II meant that the historical process
of decolonization started in Asia before
spreading across the South along a hori-
zontal axis to Africa. Ho Chi Minh and
Sukarno both announced the independ-
ence of their countries in August 1945 as
the Japanese empire crumbled but before
the French and the Dutch could reassert
theirs.26
In this climate of cooperation, two fgures
from the Philippines helped sharpen the focus
on Southeast Asia as a regional node that was
capable of an extensity: the soldier–diplomat
Carlos P. Romulo who was a signatory of the
founding documents of the United Nations
and the politician Diosdado Macapagal who
became President of the Philippines in 1961.
Both Romulo and Macapagal were delegates
to the Asian-African Conference in 1955. In
1964, Romulo visited Indonesia, Thailand,
and India as a university president to pursue
“a new concentration on Asia” and “Asian
Studies” across the region. In a speech at the
University of Indonesia, he quoted the Indo-
nesian President Sukarno: “Our Motherland
is a continuity and we are laborers toiling for
its greatness. Malaya is a continuity, Indonesia
is a continuity, the Philippines is a continuity
and we are laboring to make them great.” In
1968, he was a scholar-in-residence at the State
University of New York where he presented 11
lectures. In the lecture “Asia in the American
Mind,” he spoke of an enigmatic notion of
Asia as Time:
Asia is Time. I do not mean clock of cal-
endar time. I mean Time as a kind of
passing, a movement as well as a process,
150 Patrick D. Flores
a growth that has in it the ingredients of
decay. It is likewise a response to seasons
of change, at once passive and impassive,
the outcome of which is Age […]. How
old is the Filipino nation? An impossible
age, and certainly unacceptable to our na-
tional pride, if the answer goes back only
to Magellan […]. Thus the truism that we
in Asia live in a number of centuries si-
multaneously […] at the Conservatory of
Music of the University of the Philippines,
we offer studies in Mozart as well as in the
ancient instrument of community and re-
ligious life, the brass gong.27
He would then propose: “What the Asian
wishes to achieve is a contemporaneity and an
urgency of expression preferably in his native
tongue.”28
For his part, the Philippine President Di-
osdado Macapagal coalesced with Prime Min-
ister Tunku Abdul Rahman of Malaysia and
President Sukarno of Indonesia to confgure
Maphilindo (a contraction of Malaysia, the
Philippines, and Indonesia) in 1963. In Ma-
nila, the three leaders declared: “The Manila
Declaration is a declaration of Asian inde-
pendence. It expresses the determination of
our three countries to safeguard this area from
subversion in any form or manifestation […]
in the common struggle against colonialism
and imperialism.”29 Macapagal summoned the
spirit of Wenceslao Vinzons’s “Malaysia Irre-
denta” in 1932 and the Bandung Conference
in 1955 to carry on with “fraternal cooperation
[…] to intensify their efforts to help build a
peaceful new world dedicated to freedom and
justice.” He spoke of a storied past and a radi-
ant future:
The decision to establish Maphilindo
looks backward as well as forward. It looks
to the past of frustration and shame of the
Malay peoples, their fragmented history
and incoherent destiny. But it also looks
25 Brian Farrell, “Alphabet Soup and Nuclear War:
SEATO, China and the Cold War in Southeast Asia,”
in Cold War Southeast Asia, ed. Malcolm H. Murfett
(Singapore: Marshall Cavendish Editions, 2012), 81.
26 Christopher E. Goscha & Christian F. Ostermann,
“Introduction: Connecting Decolonization and the
Cold War in Southeast Asia,” in Connecting His-
tories: Decolonization and the Cold War in South-
east Asia, 1945–1962, eds. Christopher E. Goscha
& Christian F. Ostermann (Washington: Woodrow
forward to the reunion of brothers after
their prolonged and tragic dispersal […]
to the rebirth of a region which an aggres-
sive and adventurous colonialism had long
considered as its exclusive preserve.30
He cited as precursors the Asian Relations
Conference in New Delhi in 1947; the Baguio
Conference in 1950 attended by representatives
from India, Pakistan, then Ceylon, Indonesia,
Thailand, and Australia; and the Association of
Southeast Asia in 1961.
The other level of the collective pertains to
the practice of collecting, or the accumulation
of objects thought to be invested with values
and the capacity to signify the identity of a his-
torical moment or moment of culture. In other
words, they were deemed capable of represent-
ing a place and a time, a possibility availed of
nation-states or their elite who postured as
vanguards of certain totalities, or better still, of
their dominions. The process through which
in the Philippines Jorge B. Vargas, Fernando
Zóbel, Eugenio López, Leandro Locsin, and
Arturo Luz, to name only the most assiduous,
built up their collections of objects of different
kinds (from art to archaeology to books) had
been instrumental in shaping the narrative of
art history, curatorship, and museology. These
collections also ratifed the hubris of the elite
to ordain the heritage of the Philippine nation,
effectively blurring the lines between the patri-
Conditions of Freedom, Contingencies of Art
Wilson Center Press; Stanford: Stanford University
Press, 2009), 2.
27 Carlos Romulo, Clarifying the Asian Mystique (Ma-
nila: Solidaridad Publishing House, 1970), 64.
28 Ibid.
29 Diosdado Macapagal, The Philippines Turns East
(Quezon City: Mac Publishing House, 1970), 34.
30 Ibid., 39.
31 The quote is taken from an original manuscript at the
Jorge B. Vargas Museum, dated 1948.
monial and the paternalist. It is indispensable
for an art history of Southeast Asia to draw up
as well a history of collecting, a practice that
was central in the reconstruction of the post-
colony after the Pacifc War. It must be men-
tioned that Jorge B. Vargas, a political fgure
who served the American and Japanese colo-
nial governments, imagined his collection of
Filipiniana as an allegorical testament to and a
recuperation of a shattered Philippine culture:
“In the days ahead of the young Republic of the
Philippines, there will be undoubtedly a grow-
ing desire for emphasis on the appreciation of
our cultural heritage.”31 This cultural heritage
was in fact asserted in the revolution against
Spain beginning in 1896, but then usurped by
the Americans. It was the aftermath of war that
reignited this passion for culture as an index of
wholeness in the wake of war’s fragmentation.
The consolidation of the collective in the 1950s
generated a sense of adequacy on the part of the
post-war, postcolonial nation-state, securing
for itself a foundation of the “national” with
which to relate to other nations on the same
level; thus the quest for the “international” that
was feathered in the nest of the 1960s.
Finally, the collective, as intimated by the
longing to be part of a more expansive sphere
of a history of sensible life, could be referenced
through the participation of Southeast Asian
artists in art exhibitions with an international
or global profle. Affandi, for instance, was at
151
 32 Emmanuel Torres, “‘Because It Is There’ … The Phil-
ippines at the 32nd Venice Biennale: A Close Look,”
Philippine Studies 13, no. 2 (1965): 341.
33 Hiroko Ikegami, The Great Migrator: Robert Rau-
schenberg and the Global Rise of American Art (Cam-
bridge: The MIT Press, 2010), 205.
34 Poshyananda, op. cit., 117.
35 Guy Brett, Exploding Galaxies: The Art of David
Medalla (London: Kala Press, 1995).
the Venice Biennale in 1954. In 1964, the Phil-
ippines set up its frst national pavilion in Ven-
ice, represented by Napoleon Abueva and Jose
Joya, with the poet-art critic Emmanuel Torres
as commissioner. Torres lamented the belated-
ness of the conservative artistic gesture of the
two Philippine abstractionists, “remote from
the critical storm centers, the titillating novel-
ties of ‘pop’ […] and the nervy, jumpy excite-
ments of the even bolder works of the ‘kintetic’
artists whose whirling, vibrating, noise-making
machines looking like complicated toys.”32
This was the year when the American Robert
Rauschenberg was conferred the grand prize
for painting, an achievement that was styled
and staged by American foreign policy and the
art market, and marked the American turn in
global art. Cities such as Stockholm and Tokyo
struggled simultaneously, according to the art
historian Hiroko Ikegami, “to articulate […]
cultural identity within the increasingly Ameri-
canizing art scene” and to “capitalize on the
force of American art in order to become an
active and unique participant in the world art
scene.”33
In Thailand, Prawat Laucharoen (b. 1941)
widened the repertoire of abstraction by way
of reprographic techniques as well as references
to Pop Art. Apinan Poshyananda singles out a
mixed media series titled Collage No. 3 as “im-
pressive.” It consisted of lettering, raw canvas,
oil and sand, among other materials. Prawat
152 Patrick D. Flores
36 Galo B. Ocampo, Aspects of Philippine Culture: Con-
temporary Painting of the Philippines (Manila: Na-
tional Museum, 1968), 4.
37 Ibid.
38 Ibid., 16.
39 See Aminudin TH Siregar, “Confict and Denial: The
Discourse of Identity in Indonesian Art, 1950s to
1980s,” published in this anthology.
engaged in combines and in abstraction that
looked to action painting for processes; he also
innovated in the feld of etching and collage.
In New York, he later collaborated with artists
like Adolph Gottlieb, Alex Katz, Larry Rivers,
Philip Pearlstein and David Hockney.34
Critique of the Modern,
or the Modernist Critique
The critique of the modern at the end of the
1960s and at the threshold of the 1970s would,
at a signifcant level, overcome the binary of the
local and the Western. This required a com-
plicated procedure, prompted by the analysis
of contradictions within the discourses and
institutions of modernity, foremost of which
was the “nation-state” that aspired to an “eth-
nic totality” across differences in subjectivities
shaped by class, race, gender, and so on. This
transfgured, for instance, in the evocation of
land and the depiction of how it was contested,
claimed by discrepant forces and visions of the
future. The distance between patrimony and
dispossession arising from the said contradic-
tions would be navigated quite markedly in
art, with land invested with allegorical poten-
tial and even the sublime. On the other hand,
an anecdotal delineation of everyday struggle
would also be registered, as in the description
of scenes in the street like the confrontation of
different personae and in riots.
 It is this claim to space and its habitation
as a historical responsibility, and a critique of
other claims to it, that delineated efforts in
the 1960s. When Imelda Marcos reclaimed a
part of Manila Bay to transform it into land
for a complex of buildings dedicated to cultural
presentations and conventions, it was a sign
that space was being contoured for something
modern. This development was also the basis
of intense critique. Alongside this depiction of
urgency was a more performative rendering of
the material condition itself. David Medalla’s
(b. 1942) compelling protest on the inaugural
night of the Cultural Center of the Philippines
in 1969 spoke of the instinct of artists to take
over space when the situation warranted it (fg.
10.9). Medalla’s practice harnessed this potential.
He was an acutely politicised artist; at the same
time, he was keenly aware of his environment.
He did not only describe this environment; he
recreated it as condition in which an alternate
life could transpire, evoking the atmosphere of
the social in the intuition of the natural. It is in
this context that his pioneering work in land,
kinetic, and performance art gains exceptional
stature of global magnitude.35
At the end of the 1960s, art in Southeast
Asia was “attuned to the frenzied escalation
of events in the world scene.” These were the
words of Galo B. Ocampo in his remarks on
Philippine art. He continues: “The develop-
ment of contemporary art in the Philippines
has paralleled that same movement in other
parts of the world. So continuous is this move-
ment that it would be impossible to defne the
limits indicating where pure Philippine art be-
gins, as improbable perhaps as to state exactly
what is pure Filipino, or pure American.”36 He
would conclude that this idea of Philippine art
could never be singular:
Contemporary art is therefore an admix-
ture of developing and shifting cultures. It
is no sudden thing that one man conjured
in the moment of greatness; it is some-
Conditions of Freedom, Contingencies of Art
thing borne upon him by social conditions
and upon which he, as an individual artist,
imposes on his own society. It belongs to
a developing scale of social values, values
which have been assimilated and summed
up in the adult individual—and to which
the artist in turn adds his own values to
be accepted by others. The history of con-
temporary Philippine art cannot be disas-
sociated from the contemporary history of
the country and its social context.37
Still, Ocampo found this toil wanting:
While Philippine arts are able and com-
petent in the craft […] there has been no
indication so far […] of the contemporary
artists in conceptualizing a new art form
that would serve as a model for a con-
vention that could possibly infuence the
world of art […] no progressive thought
in painting has developed which could
serve as the springboard for a new cultural
invention that would add to the present
scale of values. No one has yet in the local
feld attempted or dared to enter the feld
of a new form, timidly daring to exploit
the only feld which has been previously
worked over.38
In 1969, Oesman Effendi in Indonesia
would express his apprehension about the ex-
istence of Indonesian painting, or to be more
specifc, of the Indonesian mark in Indonesian
painting. “Therefore, I believe, Indonesian
painting is still growing, but does not exist yet,
as it is in the process of discovering its unique
form.”39 This sense of incommensuration and
indistinction, this political feeling of at once
not measuring up and of super-adequating, as
expressed by Ocampo and Effendi, is key in
thinking through the modern in the region in
the 1950s and 1960s, a modern on the cusp of
the contemporary that would in the 1970s be
addressed with more temerity and resolve.
153
 10.1 10.2

402 Patrick D. Flores

0328-Charting Thoughts.indd 402 28/3/17 2:54 PM

 10.3

10.1 Hernando R. Ocampo

The Contrast
1940
Oil on canvasboard
58 x 41.5 cm
Collection of Jorge B. Vargas
Museum and Filipiniana Research
Center, University of the Philippines

10.2 Hernando R. Ocampo

Dancing Mutants
1965
Oil on canvas
101.8 x 76 cm
Collection of National Gallery
Singapore

10.3 S. Sudjojono
Perusing a Poster
1956
Oil on canvas
109 x 140 cm
Collection of OHD Museum

Conditions of Freedom, Contingencies of Art 403

0328-Charting Thoughts.indd 403 28/3/17 2:54 PM

 10.4 Cheong Soo Pieng
Tropical Life
1959
Chinese ink and gouache on
Chinese rice paper
43.6 x 92 cm
Collection of National Visual
Arts Gallery of Malaysia

10.5 Sudibio
Kekau Penduduk Jogja
(To You People of Jogja)
1949
Oil on canvas
200 x 136 cm
Collection of OHD Museum

10.6 Ricarte Puruganan

Give Us This Day
c. 1974
Oil on canvas
152 x 211 cm
Collection of National Gallery
Singapore

10.5

10.4

404 Patrick D. Flores

0328-Charting Thoughts.indd 404 28/3/17 2:54 PM

 10.6

Conditions of Freedom, Contingencies of Art 405

0328-Charting Thoughts.indd 405 28/3/17 2:54 PM

 10.7

10.7 Manuel Conde as the eponymous

overlord in his flm, Genghis Khan
1950
Image courtesy of Cesar Hernando

10.8 Vann Molyvann, architect

Jean Mohr, photographer
Chatomuk Theatre, Phnom Penh,
Cambodia
Original photograph c. 1960s,
digital reprint 2015
Image courtesy of Vann Molyvann

10.9 David Medalla (second from the right)

protesting at the inauguration of the
Cultural Center of the Phillippines, 1969

406 Patrick D. Flores

0328-Charting Thoughts.indd 406 28/3/17 2:54 PM

 10.9

10.8

Conditions of Freedom, Contingencies of Art 407

0328-Charting Thoughts.indd 407 28/3/17 2:54 PM

 1 Wiyada Thongmitr, Khrua In Khong’s Westernized
School of Thai Painting (Bangkok: Aksorn Sampan
Press, 1979), 127.
(11)
The Transition of Thai Traditional Art to Modern Art
in the 1950s and 1960s
Somporn Rodboon
People have long misunderstood that the domi-
nance of Western art caused the decline of tra-
ditional Thai art. To clarify the situation, this
essay will explain how modern Thai art began,
and how traditional art was revived and devel-
oped in parallel to modern art during the late
1940s to the 1960s in Thailand.
Traditional Thai art did experience an
initial decline, however. This began with the
opening of the Thai Kingdom to Western in-
fuences in the reign of King Rama IV or King
Mongkut (r. 1851–1868) and his successor
King Rama V, also known as King Chulalong-
korn (r. 1868–1910). Modernisation policies
and the adoption of Western culture brought
about the decline; consequently, Thai art grad-
ually transitioned from traditional to modern.
But even though traditional art declined, it was
included in the curriculum of Thailand’s frst
art school (founded in the 1930s), along with
Western academic training.
The Rise of Western Infuence
in Traditional Art
Western infuence in Thai art can be seen in
paintings by Khrua In Khong, the most cel-
ebrated monk in Thailand and court painter
of King Mongkut. Khrua In Khong was ac-
154 Charting Thoughts
2 Piriya Krairiksh, Art since 1932 (Bangkok: Thamma-
sat University, 1982), 65.
tually a traditional painter who had been ex-
posed to Western prints and photographs, and
started to incorporate Western elements such
as three-dimensional perspective techniques
and chiaroscuro rendering in his mural paint-
ings. Elements of Thai traditional paintings
can also be found in his works, for instance the
use of two-dimensional space, parallel perspec-
tive, Thai ornament and sharp contour lines to
delineate different motifs. In addition, Khrua
In Khong also applied gold leaf to his works.
Combining Western and traditional Thai
painting techniques, Khrua In Khong became
the frst painter to break away from tradition
to paint in a new way. At the time, painters
who executed their paintings in the same man-
ner were said to belong to the Khrua In Khong
School of Painting. Through their approach to
painting, Khrua In Khong and his followers
contributed to the evolution of Thai art in the
19th century.1
Western culture became more infuen-
tial during the reign of King Chulalongkorn
because foreign painters and architects were
increasingly commissioned for royal projects.
During this period, various colonial powers
were establishing territories in Southeast Asia.
To save Thailand from the same fate, King
Chulalongkorn tried to modernise the country
as a show to the West that Thailand was not
a primitive and uncivilised country. The King
modelled Thailand after Western countries
and developed public welfare infrastructure by
building hospitals and schools, constructing
roads and railways as well as installing elec-
tricity and water systems. In addition, he also
employed architects and artists to work on ar-
chitectural projects, mural paintings and royal
portraits in Western techniques and styles.
These foreign artists and architects were only
employed to design and create works that had
never existed in a traditional Thai context, such
as monuments, statues, portraits and medals.
In 1904, the frst court painter from Europe,
Cesare Ferro, an Italian, was commissioned to
paint the King’s portrait. Subsequently, more
painters, sculptors and architects from Italy
were brought to Thailand under the King’s pa-
tronage, resulting in clear affnities between the
art of Thailand and Italy. Art from the Euro-
pean academic tradition and realism, for in-
stance, were highly infuential in Thailand;
notably, Phra Soralaklikhit (1875–1958), who
was well known for his academic-style portraits
of the royal families, became the frst Thai
painter to train in Italy in the reign of King
Chulalongkorn.
During the reign of King Vajiravudh
(r. 1910–1925), it was realised that traditional
Thai art needed to be revived to build a nation-
al identity. Thai culture had seemed to be in
decline in the preceding period of King Chula-
longkorn, and this concerned King Vajiravudh.
As a result, the Fine Arts Department as well
as the Arts and Crafts School were founded in
1912 and 1913 respectively, to train artisans
in traditional arts and crafts to serve the royal
projects as well as to preserve Thai national
uniqueness. King Vajiravudh was so support-
ive of the arts that he sponsored annual arts
and crafts exhibitions. The King also wanted
to revive the use of traditional architecture in
designing educational institutions, and ap-
pointed Somdet Chaofa Krom Phraya Narisa-
The Transition of Thai Traditional Art to Modern Art in the 1950s and 1960s
ranuwattiwong, also known as Prince Naris, as
the royal chief architect of Vajiravudh College
and Chulalongkorn University. The prince’s ar-
chitecture projects include the Royal Institute
building and the Assembly Hall of Wat Ben-
chamabophit (The Marble Temple). Interest-
ingly, however, public and private buildings
were built in a Western style as a result of the
country’s policy of modernisation.
Institutionalisation of Modern Thai Art
The aim of the Arts and Crafts School (Rongrien
Poh Chang), presently known as Rajamangala
University of Technology Rattanakosin (Poh
Chang Campus) was to train students in design
and traditional craft techniques to keep these
practices alive as well as to groom them to be
the next generation of teachers. The subjects
taught were, for example, traditional painting,
inlaying and embossing, niello, and wood and
ivory carving.
One of Thailand’s most distinguished art-
ists, Jitr Buabusaya (1911–2010), contributed
a great deal to the Arts and Crafts School. He
introduced modern methods of teaching, drew
up a new curriculum for painting and sculp-
ture, and raised the standard of art education. In
1947, the school held its frst art exhibition un-
der Jitr’s supervision, and in the following year,
a group of art instructors formed the Thai Fine
Art Association. The association successfully
held the frst exhibition of oil paintings in Thai-
land and continued thereafter to organise bien-
nial exhibitions of artworks by their members.
According to Piriya Krairiksh, the transfer-
ence of power from the monarchy to the state
after the revolution of 24 June 1932 resulted
in the state assuming the role of patron of the
arts. As a result, the Fine Arts Department,
which came under the Ratchabanditsabha
(The Offce of the Royal Society) and was later
renamed as Silpakorn Sathan, was transferred
to the Ministry of Education in 1933 under the
directorship of Luang Wichit Wathakan.2
155
 In 1923, an Italian sculptor from Florence,
Corrado Feroci (1892–1962), was employed by
the Thai government as an offcial sculptor of
the Fine Arts Department to undertake com-
missioned works. His frst works include a bust
of King Vajiravudh, which he made by refer-
ring to photographs, and later, a bust of Prince
Naris that was sculpted from life. He also ex-
ecuted remarkable portraits and monuments of
important fgures such as the members of the
royal family. After Feroci became a Thai citizen
in 1944, he adopted the Thai name Silpa Bhi-
rasri; he was also known as the father of Thai
modern art.
Establishment of the School of Fine Arts
The founding of the School of Fine Arts in
1934 by the Fine Arts Department gave Bhi-
rasri a chance to introduce teaching methods
and curricula that were used in most Euro-
pean art academies to the Thai art education
system. The school offered a four-year course,
taught by Bhirasri himself, Phra Prom Pichitr
and Phra Soralaklikhit. For the frst two years,
students received academic training in fne arts,
which was divided into two sections: painting
and sculpture. Later, industrial art and music
were added to its programme. Bhirasri was in
charge of the fne arts curriculum, which in-
cluded painting, sculpture, drawing, theory of
composition, perspective and shadow, human
anatomy, art history, art criticism, geometry
and English. Under Bhirasri’s academic train-
ing, the students also painted and sculpted from
nature and life, and as a result, the style of the
graduates was generally described as realist. The
School of Fine Arts gave its students a sound
foundation in art practice.
The frst class of students in the School of
Fine Arts graduated in 1937; some of whom
have since become well-known artists, such as
painter Fua Haribhitak and sculptors Piman
Mulpramuk and Sitthidet Sanghiran. In 1938,
Thailand replaced the European artists who had
156 Somporn Rodboon
until then worked on offcial projects, with its
frst group of local painters and sculptors. Ac-
cording to Bhirasri, the frst group of students
who had graduated from the School of Fine
Arts were employed as painters and sculptors at
the Fine Arts Department and as art teachers.3
Many of them modelled fgures for the Victory
Monument of 1941 with Silpa Bhirasri.
Impact of Political Change on Thai Art and
the Establishment of Silpakorn University
It is worth noting that an annual Constitution-
al Fair supported by the Thai government was
frst held in 1937 to promote cultural nation-
alism and modernisation. It was also held in
celebration of the Thai national day, on 24 Oc-
tober, when a revolution in 1932 successfully
overthrew the absolute monarchy and installed
a constitutional one instead. It was then that
the country’s name was changed from Siam to
Thailand. The fair was organised annually until
1941, when it was interrupted by the Japanese
invasion of Thailand.
The art exhibitions and competitions
organised by various cultural institutions in
conjunction with the fair featured artworks of
different forms. Most of the entries were sub-
mitted by the students and staff of the School
of Fine Arts and the Arts and Crafts School.
Notably, the Constitutional Fair brought mod-
ern art to the public and could have been the
frst time the public saw Thai traditional art
alongside new artistic expressions that were in-
fuenced by the West.
The Constitutional Fair is considered im-
portant in the history of modern Thai art be-
cause it is the frst art competition in Thailand
of this theme. Moreover, as the frst public art
exhibition and competition supported by the
government, the Constitutional Fair also signi-
fed a change in Thai art. When Phibun Song-
khram became Prime Minister of Thailand in
1938, he continued to use art as propaganda to
promote nationalism. He was very impressed
3 Nihon Bunka Foramu, Modern Art of Asia, New Move-
ments and Old Traditions (Tokyo: Toto Shuppan Com-
pany Limited, 1961), 79.
by the progressive and modern artworks by stu-
dents from the School of Fine Arts. Thus, in
1943, Phibun Songkhram raised the status of
the School of Fine Arts to that of a university,
and it was renamed Silpakorn University, the
frst university of fne arts in Thailand. Bhirasri
was appointed as its frst dean. At the time,
there was only one faculty consisting of two de-
partments, the Department of Painting and of
Sculpture. The school offered fve-year courses,
in which students had to complete three years
of academic training, and spend the fnal two
years developing individual artistic expression.
All of the modern subjects taken from a West-
ern academic curriculum and taught at the
school were introduced by Bhirasri.
The earliest extant record of the curricu-
lum of Silpakorn University is a 1953 exhibi-
tion catalogue published by the university.4
Subjects taught then could be grouped into two
categories, practical and theoretical aspects of
art. Modules such as drawing, painting, model-
ling, introduction to architecture, Thai archi-
tecture, Thai ornamentation, research on old
Thai art, composition and decorative art be-
longed to the frst category, while the subjects
in the latter category were history of art (West-
ern and Asian art), styles of art, theory of col-
our, theory of composition, human and animal
anatomy, geometry as well as projection and
shadow. There were also compulsory courses
for all students such as aesthetics, art criticism,
English and literature. In addition, students
who majored in painting were required to mas-
ter subjects such as portraiture, fgures, land-
The Transition of Thai Traditional Art to Modern Art in the 1950s and 1960s
4 The catalogue was published by the Faculty of Paint-
ing and Sculpture, Silpakorn University, in conjunc-
tion with an exhibition held from 15 to 31 May 1953.
scapes and seascapes, as well as art composition;
whereas students who specialised in sculpture
were taught portraiture, to sculpt bas-reliefs of
live models and human fgures in the round,
medal design, copper casting, wood carving,
stone carving and modern composition.
Students who majored in painting had
to learn painting techniques using a variety of
media, such as watercolour, tempera and oils.
Bhirasri also taught fresco, which was entirely
new to Thailand, let alone to these art stu-
dents. These students had to practise and ex-
periment with the medium in order to master
it. Fresco was taught because Western build-
ings were popular in Thailand and the material
featured prominently as decorative elements in
Western architecture. In addition, Bhirasri was
concerned about professions that the students
might take up after fnishing their studies. So
he designed practical courses that will equip
them with skills that could be pursued in their
careers after they graduate.
The art curriculum of the faculty was
revised after the death of Bhirasri in 1962.
Khien Yimsiri (1922–1971), who was serving
the Fine Arts Department as a civil servant
then, was offcially appointed as the faculty’s
Acting Dean in 1964. The faculty at the time
expanded from the Departments of Painting
and Sculpture to include the Department of
Drawing. Fua Haribhitak (1910–1993), Khien
Yimsiri and Chalood Nimsamer (1929–2015)
were in charge of these departments respec-
tively. In 1966, the curriculum was revised yet
again. This time, the Department of Drawing
157
 5 See “Notes on the Establishment of the University of
Fine Arts,” in Eleventh National Exhibition of Art, exh.
cat. (Bangkok: Fine Arts Department, 1960), unpagi-
nated.
was changed to the Department of Printmaking
under the supervision of Chalood Nimsamer
who had studied printmaking (in particular,
lithography) at Pratt Graphic Art Center in the
United States in 1963. After returning to Thai-
land to work at Silpakorn University, he set up
this new feld of study in which various print-
making techniques were taught.
It is known that Bhirasri was the frst to
introduce the method of teaching modern
Western art to students at Silpakorn Universi-
ty. Academic training in drawing, painting and
sculpture was also very important. Bhirasri em-
phasised drawing from nature to build a sound
foundation in art. He held that students would
be able to express themselves better in whatever
style they liked after fnishing their art training
and attaining a level of technical profciency.5
As a matter of fact, Silpa Bhirasri’s contri-
butions to the Thai government and art institu-
tions from the 1930s to the 1960s signifcantly
enhanced the rise of modernism in Thai art.
This phenomenon not only brought about new
art styles, concepts and techniques, but also
provoked questions concerning the adaptation
of Western art as well as the confrontation be-
tween modernism and traditionalism. Paintings
and sculptures of the period predominantly re-
fect the infuence of Impressionism and Cub-
ism from Europe, and abstraction from the
United States. A revival of traditionalism also
ran parallel with Western infuence then.
In the 1950s, Bhirasri promoted Thai art
not only in Thailand, but also in other coun-
158 Somporn Rodboon
6 Pichai Nirand, interview with the author, 21 January
2016.
tries. In 1953, he led Thailand to become a
member of the International Association of
Plastic Arts (IAPA) at Maison de I’UNESCO in
Paris. Later, in 1954, Bhirasri participated in the
IAPA conference in Venice and again in 1960,
when it was held in Vienna. Fua Haribhitak and
Sawasdi Tantisuk also represented Thailand at
the conference in 1954. In the same year, the
Thai artists Khien Yimsiri, Paitun Muangsom-
boon, Sitthidet Saenghiran, Sawang Songman-
gmee and Amnart Puangsamneang participated
in the International Sculpture Competition of
the Unknown Prisoners in London. Among
the famous artists from different countries who
submitted their works were Henry Moore,
Alexander Calder, David Smith, Jean Arp and
Barbara Hepworth. In 1960, Bhirasri promoted
exhibitions of modern Thai art at the German
Council of Art in Cologne, the 2nd Internation-
al Biennale of Prints in Tokyo and the Graphic
Center of the Pratt Institute in New York.
Through these activities, modern Thai art and
Thai artists were exposed to the outside world
and received international recognition.
Publications by Silpa Bhirasri
Apart from his work in the Thai art institutions,
Bhirasri’s numerous publications have been in-
valuable resources to art educators, students
and the public. Although he wrote in English,
some have been translated into Thai by Khien
Yimsiri and Praya Anumanrachadhon. Among
his writings are small booklets on modern art
in Thailand, Thai architecture, painting and
Thai Buddhist sculpture, which formed part of
the Thailand Culture Series published by the
National Culture Institute in 1955. In 1965,
the Faculty of Painting and Sculpture pub-
lished another series of booklets by Bhirasri,
with titles such as Art and Evolution of Modern
Art, Aesthetics and Notes on Art, History of Art
(Chinese-Japanese, Oceanic and Australian, Old
America-African), Important Dates in Indian
Philosophy, Thai Buddhist Art and Architecture,
Thai Culture and Contemporary Art in Thai-
land. The last title was frst published by the
Promotion and Public Relations Subdivision of
the Fine Arts Department, Bangkok in 1959–
1960. Most of Bhirasri’s articles can be found
in catalogues published in conjunction with
Thailand’s national exhibitions of art. His arti-
cles on art include: “Culture and Art” (1959),
“West and East” (1958), “Literature and Art,”
“Art and Morality,” “Critic [sic] of Traditional
Art and Modern Surroundings,” “Meaning
and Psychology of Colours,” “Nude—Art or
Obscenity,” and “Research of Old Thai Art.”
An important dictionary of Western art terms
by Bhirasri, titled Silapa Songkrau, which was
translated into Thai by Phaya Anuman Rajad-
hon, was frst published in 1967. The diction-
ary proved very useful because there was no
publication as such available in Thailand then;
it was also one of the texts that the Royal Insti-
tute of Thailand translated. More notably, the
publication was initiated and supported by the
former Prime Minister, Phibun Songkram. The
Style of Art, which deals with styles of art and
architecture of cultures, was another key publi-
cation by Bhirasri used by most art students at
Silpakorn University at the time for their stud-
ies. Bhirasri’s publications have proven to be
very accessible and benefcial for anyone inter-
ested in art. All of his publications are informa-
tive and of great value to the development of
Thai art, and have done much to revive appre-
ciation for Thai traditional art. Sadly, most of
his old publications are no longer available.
The Transition of Thai Traditional Art to Modern Art in the 1950s and 1960s
Silpa Bhirasri and Traditional Art
Bhirasri’s contributions to traditional art are of-
ten eclipsed by his greater work in the promo-
tion of modern art in Thailand. Understanding
the impact of traditional art on Bhirasri can of-
fer insights into its revival in modern Thai art
and how it came to play an important role in
this area. Bhirasri frst encountered traditional
Thai art when he worked with Prince Naris, a
well-known royal architect during the reign of
King Mongkut. In order to work for the Thai
government on various commissioned projects,
it was necessary for foreign artists, such as Bhi-
rasri, to understand the country’s traditional
art and culture. Hence, Bhirasri studied Thai
ornamentation, the decorative motifs on Thai
temples and architecture under Prince Naris.
Fortunately, some extant drawings and sketches
of traditional art and decorative motifs by Bhi-
rasri are now kept at the Silpa Bhirasri Memo-
rial National Museum in Bangkok.
As the dean of Silpakorn University, Bhi-
rasri was responsible for repairing and restor-
ing old monuments, on top of his teaching
duties. He realised that knowing about tradi-
tional art was essential for these projects, and
planned for traditional art to be revived at Sil-
pakorn University. He introduced courses on
Thai traditional art, such as Thai ornamenta-
tion, Thai architecture and research of old
Thai art, to an education system largely based
on the Western art system, truly refecting his
awareness of the signifcance of traditional art.
Pichai Nirand, from a younger generation of
artists after Haribhitak, explained that under
Bhirasri, the intent of the research of old Thai
art course was not for students to make exact
copies of traditional paintings, but to study the
overall structure, unique styles, subject matter
and techniques of traditional paintings of dif-
ferent periods.6 Such research enabled students
to understand, appreciate and get inspiration
from tradition to create their own individual
artworks. Artworks by Khien Yimsiri, Pichai
159
 Nirand, Thawan Duchanee and many oth-
ers are exemplary of this method of teaching
and learning. Bhirasri’s expectations regarding
the assimilation of traditional and modern art
styles were to pave a way for the new traditional
art movement.
Bhirasri also devoted himself to the study
of Thai mural painting of different periods and
published The Origin and Evolution of Thai
Murals in 1959. On several occasions, Bhirasri
joined the staff of the Fine Arts Department in
their research on old mural paintings in tem-
ples. He was concerned about the damages to
these murals; he felt that they should be con-
served or copied and kept as a form of histori-
cal reference to preserve Thailand’s national
heritage. He was of the opinion that these re-
productions would also serve as valuable and
signifcant historical sources for Thai art. Art-
ists who were very much involved with such
research were Fua Haribhitak, Khien Yimsiri
and Angkarn Kalyanapong. According to Fua
Haribhitak, when he was working closely with
Bhirasri while teaching at Silpakorn Universi-
ty, he often went to an old temple to reproduce
images of old, deteriorating traditional paint-
ings of Ayudhaya for fear that these images
may disappear in the coming years.7 Recog-
nising Haribhitak’s effort and the value of his
work, Bhirasri wrote to UNESCO on behalf of
the Fine Arts Department, to send an expert
from Europe to teach them the conservation
of paintings.
Art Movements and Styles
from the 1940s to 1960s
In 1944, prior to the frst National Art Exhibi-
tion, a group of artists from different felds of art
known as the Chakrawat Sinlapin, organised an
art exhibition at the Sala Chalermkhrung Roy-
al Theatre. Among the artists who participated
in the exhibition were Chamras Kietkong, Jitr
Buabusaya, Panom Suwanaboon and Prasong
Padmanuja. Apart from Jitr Buabusaya, most
160 Somporn Rodboon
were former students of Bhirasri. The second
exhibition organised by the group in 1945 was
also held at the same venue. It was possible that
their works might have made known to Thais
modern Thai art and the individual expression
of artists at that time.
Possibilities and alternative paths for the
development of modern Thai art emerged in
the 1940s. The infuence of Western modern-
ism in Thai art manifested in different ways.
For instance, Impressionistic styles were very
popular and widely practised in the Thai art
scene from 1949 (when the frst National Art
Exhibition was offcially held) until 1958.
During this period there were no galleries or
museums to exhibit these artworks, and the
National Art Exhibition was the only source of
evidence of the evolution of these movements.
Prominent Thai artists who had sub-
mitted Impressionist-style paintings to the
National Art Exhibition between 1949 and
1958 and won awards were Misiem Yipintsoi,
Chamras Kietkong, Sawasdi Tantisuk, Tawee
Nandakwang, Suchao sae-Yim, Pranee Tan-
tisuk, Prayura Uluchadha, Nopparat Livis-
ithi and Taweesak Senanarong (1958); most
painted landscapes, while others won awards
for their Impressionist portraits, such as
Chamras Kietkong, Fua Haribhitak (1950),
Banchop Palawongs (1953, 1954) and San
Sarakornborirak (1958).8
Widely regarded as one of the most
signifcant artist in the history of Thai art,
Chamras Kietkong (1916–1965) specialised
in portraiture and once trained under Bhi-
rasri during World War II. He worked mainly
in oils and pastels and his works are charac-
terised by lively strokes. The pastel drawing
Woman (1962, fg. 11.1) shows his excellent
manipulation of light and shade.
Another well-known fgure who painted in
the French Impressionist manner was Jitr Bua-
busaya, who had attended postgraduate courses
at the Tokyo School of Fine Arts. In the 1940s,
he became infuenced by the French Impres-
7 See Prof. Silpa Bhirasri and his Students, ed. Nipon
Khumwilai, republished by (Bangkok: Silpa Bhirasri
Research Center, Focal Image, 2008), 43. Author’s
translation.
sionist paintings he saw in galleries and muse-
ums in Japan. He painted country landscapes,
and scenes of different places such as Tokyo Fine
Art University Garden (1942), Fuji Vine Arbor
(1946) and Autumn Suburb in Tokyo (1942, fg.
11.2), which portray the atmosphere of the sea-
sons in beautiful colours. It is very unfortunate
that most of the artist’s works were destroyed in
Japan during World War II. Only a few paint-
ings could be brought back to Thailand.
The artists who executed their works in
a realist style were largely sculptors. Piman
Mulpramuk and Sitthidet Sanghiran produced
mainly human fgures and portraits in this vein
while Paitun Muangsomboon was far more in-
terested in modelling life-sized animal fgures
such as Calf (1951), Deer (1953) and Fighting
Cock (1953). He also made some realistic por-
traits. In fact, at the onset of modern Thai art,
all modern artists went through realistic and
Impressionistic phases before moving on to
other new art movements.
The infuence of Cubism in modern Thai
art began in the late 1940s, with Fua Haribhi-
tak as the frst Thai artist to paint in this man-
ner. The style became fully developed in the
1950s, when Fua Haribhitak studied in Italy
for two years on a scholarship granted by the
Italian government and was inspired by the
Cubist works there. One of his masterpieces in
the Cubistic style is Blue-Green (fg. 11.3), paint-
ed in 1956, which clearly refects the infuence
of Picasso’s early Cubist style between 1907 and
1908. During that time, Cubism became highly
appreciated and grew in popularity as Thai art-
The Transition of Thai Traditional Art to Modern Art in the 1950s and 1960s
8 Suchao sae-Yim was also known as Suchao Yimtra-
kul before he changed his name to Sisganes in 1946.
ists turned away from Impressionistic styles to
the new trend. Tawee Nandhakwang’s Ayud-
haya (1948) and Sompot Upa-In’s Politicians
were painted in the same manner of Analytical
Cubism as seen in Haribhitak’s practice, clearly
refecting their interest in Picasso’s Cubist work.
Sawasdi Tantisuk and Chalood Nimsameur also
applied geometric planes in their works.
In contrast to the aforementioned artists,
Prasong Padmanuja (1918–1989) was inspired
by a different approach to Cubism. His sketch,
Wat Phra Keo (1951, fg. 11.4), possibly refects
his interest in Synthetic Cubism, which can be
seen in the use of geometric planes and bright
colours, and decorative quality of the work. His
use of decorative spatial concept in his paint-
ings is stylised and far more modern as com-
pared to his contemporaries. Although the style
is modern, his subject matter focuses on Thai
contexts. The work also shows that his artistic
creativity could have stemmed from his back-
ground and interest in decorative art.
Thai artists who worked in the new Im-
pressionistic and Cubistic styles during this
transformative period were criticised by the
public for copying Western art. Bhirasri was
defensive of such criticism and explained:
with reference to landscapes, remarks have
been made that the painters were infu-
enced by Western Impressionism. In such
respect we would like to say that the Thai
painters have a natural style, they do what
they see and what they feel. If they suc-
ceed in rendering every part related to oth-
161
 9 Silpa Bhirasri, Modern Art in Thailand, Thai Culture
Series (Bangkok: National Culture Institute, 1955),
unpaginated.
ers and the whole to space, and succeed
in conveying the atmosphere and light
of Thailand, then they have succeeded in
their artistic aspiration. If not, the works
are considered a failure, for the lack of
artistic value and not because the painter
imitated any foreign school.
Bhirasri went on to make an interesting remark
on sculpture, saying that
a sculptor modelling a portrait has no
chance to link the characteristic of his
work to the past for the simple reason that
in old time [sic] Thai statuary was limited
to modelling Buddha images. Besides, we
have also to realise that real art is an in-
dividual expression and as such it corre-
sponds to the personal style of each artist.
This style may be realistic, Impressionistic,
may be that of Cubism, conventionalism
or anything else.9
During this period there was also an unu-
sual approach to Surrealism in modern Thai
art, which can be detected in Pichai Nirand’s
painting titled The End (1959, fg. 11.5). Ac-
cording to Nirand, the work expresses his sub-
conscious and nightmares during a diffcult
time in his life, and is a sincere presentation of
his innermost feelings.
162 Somporn Rodboon
10 Pira Pathanapiradej, interview with the author,
22 January 2016.
Revival of Traditional Art and Thai Identity
In the 1940s and late 1950s, it became
apparent that some Thai artists were grappling
with Western infuence (modernism) while
maintaining their own culture and identity (re-
vival of tradition) in their works. Around the
late 1950s to 1960s, a group of artists emerged
who strove to revive tradition to balance the
dominant infuence of Western art. Buddhist
themes and philosophies and even folk life
and culture counted as their inspirations. In
fact, courses on Thai art at Silpakorn Univer-
sity encouraged the revival of tradition art, in
tandem with the government’s commitment to
strengthen traditional values and institutions.  
Khien Yimsiri frst revitalised traditional
art by combining it with modern art forms,
as exemplifed by the bronze sculpture Musical
Rhythm (fg. 11.6), which was awarded a gold
medal at the frst National Art Exhibition in
1949. It features a futist in a graceful pose
playing his musical instrument. According
to Kanongnuj Yimsiri (the artist’s daughter),
Khun Malini (Bhirasri’s wife) said that Bhi-
rasri himself actually posed for this sculpture.
Moved by the beautiful representations of the
Sukhothai Buddha, Yimsiri assimilated its tra-
ditional characteristics and a simple, modern
form to create the graceful pose. In the 1960s,
in the feld of painting, Pichai Nirand, Tha-
wan Duchanee, Angkarn Kalayanapong and
Pratuang Emjaroen turned to Buddhist themes
as means of expression. Pichai Nirand was the
frst to use Buddhist elements as symbols to
convey his thoughts and spirit. This group of
artists established a new movement in modern
Thai art.   of abstraction from his own Chinese roots,
Damrong Wong-Uparaj’s early works,
such as Fishermen Village (1960, fg. 11.7), por-
tray aspects of Thai folk life. In this work, ar-
chitectural structures absent of human fgures
are used to convey the simple and peaceful
life of the village fshermen. Other artists who
created works of similar subjects were: Manit
Poo-Aree, Prayat Pongdam (who produced
stylised woodcut prints of domestic animals)
and Chalood Nimsamer (who created paint-
ings and prints).
The Beginning of Abstraction
In the early 1960s, fguration gave way to the
infuence of non-representational art and Ab-
stract Expressionism in Thai modern painting
and sculpture, as young Thai artists who had
furthered their studies in the United States and
were infuenced by the Abstract art movements
there, returned to Thailand. In 1965, Cham-
ruang Vichienkhet, widely regarded as the pio-
neer of abstract sculpture, produced his frst
abstract piece titled Group (fg. 11.8), in which
elongated human fgures merge into one beau-
tiful abstract form. According to the artist, the
work portrays a group of people coming to-
gether in an expression of unity and goodness
of spirit and mankind. Many Thai abstract
painters at the time such as Panom Suwannat,
Anan Panin and Prawat Laochareon were in-
spired by the works of the New York School.
Pricha Arajunka and Pira Pathanapiradej (fg.
11.9) also painted non-fgurative art. In an
interview, Pira Pathanapiradej recalled that
the frst exhibition of non-objective art had
greatly inspired him and other abstract paint-
ers then.10 It was held at Bangkapi Gallery in
The Transition of Thai Traditional Art to Modern Art in the 1950s and 1960s
1962 and featured works by prominent archi-
tect Dr Sumeth Chumsai, Pratuang Emjaroen
and Tang Chang (Chang sae-Tang) who also
experimented with abstraction. While most
painters were following Western approaches
to abstraction, Tang Chang derived his style
namely, through philosophy and poetry.
His work was closely related to Taoism, and
Chinese and Zen Buddhism. Evidently, Tang
Chang’s abstract paintings were powerful and
truly expressed his emotions and the depth of
his inner feelings (fg. 11.10).
Art galleries (both commercial and non-
proft) and new venues that could be used for
exhibitions proliferated in this new artistic era.
Founded in 1962, Bangkapi Gallery was the
frst art gallery in Thailand. Unfortunately,
the public was not ready for modern art at the
time. Only foreigners who were living in Thai-
land and foreign institutions in Bangkok, like
the British Council, Goethe Institute, Alliance
Francaise, and the United States Information
Service, supported this new art, and also pro-
vided their premises for exhibitions. Through
these exhibitions, artists were able to sell their
works. In fact, many artists at the time made a
living by selling their works.
Conclusion
Historical evidence clearly shows that modern
Thai art evolved during the 1940s to 1960s
along two trajectories. Firstly, it drew inspi-
ration from traditional cultures in Thailand,
which promoted a revival of traditional art.
Secondly, it incorporated new expressions of
art from the West, mainly from Italy and the
United States, without losing touch with Thai
subject matter and spirit. As a result, a third
avenue emerged, through the overlapping of
both trajectories, paving the way for new indi-
vidual expression and artistic styles. Presently,
art in Thailand is still progressively developed
along these three paths.
163
 11.1 Chamras Kietkong
Woman
1962
Pastel on paper
53 x 32 cm
Collection of Silpa Bhirasri Memorial
National Museum
Image courtesy of Silpa Bhirasri
Memorial National Museum

11.2 Jitr (Prakit) Buabusaya

Autumn Suburb in Tokyo
1942
Oil on canvas
30 x 40 cm
Collection of Thai Art Council,
California, USA
Image courtesy of Jitr (Prakit)
Buabusaya Foundation

11.1

11.2

408 Somporn Rodboon

0328-Charting Thoughts.indd 408 28/3/17 2:54 PM

 11.3 Fua Haribhitak
Blue-Green
1956
Oil on canvas
66 x 90 cm
Collection of Silpa Bhirasri
Memorial National Museum
Image courtesy of Silpa Bhirasri
Memorial National Museum

11.4 Prasong Padmanuja

Wat Phra Keo (sketch)
1951
Tempera on paper
28 x 21 cm
Collection of Chuleerat Pipitpakdee
Image courtesy of Rama IX Art
Museum Foundation

11.4

11.3

The Transition of Thai Traditional Art to Modern Art in the 1950s and 1960s 409

0328-Charting Thoughts.indd 409 28/3/17 2:54 PM

 11.5

11.6

410 Somporn Rodboon

0328-Charting Thoughts.indd 410 28/3/17 2:54 PM

 11.7

11.5 Pichai Nirand

The End
1960
Oil on hard board
61 x 102 cm
Collection of Silpa Bhirasri
Memorial National Museum
Image courtesy of Silpa Bhirasri
Memorial National Museum

11.6 Khien Yimsiri

Musical Rhythm
1949
Bronze
55 x 38 x 38 cm
Collection of Silpa Bhirasri
Memorial National Museum
Image courtesy of Silpa Bhirasri
Memorial National Museum

11.7 Damrong Wong-Uparaj

Fishermen Village
1960
Tempera on cloth
89 x 110 cm
Collection of Silpa Bhirasri
Memorial National Museum
Image courtesy of Silpa Bhirasri
Memorial National Museum

The Transition of Thai Traditional Art to Modern Art in the 1950s and 1960s 411

0328-Charting Thoughts.indd 411 28/3/17 2:54 PM

 11.8 Chamruang Vichienkhet
Group
1965
Bronze
143 x 33.5 cm
Collection of the artist
Image courtesy of the artist

11.9 Pira Pathanapiradej

The Conquerer
1965–1966
Oil on canvas
65 x 145 cm
Collection of the Bhirasri Institute
of Modern Art Foundation
Image courtesy of Rama IX Art
Museum Foundation

11.10 Tang Chang (also known as

Chang sae-Tang)
Untitled
1965
Oil on canvas
210 x 250 cm 11.8
Collection of Thip sae-Tang
Image courtesy of Thip sae-Tang

11.9

412 Somporn Rodboon

0328-Charting Thoughts.indd 412 28/3/17 2:54 PM

 11.10

The Transition of Thai Traditional Art to Modern Art in the 1950s and 1960s 413

0328-Charting Thoughts.indd 413 28/3/17 2:54 PM

 1 David van Duuren, “Governors-General and Civilians:
Portrait Art in the Dutch East Indies from the Seven-
teenth to the Nineteenth century,” in Marie-Odette
Scalliet et al., Picture from the Tropics: Paintings
by Western Artists during the Dutch Colonial Period
in Indonesia (Amsterdam: KIT/Pictures Publishers,
1999), 90–103.
2 Dullah, foreword to Sukarno & Dullah, Lukisan-
Lukisan Koleksi Ir. Dr. Sukarno Presiden Republik
Indonesia [Paintings from the Collection of Dr Sukarno
President of the Republic of Indonesia], vol. I (Peking:
People’s Fine Arts Publishing House, 1956), 21; Angus
McIntyre, “Sukarno as Artist-Politician,” in Indone-
sian Political Biography: In Search of Cross-Cultural
Understanding, ed. Angus McIntyre, Monash Papers
(12)
Landscape Painting in Indonesia:
Continuity and Change in President Sukarno’s Collection
Susie Protschky
In the days immediately following the trans-
fer of sovereignty from the Netherlands to the
Republic of Indonesia in late December 1949,
Sukarno, the country’s new president, set about
claiming the former palaces of the colonial
governors-general for the newly independent
nation. On the walls of the palaces hung por-
traits of the Dutchmen who had reigned from
Batavia, now renamed “Jakarta,” since the early
17th century.1 Sukarno, a keen amateur painter
himself who had been collecting art since the
1920s, removed the governor-general portraits
and replaced them with his own collection of
paintings.2 These grew to constitute the largest
body of works belonging to a single collector
in Indonesia, numbering 3,000 paintings by
the end of Sukarno’s presidency in 1967. He
thus emerged as the most infuential patron of
Indonesian painting in the frst decades of the
164 Charting Thoughts
on Southeast Asia 28 (Clayton: Centre of Southeast
Asian Studies, Monash University, 1993), 162.
3 Dullah, op. cit., 22; Carla Bianpoen, “Kunst en staat:
De cultuurpolitiek van Soekarno” [Art and state: The
cultural politics of Sukarno], in Beyond the Dutch:
Indonesië, Nederland en de beeldende kunsten van
1900 tot nu [Beyond the Dutch: Indonesia, the Neth-
erlands and the visual arts, from 1900 until now],
eds. Meta Knol, Remco Raben & Kitty Zijlmans (Am-
sterdam: KIT Publishers; Utrecht: Centraal Museum
Utrecht, 2009), 99, 103.
4 Agung Hujatnikajennong et al., Modern Indonesian
Art: From Raden Saleh to the Present Day, ed. Koes
Karnadi (Denpasar: Koes Artbooks, 2006), 23–4, 26.
5 Abdullah Suriosubroto is listed as “Abdullah Sr.” in the
Republic. His collection was periodically dis-
played to local and foreign dignitaries as well
as artists, journalists and, occasionally, mem-
bers of the general public.3 Viewers of the art-
works would have seen antique paintings in the
wayang (shadow puppet theatre) style, recent
scenes from the revolution, a large collection of
mainly 20th-century portraits, and a signifcant
number of landscapes, some from the late 19th
century, most by painters who were active dur-
ing Sukarno’s own lifetime and whom he knew.
Landscape had been a major theme in co-
lonial art from Indonesia since the 19th century.
Some of the landscapes produced in this pe-
riod were by painters who are now considered
to be the frst Indonesian artists of the modern
era: Raden Saleh (c. 1811–1880), Abdullah
Suriosubroto (1874–1941) and Mas Pirngadie
(c. 1875–1936), all of whom were either trained
 volumes: see his landscapes in volume II of both the
1956 and 1964 editions.
6 See the testimony of Amir Sidharta, Hardi and Dr. Ing.
H. Fauzi Bowo in Amir Sidharta, S. Sudjojono: Visible
Soul (Jakarta: Museum S. Sudjojono, 2006), 17, 143,
217.
7 Sukarno & Dullah, op. cit., vols. I and II (1956). Two fur-
ther volumes (III and IV) were published in 1959, but
appear not to have been widely distributed, for they
are not in major public libraries.
8 There were 401 paintings in Sukarno & Lee Man
Fong’s Lukisan-Lukisan dan Patung-Patung Kolleksi
Presiden Sukarno dari Republik Indonesia [Paintings
and statues from the Collection of President Sukarno
of the Republic of Indonesia] (Indonesia: Publishing
in Europe or by Europeans in the Indies.4 Land-
scape paintings by Suriosubroto and Pirngadie
feature in Sukarno’s collection, and were rep-
resented in two compendia of luxury volumes
printed in 1956 and 1964 that widely publi-
cised the president’s artworks.5
It was through these volumes that many
future artists and collectors in Indonesia be-
came acquainted with the major Indonesian
painters of the 20th century.6 The frst edition,
published in 1956, comprised two volumes
that reproduced 384 paintings.7 The fve-
volume second edition was published in 1964.
It replicated many of the works produced in
the earlier edition and augmented these with a
number of newer paintings.8 The volumes were
curated by Sukarno’s “Palace Painters,” Dullah
(appointed in 1950) and Lee Man Fong (ap-
pointed in 1960), but the preface of each set
was written by Sukarno himself, and the fnal
approval rested with him. That these volumes
were intended for an international audience is
signalled by their multilingual text, which was
issued in Indonesian, English, Chinese and, for
the 1956 volumes, Russian. The effusive front
matter in the second edition described the
paintings as a “bridge of friendship between the
Indonesian people” and other nations for “art
Landscape Painting in Indonesia
Committee of Collection of Paintings and Statues of
President Sukarno, 1964). Volumes I–IV were dedi-
cated to paintings, while volume V was devoted to
sculpture.
9 Lee Man Fong, foreword to Sukarno & Lee, op. cit.,
vol. I (1964), 8.
10 J.D. Legge, Sukarno: A Political Biography (Singapore:
Archipelago Press, 2003), 300, 330–1, 402, 426; Sukar-
no & Cindy Adams, Sukarno: An Autobiography (Indian-
apolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1965), 295, 297–8. Interestingly,
only four paintings from the Soviet Union were repro-
duced across the two sets of volumes of Sukarno’s
paintings, which suggests that he acquired much less
art from there than from China or even Japan.
11 Legge, op. cit., 294–5, quote on 402.
enthusiasts all over the world.”9 More specif-
cally, the decision to print the frst volume set
in Russian and Chinese refects the close eco-
nomic and diplomatic relations that Sukarno
fostered with the Soviet Union and the People’s
Republic of China during his presidency.10 At
the same time, Sukarno was positioning himself
as a leader among postcolonial developing na-
tions. The frst edition of his painting volumes
appeared soon after the Asian-African Confer-
ence that Sukarno hosted at Bandung (Java) in
April 1955, a key moment in his representa-
tion of himself as a leader of the Third World
and proponent of the Non-Aligned Movement
in the early Cold War era. The painting com-
pendia published in 1956 and 1964 were thus
arguably extensions of what the Australian his-
torian John Legge called Sukarno’s “adventur-
ous foreign policy” in this period.11
Indeed, the two multivolume sets po-
sitioned Sukarno’s art collection as a vehicle
for international cultural diplomacy and an-
nounced his broader political ambitions as In-
donesia’s frst president. In his prelude to the
frst edition, Sukarno highlighted the predomi-
nance of paintings made by Indonesians after
1945 and held that “before Independence, the
fne arts did not thrive in Indonesia. Independ-
165
 12 Sukarno & Dullah, op. cit., vol. I (1964), 14. Ironically,
Sukarno was echoing the views of European art crit-
ics in the Dutch Indies in the 1940s who held that the
colony was a cultural wasteland: see the frst foot-
note to Koos van Brakel, “‘For Evidently, the Fine Arts
Do Not Thrive in the Indies’: The Artistic Climate in the
Dutch East Indies in the First Half of the Twentieth
Century,” in Scalliet et al., op. cit., 103.
13 Sukarno & Lee, op. cit., vol. I (1964), 15.
14 Hardi’s testimony is given in Sidharta, S. Sudjojono:
ence, however, has made it possible for the fne
arts to quicken and fourish.”12 The matura-
tion of this narrative in Sukarno’s preface to the
second edition is worth quoting at length:
In the present atmosphere of independ-
ence—FREE INDONESIA—, art is sure
to bloom.
Such is not the case in an atmosphere
of colonialism! The paintings and sculp-
tures in my collection are not always of the
same high quality. However, those paint-
ings and sculptures are themselves proof of
“the fruits of independence”.
Surely independent nations are happy
nations!13
Since these volumes abridging Sukarno’s
art collection were clearly part of the cultural
and political project of proclaiming a radical
break in Indonesian art with the practices of the
colonial past, one would expect to see landscape
paintings among the works that heralded these
changes. Yet, as this chapter demonstrates, the
volumes refect signifcant continuities across
the late colonial and early postcolonial periods
in Sukarno’s art collection, not only in terms of
the painters he favoured but also in the themes
these artists chose. The greatest changes we see
emerge in the 1950s and 1960s are, frst, a new
interest in seascapes that depart from colonial
166 Susie Protschky
Visible Soul, 143.
15 Dezentjé does not appear in the 1956 volumes, but is
listed as “Indonesian” in the 1964 volumes.
16 Claire Holt, Art in Indonesia: Continuities and Change
(Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1967), 214.
17 Ibid., 235–8; Helena Spanjaard, Moderne Indone-
sische schilderkunst [Modern Indonesian art] (Ab-
coude: Uniepers, 2003), 95–120; Nicole Baros, “Yo-
gyakarta and Bandung: Stijl en inhoud” [Yogyakarta
and Bandung: Style and substance], in Knol, Raben
modes of viewing the coast; and second, an ori-
entation toward art traditions in the Asia re-
gion that had been absent from painting in the
colonial period.
Temporality and Nation
in the Sukarno Painting Volumes
In the two multivolume sets that sample
Sukarno’s art collection, no discernible mode
of organisation can be gleaned from brows-
ing the images themselves. The table of con-
tents at the end of each volume arranges the
works by the artists’ nationality rather than by
theme or the chronological order of the works’
production. As observed by the painter Hardi
(b. 1951), who became acquainted with some
of the major Indonesian artists of the genera-
tion before him through the pages of the Sukar-
no volumes, this peculiar mode of organisation
promotes the confation of colonial and post-
colonial artists and their works, and imposes
a similitude on Indonesian painters with very
different “artistic” politics. “What we could see
there,” Hardi remarked, “was only photographs
of the paintings, not the artists’ ideologies.”14
Each volume commenced with “Indo-
nesian” artists, a category that subsumed the
painters’ various ethnicities into a new national
identity, but also failed to differentiate between
artists who worked in a colonial idiom and
 & Zijlmans, op. cit., 125–38; Amir Sidharta, “The land
and her people in the discourse on Indonesia art,” in
Soul Ties: The Land and her People: Art from Indone-
sia (Singapore: Singapore Art Museum, 1999), 10–7.
18 The Javanese artist Dullah (1919–1996), Sukarno’s frst
Palace Painter, observed that Sukarno “loves form that
is close to nature and images that are true to life, more
especially if the form is delineated in strong, bold, clear
and swift strokes.” See Dullah, op. cit., vol. I (1956), 22.
19 The Bandung painters were not, meanwhile, prohib-
those who opposed it. Thus, Javanese paint-
ers like Abdullah Suriosubroto, who were ac-
tive not just in the colonial period but also in
the colonial genre, were stealthily reclaimed
as predecessors of modern Indonesian art by
virtue of their indigeneity. The Indo-European
Ernest Dezentjé (1885–1972), who is to this
day classifed as a Dutch or colonial painter
in standard works on art surveying the pre-
independence period, was nationalised as Indo-
nesian in the Sukarno volumes by virtue of his
having taken citizenship in the 1950s.15 The
two compendia thus haphazardly mixed genres
together, entirely evaded temporal categorisa-
tions such as “colonial,” and instead simply
grouped together paintings made within the
century leading up to Sukarno’s reign. It may
not have been the intention of Sukarno and his
Palace Painters, but such an arrangement has
the effect of emphasising continuities in the
style and subject matter of the paintings across
the colonial period and early years of Indone-
sian independence.
Art historians have been reluctant to ac-
knowledge such possible continuities in paint-
ing from Indonesia in the 1950s and 1960s,
partly because the political allegiances and
activities of Indonesian artists were deeply in-
fuenced by the nationalist revolution, and
many painters conceptualised their practice in
distinctly anti-colonial terms. The eminent art
Landscape Painting in Indonesia
ited from working; they simply found their buyers else-
where. See Holt, op. cit., 239.
20 Dullah held that Sukarno visited the homes and stu-
dios of artists, where he would drink tea with them
and “very often their talk turns into controversies
which are as lively as debates on some political is-
sues.” See Dullah, op. cit., vol. I (1956), 21. For further
discussion surrounding the defnition of modern
Indonesian painting, see Holt, op. cit., 195, 199–201,
218; Spanjaard, op. cit., 51, 81.
historian Claire Holt, for instance, held in her
germinal work on Indonesian art that “subject”
was “decidedly not” what made postcolonial
Indonesian painting “modern.” Instead, she
argued that the question of “style” was “inti-
mately linked with the quest for national cul-
tural identity.”16 Art historians since Holt have
invariably been drawn into this contention, in
part because Indonesian painters themselves
extensively debated the merits of style in dis-
tinguishing their work from that of their colo-
nial predecessors. A great deal of ink has been
spilled on the rifts between painterly schools in
the 1950s and 1960s, particularly the Yogya-
karta–Bandung rivalry, which was characterised
by a preference for naturalism among adherents
to the former and abstract styles in the latter
school.17 As the volumes sampling Sukarno’s
collection show, the President favoured the
naturalism of the Yogya school.18 It was paint-
ers working in that style who chiefy enjoyed
his patronage.19 Meanwhile, contemporary
debates between artists (in which Sukarno is
claimed to have taken part) concerning style,
composition, subject matter and the social
goals of painting carried over into artists’ or-
ganisations, their political activities and printed
matter, providing fertile material for art histo-
rians to plough in their search for what defned
“modern”, “Indonesian” painting in the frst
decades after independence.20
167
 21 Holt, op. cit., 257.
22 Spanjaard, op. cit., 7, 73.
23 Ibid., 97, 103, 184.
24 Modernist painters included Pieter Ouborg (1893–
1956) and Dolf Breetvelt (1892–1975): see Leonie
ten Duis & Annelies Haase, Ouborg: Schilder [Ouborg:
Painter] (Amsterdam: Openbaar Kunstbezit, 1990)
and Rob Delvigne, Dolf Breetvelt: Modernist in Indië
Holt partly acknowledged the possibility
of signifcant continuities between the colonial
and postcolonial period in her assertion that a
“breakthrough” in modern art had already oc-
curred in the 1930s. But for her, this change was
chiefy characterised by a new “self-assertion”
among indigenous artists who were opposed
to the European, colonial establishment in this
decade.21 Holt’s focus on the rhetorical commit-
ment of Indonesian artists to breaking with the
conventions of colonial-era art is implicitly un-
derpinned by the self-identifcation of the artists
as Indonesian, and their political opposition to
colonial rule: personnel and politics thus consti-
tuted the greatest change in painting practices
during the 1940s and paved the way for the art
of the 1950s and 1960s to be “modern.” Helena
Spanjaard has expanded on Holt’s contention
by detailing the “intellectual, urban context”
that served an “emergent nationalism” among
Indonesian artists.22 However, Spanjaard con-
cludes that, overall, “socially engaged” painting
and works done in a neocolonial style coexisted
in the immediate post-independence period.23
I argue that these continuities can most clearly be
observed in paintings that show the mountain-
ous, rice-growing landscapes of Java’s interior.
Mooi Indië / Beautiful Indonesia
Prior to the 1940s, the largest body of land-
scape art from Indonesia was made by Euro-
168 Susie Protschky
en Nederland [Dolf Breetvelt: Modernist in India and
Netherlands] (Amsterdam: KIT Publishers, 2008).
25 Susie Protschky, Images of the Tropics: Environment
and Visual Culture in Colonial Indonesia (Leiden:
KITLV Press/Brill, 2011).
26 Holt, op. cit., 198.
27 However, Sukarno distanced himself from Sudjojono
in the late 1950s following a personal scandal (the
peans, and their most (in)famous trope has
become known as the Mooi Indië (beautiful
Indies) scene. Apart from a marginal contin-
gent of modernist painters, the most success-
ful landscape painters in the Indies worked in
a realist or Impressionist style.24 Their subject
matter was rice felds, palm trees, mountains
or smoking volcanoes, all contained within a
sweeping panoramic feld that minimised de-
tails and created a generic impression of “the
tropics.” Such paintings were widely seen in the
Indies and Europe in art clubs and academies
as well as world fairs and international colonial
exhibitions. Further, as lithography and other
printing processes became cheaper and more
advanced in the second half of the 19th century,
reproductions of Indies paintings moved from
expensive, low-circulation folios for collectors
to illustrations in books that reached a wider
audience.25
During the 1940s, the dominance of these
views of Indonesia began to attract criticism
from a number of mostly self-taught indigenous
artists. Prominent among these was the Javanese
painter Sindudarsono Sudjojono (1913–1986).
A self-proclaimed nationalist, modernist, even-
tual communist, and co-founder, in 1937, of
the Association of Indonesian Drawing Mas-
ters (Persatuan Ahli-Ahli Gambar Indonesia,
PERSAGI), Sudjojono was one of a number of
young Javanese painters who struggled to estab-
lish themselves within the conservative colonial
 artist’s affair with the woman who was to become his
second wife) that saw Sudjojono lose his position in
the House of Representatives. See Sidharta, S. Sud-
jojono: Visible Soul, 70, 84–6.
28 S. Sudjojono, “Seni Lukis di Indonesia Sekarang
dan yang Akan Datang” [Painting in Indonesia now
and in the future], in Seni Lukis, Kesenian, dan Seni-
man [Painting, the arts, and the artist] (Yogyakarta:
art establishment of the 1930s and early 1940s.
After Indonesia achieved its independence in
1949, Sudjojono was among those whose ca-
reers were launched in part because of their po-
litical commitment to a more “socially engaged”
form of art.26 Sukarno was a patron of his work
in the 1940s and early 1950s.27
Sudjojono’s present status as the “father”
of modern Indonesian art stems in large part
from his manifesto, produced in 1946 during
the Indonesian War of Independence. In this
frequently quoted work, Sudjojono deplored
the European focus on the “holy trinity” of
mountain, coconut palm and rice feld in land-
scape art at the expense of “sugar factories and
emancipated peasants, the motorcars of the
rich and the pants of the poor youth.”28 What
Sudjojono articulated here was an objection
to historically unchanging and thematically
uniform visions of colonised landscapes that
avoided the transformative impact of Dutch
rule on local environments, economies and
societies.
While Sukarno condoned Sudjojono’s
nationalist and revolutionary credentials, he
clearly did not share the latter’s aesthetic poli-
tics. Indeed, colonial Mooi Indië painters were
included prominently among the president’s
artworks, as the volumes sampling his collec-
tion demonstrate. Many of these works were
originally held by the Batavia Kunstkring (Art
Circle), a colonial association of artists and
Landscape Painting in Indonesia
Yayasan Aksara Indonesia, 2000), 1–8.
29 McIntyre, op. cit., 167.
30 Spanjaard, op. cit., 25. The relevant painting in the
Tropenmuseum (Amsterdam) collection is Ernest
Dezentjé, Landscape on Jawa, 1925, oil on unknown
medium, Tropenmuseum, coll. no. TM-1602-1.
31 Both artists have works in Sukarno & Dullah, op. cit.,
vol. I (1956) and Sukarno & Lee, op. cit., vols. I–V (1964).
afcionados. The collections were seized by
the Japanese during the occupation that com-
menced in 1942 and then handed over to
Sukarno when it ended in 1945.29 The selec-
tion of some of these works for publication in
the two multivolume sets may be interpreted
as Sukarno’s triumphant display of the spoils
of nationalist victory. However, the President’s
preferences in Indonesian art resonated so pro-
foundly with these colonial paintings that they
cannot solely be viewed as trophies of the revo-
lution.
Ernest Dezentjé, a leading practitioner
of the Mooi Indië genre active in the colonial
period, emerges as one of Sukarno’s favourite
painters: ten of his landscapes are reproduced
across the two editions of volumes. One of
the Dezentjés in Sukarno’s collection (fg. 12.1)
is strikingly similar to a painting at the Tro-
penmuseum in Amsterdam, an archive that
showcases the highlights of colonial art. In-
deed, Dezentjé was from a prominent Indo-
European family of French-Javanese extraction,
and moved among the Indies art establishment
as a member of and frequent exhibitor in the
Batavia Kunstkring.30
Dezentjé is not the only colonial art-
ist to feature in Sukarno’s collection. In the
landscape genre, Willem Imandt (1882–1967)
and C.L. Dake the Younger (1886–1948) are
also represented.31 Elsewhere in the volumes,
the president’s predilection for the Bali artists
169
 32 As above.
33 Werner Kraus, Raden Saleh: The Beginning of Modern
Indonesian Painting, eds. Werner Kraus & Irina Vo-
gelsang, trans. Chris Cave & Werner Kraus (Jakarta:
Goethe Institut Indonesia, 2012), 33, 162. For an ex-
ample by Antoine Payen, see pages 200–2 for an 1844
painting of a thunderstorm off the West Java coast
near Karang Gajah (Elephant Rocks), Museum Volk-
enkunde Leiden.
34 Protschky, op. cit., 23–43.
35 C.L. Dake Jr, Madura Beach, in Sukarno & Dullah, op.
cit., vol. I (1964), plate 66; Ernest Dezentjé, The Sea,
in Sukarno & Lee, op. cit., vol. II (1964), plate 13.
36 See works by the American painter B. White (vol. I
Rudolf Bonnet (1895–1978) and Willem
Hofker (1902–1981) is strongly evident.32
More importantly, the subject matter and
treatment of many of these works are indis-
tinguishable from the paintings of indige-
nous artists who were active from the 1940s
onwards—the so-called “frst generation” of
modern Indonesian painters who had been
involved in nationalist organisations dur-
ing the War of Independence and progressed
to illustrious careers in the postcolonial pe-
riod. Examples included in the volumes are
by the renowned painters Basoeki Abdullah
(1915–1993), Dullah (1919–1996) and Henk
Ngantung (1921–1991). Together, 35 of the
115 landscapes across the two compendia were
made by these three artists. Many of their
landscape paintings from the 1950s and 1960s
continue directly in the tradition of the Mooi
Indië scene (fgs. 12.2 and 12.3).
New Orientations:
Looking Out to Sea, Engaging with Asia
Two conspicuous features of the volumes
abridging Sukarno’s painting collection are,
frst, a novel interest in coastal landscapes
and views of the sea, and second, a signifcant
170 Susie Protschky
[1964]) and the Italian painters Galli, E. Brianto,
Mariani and Simonetti in the 1964 volumes. See also
the specifc works: William Imandt, The Rolling Sea,
in Sukarno & Lee, op. cit., vol. II (1964), plate 61; Ba-
soeki Abdullah, The Oceanic Wave, in Sukarno & Lee,
op. cit., vol. II (1964), plate 29. For further exposition
on Imandt see Paul van der Velde, “The Painter Wil-
lem Imandt Revisited,” The Newsletter 64, Summer
(2013): 6–7.
37 By the same painter, see also On the Shores of Flores
Island, in Sukarno & Dullah, op. cit., vol. II (1956) and
Sukarno & Lee, op. cit., vol. III (1964), plate 30.
38 Agus Dermawan T., R. Basoeki Abdullah RA: Duta
Seni Lukis Indonesia [R. Basoeki Abdullah RA: Am-
contingent of landscape works by artists from
China, Japan and other parts of Asia. These
outward orientations—toward the coastal geo-
graphies of the Indonesian archipelago and
the art traditions of its neighbours in Asia—
represent signifcant departures from colonial
landscape painting in the late 19th and early
20th centuries.
Apart from a few works by 19th-century
artists who dabbled in Romanticism—notably
Raden Saleh, but also one of his teachers, the
Belgian painter Antoine Payen (1792–1853)—
wild seascapes had not previously been a strong
feature of colonial painting in the Indies.33
Instead, a cartographic way of seeing the coast
informed colonial landscape art: a tradition
of viewing the shore from the perspective of a
ship’s deck, and a focus on identifying port cit-
ies and historic sites of Dutch settlement.34
Paintings of lonely beaches and crashing
waves appear to have been to Sukarno’s taste,
and as with views of mountainous hinter-
lands, he was indiscriminate in his liking for
colonial as well as nationalist painters. Scenes
of deserted beaches painted in a realist style
and (in contrast to colonial views) from an in-
land perspective looking out to sea at distant
mountainous shores are featured regularly.
 bassador of Indonesian painting] (Jakarta: Grame-
dia, 1985), 13–4, 16. On romanticism in European
marine painting see William Gaunt, Marine Paint-
ing: A Historical Survey (London: Secker & Warburg,
1975), 95, 116.
39 With the exception of Beach, in Sukarno & Lee, op.
cit., vol. III (1964), plate 15.
40 Ratu Loro Kidul is elsewhere represented in the
Sukarno volumes in a famous painting by Basoeki
Abdullah, Queen of the South Seas, in Sukarno &
Dullah, op. cit. and Sukarno & Lee, op. cit., vol. II
(1956 and 1964), plates 105 and 30. It was a visita-
tion from the queen while Basoeki was meditating
on the beach of South Java that (according to leg-
Two come from Dake and Dezentjé, colonial
artists better known for their inland Mooi In-
dië scenes.35 Sukarno also collected numer-
ous close-cropped views of tempestuous waves
against stormy skies. These were made by unre-
markable American and Italian painters, by the
Dutch painter Willem Imandt (who was one of
the most established artists in the late colonial
period), and by the Indonesian painter Basoeki
Abdullah—but they are virtually interchange-
able with one another.36 Works that celebrate
the sublime qualities of Indonesia’s coastal
landscapes are particularly evident in the beach
scenes of Sukarno’s favourite painter, Basoeki
Abdullah (fg. 12.4).37 The latter’s emphasis on
the majesty and scale of Indonesia’s shores reso-
nates with Romantic European traditions of
the kind that Basoeki would have encountered
during his training in Europe.38
Sukarno also acquired several coastal scenes
by Henk Ngantung. With his lower perspec-
tives and emphasis on monotonous, horizontal
stretches of sand, Ngantung was notably less
inclined towards the sublime than Basoeki.
However, the titles of Ngantung’s paintings give
his beach scenes a sacred resonance.39 Beach of
the South Sea (date of composition unknown)
alludes to the domain of Ratu Loro Kidul,
Landscape Painting in Indonesia
end) set him on the career path of painting. See Der-
mawan T., op. cit., 10. The sense of integration with
the natural backdrop is created in an almost identi-
cal pen and ink drawing of the spot that Ngantung
made in 1952, which may have been a preparatory
sketch. See Henk Ngantung, Sketsa-Sketsa Henk
Ngantung dari Masa ke Masa [Sketches of Henk
Ngantung through the years] (Jakarta: Penerbit
Sinar Harapan, 1981), 170.
41 John Pemberton, On the Subject of “Java” (Ithaca &
London: Cornell University Press, 1994), 270.
42 Astri Wright, Soul, Spirit and Mountain: Preoccupa-
tions of Contemporary Indonesian Painters (Kuala
Lumpur: Oxford University Press, 1994).
Queen-Goddess of the South Ocean and mythi-
cal consort of Central Java’s kings; On the Shores
of Tanah-Lot (Bali) (fg. 12.5) shows the rock for-
mation off the coast of Bali where a centuries-
old Hindu sea temple, a site of pilgrimage (and
now, of tourism) is located. Ngantung integrat-
ed the temple into the rocks such that it is bare-
ly distinguishable from its natural backdrop.40
Ngantung’s paintings drew attention to
the environmental features of what the Ameri-
can anthropologist John Pemberton conceives
as “topographies of power,” and thus to venera-
tion for the natural, ancient and undisturbed
qualities of Hindu-Buddhist sites of pilgrim-
age that continued to have meaning for many
Indonesians even in places where Islam had
become the dominant religion.41 Scholarship
to date has rightly focused on the importance
of the cosmic mountain in 20th-century Indo-
nesian painting and other arts.42 Ngantung’s
sacred coastal landscapes, together with the
more generically sublime views of the shore
and ocean in Sukarno’s collection, suggest that
the sea was also being explored by painters in
the president’s lifetime as a potential site for
spiritual retreat and refection.
Sukarno’s painting volumes also promi-
nently feature landscapes from artists through-
171
 43 Legge, op. cit., 426.
44 The paintings reproduced in the frst edition were
photographed by Chinese personnel. Each artist
selected received 2000 rupiah from the Chinese gov-
ernment for each of their works in the volumes. See
Holt, op. cit., 209.
45 Sukarno endorsed the publication of the frst edition,
among other reasons, “for the sake of strengthening
the brotherly ties between the people of China and
Indonesia.” Dullah himself viewed the volumes as evi-
dence of “the further strengthening and growth of the
friendship and cultural exchange between the Chi-
nese and Indonesian peoples,” and dedicated them to
“the friendship between the Chinese and Indonesian
peoples and to those who love art and peace dearly.”
See Sukarno & Dullah, op. cit., vol. I (1956), 7, 14.
46 Qi Baishi is listed as “Chi Pai-Shih” in volume I (1964)
where his work, Pine and Peony, is reproduced. On
the artist’s career and works, see Low Sze Wee, 20 th
out East and Southeast Asia. The greater num-
ber were by Chinese and Japanese artists work-
ing in a distinctively traditional visual idiom,
using materials such as ink, colours and brush
on folding screens and hanging scrolls of silk
or paper, and featuring motifs that signalled
the seasons (the pine tree for winter, the cherry
blossom for spring and the maple for autumn).
The inclusion of these works by Chinese and
Japanese painters in the two volume editions of
Sukarno’s collection reveals a novel orientation
toward Asian landscapes and artists in Indone-
sian painting, away from the colonial focus on
Europe and its traditions.
Following an initial foreign policy fir-
tation with non-alignment either with the
United States or the Soviet Union in the early
1950s, in the latter years of his presidency Su-
karno moved from what Legge called a “west-
ward looking neutralism” toward a strengthen-
ing alliance with China.43 This political shift
was presaged in the text of the frst edition of
volumes abridging his painting collections.
The 1956 volumes were the result of a collabo-
ration between Sukarno’s staff and Chinese art
172 Susie Protschky
Century Chinese Paintings in Singapore Collections
(Singapore: Singapore Art Museum, 2003), 15, 86.
47 Chu-tsing Li, “Traditional Painting Development
during the Early Twentieth Century,” in Twentieth-
Century Chinese Painting, ed. Mayching Kao (Hong
Kong: Oxford University Press, 1988), 78, 82, 87.
48 Spanjaard, op. cit., 74–5.
49 One exception is the artist Affandi (1907–1990), who
experimented with Japanese brush and ink styles
but expressed ambivalence about these works. See
Holt, op. cit., 199.
50 Ibid., 208.
51 Yoshizawa Chu, Taikan: Modern Master of Oriental-
Style Painting, 1868–1958 (Tokyo: Kodansha, 1962),
9, 21–2.
52 Tanio Nakamura, Contemporary Japanese-Style
Painting, trans. Mikio Ito (New York: Tudor, 1969),
29–31.
53 Wright, op. cit.
specialists, and were presented by Sukarno as
a gift to the People’s Republic of China on a
state visit.44 Gestures toward the “friendship”
between China and Indonesia were made both
by Sukarno in his brief introduction, and in
the foreword written by the Javanese Palace
Painter Dullah.45
Some of the Chinese artists in Sukarno’s
collection were renowned painters in their own
countries. An eminent example is Qi Baishi
(1864–1957), who was born to a peasant fam-
ily and commenced painting late in life, but
rose to be celebrated during Mao’s reign as a
People’s Artist. Qi Baishi’s humble origins and
vigorous style, combining gongbi (a meticulous
realism) with xieyi (a spontaneous free-hand),
were traits that Sukarno particularly admired in
artists.46 Landscapes in which the eye is led up-
ward through forested mountains, as practised
by traditional painters active in Beijing in the
early 20th century, also featured in Sukarno’s
collection. Among them is an undated work by
Chen Shaomei (1909–1954) that is representa-
tive of his landscape paintings from the 1940s
(fg. 12.6).47
 Numerous landscapes by Japanese art-
ists also feature in the volumes sampling
Sukarno’s painting collection. During the Pacif-
ic War, Japanese authorities established artists’
organisations run by Indonesians to foster and
“improve” traditional arts, and contribute cul-
turally to the Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity
Sphere envisioned for Japanese-occupied Asia.
These organisations supported the independ-
ent development of Indonesian art, not least
because of the prominence they gave to revolu-
tionary painters.48 Given the oppressive expe-
rience of the occupation, however, Indonesian
painters were generally not inclined to experi-
ment with traditional Japanese styles of paint-
ing in the post-war years.49 At the same time,
a growing number of artists were exposed to
Japanese painting in the mid-1950s, when the
Indonesian government sponsored exchanges
through artists’ fellowships to a range of coun-
tries, including Japan.50
Sukarno’s collection refects this cultural
re-orientation toward Indonesia’s former occu-
pier. His volumes include a painting by Yokoy-
ama Taikan (1868–1958), who was renowned
for contributing to the modern Japanese style
of painting in the early 20th century. Trained
at the Tokyo School of Fine Arts in the 1890s,
he was awarded one of the frst Orders of
Culture, conferred annually by the Emperor,
when it was founded in 1937. Indeed, Taikan
was a committed ultra-nationalist during the
1930s and the World War II.51 In his paint-
ing, he was particularly renowned for rendi-
tions of Mount Fuji (fg. 12.7).52 The theme
resonates with the Indonesian veneration for
sacred mountains, derived from the archipela-
go’s Hindu-Buddhist heritage, and refected in
the work of Indonesian artists throughout the
postcolonial period.53
Conclusions
Thematically, the landscape paintings selected
for reproduction in the volumes sampling Su-
Landscape Painting in Indonesia
karno’s art collection reveal the gradual nature
of decolonisation in Indonesia following the
end of Dutch rule in the 1940s. They repre-
sent the more general trend of continuities in
personnel—European artists who remained in-
fuential even after the colonial establishment
that once supported them had collapsed—as
well as in themes and interests shared between
Indonesian artists whose careers fourished
between the 1940s and the mid-1960s and
their colonial predecessors. Thus, despite the
political commitment of many frst-generation
Indonesian artists to more “socially engaged”
themes in their work, in landscape, the Mooi
Indië scene endured. The impact of war, rev-
olution and urbanisation on the countryside
were nowhere to be seen in Sukarno’s col-
lection. In his view, the hard work of recon-
struction and nation-building in independent
Indonesia was evidently for the political are-
na and not for the canvas. Sukarno’s art col-
lecting refects an ecclecticism on his part in
everything except aesthetics: the politics and
background of the artist were ultimately less
important than whether the style and subject
matter pleased the president.
A change visible in the President’s paint-
ings is the reclamation of the coast by Indo-
nesian artists from colonial ways of seeing this
landscape. The sea and shore were depicted
in the 1950s and 1960s from indigenous per-
spectives as sites of introspection and, indeed,
religious signifcance. Important also was
Sukarno’s interest in foreign artists and their
work, particularly those from China and Japan.
Paintings that focused on the landscapes and
artistic traditions of East Asia reveal the emer-
gence of Indonesia as a nation seeking to ne-
gotiate a world order in fux after World War
II, after decolonisation, and entering the Cold
War era. In this context, regional neighbours
with whom Indonesia had complex historical
and political relations would play a far more
important role than the nation’s distant former
coloniser, the Netherlands.
173
 12.1

12.2

414 Susie Protschky

0328-Charting Thoughts.indd 414 28/3/17 2:54 PM

 12.1 Ernest Dezentjé
Rice Fields
1956
Oil on canvas
110 x 176 cm
Collection of Dr Sukarno,
President of the Republic of Indonesia
As published in Sukarno & Lee Man
Fong, Lukisan-Lukisan dan Patung-
Patung, Kolleksi Presiden Sukarno
dari Republik Indonesia [Paintings
and statues from the Collection of
President Sukarno of the Republic
of Indonesia], vol. II (Indonesia:
Publishing Committee of Collection
of Paintings and Statues of President
Sukarno, 1964), plate 15.

12.2 Basoeki Abdullah

Landscape
Date unknown
Oil on canvas
170 x 255 cm
Collection of Dr Sukarno,
President of the Republic of Indonesia
As published in Sukarno & Lee, ibid.,
vol. I, plate 18.

12.3 Dullah
Rice Fields Near Mt Lawu
Date unknown
Oil on canvas
92 x 148 cm
12.3 Collection of Dr Sukarno,
President of the Republic of Indonesia
As published in Sukarno & Lee, ibid.,
vol. II, plate 22.

Landscape Painting in Indonesia 415

0328-Charting Thoughts.indd 415 28/3/17 2:54 PM

 12.4 Basoeki Abdullah
A Peaceful Sea
Date unknown
Oil on canvas
80 x 120 cm
Collection of Dr Sukarno,
President of the Republic of Indonesia
As published in Sukarno & Lee, ibid.,
vol. IV, plate 47.

12.5 Henk Ngantung

On the Shores of Tanah-Lot (Bali)
1952
Oil on canvas
84.5 x 144 cm
Collection of Dr Sukarno,
President of the Republic of Indonesia
As published in Sukarno & Dullah,
Lukisan-Lukisan Koleksi Ir. Dr. Sukarno
Presiden Republik Indonesia [Paintings
from the Collection of Dr Sukarno
President of the Republic of Indonesia],
vol. II (Peking: People’s Fine Arts
Publishing House, 1956), plate 58 and
Sukarno & Lee, op. cit., vol. IV, plate 14.

12.4

416 Susie Protschky

0328-Charting Thoughts.indd 416 28/3/17 2:54 PM

 12.5

Landscape Painting in Indonesia 417

0328-Charting Thoughts.indd 417 28/3/17 2:54 PM

 12.6

418 Susie Protschky

0328-Charting Thoughts.indd 418 28/3/17 2:54 PM

 12.7

12.6 Chen Shaomei

Landscape
Date unknown
Chinese ink and colour on paper
177 x 98 cm
Collection of Dr Sukarno,
President of the Republic of Indonesia
As published in Sukarno & Lee,
ibid., vol. II, plate 86.

12.7 Yokoyama Taikan

Mount Fuji
Date unknown
Watercolour on silk
67.5 x 90 cm
Collection of Dr Sukarno,
President of the Republic of Indonesia
As published in Sukarno & Dullah,
op. cit., vol. I, plate 30 and Sukarno
& Lee, op. cit., vol. I, plate 86.

Landscape Painting in Indonesia 419

0328-Charting Thoughts.indd 419 28/3/17 2:54 PM

 1 Oesman Effendi, “Surat I, Perkembangan Seni Lukis
Indonesia Baru: Surat-Menyurat antara 2 Orang
Pelukis” [Letter I, New developments in Indonesian
painting: A conversation between two painters],
Zenith, 15 February 1951, 81. Author’s translation.
2 Jim Supangkat, “The Two Forms of Indonesian Art,”
in Modern Indonesian Art: Three Generations of Tra-
ditions and Change 1945–1990, ed. Joseph Fischer,
exh. cat. (Jakarta: Panitia Pameran KIAS; New York:
Festival of Indonesia, 1990), 220.
3 For further reading, see Trisno Sumardjo, “Ke-
merdekaan dan Kesenian” [Independence and the
arts], Indonesia XI, no. 4, 155–8.
(13)
Confict and Denial: The Discourse of Identity
in Indonesian Art, 1950s–1980s
Aminudin TH Siregar
The differences between East and West are only
relative, to the point [that] it becomes nonsense.1
Oesman Effendi, 1951
The long-standing problems that gave birth to
unique developments in Indonesian modern
art arose from the cultural debate of confron-
tation between the West and the East. This
debate is not unique to Indonesia, being prev-
alent in many developing countries, and vari-
ous studies conducted by Western researchers
or developing countries themselves show that
these kinds of debates stem from sociopolitical
conficts. The search for Eastern values within
these debates is not based on Orientalism; typi-
cally, it is a reaction based on anger over the
displacement of ethnic cultural identities by
Western culture during colonial times.2 If the
174 Charting Thoughts
4 Helena Spanjaard, Moderne Indonesische schil-
derkunst [Modern Indonesian painting] (Abcoude:
Uniepers, 2003), 81.
5 Trisno Sumardjo, “Bapak Seni Lukis Indonesia
Baru” [The father of Indonesian modern painting],
Mimbar Indonesia, no. 41 (8 October 1949). Author’s
translation.
6 M. Balfas, “Seni Lukis Indonesia Baru” [New Indo-
nesian painting], Indonesia no. 4 (April 1951): 2–6.
Author’s translation.
7 S. Sudjojono, Seni Loekis, Kesenian dan Seniman
[Painting, the arts and the artist] (Yogyakarta: Indo-
nesia Sekarang, 1946), 8. Author’s translation.
“West” here traditionally refers to Western cul-
ture, the “East” relates to locality and is com-
monly understood as standing for the values of
ancestral heritage.
The theme of confict and denial in this
essay is discussed as it pertains to modern
art—its meaning and its relation to the Indo-
nesian contemporary cultural scene at large.
But modern art did not just happen. It arose as
a result of deepening nationalist values in the
revolutionary era after the 1945 Proclamation
of Indonesian Independence and can be traced
back to ideas frst introduced in the 1930s. The
intellectuals and artists were aware that some-
thing radical was happening around them, but
it was not always easy to identify. They were
aware too that tremendous change had come
over the arts at that time. Why? What were
the true forces behind the change? What does
“modern art” really mean? Indeed, there is an
opportunity to enrich the hypothesis in the
previous paragraph by observing shifts in East‒
West discourse within the history of Indone-
sian art, and the confict and denial between
actors in the era of postcolonial awareness. The
search for Eastern values in fact started with
an awareness of the Eastern exoticism used by
European painters in their works. It is too sim-
plistic to conclude this issue was purely caused
by the anger of the locals or angst over displace-
ment; we must consider the option that it was
also buoyed by painters looking at Indonesia
through new perspectives. Examining the his-
tory of Indonesian art, it is clear that the great-
est conficts actually happened between Indo-
nesian artists, rather than between Indonesian
artists and the Dutch. Not everything can be
explained by antagonism towards the West.
After proclaiming its independence on 17
August 1945, Indonesia entered into a post-
colonial situation of social, political and cultural
ambiguity. The tense, confrontational situation
between 1945 and 1949 forced Indonesia into
battling the Dutch using both weapons and
diplomacy, until the latter eventually acknowl-
edged the sovereignty of the new nation on 27
December 1949. After the transfer of inde-
pendence, intellectuals and artists began ques-
tioning how Indonesia should defne for itself
an identity with national characteristics—an
issue that had bearing on the direction of its art
and culture. Nevertheless, they soon realised
that security, stability, and economic and po-
litical recovery were the main issues that had to
be addressed by the Sukarno administration.3
Fiery debates began in the run-up to 1950,
in cultural congresses and seminars. Concepts
of art and culture were disseminated through
articles in magazines and newspapers. Outside
of offcial channels used to promote the new
national culture, the intellectuals and artists
gathered in studios, their favourite places to
trade ideas. It was in these studios that they
Confict and Denial
discussed culture and art, and the role of art in
creating a new identity for Indonesia.4
This paper will elaborate on these debates.
The Early Phases of Heading East
The pages of Indonesian modern art his-
tory begin with S. Sudjojono (1913–1986).
As a thinker and ideologist, he is not a mere
painter. In 1949, critic Trisno Sumardjo said
this of Sudjojono: “In Indonesia’s lethargy and
quietness of spirit and soul during the occupa-
tion era, Sudjojono’s voice was like a nafri [a
traditional trumpet-type musical instrument]
emanating a new sound, bringing up those
who were cowering, to stand up and use their
soul’s ear.”5 Before the arrival of the Japanese,
Sudjojono was the only painter who had ac-
tively pushed for painting to enter the debate
of national culture. He placed a sign on his stu-
dio’s door that stated: “In Search of the Uniting
Characteristic of Indonesia.”6
The search for the characteristics of Indo-
nesian painting began with the founding of the
Association of Indonesian Drawing Masters
(Persatuan Ahli-Ahli Gambar Indonesia, PER-
SAGI) in 1938 by a few painters in Jakarta.
However, quite a few people criticised PER-
SAGI painters as being discernably Western.
PERSAGI painters naturally denied the charge,
although the accusation was not unfounded.
While the group was nationalistic, its key fgure
Sudjojono, openly admired European painters
such as Vincent van Gogh and Marc Chagall.
Sudjojono also derided traditional art, describ-
ing it as art that was antiquated and “smell[ed]
of oncom [traditional West Javanese food] and
incense,” and was unsuitable for the spirit of
the times.7 In Seni Loekis, Kesenian dan Seni-
man, he showed his avant-garde attitude along
with his strong nationalistic empathy. Among
other things, he highlighted the importance
of fve things: leaving behind the dogma of
tourism; not searching for beauty in the past
(for instance, art from the Majapahit or Ma-
175
 8 Ibid., 7–9.
9 There are many variations regarding the founding
date of POETERA. Some say it was in 1943, while oth-
ers specify 1 March 1943. See Djawa Baroe, no. 5, 1
March 1943. Yet in Djawa Baroe, no. 1, 1 January 1943,
it states that POETERA was founded on 8 Decem-
ber 1942, coinciding with the frst anniversary of the
Greater East Asia War and POETERA’s frst exhibition.
10 Imam Boechori Zainuddin, Latar Belakang Sejarah
Pembinaan dan Perkembangan Seni Lukis Indonesia
taram eras); not listening or becoming a slave
to one of the moralisserende-mensen (moralisers
or moralising people) groups or parties; being
wholly independent, releasing oneself from the
binds of morals or traditions; and treating daily
realities as the arena wherein to search for the
“Indonesian national identity.”8
Before World War II, PERSAGI, through
Sudjojono, contributed many important
thoughts about how best to handle the lack
of practice and discourse in painting since
Raden Saleh’s work in the 19th century. Sud-
jojono tended to foreground nationalism in
painting while denying that modern painting
was a continuation of the traditional arts, even
distancing it from Raden Saleh’s achievements.
The understanding of new Indonesian painting
was instead offered via paintings that empha-
sised the recording of daily life. In less than fve
years, however, PERSAGI disbanded when the
16th Division of the Imperial Japanese Army
landed on and occupied Java.
In the early months of the Japanese Oc-
cupation, popular independence fgures like
Sukarno, Mohammad Hatta, K.H. Dewantara
and Kyai Mas Mansoer founded the Centre of
People’s Power (Poesat Tenaga Rakjat, POET-
ERA).9 POETERA worked hand-in-hand with
the Japanese, building up the people’s support
to win the Greater East Asia War (Dai Toa
Senso). Sudjojono and Affandi led the cultural
176 Aminudin TH Siregar
Modern (1935–1950) [A historical background of the
development of modern Indonesian painting] (mas-
ter’s thesis, ITB, 1966), 36.
11 Ibid., 48.
12 Boejoeng Saleh, “Perkembangan Kesusasteraan In-
donesia” [The development of Indonesian painting],
in Almanak Seni 1957 [Art almanac 1957], ed. Zaini
(Jakarta: BMKN, 1956), 30.
13 Aiko Kurasawa, Mobilisasi dan Kontrol: Studi Peru-
bahan Sosial di Pedesaan Jawa 1942–1945 [Mobili-
sation and control: A study of social change in rural
section of POETERA, and the Japanese used
POETERA to popularise the concept of the
Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere (Dai
Toa Kyoeiken). One of POETERA’s exhibi-
tions, titled Winning the Greater East Asia War
and held at the Rakoetentji night market on 8
December 1942, was evidence of Japanese in-
terests.10 The exhibition accelerated the emer-
gence of new painters, and the Japanese played
a role in introducing these painters to the pub-
lic through 23 exhibitions held from 1943 to
1945.11 The Japanese encouraged Indonesian
painters to develop their art from Eastern val-
ues and reject the West. To that end, myths
about the stateliness and superiority of the East
were spread, along with tales of the lowliness
and decadence of the West.12 The Japanese
maintained that the various East Asian nations
had to be convinced they were really one: one
cultural character—Eastern culture—under
threat from the West.
Keimin Bunka Shidosho (KBS) was
founded by the Japanese government on 1
April 1943 in Jakarta, and had divisions in
Bandung, Malang, Semarang and Surabaya.
KBS was known as a cultural centre, its name
literally translated as: keimin, enlightment for
all; bunka, culture; and shidosho, place or centre
for briefng. Congruent with these defnitions,
KBS was founded to enlighten and educate the
public about art and culture. One of the offcial
 Java 1942–1945] (Jakarta: Grasindo, 1993), 61.
14 Claire Holt, Art in Indonesia: Continuities and Change
(Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1967), 198–9.
15 Sanusi Pane, “Seni Indonesia Siap Berkembang”
[The art of Indonesia ready to evolve], Soeara Asia,
22 May 1943. Author’s translation.
16 Ibid.
17 In D. Suradji’s version of the translation, Hopman’s
article was titled “Hari Kemudian Seni Bentuk di In-
donesia” [The future of Indonesian art]. See D. Sur-
adji, Bertebaran: Rangkuman Tulisan Menyinari Seni
reasons behind its founding was that for over
300 years, the Dutch colonial government had
failed to progress Indonesian art and culture,
just as it had failed to provide opportunities for
Indonesians. The long-term goal of KBS was
thus aligned to the larger development goals of
Greater East Asia.13
Unlike KBS, painters from POETERA
avoided propagandistic subjects and themes
in their work like planting cotton, romusha
(forced labour), the spirit of warriors or saving
money, which were diligently campaigned by
the Japanese. Interestingly, a few Japanese art-
ists within KBS safeguarded the purity of art
so that it could not be subordinated to propa-
gandistic ideology. Japanese artists also spread
the techniques and styles of Western painting
to Indonesian painters, leading many histori-
ans to suspect that Indonesian painting during
the Japanese Occupation actually became more
Western.14 The Japanese consciously attempt-
ed to achieve a balance between artistic con-
tent, entertainment and slogans. However, in
practice, the lines between propagandistic art
and art for art’s sake became blurred.
The Japanese government placed pres-
sure on Indonesian painters to fnd Eastern
characteristics of painting via exhibitions and
painting competitions. When KBS held a 1943
exhibition titled Kehidupan Djawa Baroe (The
New Life in Java), the organisation awarded
Confict and Denial
Drama, Film, Lukis dan Sketsa Ibukota R.I.S [Scat-
tered: A compilation of texts of theatre, flm, painting
and sketches of the Capital of the Union of Republik
Indonesia] (Jakarta: Haruman Hidup, 1961), 147–8.
Under the same title and indeed using the transla-
tion from D. Suradji, the article was also printed
along with S. Sudjojono’s book, Kami Tahu Kemana
Seni Lukis Indonesia Akan Kami Bawa [We know
where we are going with Indonesian art] (Yogyakarta:
Penerbit Indonesia Sekarang, 1948).
female painter Emiria Sunassa a prize. Paint-
ings from Sudjojono, Soekirno and Agus Djaya
were also received with much fanfare. Sanusi
Pane, a KBS administrator, praised these artists,
opining that “their steps seem to have stepped
further towards the realm of Indonesia and
the East.”15 Sunassa appropriated the essence
of primitive sculptures from Indonesia, which
could be said to give a “prehistoric feel” to her
work; Sudjojono was said to be “attempting to
achieve Indonesian norms”; Soekirno appro-
priated the basics of wayang (shadow puppet
theatre) and used primitive colours and the
atmosphere of giant temples from wayang sto-
ries; and Agus Djaja, who appropriated the
substances and styles of sculptures and reliefs
of temples, was said to “elevate Eastern val-
ues.”16 Artists felt they had discovered Eastern
or Indonesian values but this sense did not last
beyond the end of the Pacifc War, when the
Japanese left Indonesia.
Denials
In a magazine published in 1947, Dutch critic J.
Hopman denied the existence of truly Indone-
sian painting and even predicted that it would
cease to exist in a few years. Hopman admit-
ted that the content of Indonesian paintings
was Eastern, but felt the methods merely aped
those of Western modern art.17 Sudjojono was
177
 18 Sudjojono, ibid., 3.
19 Ibid., 14–5.
20 See Soemarno Soetosoendoro, “Seni Lukis Kita dalam
Mencari Jalan” [Our painting fnds its way], Indonesia
no. 10 (November 1949).
21 See the rebuttal in Trisno Sumardjo, “Seni Lukis Kita
Bukan Tiruan: Tanggapan atas Soemarno Soetoe-
soendoro,” Indonesia II, no. 4 (April 1950).
22 Suromo, “Tentang Seni Lukis” [About art], Indonesia
II, no. 2 (February 1950).
angered by Hopman’s denial. In the magazine
Revolusioner, he retaliated by demanding that
the Dutch leave issues of Indonesian painting
alone, asserting: “We know where we want to
bring Indonesian painting.”18 Moreover, after
hundreds of years of occupation it was clear the
Dutch had been ineffectual in managing and
progressing Indonesian painting.19
Two years later, academic Soemarno Soe-
tosoendoro stood with Hopman.20 His cyni-
cal article about Indonesian painting received
a harsh rebuttal from Sumardjo in an article
titled “Seni Lukis Bukan Tiruan” (Our paint-
ings are not imitations).21 At the same time, a
painter from the PERSAGI era, Suromo, also
maintained that Indonesian painting did not
copy Western painting. Suromo was careful to
note this did not therefore mean that Western
art had no infuence on Indonesian painters,
and also brought up the inherent normality of
“infuence” in culture.22 Painter and photogra-
pher Baharudin Marasutan also admitted that
Indonesian painters were initially heavily infu-
enced by the achievements of Western paint-
ing, although the process of infuencing did not
result in mindless imitation. Indonesian paint-
ers certainly studied the techniques and essence
of Western painting diligently. However, he
believed that Indonesian painters with Indo-
nesian souls, who live among their people and
breathe the air of their land, would be able to
178 Aminudin TH Siregar
23 Baharudin Marasutan, “Seni Rupa Indonesia Seka-
rang” [Indonesian art now], Daya, no. 1 (1 February
1949), cited in Ugeng T. Moetidjo & Hafz, Seni Lukis
Indonesia Tidak Ada [There is no Indonesian paint-
ing], ed. Ugeng T. Moetidjo (Jakarta: Dewan Kesenian
Jakarta, 2007), 72.
24 Trisno Sumardjo, “Realisme Sudjojono” [Sudjojono’s
realism], Mimbar Indonesia no. 20 (May 1950). Sud-
jojono wrote a rebuttal in the same journal over two
editions, nos. 33–4 (August 1950).
create paintings that coincide with the person-
ality, spirit and aspirations of the nation—an
“Indonesian-ness” both specifc and unique.23
Also in 1949, after his rebuttal of Hop-
man, Sudjojono urged painters to follow a re-
turn to realism. Sumardjo once again fercely
rejected it, as he felt it narrowed the meaning of
realism and ignored the potential of creativity
and freedom of the artist.24 Sumardjo, a right-
wing artist, held this opinion: “Sudjojono’s
realism does not recognise the value of spir-
ituality, it is left with the surface of the senses.
Realism should occur through the spirit as we
would have it, through each true artist.”25 In
fact, in the eyes of Sudjojono communist real-
ism in painting expressed the will of the times.
Other than being an advocate for paintings
that could be understood by the masses, he also
asked modern Indonesian painters not to use
abstract styles. Abstraction in art, he felt, was
“the art of the bourgeois,” and just as the peo-
ple needed rice, the people needed realism.
Sudjojono realised that the occupation
and the war had worsened Indonesian society.
His belief that one of the main functions of art
is to serve the people forced him into action,
with the recognition that it was no longer pos-
sible to merely stand as a spectator of society.
In PERSAGI, he remarked that art must im-
prove society. Therefore, art must actively and
concretely change society into something bet-
25 Trisno Sumardjo, “Kedudukan Seni Rupa Kita” [The
position of our art], in Almanak Seni 1957 (s.l.: s.n.,
n.p.), 137. Author’s translation.
26 Aminudin TH Siregar, Sang Ahli Gambar: Sketsa,
Gambar dan Pemikiran S. Sudjojono [The drawing
specialist: Sketches, drawings and thoughts of Sud-
jojojono] (Jakarta: Sudjojono Center & Galeri Canna,
2010), 98.
27 Statement publicised in Brochure Kesenian in 1949
in an interview between Dr Huyung and S. Sudjojono.
ter than it was, lending its power to mobilise
the people towards concrete social goals.26 He
declared: “Realism, for me, is more real. If Yo-
gya is taken, I would want to take back the real
Yogya. If I haven’t eaten, I must eat rice. Real
rice. When I fght for independence, I want
real independence. Not symbolic. Not fulfll-
ing, but real.”27
Abstraction versus Socialist Realism
Aside from studios, university campuses
were also dragged into the East‒West debate.
Founded in 1947, the art academy at Institute
of Technology Bandung (Institut Teknologi
Bandung, ITB), under the tutelage of Dutch
painter Ries Mulder, was a Western institution.
The resulting artworks were not based on ex-
periences of Indonesia, but were oriented to-
wards the sensibilities and events of the West.28
Meanwhile, the works of painters at the Indo-
nesian Academy of Fine Arts (Akademi Seni
Rupa Indonesia, ASRI, founded in 1950 in Yo-
gyakarta) embraced themes of the people, at the
time imagined as “Indonesia.” These opposing
trends brought forth tension between what is
known in Indonesian art history as the Band-
ung school of thought, typically represented by
ITB, versus the Yogyakarta school of thought,
led by ASRI. Historian Helena Spanjaard notes
that in this debate, it must be observed that
Confict and Denial
See Dr Huyung, Brochure Kesenian [Brochure on the
arts] (Jakarta: Kementerian Penerangan Republik
Indonesia, 1949), 18–9. Author’s translation.
28 Trisno Sumardjo, “Bandung Mengabdi Laboratorium
Barat” [Bandung is a servant of the laboratory of the
West], Siasat, 5 December 1954, 26.
29 Helena Spanjaard, “Bandung, the Laboratory of the
West?” in Fischer, op. cit., 207.
30 A.D. Pirous, interview with the author, March 2012.
both the Bandung (abstraction and Cubism)
and Yogyakarta (realism and expressionism)
schools followed Western painting practices.
The differences lay merely in the basic themes
of their paintings.29
As with Piet Mondrian who heavily in-
fuenced the development of abstract art since
his arrival in New York in the 1940s, Mulder
is thought to have done the same in Bandung.
Before arriving in Indonesia, he lived in Paris,
studying European modern art and its history,
philosophy and theories. During his stay, Paris
was still the centre of the modern art world,
where Cubism and Futurism were developed.
In 1910, Jacques Villon started to experiment
in Analytical Cubism, which was then ab-
sorbed by Mulder and taught to his students in
Bandung. This fact showcases the development
of European modern painting outside America
(and particularly New York); as an “agent,”
Mulder brought the knowledge of European
modern art across the Asia Pacifc for study in
Bandung.
Reactions to the new developments in
painting in Bandung did not only come from
the studio painters of Sudjojono’s generation.
Left-leaning painters also vocalised vehement
criticism.30 These reactions were quite un-
derstandable as the style of paintings coming
from ITB deviated from mainstream painting
at the time, which was based on the realism of
179
 31 Jennifer Lindsay, “Ahli Waris Budaya Dunia 1950–
1965: Sebuah Pengantar” [Heirs to world culture
1950–1965: An introduction], in Ahli Waris Budaya
Dunia; Menjadi Indonesia, 1950–1965 [Heirs to World
Culture; Becoming Indonesia, 1950–1965], eds. Jen-
nifer Lindsay & Maya H.T. Liem (Denpasar: Pustaka
Larasan; Jakarta: KITLV-Jakarta, 2011), 12. Author’s
translation.
32 Keith Foulcher, Social Commitment in Literature and
the Arts: The Indonesian ‘Institute of People’s Culture’
1950–1965 (Clayton: Monash University Center of
Southeast Asian Studies, 1986), 212.
33 D.N. Aidit, Tentang Sastra dan Seni [On literature and
art] (Jakarta: Yayasan Pembaruan, 1964), 52–3.
34 Sunaryo, interview with the author, January 2006.
See the supporting archives of Bandung artists for
the Manifes Kebudayaan in D.S. Moejanto & Taufk
Ismail, Prahara Budaya: Kilas Balik Ofensif Lekra/
PKI dkk. [The cultural hurricane: Looking back at the
offensive of LEKRA/PKI DKK], eds. D.S. Moejanto &
PERSAGI, Young Artists Indonesia (Seniman
Indonesia Muda, SIM) or the Institute of Peo-
ple’s Culture (Lembaga Kebudayaan Rakyat,
LEKRA), and revolved around populist con-
cepts. Many harboured suspicions that ITB
was a product of neocolonialism, subservient to
the West and flled with middle-class bourgeois
practices. Those outside ITB could not differ-
entiate between paintings by different ITB art-
ists. Mulder himself had been accused as a spy
many times.
Entering the 1950s, sociopolitical con-
frontations related to the cultural identity of
Indonesia started to heat up. Previously in
Jakarta in 1946, Asrul Sani, Chairil Anwar,
Mochtar Apin, M. Akbar Djuhana, M. Balfas,
Rivai Apin, Baharuddin Marasutan and Henk
Ngantung gathered to form the cultural group,
the League of Independent Artists (Gelanggang
Seniman Merdeka). The group’s aims were only
released in February 1950, impressively stating:
“We are the true inheritors of the world’s cul-
ture, and we shall continue this culture in our
180 Aminudin TH Siregar
Taufk Ismail (Bandung: Penerbit Mizan, 1995), 439.
35 Aidit, op. cit., 64. Author’s translation.
36 For further reading, see Moejanto & Taufk, op. cit.
37 See further details in Brita L. Miklouho-Maklai, Men-
guak Luka Masyarakat Beberapa Aspek Seni Rupa
Kontemporer Indonesia Sejak 1966 [Exposing soci-
ety’s wounds: Aspects of contemporary Indonesian
art since 1966] (Jakarta: Gramedia Pustaka Utama,
1997), 25.
38 Sudarmadji, Dari Saleh Sampai Aming, Seni Lukis
Indonesia Baru dalam Sejarah dan Apresiasi [From
Saleh to Aming, an appreciation of new Indonesian
painting and its history] (Yogyakarta: Sekolah Tinggi
Seni Rupa Indonesia “ASRI” Yogyakarta, 1974), 75.
Author’s translation.
39 Miklouho-Maklai, op. cit., 28.
40 See Kenneth M. George, Melukis Islam: Amal dan
Etika Seni Islam di Indonesia [Picturing Islam: Art
and ethics in a Muslim lifeworld] (Bandung: Mizan,
2012), 21.
own way.” The statement not only encouraged
Indonesia’s cultural involvement on the world’s
stage, but also acknowledged that the Indone-
sian national culture project is internationalist.
Within this framework, Indonesian culture is
seen as formed via a continuous interaction
with the world, a heritage continued “in our
[Indonesia’s] own way.”31
Several months later, LEKRA was founded
in Jakarta on 17 August 1950. At the begin-
ning, LEKRA avoided hostility with foreign
cultures: “The essence of progressive foreign
cultures will be acquired for the progress of the
culture of the Indonesian people.”32 In the en-
suing years, artists from LEKRA, often believed
to be affliated with the Indonesian Commu-
nist Party (Partai Komunis Indonesia, PKI), re-
formulated realism into a 1–5–1 guide, to cre-
ate integration between the artist and the peo-
ple. The 1–5–1 guide consisted of: a principle
of treating “politics as commander”; 5 guides
to creation, which were breadth and height,
high-quality ideology and aesthetics, combin-
ing tradition with cutting-edge contemporary
notions, combining the creativity of the in-
dividual with the wisdom of the masses, and
combining revolutionary realism with revolu-
tionary romanticism; and a method of work,
which was to practise tiga kesamaan (the three
similarities method): working, eating and liv-
ing in the same manner as poorer farmers and
labourers.33
Entering the 1960s, the confrontation
became messier after a number of intellectu-
als, painters and poets declared the Manifes
Kebudayaan (Cultural Manifesto) in 1963. 38
people from art and journalism circles signed
the manifesto, including ITB lecturers Kaboel
Suadi, A.D. Pirous, Sanento Yuliman, Gandjar
Sakri, Imam Boechori, Aceng Arif and Sunar-
yo, among others.34 The manifesto followed
universal humanist values, was viewed as op-
positional to LEKRA’s beliefs, and was a source
of confict between the two groups. In 1964,
when the Bandung school announced their
support for the Manifes Kebudayaan, accusa-
tions of being Western lackeys arose.
The rejection and criticism regarding ab-
stract and Cubist styles intensifed. This issue
was no longer a problem between academies
in Bandung and Yogyakarta, but a problem on
the national political stage. In the 1964 Na-
tional Conference of Art and Literature, D.N.
Aidit, head of PKI, cursed: “Abstractionism
in the felds of literature and art are forms of
aggression of imperialistic culture, conducted
through agencies such as USIS, The American
Center for Culture, Field Service, Peace Corps
and so on.”35
The situation came to a head in May 1964
when President Sukarno banned the Mani-
fes Kebudayaan, accusing it of neocolonialism
and rampant Westernism. The ban received
wide support, particularly from LEKRA art-
ists. Afterwards, the debate about the character
of Indonesian art and culture waned. Quite a
few groups asserted that during this period, the
communists and left-leaning artists were pre-
Confict and Denial
paring to emerge as winners.36 Then, on 30
September 1965, a bloody coup involving the
Army, PKI and President Sukarno occurred.
Indonesian Painting Does Not Exist
Events in the art world after the 1965 coup,
which killed thousands of people accused of
communism, were marked by the victory of
universal humanism, a celebration of individ-
ual expression and the desire to develop wider
international relations in art, which were pre-
viously silenced by the Sukarno administra-
tion.37 Critic Sudarmadji welcomed the new
era, naming it “an era of freedom in creating
art.”38 The face of art post-1965 showed a
strong tendency to explore new things, mixing
traditional art aesthetics with the language of
modern painting. We can see this tendency in
the works of senior painters such as Sudjojono,
Affandi, Agus Djaya, Otto Djaya, G.A. Sukir-
no, Surono, Mochtar Apin, Soedibio, Sudarso,
Hariadi S., Dullah, Barli, Popo Iskandar, Oes-
man Effendi, Zaini, Baharudin Marasutan, Na-
shar, Rusli, Kusnadi, and a number of others.39
Meanwhile, it is important to remember
the adversity and brutal violence experienced
by left-leaning artists and writers after the
1965 coup.40 Painter Hendra Gunawan was
jailed for 12 years at Bandung’s Kebon Waru
prison, while a darker fate met Trubus Sudar-
sono, who remains missing to this day. Basuki
Resobowo painted in exile in the Netherlands,
where he died. The elimination of left-leaning
artists from the arena did not, however, quash
the East‒West debate. In 1969, the debate re-
surfaced, still revolving around the character of
Indonesian painting, and captured the atten-
tion of artists and critics. It continued to do so
up to the 1990s.
The debate began with a lecture by Oes-
man Effendi (1919–1985) on 27 August 1969
at the Art Discussion Night held at the Indo-
nesian-American Friendship Institute (Lem-
baga Pendidikan Indonesia-Amerika, LPIA). In
181
 contrast to his position in the 1950s, Effendi
stated that Indonesian painting did not yet ex-
ist as there was no “Indonesian stamp” or iden-
tity consisting of national characteristics that
defned Indonesian art and culture. Painting in
Indonesia was merely an imitation of Western
painting—the result of following a teacher—
and painters were just serving the market. This
provocative statement quickly induced reac-
tions. Critic Dan Suwaryono demanded that
Effendi prove the existence of Indonesian art or
lack thereof via scientifc methods.41 Cultural
fgure Umar Kayam also responded to the is-
sue, refuting Effendi’s declaration and asserting
that “Indonesian art does exist, as it exists to-
day—paintings with all its scribbles.”42 Kayam
also highlighted the importance of realising
that Indonesian art was a new culture still un-
dergoing development, and stood apart from
traditional culture.
Conversely, writer D.S. Moeljanto appre-
ciated the courage and honesty of Effendi:
Therefore it is correct as Oesman Effendi
has stated, that when we had achieved
our independence in 1946, when Young
Artists Indonesia (SIM) was founded, we
had travelled [along] the correct path, but
afterwards until today, our compass for
painting [has been] pointing in the wrong
direction.43
Moeljanto also reminded readers that this
was not a new debate:
Problems as stated by painter Oesman Ef-
fendi [are] actually not […] new issue[s]
in the history of discussing Indonesian
painting. The issue of development in In-
donesian painting has long been discussed
by our art critics, even becoming topics
in seminars, discussions or debates. […]
“[T]he existence or not of Indonesian
painting” once was a hot topic in a 1956
seminar in Yogyakarta. At the time, paint-
182 Aminudin TH Siregar
ing fgures such as S. Sudjojono, Hendra
Gunawan, Affandi, Trisno Sumardjo, Sud-
joko, Amrus Natalsja, and Widayat faced
each other and defended their opinions
and standing about “the history of Indo-
nesian art.”44
Painter Rusli expressed surprise that Effen-
di was still making an issue of the “Indonesian
stamp” in art. He believed one was an Indone-
sian painter if they had an Indonesian passport,
and stated: “Art must be free. Art should not be
held back by ties of tradition, nationalism and
so on. Because the existence of such ties will
only paralyse the artist to the point [that] he
cannot create.”45
Effendi did not stop there. His belief in
the absence of Indonesian style in painting was
restated in his lecture at the November 1969
Jakarta Art Festival II at Taman Ismail Marzu-
ki, two months after his lecture at LPIA which
frst triggered the debate. By considering terms
like “painting,” “painting in Indonesia,” “In-
donesia,” “painters or artists,” “infuence” and
“modern painting,” Effendi tracked the devel-
opment of painting from the pre-Japanese, Jap-
anese and post-independence eras. After this,
he claimed, Indonesian painting began to lose
direction: “Indonesian painting has lost its way.
While all this time—regardless of its values—it
is based on the impulses of the heart, and the
movement of the spirit, lately, many external
factors have also defned its direction.”46
Effendi did not specify precisely which
external factors could divert the direction of
Indonesian painting. However, we can guess
that they are closely related to actors in the
Indonesian art scene such as collectors, critics
and galleries. Effendi touched on this issue of
external intervention: he called it “judgement
from foreigners,” and saw them as meddling
in the development of painting by providing
help to Indonesia. In Effendi’s view, these “for-
eigners” assumed: “Since this is a new nation,
it must be brought forward. Prove it. Support.
41 Dan Suwaryono, “Quo Vadis Oesman Effendi?”
[Where are you going Oesman Effendi?], Kompas,
6 October 1969.
42 Umar Kayam, Kompas, 1 September 1969. Author’s
translation.
43 D.S. Moeljanto, Suara Merdeka, 23 September 1969.
Author’s translation.
44 Ibid.
45 Rusli, Sinar Harapan, 1 October 1969. Author’s trans-
lation.
46 Oesman Effendi’s lecture “Seni Lukis di Indonesia
Dulu dan Sekarang” [Painting in Indonesia, past and
present] was presented at Diskusi Seni Rupa Pesta
Seni Jakarta II, 7 and 8 November 1969 at the Exhibi-
tion Room of di PKJ-TIM, Jakarta Art Council. Excerpt
taken from Moetidjo & Hafz, op. cit., 11. Author’s
translation.
47 Effendi in Moetidjo & Hafz, ibid., 19.
48 Ibid.
Buy. Invite. Giving sweet criticism, you must
know, is an incomprehensible manifestation
that a nation that did not know anything yes-
terday, could magically create something that
looks exactly like ours.”47
Effendi believed the “Indonesian stamp”
of identity would be attained on its own if the
artist diligently and humbly created, following
the calling of his spirit. Effendi also believed
that the landscape and environment of the art-
ist’s surroundings would infuence his artistic
style, although this process would take time.
Eventually, artists would discover their artistic
identity and at a certain level of maturity, In-
donesian painting would surface. He summed
up his position thus: “Therefore, I believe, In-
donesian painting is still growing, but does not
exist yet, as it is in the process of discovering
its unique form.”48 Critic Sudarmadji voiced
his support of Effendi’s position, asserting that
“painting as we know it today, painting upon
canvas and enjoyed without any relation with
religious, mystical ceremonies, is an sich [per
se] a Western infuence.”49
Confict and Denial
49 Sudarmadji, “Indonesian Modern Art,” in Sinar Hara-
pan, 12 October 1974, unpaginated. Author’s trans-
lation.
50 S. Sudjojono, “Seni Lukis Indonesia Telah Ada Sejak
Abad-7” [Indonesian painting existing since the 7th
century], Kompas, 29 August 1979. Sudjojono had
also stated his disagreement in response to Effendi’s
statement two years prior, also in Kompas. According
to him, acknowledgement of the existence of Indone-
sian art had already come from France in 1947. See
S. Sudjojono, “Seni Lukis Batik Kontemporer Juga
Termasuk Seni Lukis” [Contemporary batik painting
is also considered art], Kompas, 13 August 1977. In it,
he stated: “We should not make a problem of identity.
We will discover it as we go.” Both quotations trans-
lated by the author.
51 S. Sudjojono, “Jangan Ributkan Soal Orisinalitas!”
[Do not argue about the problem of originality!],
Kompas, 4 November 1977. Author’s translation.
Sudjojono, however, naturally disputed
Effendi:
That is nonsense! If there are Indonesian
painters, and they have works, have the
vocabulary and these Indonesian painters
are of a good social standing, then the life
of Indonesian painting does exist. And if
the life of Indonesian painting exists, how
could one say Indonesian painting does
not?50
Sudjojono, who rebutted Hopman in 1947,
strongly believed that painting in Indonesia had
existed since the 7th century and developed clear-
ly until the 14th century. From that point on-
wards, however, Indonesian painting had its ups
and downs. Sudjojono ventured that to prove its
existence, “One did not need to search as far as
the rural areas to locate Indonesian painting.”51
Mara Karma, a painter, attempted to fnd
the middle ground. He thought that Effendi’s
statement was not a manifesto, not even a state-
ment meant to act as a new premise of the dis-
183
 52 Mara Karma, “Oesman Effendi dan ‘Tjap’-nja” [Oes-
man Effendi and his “stamp”], Harian Kami, October
1969. Author’s translation.
53 Sides Sudyarto D.S., “Seni Lukis Indonesia Merin-
dukan Pengadilan” [Indonesian painting demands
for a trial], Kompas, 31 December 1974. Author’s
translation.
54 Oesman Effendi, “Orang Sederhana dari Pedalaman”
[Ordinary people from the hinterland], Tempo, 16 April
1977. Excerpt taken from Moetidjo & Hafz, op. cit., 7.
55 Soedarso S.P., “Isu Tentang Keindonesiaan Bangkit
Lagi” [The issue of Indonesian-ness rises again].
Taken from clippings of Laporan Bentara Budaya,
March 1985 (no other publication details are avail-
able). Author’s translation.
course surrounding Indonesian painting. He
also believed the statement was not the intro-
duction of a new school of thought:
What came out of his mouth that night
at LPIA last September was merely a slip
of the tongue. Oesman Effendi quietly
admitted this to people or friends whom
he thought he could talk with discreetly.
Apparently, Effendi himself did not realise
what he said at that time. Despite having
a concept beforehand, when the time to
speak came, he forgot about it. What came
later—says the storyteller—were “voices”
that came from within him. That is how
this controversial statement came about.52
The charge about the lack of an “Indone-
sian stamp” in painting, as levelled by Hopman
in 1947 and Effendi in 1969, became a latent
problem, prone to surfacing at any time. In the
mid-1970s, poet Sides Sudyarto D.S. began his
report:
Approaching the end of 1974, an old ques-
tion proposed by an Oesman Effendi re-
mains alive in offcial and unoffcial discus-
184 Aminudin TH Siregar
56 S. Sudjojono, “Seni Rupa yang Menjawab Tantan-
gan Masa Kini” [Art that challenges the present], a
lecture presented at the symposium Indonesian Art
Today, 10–28 June 1985. Author’s translation.
57 Sanento Yuliman, “Mencari Indonesia dalam Seni
Lukis Indonesia” [Looking for Indonesia in Indonesian
Art], Budaya Djaya, November 1969 as republished
in Dua Seni Rupa: Sepilihan Tulisan Sanento Yuliman
[Two Arts: The compilation of Sanento Yuliman’s
papers], ed. Asikin Hasan (Jakarta: Yayasan Kalam,
2001), 65–6. Author’s translation.
58 Based on Jim Supangkat & Sanento Yuliman, G. Sid-
harta di Tengah Seni Rupa Indonesia [G. Sidharta in
the midst of Indonesian art] (Jakarta: Gramedia,
1982), 29–32. Author’s translation.
sions: “What defnes Indonesian painting?”
And the answers, of course, are not all in
agreement with the painter, humble as he
is, but has received a lot of bad sentiment
by saying “Indonesian painting does not
exist.” It seems that any answer is not suff-
cient. In reality, the opinion that questions
the existence of Indonesian painting has
flled every pore of consciousness of the ob-
servers and enthusiasts of our painting.53
Over seven years later, Effendi himself con-
tinued to comment on the matter:
In previous years I said that there is no “In-
donesian stamp,” as I saw the tendencies in
painting based on thoughts that originate
from outside us. Man is the child of his en-
vironment. Picasso, for instance, said to be
accepted all over the world, could not re-
lease himself from Spanish lands. For me,
land is the same as the blood of the men
living upon it.54
Effendi felt that the shapes on the canvas could
lead one to the development of Indonesian
characteristics. It was these basics that were
more apparent in Western painting and absent
in Indonesian painting, and that had yet to be
explored by Indonesian painters.
Several years later, this issue remained up
for debate. At a workshop titled Temu Seniman
(The artists’ gathering) at Purna Budaya, Yog-
yakarta in February 1985, art academic Soedar-
so S.P. brought up “Oesman Effendi’s denial,”
elaborating on the issue:
People everywhere are in confusion in
the search to discover what is the feeling,
meaning and characteristics that are Indo-
nesia. I believe Indonesian painting already
exists; yet we are still formulating it, on
what defnes Indonesian painting. If it has
not been discovered, we should not say it
does not exist. The paintings have existed
for a while, so why should we say Indone-
sian painting does not exist?55
Meanwhile, in a lecture in Solo during the
mid-1980s, Sudjojono continued to respond
seriously to Effendi:
Indonesian painting exists. So if Oesman
Effendi says that Indonesian painting does
not exist, it is incorrect […] as the na-
tion of Indonesia accepted PERSAGI as a
national movement, and its artist mem-
bers strengthened the spirit of nationalism
through their work, therefore the art be-
longs to us. It is a tool of our expression,
to express our thoughts. It is the literature,
poetry and kinanti [song] of our nation. So
our art is once again used after being for-
gotten for centuries, in a new form with an
impressive style and creative power. This
symptom is an atavism, [a return to] a
characteristic heritage resulting from hun-
dreds of years of the nation’s culture.56
Of the various reactions, critic Sanento
Yuliman framed the fact of the matter with
greater clarity. He stated: “The new painting
Confict and Denial
developing in Indonesia is undeniably ‘Indo-
nesian Painting.’ It means it is shaped by the
historical legacy of Indonesia. True, it does not
stand frm as it relies on weak support pillars. It
is isolated in the large cities, further isolated to
[only be] part of the educated and rich.”57
Effendi had become increasingly lonely
since his declaration that “Indonesian painting
does not exist” sparked rigorous debate. He was
attacked from all sides and criticised for being
blind to all the existing developments in paint-
ing. His search for unique, Indonesian char-
acteristics was considered ridiculous in these
modern times. The bulk of Effendi’s thoughts
failed to engage or be understood: people
latched on to only this notion of “unique
characteristics,” taking it to mean anything
originating from Indonesia, such as cultural
products which were then placed on canvasses.
There was even a quip that one just needed to
place the red and white fag on the canvas to
make the painting “Indonesian.”58
During the anti-communist New Order
regime, abstract painting grew in popular-
ity and received strong political endorsement,
thanks to support from the Bandung school
of thought. The style was deemed innocuous,
apolitical and did not represent anything from
reality; the canvas was seen as a fat plane that
must be freed from the narrative needs of the
artist. Aside from being associated with moder-
nity, abstract paintings were considered congru-
ent with the spirit of the nation’s development.
Such art had no diffculty fnding homes in the
houses of the rich and offces of private and
government-owned enterprises. These paint-
ings, which were actually diffcult to under-
stand, were suddenly associated with the intel-
lectual capacity of the artist and the appreciator.
This was most likely politically engineered, to
subjugate the artistic preferences of the public
and silence the potential for criticism.
Since the abstract style was associated with
modernity, those who did not paint in this style
were considered old-fashioned or obsolete. In
185
 his frst solo exhibition at Balai Budaya, Jakarta,
at the end of 1968, Sudjojono’s paintings were
mocked for being outdated. “It is strange, that
I am now accused of being not modern, behind
the times, when it was I that encouraged the
development of modern art,” he complained.59
The issues of “modernity in art” and “Indone-
sian modern art” muddied the discourse during
these times. After 1965, the Bandung school of
thought felt that they were following the cor-
rect course: this is Indonesian art! In that as-
pect, Indonesian modern art was very much a
part of the global art community’s belief that
modern art manifested the aspirations of mod-
ern man. This belief was, naturally, regarded as
much too arrogant.
Semsar Siahaan, an artist from a younger
generation, fnally questioned the notion that
Indonesian modern art had succeeded in syn-
thesising ethnic styles with Western abstrac-
tion. His ideas about art were judged as a
refection of the art ideology followed by the
LEKRA artists during the 1950s. Semsar Sia-
haan was a student at ITB who had shocked
the academic world when he burnt to ash a
sculpture by his professor, Sunaryo. He held
that the burning was an event in art and ti-
tled it Oleh-oleh Dari Desa 2 (1981), a protest
against the exploitation of primitive art of eth-
nic minorities by Indonesian modern artists,
especially the artist-professors in the academic
circles of ITB.60
Effendi left Jakarta for his hometown in
West Sumatra, never to publicly comment on
the existence of Indonesian painting again. Yet
he was not alone. There was another artist who
had also questioned the identity of Indonesian
art: Gregorius Sidharta Soegijo, a popular fg-
ure from the West-leaning Bandung school of
thought.61 He elaborated on his concerns in
1971: “Are the thoughts and ways of the West,
the only way to reach today’s art in Indone-
sia? I would like to be free of absolute values.
I would like to search for the local values of
Indonesia.”62
186 Aminudin TH Siregar
The Shadow of Colonialism
Nationalist painters such as Agus Djaya, Sud-
jojono, Suromo, Basuki Resobowo, Baharud-
din Marasutan, Trisno Sumardjo and Oesman
Effendi were, in their time, defenders who
persistently fought attacks directed towards In-
donesian painting. They came to accept West-
ern infuences on art and its prevalence as an
inevitable reality of the times. These painters
realised that Indonesian modern art was nei-
ther a transformation nor a continuation of the
traditional art of any ethnic group.63 New In-
donesian painting, in their view, was an art that
shaped its own traditions and established its
autonomy.64 However, these turn of events and
conclusions were not as simple as we imagine.
During the 18th and 19th centuries, the
Nusantara region was represented by all things
calm, fresh, peaceful and full of romance.
People did not realise that beneath the depic-
tions of lush forests, fertile lands, clear rivers,
open skies and diligent workers toiling in har-
mony, as if all was under control, lay colonial
aggression and the establishment of Western
supremacy. Paintings, lithographic prints and
etchings were flled with the visual vocabulary
of those times and were the roots of the style
popularly known as Mooi Indië (beautiful In-
dies). This would later be vilifed by Sudjojono
in the 1930s; because these were “representa-
tions of the East,” the authentic East could not
be said to exist. “The authentic East,” in these
images, was the East sucked dry by colonial-
ism, oppressed by the expansion of the capi-
talism of Western countries. Painters who were
cognisant of this perspective were encouraged
by Sudjojono in 1939 to also paint sugarcane
factories, skinny farmers, cars owned by the
wealthy, urban fashion and the changing social
realities of Indonesia.
While Sudjojono aggressively discredited
the dogma of colonial painting, he did not
suggest for painters to return to the notion of
the East in their work, being a proponent of
59 Bur Rasuanto, “Pertemuan dengan S. Sudjojono”
[Meeting with S. Sudjojono], Indonesia Raya, no. 253,
15 December 1968. Author’s translation.
60 Miklouho-Maklai, op. cit., 103–6.
61 Supangkat & Yuliman, op. cit., 33.
62 Ibid., 20–35.
“painting that is not searching for the beauty
of past times.”65 To Sudjojono, the “East” was
one that had been frozen into orientalist mu-
seum artefacts, a consequence of Western mo-
dernity that had uprooted art, alienated it from
its people and placed it in museums. Sudjojono
had little faith in such institutions, declaring:
“Museums will not help much.”66 These sus-
picions of Western modernity were justifable,
evinced, he believed, by the inauthenticity of
the East as presented in Jakarta museums, be-
ing merely Western narratives and interpreta-
tions of the East. It is true that the founding
of Eastern nations like Indonesia arose out of
the shadows of Western might in the guise of
colonialism. The political implications of this
attitude of superiority rejected the validity of
any modern order outside the West, subsum-
ing them into Western hegemony. Sudjojono’s
suspicion towards Western modernity was thus
read as suspicion towards Orientalism.
The effects of Effendi’s denial clearly tran-
scended time; every artist in the two decades
following his denial responded to the issue in
his or her own way. The Design Center Asso-
ciation (Decenta) group formed in 1973, for
instance, succeeded in creating a synthesis of
East and West through their work in silkscreen
and pioneered this technique in the Indonesian
art scene. The experiments and exploration
of ornamentation and mythology, Indonesian
popular culture icons and Pop Art in works by
G. Sidharta, T. Susanto, A.D. Pirous, Diddo
Confict and Denial
63 Sanento Yuliman, “Kelahiran Seni Rupa Modern In-
donesia” [The birth of modern Indonesian art], in
Hasan, op. cit., 55.
64 Hasan, op. cit.
65 Sudjojono, Seni Loekis, Kesenian dan Seniman, 6–9.
66 Ibid., 13–4.
Kusnidar and Priyanto Sunarto from Decenta
were deemed to offer new inspiration to the
young artists.
The discourse surrounding the charac-
ter of Indonesian art resurfaced at the Black
December Manifesto of 1974, questioned by
young artists who were part of the New Art
Movement (Gerakan Seni Rupa Baru, GSRB)
in 1975, and then criticised by the What Per-
sonality (Kepribadian Apa or PiPa) group in
1977. The East‒West discourse continued to
be debated until the early 1990s. The wound
caused by Hopman’s denial in 1947 was reo-
pened 40 years later, when several modern art
museums in Europe and America declined to
exhibit Indonesian modern painting. This re-
jection is clear indication that until the 1990s,
the existence of Indonesian modern painting
remained unacknowledged.
What we understand as the identity of In-
donesian art is full of contradictions and con-
frontations which are diffcult to unravel. Myr-
iad statements attempting to tell what actually
happened and why only succeed in making one
thing clear: the identity of Indonesian art, at its
core, still faces a complex, serious problem. Its
mode of discourse consists of a convoluted web
of acculturation and enculturation processes,
and the sheer amount of participants and ac-
tors involved means every process has to fac-
tor in manifold points of view. A much sharper
structuring and interpretation of its history is
needed in the future.
187
 1 Kevin Chua, “Painting the Nanyang’s Public: Notes
Toward a Reassessment,” in Eye of the Beholder: Re-
ception, Audience and the Practice of Modern Asian
Art, eds. John Clark, T.K. Sabapathy & Maurizio Pel-
eggi (Sydney: Wild Peony, 2006), 74.
2 Toshiko Rawanchaikul, Nanyang 1950–65: Passage
to Singaporean Art (Fukuoka: Fukuoka Asian Art
Museum, 2002), 36.
3 The 1950s and the 1960s form the timeframe of
this essay as this period marked the emergence and
height of social realism in Singapore, when artists
envisioned playing a role in the anti-colonial strug-
gle to create a new national culture and identity
imagined as Malaya. Singapore and Malaya were
imagined as sharing a common Malayan culture in
the 1950s until 1965, when Singapore became in-
dependent. First published in 1963, Marco Hsu’s A
Brief History of Malayan Art was a product of this
(14)
Lim Hak Tai Points a Third Way: Towards a Socially Engaged Art
by the Nanyang Artists, 1950s–1960s
Seng Yu Jin
To the Equator Society, the Nanyang paint-
ers must have lacked a certain realism in their
work—their paintings were disengaged from so-
cial reality, and did not speak to the public sphere.
In part the rejection was born of the exigencies of
their moment: by the late 1950s “Western” modes
of painting seemed too compromised, too tainted
with memories of a colonialist past.1
Kevin Chua, 2006
Among the Equator Art Society, some do not be-
lieve the art that they pursued can be categorised
as being part of Nanyang art. However, isn’t the
gaze directed toward the local Malay, their pecu-
liar customs and poverty in the countryside the
same gaze towards the aborigine and their cus-
toms in peripheral areas like Bali? Perhaps the
188 Charting Thoughts
striving towards a Malayan culture. Marco Hsu, A
Brief History of Malayan Art, trans. Lai Chee Kien
(Singapore: Millennium Books, 1999), 101.
4 There have been competing, and at times confus-
ing, terms used to describe this group of artists
(and their artworks) as “Nanyang artists,” “Nanyang
School,” “Nanyang art,” Nanyang movement” and
“Nanyang style.” There are nuanced differences in
each of these terms. “Nanyang School” implies a
loose grouping of artists associated with a particu-
lar institution, such as an art academy or society,
with a shared stylistic and aesthetic direction dis-
cernable in their artworks. “Nanyang movement” is
broader than the “Nanyang School” as it suggests a
stylistic movement and common aesthetic evident
in a group of artists. “Nanyang style” is a much nar-
rower defnition based on a specifc set of formal
qualities that are common in the practices of a
artist who pursued social themes took these sub-
jects under their gaze, turned works that are based
on reality at times, and at other times turned into
works full of Nanyang sensibility.2
Toshiko Rawanchaikul, 2002
Marco Hsu gave a contemporary account of
the Equator Art Society, which was established
in 1956 in Singapore, and other realist artists
active in the 1950s and 1960s in Malaya as
sharing “a common melancholic tone and re-
alist tenor expressing the anger, sadness, and
injustice for the unfortunate.”3 Artist and art
historian Redza Piyadasa cites Chung Cheng
Sun, a graduate of Nanyang Academy of Fine
Arts (NAFA), as recalling a group of realist
painters such as Lim Yew Kuan, Chua Mia Tee
 group of artists. This essay adopts the use of “Nan-
yang artists” to refer to a loose grouping of artists,
most of whom emigrated to Singapore and Malaya
from China, either before or soon after World War
II. (Although this was the general trend, it does not
preclude the possibility of Chinese artists who emi-
grated to other parts of Southeast Asia, such as the
Philippines. The region was conceived broadly as
the “Nanyang” [South Seas], a general geographical
direction relative to China.) These artists produced
a new art form that this essay terms as “Nanyang
art,” characterised by a synthesis of practices from
Chinese ink painting and the School of Paris (move-
ments/styles associated with Paris such as Cub-
ism and Post-Impressionism), as well as local and
regional subject matter. Redza Piyadasa, “The Nan-
yang Academy of Fine Arts,” in Pameran Retrospek-
tif Pelukis-Pelukis Nanyang, eds. T.K. Sabapathy &
and Lee Boon Wang who had graduated from
NAFA. Although these realists had been under
the tutelage of the Nanyang artists at NAFA,
their works were radically different compared
to their teachers.4 According to Chung, these
Equator Art Society artists and social real-
ists were “responsible for emphasising a more
socially oriented approach toward creativity,
based on the depiction of the harsh realities of
everyday life devoid of any romantic or senti-
mental implication.”5 However, are we certain
that the Nanyang artists did not produce works
that were socially engaged?6 Hungry (fg. 14.1), a
painting by Cheong Soo Pieng, one of the lead-
ing Nanyang artists, challenges this view of the
Nanyang artists as socially disengaged. In the
work, a boy is depicted holding a scrap of food
in his hands. His misery is registered in his ex-
pression as he looks dejectedly at the morsel of
food he has, insuffcient to satiate his hunger.
Painted in 1950, Hungry depicts an ubiquitous
scene in a Singapore that was recovering from
the ravages of World War II and the Japanese
Occupation. Food was scarce and many build-
ings were in the midst of being rebuilt, just as
its people were rebuilding their own lives. Hun-
gry is an example of a socially engaged work,
Lim Hak Tai Points a Third Way
Redza Piyadasa (Kuala Lumpur: Muzium Seni Ne-
gara, 1979), 33.
5 Ibid. Lim Yew Kuan was cited by Marco Hsu as one of
the important artists connected to the founding of
the Equator Art Society. See Hsu, op. cit., 103. How-
ever, there is no evidence of Lim Yew Kuan’s works
being shown at the Equator Art Society exhibitions.
This could be due to Lim’s departure from Singapore
in 1957 to further his studies at the Chelsea School
of Art in London.
6 Art historian and curator Low Sze Wee proposed
that both the Nanyang artists and artists who pro-
duced social realist works could be considered
as proponents of Nanyang art. Please refer to Low
Sze Wee, “Lim Hak Tai—Art and Life,” in Crossing Vi-
sions—Singapore and Xiamen: Lim Hak Tai and Lim
Yew Kuan Art Exhibition (Volume on Lim Hak Tai) (Sin-
gapore: Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts, 2011), 38.
painted with empathy—Cheong’s bold, thick
and richly layered brushstrokes capture the in-
tensity of his emotional response to the plight
of this boy who represents the multitude of
other similarly suffering children Cheong must
have seen daily. A crescent moon shining on
the boy, in the atmosphere of a dark night, illu-
minates his desperate situation—a reality that
cannot be ignored and forgotten. It is hardly
possible to describe a painting like Hungry as
romantic, idealised and disengaged from the
reality of society.
In light of Cheong’s Hungry, are there oth-
er works by the Nanyang artists that are also so-
cially engaged and if so, how do we account for
them art historically? To reconsider the oeuvre
of Nanyang art to include works that are so-
cially engaged demands that we scrutinise the
art historical discourse on both Nanyang art
and social realism in Singapore. In this regard,
Piyadasa’s dominant narrative of the social re-
alists and the Nanyang artists deserves closer
study. According to Piyadasa, the social realists
adopted a socially engaged artistic practice as
their subject matter focused on themes such as
social inequalities and injustices faced by the
working classes, thereby rejecting the works of
189
 7 T.K. Sabapathy, “The Nanyang Artists: Some General
Remarks,” in Pameran Retrospektif Pelukis-Pelukis
Nanyang, 44.
8 Various terms like “Nanyang style,” “Nanyang
School,” “Nanyang movement” and “Nanyang art”
have been used when referring to this group of art-
ists and their practices and need further research.
9 For an understanding of the history of Socialist Re-
alism, refer to Andrei Zhdanov, “From Speech at the
First All-Union Congress of Soviet Writers 1934,”
in Modernism: An Anthology of Sources and Docu-
the Nanyang artists, including Lim Hak Tai,
Cheong Soo Pieng, Chen Chong Swee, Liu
Kang and Georgette Chen, as being “romantic
and sentimental.” This narrative of the social
realist artists was frst constructed in Piyadasa’s
writings published in the exhibition catalogue
of Pameran Retrospektif Pelukis-Pelukis Nan-
yang, the seminal frst survey exhibition on
Nanyang art held at the Muzium Seni Negara
Malaysia in 1979. This narrative has been per-
petuated in art historical discourses since. Art
historian Ken Chua’s assessment of the Nan-
yang artists as making pictures that lacked re-
alism and were disengaged from social reality
reinforces Piyadasa’s narrative of the adversarial
aesthetic and even political positions of the
Equator and Nanyang artists. T.K. Sabapathy,
a leading art historian on the Nanyang artists,
in an illuminating pictorial analysis, describes
the Nanyang artists’ representational schema
as “using styles and techniques derived from
two sources: Chinese pictorial traditions, and
the School of Paris.”7 Sabapathy’s representa-
tional schema of “scroll meets easel” explains
Nanyang art as synthesising the pictorial sche-
ma of Chinese ink painting (in the hanging
and hand scroll formats), and techniques and
brushstrokes from the School of Paris (domi-
nated by avant-garde styles such as Cubism,
190 Seng Yu Jin
ments, eds. Vassiliki Kolocotroni, Jane Goldman &
Olga Taxidou (Chicago: The University of Chicago
Press, 1998), 525. The Soviet Union endorsed Social-
ist Realism as the offcial art style of the Soviet state
in 1932.
10 As this essay is focused on socially engaged Nan-
yang art (as a discrete body of works and category),
rather than Socialist Realism, the strategies of So-
cialist Realism employed by Singapore artists in the
1950s and 1960s will have to be left for future re-
search.
Fauvism and abstraction), which were based on
the easel format.8 Circumscribing Nanyang art
chiefy in these two pictorial schemas supports
Piyadasa’s view of the Nanyang artists and the
social realist artists as two opposing groups as
it excludes the possibility of a socially engaged
Nanyang art based on realism.
Curator Toshiko Rawanchaikul questions
the dominant art historical discourse that has
established the Equator and Nanyang artists as
adopting mutually exclusive artistic and aes-
thetic positions: the former based on a socially
oriented realism and the latter on romanticised
representations of local and regional subject
matter using representational schemas from
Eastern and Western pictorial traditions. She
questions and problematises the paradoxical
aesthetic position taken by the Equator art-
ists who were equally guilty—as the Nanyang
artists—of their romanticised representations
of “the Other.” But is this necessarily a con-
tradiction given that the work of the artists of
the Equator Art Society could also have been
described as Nanyang art as suggested by Raw-
anchaikul?
This essay looks at the distinction between
Nanyang artists and Equator artists by exam-
ining the writings and works of Lim Hak Tai,
the frst principal and founder of NAFA. An
analysis of Lim’s ideas that bridge the seemingly
oppositional aesthetics posits him as an inter-
locutor between the two groups of artists. Lim’s
call to depict the “realities of the South Seas,”
(the term “South Seas” is a reference to Nan-
yang), provides a possible third way: a socially
engaged form of Nanyang art, besides the other
two sources derived from Chinese ink paint-
ing and the School of Paris as formulated by
Sabapathy.
This essay challenges rigid categories like
Nanyang artists and social realist artists as be-
ing mutually exclusive. For example, pioneers
of Nanyang art such as Cheong Soo Pieng
are known to have produced socially engaged
woodcuts in the early 1950s. The category of
Nanyang artists is also problematic as artists
like Tan Tee Chie produced both Nanyang art,
as seen in his romanticised Chinese ink land-
scapes of the region, and also woodcuts that
depict local social realities. In addition, not all
the social realist artists were members of the art
societies that advocated social realism in the
1950s and 1960s like the Equator Art Society
and/or the Singapore Chinese High Schools’
Graduates of 1953 Arts Association (hence-
forth in this essay, the SCHSGAA); an example
being Choo Keng Kwang. Furthermore, while
most of the prominent artists in the Equa-
tor Art Society were graduates of NAFA, the
academy was not affliated with the society. As
such, this essay argues that such categories are
problematic when applied rigidly in our under-
standing of social realism and Nanyang art.
Socially engaged Nanyang art is distin-
guished from the social realism of the Equa-
tor artists. Socially engaged Nanyang artists
depict social realities, such as the suffering of
labourers, to raise social awareness without
participating in or forming an artists’ society
with a manifest desire to pursue sociopoliti-
cal aims, such as independence from colonial
rule. Nonetheless, this essay asserts that both
the Nanyang and social realist artists share a
common concern for social issues as seen in
Lim Hak Tai Points a Third Way
their artworks. Socially engaged Nanyang art
and social realism are, in turn, distinct from
Socialist Realism; the latter seeks not to gener-
ate social awareness or effect social change but
to glorify, propagandise and “depict the revo-
lutionary development” of a communist state
as it transforms into an ideal Communist so-
ciety.9 A nuanced understanding of concepts
such as socially engaged Nanyang art, social
realism and Socialist Realism is important in
unpacking the contradictions in why there is
evidence of social engagement in the works of
the Nanyang artists and why there are only a
few instances of what can be considered social
realist works produced by the Equator Art So-
ciety. The majority of the paintings exhibited
at the six Equator Art Society annual exhibi-
tions (from its frst exhibition in 1958 to its
last exhibition in 1968) were academically re-
alistic still lifes, portraits and landscapes. Social
realist paintings such as Chua Mia Tee’s Epic
Poem of Malaya and National Language Class,
Lee Boon Wang’s Indian Workers and Lai Kui
Fang’s Bedok Flood were exceptions rather than
the rule. These paintings are considered social
realist rather than Socialist Realist as they do
not glorify a communist leader or a communist
state. Instead, these works seek to evoke a desire
for social action by involving the viewer not as
a passive observer but as an active subject in
the picture, a part of it and inspired with agen-
cy for social change. However, the technical
competence and conceptual maturity required
to produce such social realist works meant that
only a few artists in the Equator Art Society
were able to produce these works successfully.
This distinction of exciting a desire for social
action, for change, in social realist works dis-
tinguishes it from socially engaged Nanyang
art that only seeks to raise social awareness in
the viewer.10 Lastly, this essay will unpack the
concepts of “reality of the ‘South Seas’” and to
“depict the localness of the place we live in”
as cardinal directions set by Lim Hak Tai that
Piyadasa and Sabapathy have attributed as aes-
191
 11 Sabapathy notes that the “Nanyang style” is not nec-
essarily synonymous with NAFA as there were artists
who produced Nanyang art outside of the academy.
See Sabapathy & Piyadasa, eds., op. cit., 32–43.
12 Refer to fgure 2, a schema of the two trajectories
of Nanyang art, the “aesthetic Nanyang art” and the
“socially engaged Nanyang art.”
13 Lim Hak Tai, “Art and Life,” Chinese transcript of a
speech frst broadcast on local radio and later tran-
scribed and published in The Father of Nanyang Art:
Lim Hak Tai (Kuala Lumpur: Malaysia Art Academy
Asia Research Centre, 1991). An English version of
thetic frames for Nanyang art.11 Sabapathy’s
framing of the “scroll and easel” (where Nan-
yang artists synthesised representational sche-
mas from Chinese ink painting and the School
of Paris) provides an important framework for
understanding Nanyang art that focuses on
formal experimentation without social engage-
ment. This essay will use the term “aesthetic
Nanyang art” to describe this body of work.
This essay will also examine the third source
proposed by Lim in his writings and artworks.
These materials provide entry points to map
similar socially engaged practices and artworks
by Nanyang artists that have been overlooked
in current scholarship on Nanyang art (fg.
14.2).12 This essay conceives socially engaged
Nanyang art, not as a style that is primarily vis-
ual, formal and perceptual, but one which con-
ceptually and cognitively, through allegories,
symbols and metaphors, make visible the “real-
ity of the South Seas,” and engages with the
public sphere, comprising the working class,
rather than the social and economic elites.
Lim Hak Tai Points a Third Way
Art is a refection of social ideology, and therefore
is closely linked to the commercial and industrial
sectors of society. Commercial art is testament to
this. In contrast, art has little relevance to com-
mon labourers and farmers in the past. This is
192 Seng Yu Jin
this transcript translated by Goh Ngee Hui was later
published in Lim Hak Tai: Quintessential Nanyang,
eds. Bridget Tracy Tan & Justin Loke (Singapore:
NAFA, 2009), 75.
14 T.K. Sabapathy, “Hak Tai Points the Way,” in Sources of
Modern Art (Singapore: s.n., 1986), 148–50. In an inter-
view with Redza Piyadasa, Chung Cheng Sun recalls
that Lim Hak Tai believed that their works should re-
fect the “reality of the ‘Southern Seas’” and “localness
of the place.” Chung Cheng Sun as paraphrased in
Redza Piyadasa, “The Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts,”
in Pameran Retrospektif Pelukis-Pelukis Nanyang, 32.
because in a capitalist society, art is viewed as
something decorative, to be enjoyed by the schol-
arly and affuent classes with time on their hands.
But this is not the case in new art movements.13
Lim Hak Tai, 1949
Lim Hak Tai was the founder and principal of
NAFA, a pioneer of art education in Singapore
and Malaysia and a visionary who, Sabapathy
argues, provided artistic direction for Nanyang
art based on depicting the “localness of a place”
and the “reality of the South Seas.” Nanyang
art departed from the then predominantly
practised academic realism and traditional
Chinese ink that depicted subject matter from
Europe and China, by representing local con-
texts and conditions instead.14 What has been
overlooked is how Lim played a critical role as
an intellectual force in shaping the social real-
ist movement in Singapore and the social en-
gagement demonstrated in some of the works
produced by the Nanyang artists, including
Lim’s own paintings. Lim’s ideas were crucial
to both the development of NAFA as an art
academy and Nanyang art. As Piyadasa writes,
Chung Chen Sun, a graduate of NAFA, recalls
that Lim’s “greatest infuence lay in his think-
ing” for it was his ideas that attracted students
from all over Singapore and Malaya to study
art at NAFA, which was remarkable consider-
ing the absence of an art market, museum and
15 Piyadasa, ibid.
16 Lim, “Art and Life,” in Lim Hak Tai: Quintessential
Nanyang, 75.
17 This exhibition also travelled to the Federation of
Malaya.
18 Chairman, foreword to Huawen biye ban tongxue
Xingzhou yijiuwusan niandu yishu yanjiuhui zhu-
ban meishu xunhui zhanlan tekan [Singapore
Chinese High Schools’ Graduates of 1953 Arts As-
sociation travelling art exhibition catalogue] exh.
cat. (Singapore: Yishu Yanjiuhui, 1956), 1. Author’s
translation.
other art institutions then to support a career
in art.15 In Art and Life, Lim saw art as a form
of social ideology, and foresaw new art move-
ments that would challenge the capitalist view
of art dominated by the “affuent classes,” as
decorative with “little relevance to common la-
bourers and farmers.”16 Art as a form of social
ideology formed the basis for his idea of a so-
cially engaged Nanyang art that resonated with
the working class rather than the affuent. This
message that was broadcast over radio must
have had a huge impact on the then young art-
ists, who were stirred by nationalist sentiments
against the social injustices of colonialism and
who would later form the socially engaged real-
ist movement with the Equator Art Society at
its centre. He did not have to wait long for this
new art movement—a Social Realist move-
ment—to arrive.
In 1956, the SCHSGAA organised an art
exhibition at the Singapore Chinese Chamber
of Commerce that propelled social realism into
the limelight.17 The foreword of the exhibition
catalogue proclaimed:
Art belongs to society­—it is public, and
should serve the public. We want to re-
fect public life and to produce artistic
form and content that the public likes;
and to create opportunities for our art to
be closer to the public in order for them to
Lim Hak Tai Points a Third Way
19 Hsu noted the SCHSGAA “faced great external obsta-
cles, and it soon ceased to function” and many mem-
bers joined EAS. Hsu, op. cit., 102–3.
20 Art historian Kwok Kian Chow uses the term social
realism to describe the practices of the SCHSGAA
and the Equator Art Society but does not elaborate
on the distinction between the small body of social
realist works and the majority of academically realist
works produced by the Equator Art Society. See Kwok
Kian Chow, Channels and Confuences: A History of
Singapore Art (Singapore: National Heritage Board,
1996).
accept it. Only then will art have life and
shine in this heroic age, which is the aim
of our exhibition!18
The social realist artists in this exhibition
called for art to serve and awaken the politi-
cal consciousness of the working classes, instil
a Malayan nationalism, and depict the social,
political and economic realities of the people.
The artists from the SCHSGAA, an organi-
sation that was subsequently replaced by the
Equator Art Society in 1956, used the broad-
er term “xieshi” or “realism” to describe their
practice of creating realistic works based on ob-
servations of their environment and everyday
phenomena.19 This is an accurate description
of the majority of their works, which include
still lifes, landscapes and portraits. Shehui
xieshi or “social realism” is evident in a minor-
ity of these realist works. This essay uses the
term “social realism” specifcally to refer to a
small body of social realist works that is differ-
ent from the majority of the realist works that
do not engage in social and political critique.20
As such, this essay uses the term “socially en-
gaged realism” instead of social realism or So-
cialist Realism to denote a specifc mode of
realism that engages in social and political cri-
tique that is historically closer to the writings
and ideas of these realist artists. Author Marco
Hsu described the artworks shown in the ex-
193
 21 Hsu, op. cit., 100.
22 The epigraph reads: “Art should not be the grandson of
the nature, or the son of nature but the father of na-
ture,” published in Huawen biye ban tongxue Xingzhou
yijiuwusan niandu yishu yanjiuhui zhuban meishu xun-
hui zhanlan tekan, unpaginated. Author’s translation.
23 Lim Hak Tai, “Using Art as a Finely-Edged Weapon,”
Nanyang Siang Pau, 17 December 1940. In 1940, the
“national” referred to China as most Chinese immi-
grants to Singapore continued to regard China as
their motherland.
24 The original four precepts were recorded in Lim Hak
Tai, preface to First Painting Collections of NAFA
(Singapore: Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts, 1950),
unpaginated. The four precepts are:
1. To spread the culture of our Motherland [“Mother-
land” refers to China]
2. To provide a supplement to overseas Chinese
education
hibition as “mainly realist in nature […]. The
subject of these works is drawn from farming,
workers and public life, with many portraying
the cries of injustice, calls for compassion and
encouragement for unity.”21 It was therefore
not surprising that Lim was invited to write an
epigraph for the SCHSGAA catalogue, show-
ing the high status accorded to him and the
mutual respect between him and the socially
engaged realist artists from the SCHSGAA.22
As early as 1940, Lim was already a leading art
activist, championing support for China which
had been at war with Japan since 1937 (the
Sino-Japanese War of 1937–1945). He wrote
about how art should be used as a weapon for
national salvation: “Art must possess the spirit
of resistance to allow it to become a fnely-
edged weapon, to establish the value of fne
art, and on the other hand to give it depth in
meaning.”23 The concept of art as a “fnely-
edged weapon” would have been embraced by
the social realist artists of the SCHSGAA.
While Lim’s ideas of art as a weapon
gained currency with the social realists, his ide-
194 Seng Yu Jin
3. As a bridge connecting Eastern and Western art
4. To create a Nanyang art
25 Lim Hak Tai, preface to The Art of Young Malayans
(Singapore: NAFA, 1955), 1.
26 Sabapathy, “Hak Tai Points the Way,” 148–50.
27 Toshiko Rawanchaikul notes that it is not clear if the
interest in social themes by the Nanyang artists was
infuenced by the younger generation of social real-
ist artists, or if the opposite is true. Rawanchaikul,
op. cit., 35.
28 David Brett, “On the Possibility of Social Realism,”
Circa, no. 13 (1983): 16.
29 Michael Sullivan, Art and Artists of Twentieth-
Century China (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1996), 80.
30 Refer to David Brett’s essay on the possibilities of
social realism as a strategy that could be extended
to contemporary practices, such as installation art.
See Brett, op. cit., 17.
as on Nanyang art remained infuential as well.
His preface in The Art of the Young Malayans
(1955) represents the accumulation of his ideas
since 1938 concerning Nanyang art. In it, he
presented six precepts, which he had revised
extensively and expanded from the initial four
precepts outlined fve years before.24 It offers
insights into Lim’s views as an art educator and
artist regarding the direction of art in Singa-
pore and demonstrates how his ideas bridge
the ideologies of both the Nanyang artists and
the social realists. Lim’s six precepts are:
1. The fusion of the culture of the different
races
2. The communication of Eastern and
Western art
3. The diffusion of the scientifc spirit and
social thinking of the twentieth century
4. To refect the needs of the peoples of the
Federation of Malaya and Singapore
5. The expression of tropical favour
6. The educational and social functions of
fne art25
 Lim’s ffth precept, “the expression of trop-
ical favour,” has been identifed by Sabapathy
in his essay “Hak Tai Points the Way,” as the
call to Nanyang artists to produce paintings
that embody local and regional subject matter
and aesthetics.26 What has not been discussed
are his third, fourth and sixth precepts in par-
ticular, whose sources can be traced to the May
Fourth Movement that promoted not only sci-
entifc enquiry but also, and more importantly,
the idea that art and society are inseparable.
Lim, who was both a teacher at the Xiamen Art
Academy and the Jimei Teachers’ Training Col-
lege in China before he came to Singapore in
1937 and established NAFA, would have been
exposed to these ideas. Lim’s call for a “scientifc
spirit and social thinking” in precept three, “to
refect the needs of the people in Singapore and
the Federation of Malaya” in precept four, and
the “social function of art” in precept six em-
body the ideologies of the May Fourth Move-
ment that focused on science and the need for
all knowledge, whether scientifc or artistic, to
be socially engaged, regardless of whether in the
realm of ideas (i.e. social thinking), or in eve-
ryday life (i.e. refect the needs of the people
and social function of fne art). Art historical
discourse on Nanyang art as shaped by Saba-
pathy and Piyadasa have located Lim’s ideas (in
particular precepts one to fve) as the wellspring
from which Nanyang artists have developed
their new representational schemas and aesthet-
ics. However, precept six that proposes a so-
cially engaged Nanyang art has been neglected.
Lim’s ideas about socially engaged art form the
conceptual bridge between the Nanyang artists
and the social realist artists as revealed in their
shared strategies expressed through different
narrative modes.27
Lim’s emphasis on social thinking, educa-
tion, the social function of art, and for art to
refect the needs of the people, distinguishes
socially engaged realism from other realisms or
representations of reality. Lim maintained that
social reality is not visual and perceptual, but
Lim Hak Tai Points a Third Way
is instead conceptual, represented in pictorial
form. Social realism goes beyond the represen-
tation of reality, beyond what we see before us,
as social reality cannot be depicted directly. In-
stead, it seeks to apprehend underlying reality,
to reveal the truth as a form of knowledge.28 In
this way, the task of a social realist artist is to de-
velop artistic strategies to create knowledge that
makes visible the otherwise invisible systems of
power that generate and perpetuate social injus-
tices, corruption and inequalities. Lim’s belief in
the role of the artist in society can be seen in
his admiration of Lu Xun, a revolutionary social
realist writer. Lim’s Lu Xun Shrine (fg. 14.3) pays
homage to the writer, who is depicted in a digni-
fed pose as a towering intellectual beside a stack
of books. Lu Xun famously proclaimed, “We
must establish the relationship between art and
social life, its inherent existence and value.”29
Like Lu Xun, Lim regarded art and social life as
inseparable. As such, the social function of social
realist art is education, a means for people to ap-
prehend social realities for themselves. Realism
as a style that is naturalistic and representational
is inadequate for the task of dealing with social
reality. Art has to be socially engaged, and more
importantly, socially critical, which requires a
socially engaged realist artist to adopt concep-
tual strategies that expose these social and politi-
cal structures that institutionalise exploitation
and inequality. The strategies of social realism
cut across stylistic categories of realist or Nan-
yang art, as well as affliations with art societies
and art academies, to include narrative modes
centred on the use of allegories, symbols and
metaphors that will be explicated later in this
essay, evident in a relatively small but signifcant
body of socially engaged artworks produced by
the Nanyang artists in the 1950s and 1960s.30
Allegory, Symbolism and Metaphor
in a Socially Engaged Nanyang Art
Allegory is a rhetorical device that has been
deployed across different art forms such as lit-
195
 erature, music and visual art for its ability to
seem “to be other than what it is. It exhibits
something of the perpetually fuctuating, un-
certain status of the world it depicts.”31 Allego-
ry penetrates social reality to reveal uncomfort-
able tensions and uncertainty as it subverts and
destabilises institutionalised systems of author-
ity.32 More than that, allegory as a strategy “en-
courages its readers not only to aspire towards
some world of perfect fulflment, but to direct
attention to the limited world of which they are
a part.”33 It is a kind of interpretation aligned
with Lim’s precepts of art—to inculcate social
thinking, educate and fulfl art’s social function
of increasing the social and political conscious-
ness of the people. Manifest in symbols, motifs
and metaphors, the use of allegories enables
us to express values and utopian visions of the
world.34
Lim’s call for artists to be guided by the
“social functions of fne art” in his sixth pre-
cept opens up the possibility for a socially en-
gaged Nanyang art. This call was not only re-
stricted to his writings and ideas, it extended to
his artistic practice as well. The Tyranny of Time
(Inner Beauty), painted by Lim in 1954, em-
ploys a surrealist alternate world that critiques
vanity as shown in the picture of the woman
applying lipstick while a skull looms ominous-
ly as her refection in the mirror. The skull, a
symbol of mortality, conveys the message that
the blind pursuit of beauty can only lead to
one’s ruin and death. The refection in the mir-
ror recalls Lim’s earlier statement of how “art
is a refection of society” and as a tool, how
art can be used to effect social change. In The
Tyranny of Time (Inner Beauty), Lim adopts a
form of realism that departs from academic
realism, a faithful verisimilitude as one would
see in the real world. Instead, a surreal world
of dripping red, blue and green paints on the
walls of a dark and forbidding room create the
psychological atmosphere of drug-induced hal-
lucinations that result in shifting perceptions
of reality. After all, beauty cannot last forever
196 Seng Yu Jin
and only inner beauty is timeless. The Tyranny
of Time (Inner Beauty) employs didacticism as
its strategy to produce a socially engaged Nan-
yang art that was critical of society’s obsession
with beauty at the expense of morals and val-
ues. Lim’s use of surreal allegories that were di-
dactic in nature was furthered by his son, Lim
Yew Kuan.
Lim Yew Kuan graduated from NAFA in
the early 1950s and was regarded by Hsu as one
of the key members of the Equator Art Society.
Searching (fg. 14.4), by Lim Yew Kuan, is an alle-
gorical painting of a fctional world that makes
visible the evils of capitalism. In the painting,
a monk, who would have typically renounced
material possessions, is seen counting money in
the left foreground, while a bourgeois couple
is at the right. The couple’s dog is barking at a
barefooted man wearing a torn singlet who is
holding a lit candle at the centre of this picture.
On a literal level, this painting is absurd as the
man is holding a lit candle in broad daylight,
which forces the viewer to ask: What is the man
searching for in this fctional social space? The
candle illumines the reality of social and eco-
nomic inequality and the exploitation of the
working class. The working class itself is repre-
sented by the man holding the candle, who fac-
es the sneering faces of all the other fgures. He
is alone and thus powerless to fght corruption
and greed. The lit candle offers the only pos-
sibility of destabilising this absurd world where
equality and justice are all but absent. Search-
ing and The Tyranny of Time (Inner Beauty),
painted a year apart, can be seen as companion
pictures that adopt didactic allegories for the
betterment of humanity. As can be seen, both
Lim Hak Tai and Lim Yew Kuan were known to
have painted didactic allegories which adhered
to the sixth precept, “education and social func-
tion of art,” to create socially engaged Nanyang
art without romanticising local social realities.
Lim Hak Tai’s strategy of didacticism places a
responsibility on art to educate its viewers and
raise their consciousness of problems in society.
31 Jon Whitman, Allegory: The Dynamics of an Ancient
and Medieval Technique (Cambridge, Massachusetts:
Harvard University Press, 1987), 13.
32 For how allegory is deployed in social realism in the
Philippines, see Patrick D. Flores, “Social Realism:
The Turns of a Term in the Philippines,” Afterall: A
Journal of Art, Context, and Enquiry Issue 34 (Au-
tumn/Winter 2013), 62–75.
33 Ibid.
34 Brett, op cit. 18.
The Mother-and-Child Theme
The 1950s became an important decade in the
history of social realism with the emergence of
the woodcut movement. A Selection of Woodcuts
and Cartoons by Singapore and Malayan Artists,
edited by Ho Kah Leong and Ong Shih Cheng
(pen name Ong Yih) is a catalogue that docu-
ments woodcut’s importance in the art history
of Singapore and Malaya. Both Ho and Ong
were infuenced by Lu Xun in seeing woodcuts
and cartoons as “sister arts,” that could “pro-
vide art for the masses who might not have
time or means to view it in galleries” and bring
about improvements in society through so-
cial change.35 Most of the issues raised by the
works in this landmark book concerns moral-
ity, values, the anti-colonial struggle and Chi-
nese education. The editors were also graduates
of NAFA and would have adhered to Lim’s call
for art to be used as “a forceful weapon.” By
turning to woodcuts and cartoons, they were
engaged in a transactional strategy of social re-
alism: the search for alternative modes of ex-
hibiting beyond galleries, which were viewed as
part of the capitalist process of commodifying
art and alienating “the masses.”36 This trans-
actional strategy seeks to present artworks in a
manner that extends the meaning of the work
beyond itself. The printed media, such as Chi-
Lim Hak Tai Points a Third Way
35 Lim Cheng Tju, “Chinese Cartoons in Singapore:
Chauvinism, Confrontation and Compromise (1950
to 1980),” in Southeast Asian Cartoon Art: History,
Trends and Problems, ed. John A. Lent (North Caro-
lina: McFarland & Company Inc., 2014), 155.
36 Brett, op. cit.,16.
37 Lim Cheng Tju, “Political Prints in Singapore,” Print
Quarterly 21, no. 3 (September 2004): 266–7.
38 Ibid.
nese newspapers, magazines and literary publi-
cations, became an alternative mode of exhibi-
tion initially featuring woodcuts and cartoons
only and which later included paintings as well.
One of the earliest of such publications
was Wenman Jie, an arts supplement of the
Nanyang Siang Pau edited by Dai Yinlang, a
member of the Society of Chinese Artists in
Singapore who promoted woodcuts and car-
toons here.37 Woodcuts and cartoons printed
in newspapers and magazines enabled these
artworks to reach a wider audience beyond a
gallery exhibition to achieve the goals of creat-
ing knowledge and promoting critical thinking
on social and political issues among the public.
More importantly, these artworks were seen in
tandem with similarly thought provoking es-
says that “challenged readers’ conceptions of
art, and introduced new works and ideas to the
masses.”38 Literary supplements such as Geng-
yun and Shidaibao that were critical of politics
and society in Singapore also published wood-
cuts and cartoons.
The fact that Nanyang artists were also
involved in the woodcut movement by creat-
ing their own socially engaged pieces further
complicates the neat distinction between the
Nanyang artists and the social realists. Cheong
Soo Pieng, a leading Nanyang artist, produced
woodcut prints in the late 1940s and early
197
 39 Joyce Fan discusses the repeated theme of the moth-
er and child in woodcuts by Singapore artists, such
as Tan Tee Chie’s Motherhood and Waiting (Beyond
the Wall), as well as Koeh Sia Yong’s Scene at Bukit
Ho Swee Fire, within the context of recognising the
contributions of women towards society, which could
be traced to China’s New Cultural Movement. Joyce
Fan, “Social Commentary in Prints during the 1950s
and Early 1960s,” (master’s thesis, Pratt Institute,
2000), 45–8.
40 On 2 May 1971, the General Manager of Nanyang
Siang Pau, Lee Mau Seng, was detained by Singa-
pore’s Internal Security Department raising con-
cerns over freedom of the press. It should be noted
1950s. Cheong’s early woodcuts have been
largely unremarked upon by scholars, and his
role in the woodcut movement in Singapore
overlooked. Some of Cheong’s woodcuts were
socially engaged, employing the allegorical
mode similarly found in the artworks of other
Nanyang artists.39 Cheong’s (Untitled) Mother
and Child (fg. 14.5) engages with the subject of
the “mother and child” in the late 1940s, de-
rived from imagery of the Madonna and Child
recurrent in Christian iconography. This theme
has been reproduced by artists in Singapore as
it is a universally recognised symbol of selfess
love. In Mother and Child, a forlorn mother
holds her child in her disproportionately large
and rough hands in a warm and maternal em-
brace. The unusually large hands could be in-
spired by Kathe Kollwitz’s woodcuts as artists
in Singapore and Malaya had access to repro-
ductions of her prints through magazines like
Wenman Jie.
Georgette Chen’s East Coast Vendor (fg.
14.6) portrays a Malay mother and her two
daughters, a different take of the mother and
child subject as the three fgures meet directly
with the gaze of the viewer as equals. In Chen’s
198 Seng Yu Jin
that the Nanyang Siang Pau had become more
pro-government in its views after 1965 as seen in
its cartoons making more social, economic and
international commentaries than local political
commentaries.
41 Xiao Gang Zhi Bi (pen name), “Tan yishu de fuwu duix-
iang” [Who art should serve], in the Huawen biye ban
tongxue Xingzhou yijiuwusan niandu yishu yanjiuhui
zhuban meishu xunhui zhanlan tekan, 6. Author’s
translation.
42 Lee Tian Meng, “Three Reasons against the Ideas of
Pablo Picasso,” originally published in SCHSGAA’s
1956 exhibition catalogue and subsequently cited
and translated by Lai Chee Kien in Hsu, op. cit., 101.
painting, these fgures are not romanticised
representations of other ethnic groups. Both
Cheong and Chen are Nanyang artists who
adopted the mother and child as a theme to
socially engage with the realities of the world.
As such, certain works by Cheong and Chen
exhibit a desire for social engagement that share
affnities to artworks by Tan Tee Chie and See
Cheen Tee who could be categorised as either
Nanyang or social realist artists.
Giving Instructions (fg. 15.2) and Three Gen-
erations by Tan and See respectively also adopt
the allegorical strategy of the mother and child
as a symbol to underline the importance of nur-
turing the young. Both artists were graduates of
NAFA and were actively involved in making so-
cially engaged woodcuts even though they were
not members of the EAS. Giving Instructions
portrays a mother and child looking towards a
typical Malayan landscape dotted with coconut
trees. The rays of sunlight radiating outwards
signify a new beginning for the Chinese im-
migrants who have arrived in Singapore. Singa-
pore was in the process of merging with Malaya,
along with Sabah and Sarawak, to achieve in-
dependence from British colonial rule. Seen in
this context, the theme of educating the young
is used as a metaphor of a nation’s hope. This is
also repeated in Three Generations which shows
a child being breastfed while the mother has a
Chinese newspaper known for publishing social
and political criticism, the Nanyang Siang Pau,
open in front of her. The mother’s gaze meets
the grandmother’s and they appear to be having
a conversation.40 Interpreted allegorically, the
breastfeeding can be read as a metaphor for an-
other form of nourishment: a thirst for knowl-
edge about the world and the ability to think
critically as well as the ability to engage in social
and political criticism. The child as a metaphor
for a young nation also suggests an underlying
message of the need for guidance and direction
through education that produces knowledge
framed by nationalist ideologies. It is knowl-
edge that serves social realism’s struggle to create
a new nation whereby art becomes the vehicle
in which critical thinking can be transferred to
the next generation. The use of the mother and
child imagery by the Nanyang artists (including
See and Tan whose practices can be considered
as a hybrid of Nanyang and social realist art)
demonstrates that a socially engaged Nanyang
art as espoused by Lim in his sixth precept (for
art to embody social functions) existed.
Who Art Should Serve
The working class as a cornerstone of socially
engaged art is clearly stated in a collective es-
say titled, “Who Art Should Serve” published
in the SCHSGAA catalogue. Says the essay:
“We should promote nationalistic culture, and
at the same time, for art should serve the work-
ing class, art needs to be courageous in its criti-
cisms to correct the mistakes of artistic direc-
tions taken by other artists, thus re-directing
these artists towards art that serves the working
class.”41 Workers such as coolies, street hawk-
ers, miners, cobblers, rubber tappers, rickshaw
pullers, construction workers and even child
labourers were commonly depicted by social
Lim Hak Tai Points a Third Way
realist artists, appealing to the working classes
who would be familiar with, and who would
be able to empathise with, the hardship that all
labourers share. Beyond the literal depiction of
the everyday life of labourers is the glorifcation
of labourers united as a working class regardless
of gender and ethnicity.
Lim’s Riot (fg. 14.7) captures the tumultu-
ous period of strikes by trade unions and stu-
dents from 1954 to 1955, the most serious of
which was the Hock Lee Bus strike in 1955.
His use of a Cubistic angular fragmented mass
of fgures to depict the scene of a riot expresses
his social awareness of these strikes by workers
fghting for better pay and working conditions.
His choice of style is unusual as Cubism was
discredited by some social realist artists from
the SCHSGAA as being anti-realist. Lee Tian
Meng’s essay, “Three Reasons against the Ideas
of Pablo Picasso” rejected Cubism as a style for
it “denies the heritage of tradition, discards hu-
manity and truth in art, and emphasises hypoc-
risy and anti-realism.”42 Lim’s use of the Cubist
style in Riot to depict labourers and students on
strike reveals his approach of synthesising Cub-
ism (from the School of Paris) with the realities
of local social and political conditions, an ap-
proach that he propagated. The Cubist fgures
depicted in geometric planes of different hues
construct a unifed structure of shapes united
in their belief in social action for change. For
Lim, the ideology of Cubism as being anti-
realist did not matter as he was willing to ex-
periment with different representational sche-
mas, be it Surrealistic or Cubistic to convey his
ideas. In Resting, Chen Wen Hsi similarly de-
picts labourers in the style of Cubism as seen
in the angular geometric forms of their clothes.
These labourers are probably rickshaw pullers as
their hats are similar to the ones typically worn
by rickshaw pullers to shade themselves from
the scorching sun. The rickshaw pullers are de-
picted as huddled up, holding their knees close
to their chests, and they fll the entire picture,
forcing the viewer to engage with the reality of
199
 43 Fan, op. cit., 37.
44 The samsui women are known for forming tightly knit
communities amongst themselves, their strong work
ethic, taking vows not to marry and choosing to live
in poverty than take on jobs that would involve vices,
such as prostitution. It is estimated that 200,000 sam-
sui women came to Singapore to work as construction
or industrial labourers, as well as domestic servants.
45 For a discussion of this body of works depicting rub-
the diffcult working conditions that these rick-
shaw pullers face in post-war Singapore.
The heroic labourer is a recurrent fgure
in allegorical paintings by socially engaged art-
ists. Choo Keng Kwang’s Miners is an example
of how workers were “often endowed with a
strong physique and monumental appearance”
to create a heroic image of the working class.43
Beyond such literal depictions of labour is the
social realist strategy of deploying the heroic
worker as resilient, self-sacrifcing and hard
working to awaken the consciousness of the
working class across ethnicities. Indian Workers
by Lee Boon Wang, an Equator artist, depicts
what appears to be a group of Indian workers
constructing a road under diffcult conditions
in Singapore’s hot climate. This work shares a
similar theme to Liu Kang’s painting, Samsui
Women, of women who mostly came to Sin-
gapore from Guangdong, China, in search of
jobs, even those that involved hard labour.44
A Nanyang artist, Liu Kang depicts the samsui
women as heroic, working tirelessly, some even
barefooted like the woman carrying building
materials up the plank. These samsui women,
who are the embodiment of labour and self-
sacrifce, built Singapore with their own hands.
These paintings send a powerful message of a
multicultural Singapore built by the working
class, regardless of ethnicity or gender.
200 Seng Yu Jin
bish dumps and backyards by Cheong Soo Pieng, re-
fer to Seng Yu Jin and Grace Tng, “Bridging Worlds,” in
Cheong Soo Pieng: Visions of Southeast Asia, ed. Yeo
Wei Wei (Singapore: The National Art Gallery, Singa-
pore, 2010), 52–61.
46 Lim Hak Tai’s infuential ideas as his most signifcant
contribution to Nanyang art was corroborated by the
NAFA graduates from the 1950s such as Chung Cheng
Sun.
The imagery of the heroic labourer, which
recurs in the artworks of both the Nanyang
and social realist artists, challenge the narra-
tive of an aesthetic divide between the two.
The emphasis of labour adheres to Lim’s ideas
to depict the “reality of the South Seas” and for
artists to make art that engages with society.
Nanyang artists like Chen Wen Hsi, Cheong
Soo Pieng and Liu Kang produced socially en-
gaged depictions of labourers that raised social
awareness of their plight. As such, the valori-
sation of the labourer can be conceived as a
characteristic of socially engaged Nanyang art
that bridges the false dichotomy between the
Nanyang artists and social realist artists.
Related to the social realist strategy of la-
bour as a metaphor is the motif of construction
found in socially engaged Nanyang art. Once
again, Lim points the way in Construction on
a Site at the Shipyard at Tanjung Rhu which
depicts the never-ending cycle of construction
and destruction at construction sites in Singa-
pore. The work questions the country’s obses-
sive pursuit of the new at the expense of its
heritage. Socially engaged Nanyang artworks
like Lee Kee Boon’s Nanyang University cri-
tique the state of Chinese education in Sin-
gapore. The scaffolding, a stable, interlocking
grid, symbolises the building of a nation-state
is an ongoing process; it also suggests the frag-
ile situation of Chinese education tainted by
accusations of its affliations to the left. This
motif of a grid is repeated in Liu Kang’s After
the Fire I (fg. 14.8) which portrays the devas-
tation caused by a fre, a frequent occurrence
in the 1950s and 1960s. In the aftermath, the
remnant of a building stands in a grid-like
structure. Similarly, Cheong’s drawing Unti-
tled, which depicts workers building a house,
features horizontal and vertical lines in grids
that dominate the composition. These three
pictures adopt the motif of the grid to suggest
the dialectical relationship of construction and
destruction, necessary processes of revolution-
ary sacrifce to bring about social and politi-
cal change. The grid, as scaffold and structural
beams, a symbol for construction and destruc-
tion, recurs in artworks by the Nanyang and
social realist artists. These common expres-
sions unite the socially engaged realists and
Nanyang artists and indicate a “third way.”
Cheong’s body of drawings that depict
backyard and dump sites exemplifed by (Un-
titled) A Rubbish Dump (fg. 14.9) reveal a recur-
rent interest in marginalised urban sites, the
by-products of urbanisation and construction
in the city.45 These works by Nanyang artists
reveal a preoccupation with rapid urbanisation
in post-war Singapore and a persistent interest
in social issues; they underline a need to reap-
praise the parameters of Nanyang art.
Conclusion: Lim Hak Tai’s Third Way
Both Sabapathy and Piyadasa correctly rec-
ognised Lim Hak Tai as the intellectual force
giving the direction that the Nanyang artists
would take.46 What has been overlooked are
Lim’s ideas that “art is a refection of social
ideology” and the development of Nanyang
art along a trajectory of social engagement as
demonstrated by works discussed in this essay.
This essay has traced the emergence and ex-
istence of a socially engaged Nanyang art to
Lim’s ideas of an art movement that depicts the
Lim Hak Tai Points a Third Way
“reality of the South Seas” and “localness of the
place”; his call for a hybridisation of artistic
traditions from different cultures as exempli-
fed by the eclectic adaptation of representa-
tional schemas from the School of Paris and
Chinese ink painting; Lim’s belief in education
and the social function of art; and his very own
works that are examples of socially engaged
Nanyang art. Socially engaged Nanyang art as
a body of work produced by the Nanyang art-
ists thereby forms a bridge between Nanyang
art and social realism, unifed by their shared
concern for social issues in Singapore. Lim had
shown us that the way to Nanyang art need
not be restricted to only the two sources (or
ways) identifed by Sabapathy—the School of
Paris (West) and Chinese ink painting (East).
A third way exists: a socially engaged form of
Nanyang art as an art historical category con-
structed discursively, pictorially and aestheti-
cally by artists and art historians that draws
from multiple artistic and cultural sources and
contexts. Such art historical categories, like
lexicons, are never stable as new ones emerge
from alternative perspectives and interpreta-
tions, just as how Lim opened a third way of
framing “Nanyang art.”
I would like to acknowledge the generous
assistance of Janet Fang, Koh Nguang How,
Simon Soon, Alison Carroll, Dr Edwin Jur-
riens, Low Sze Wee and Syed Muhammad
Hafz for their invaluable help in sourcing
and scanning materials, as well as editing and
giving critical comments when I was based in
Melbourne. This essay is heavily indebted to a
seminal work, Patrick D. Flores, “Social Real-
ism: The Turns of a Term in the Philippines,”
Afterall: A Journal of Art, Context, and Enquiry
Issue 34 (Autumn/Winter 2013): 62–75; as
well as Francis Choo, “Social Realism in Sin-
gaporean Art: Its Beginnings, Practice and
Subsequent Decline,” (master’s thesis, Lasalle
College of the Arts, 2014).
201
 14.1

14.2

Two Types of Nanyang Art:

Aesthetic and Socially Engaged

Three Sources in Aesthetic and Socially Engaged

Nanyang Art Nanyang Art

1 First Source 1 Aesthetic Nanyang art is the main body of

Chinese ink painting representational
schemas and styles (e.g. hanging scroll
or hand scroll compositional formats
and ink brush techniques).
2 Second Source
Representational schemas and styles
(e.g. easel painting and styles such as
Post-Impressionism).
2 Socially engaged Nanyang art seeks to engage with
3 Third Source
Socially engaged realism
representational schemas and styles
(e.g. realism, woodcut movement,
Surrealism).
works produced by the Nanyang artists that
conforms to Sabapathy’s formulation of aesthetic
explorations in representational schemas from
Chinese ink painting or the School of Paris, and
local or Southeast Asian subject matter. Aesthetic
Nanyang artworks tend to romanticise and
idealise their subject matter, focusing on aesthetic
explorations and experimentations without
signifcant engagement with the public sphere.
the public sphere by raising awareness of social
issues using narrative modes such as allegory,
symbolism and metaphors to generate knowledge
through didactic and artistic means.
Socially engaged Nanyang art is distinct from
Social Realism in that the former does not seek to
incite social action in the viewer while latter uses
art as a vehicle for social change.

420 Seng Yu Jin

0328-Charting Thoughts.indd 420 28/3/17 2:54 PM

 14.1 Cheong Soo Pieng
Hungry
1950
Oil on board
50 x 40 cm
Private collection

14.2 Two types of Nanyang art:

aesthetic and socially engaged

14.3 Lim Hak Tai

Lu Xun Shrine
1955
Acrylic on board
50 x 40 cm
Collection of Lim Yew Kuan

14.4 Lim Yew Kuan

Searching
1951
Oil on canvas
63 x 77.5 cm
Collection of National
Gallery Singapore

14.3

14.4

Lim Hak Tai Points a Third Way 421

0328-Charting Thoughts.indd 421 28/3/17 2:54 PM

 14.5
14.6

422 Seng Yu Jin

0328-Charting Thoughts.indd 422 28/3/17 2:54 PM

 14.5 Cheong Soo Pieng
(Untitled) Mother and Child
1949
Woodcut on paper
20.3 x 17 cm
Collection of National Gallery Singapore

14.6 Georgette Chen

East Coast Vendor
1965
Oil on canvas
92 x 73 cm
Collection of National Gallery Singapore

14.7 Lim Hak Tai

Riot
1955
Oil on board
49.5 x 89 cm
Collection of National Gallery Singapore

14.7

Lim Hak Tai Points a Third Way 423

0328-Charting Thoughts.indd 423 28/3/17 2:54 PM

 14.8

424 Seng Yu Jin

0328-Charting Thoughts.indd 424 28/3/17 2:55 PM

 14.9

14.8 Liu Kang

After the Fire I
1951
Oil on canvas
98.5 x 131.5 cm
Gift of the family of Liu Kang
Collection of National Gallery
Singapore

14.9 Cheong Soo Pieng

(Untitled) A Rubbish Dump
Undated
Watercolour on paper
27.4 x 37.5 cm
Collection of National Gallery
Singapore

Lim Hak Tai Points a Third Way 425

0328-Charting Thoughts.indd 425 28/3/17 2:55 PM

 1 As argued by Michael Hardt & Antonio Negri, an alter-
native form of the biopolitical may be conceived as an
opposite of biopower, defned by Michel Foucault as
the application of sovereignty over subjects and the
subjugation of social bodies through discursive and
practical regulatory mechanism. Hardt and Negri then
observe that one particular form of anti-capitalist
insurrection occurs in the use of life and the body as
weapons, through which challenges can be mounted
against existing power structures. See Michael Hardt
& Antonio Negri, Multitude: War and Democracy in the
Age of Empire (New York: Penguin Books, 2005).
2 Mia Bustam, Sudjojono dan Aku [Sudjojono and I]
(Jakarta: Pustaka Utan Kayu, 2006), 373–4. The book
suggests they were once “nikah” (married), though
(15)
The Woman and the Vista: Intimate Revolt of the Cultural Left
Simon Soon
More often than not, the revolutionary élan
of the cultural left is expressed in and repre-
sented by heroic gestures. Common exam-
ples include images exposing the destitution
of the downtrodden or representations of an
uprising of the disenfranchised masses. Sub-
jects that are deemed politicised often trade
in stock images that privilege the instructive
and instigative quality of the picture over other
criteria to rouse the public body into taking
political action. Consequently, what is seldom
discussed are some of the subtler relationships
that transpire between an image and the out-
come it inspires. Also, largely absent from our
understanding of the cultural left is a history of
emotion and sympathy that colours politicised
thinking and grounds this history in a particu-
lar locale and persons.
This essay considers two historical instances
202 Charting Thoughts
this view is contested.
3 For example, see Peter Lee et al., Inherited & Salvage:
Family Portraits from the NUS Museum Straits Chi-
nese Collection, exh. cat. (Singapore: NUS Museum,
2015).
4 S. Sudjojono, “Seni loekis di Indonesia. Sekarang dan
jang akan Datang” [Painting in Indonesia. Now and
the Future], in Seni Loekis, Kesenian dan Seniman
[Painting, the arts and the artist] (Yogyakarta: Indo-
nesia Sekarang, 1946), 3–6.
5 Amir Sidharta, S. Sudjojono: Visible Soul (Jakarta:
Museum S. Sudjojono, 2006), 63.
6 John Clark, Asian Modernities: Chinese and Thai Art
Compared, 1980s to 1999 (Sydney: Power Publica-
tions, 2010), 20.
from Indonesia and Singapore in order to posit
a discussion about the manner in which images
take on a spatio-visual quality. The term “spa-
tio-visual” here is regarded as a practice that
mediates space and visuality. In this sense, the
practice of art is aestheticised and politicised
so as to generate specifc strategies and tropes
capable of demonstrating special purchase to
address the critical conditions of modern life in
relation to the urban environment that many
artists are trying to make sense of. The political
here is defned as a kind of practice, which the
essay further qualifes as “spatio-visual.”
I further propose a reading of intimacy as
a biopolitical concept through which we may
discuss the politicisation and aestheticisation
of the interpersonal in art.1 Over and beyond
the immediate questions of political identity
and ideology is then the social terrain with
which the cultural left is engaged. By thinking
through the register of intimate revolt, I make a
case for the way in which the image engenders
new spatial critique of the present, qualifying
the spatio-visual turn as a politics of inclusion
and a signifcant register of the post-war mod-
ern in Southeast Asia. As artists attempted to
direct practice towards a public outside of the
gallery, which was perceived as a domain of
the elite, the urban fabric as a social space was
brought into relief. It was towards this other
space of accommodation and critique that the
spatio-visual gained currency.
The Woman: Bodies that Matter
A suitable entry point for our Indonesian ex-
ample is Di Depan Kelambu Terbuka (In Front
of an Open Mosquito Net), painted in 1939
by one of Indonesia’s pioneering modernists
S. Sudjojono (1913–1985), a year after the
Association of Indonesian Drawing Masters
(Persatuan Ahli-Ahli Gambar Indonesia,
PERSAGI) was founded. We know from the
account of Sudjojono’s second wife, Mia Bus-
tam, frst published in 1992, that the sitter is
a prostitute by the name of Adhesi. Not only
was she a prostitute, but also someone to
whom Sudjojono was possibly once married in
Batavia.2 The fgure of Adhesi in Sudjojono’s
rendition is seated on a wooden chair in front
of the bed frame. One can make out the gauzy
linen that envelops her body to be the mos-
quito net behind her. Embroidered motifs of
the orange blossom fank the parted mosquito
net, a symbol of bridal purity. And yet, this is
not a portrait of conjugal bliss. Adhesi is ash-
en-faced and leans frailly, her right elbow on
the arm of the chair. The iconography recalls
the standard portrait painting or photograph,
commonly found in households of the native
political elite. But unlike the standard portrait
that commemorates the aspirations of the sit-
ter, there is an unsettling quality to what is rep-
resented here.3
The Woman and the Vista
According to the writings of Sudjojono,
his criticism was levelled against the com-
mercial value of Mooi Indië (beautiful Indies)
paintings, which circulated as tourist souvenirs
of Dutch taste. He was also critical of the social
value of Mooi Indië that drew on the false senti-
ment of paradisiacal life in the Dutch colony.4
Reacting to the typical Mooi Indië idyll of a
paddy feld in the foreground and a volcano
in the distance, which could be metaphors
for the unperturbed cosmological and social
order in which the Dutch instituted indirect
rule through collaboration with local feudal
powers, Sudjojono instead turned towards the
unsettling and atomised contours of human re-
lationships that emerge from within a domestic
space. Here he reveals the strained interaction
between two persons: the painter and his be-
loved subject. Sudjojono calls painting as such
jiwa kethok (Javanese for “visible soul”).5 I have
come to believe there is a Hegelian element to
his notion of jiwa, and that is the geist. Art, in
this sense, according to Sudjojono, makes vis-
ible the spirit of the age.
Art historian John Clark posits that dis-
cursive domains aimed at qualifying the “Asian
modern” operate on two signifcant, but not
exclusive, intersecting registers—the exogenous
(that which is external or coming from the out-
side) and the endogenous (the internal or that
arising from within).6 It is through highlighting
this binary as a strategy of the modern that we
may locate agency in the artist and his or her
practice, rather than fall back on the notion of
“infuence,” through which a work like Di Depan
Kelambu Terbuka is primarily seen as stylisti-
cally derivative of European modernism. Even
so, the binarism introduced here is not meant
as absolute and is productive only up to a cer-
tain point, after which a more complex formula-
tion rooted in poetics, such as the rethinking of
the revolution through the lens of intimacy and
inclusion, can be advanced. Moreover, as I will
demonstrate, the attention to art’s spatial context
is equally signifcant as a criterion for analysis.
203
 With the above caveat, we may consider
the exogenous. Sudjojono’s Di Depan Kelambu
Terbuka may be considered to have a stylistic
affnity with Van Gogh’s La Mousmé (1888,
fg. 15.1), which features a centrally composed
fgure that bears some resemblance to Adhesi.
Their poses are similar, though Adhesi appears
wizened and haggard next to a portrait of a
young provincial girl from Arles in southern
France. That is not surprising. After all, Adhesi
lived a hard life in the slums of Batavia.
The title of Van Gogh’s painting, La
Mousmé, references novelist Pierre Loti’s Mad-
ame Chrysanthème (1887), in which the term
is used to describe a young Japanese girl. The
painted subject expresses Van Gogh’s romantic
attitude towards Arles as a Provençal subject,
while betraying his fascination with Japanese
woodblock prints, particularly ukiyo-e.7 The
resulting painting not only captures the vitality
of youth through its graphic composition and
exuberant colours, it is also a calculated study
of the Other as a subject, a projection of a Pro-
vençal maiden through the flter of Japonisme.
The pictorial charge is therefore ambiguous:
innocent, yet sensual.
The comparison is also productive on the
grounds that Van Gogh was an artistic personal-
ity whom Sudjojono greatly admired and wrote
extensively about. It is possible that Sudjojono
became aware of this painting through images
of it that were reproduced in catalogues that
were once housed in Bataviasche Kunstkring’s
library. These catalogues sat alongside original
Van Gogh paintings from the Regnault collec-
tion that were exhibited in Bataviasche Kunst-
kring from the mid-1930s up to World War II.8
The comparison with Van Gogh is also apt
because he was from the Netherlands, a colo-
nising power of the East Indies, which was not
eclipsed from his intellectual horizon. In a letter
written in 1888 to his sister, Van Gogh notes:
I assure you that in our native country
people are as blind as bats and criminally
204 Simon Soon
stupid because they do not exert them-
selves to go more to the Indies or some-
where else where the sun shines. It is not
right to know only one thing—one gets
stultifed by that; one should not rest be-
fore one knows the opposite too.9
The opposite, in this instance, offers a frame
of reference for self, and is a methodology ap-
plicable to artists from different contexts. Un-
derstood in relation to a modern artist such
as Sudjojono, practising under the condition
of colonialism, his artistic admiration of Van
Gogh must have at some point intersected
with resentment towards the systemic subju-
gation of Dutch colonialism. This ambiva-
lence is a condition that some writers have ar-
gued to be creatively productive, and it bears
elaboration.
In this instance, one cannot help but sum-
mon the “demon of comparison.”10 This is a
phrase that Filipino writer José Rizal, in his
19th-century novel Noli Me Tangere (Touch Me
Not), refers to as the condition of mediating
discrepant worlds (the colonial and the metro-
pole). These worlds come into contact, in an
instance that is at once belated and present,
through a gap (both temporal and geographic),
which results in works of art that demonstrate
both memory and mimicry. In this situation,
art historian Patrick D. Flores notes:
the local world exceeds itself and slips into
the colonial one that is incommensurate,
and the imperial world to which it pre-
tends. That said, such pretension, or such
pretending, permits the local world to
cohabit with the outside and to insinuate
the latter within itself. Thus, the colonial
country at some point integrates with the
world through mastery, and mestizaje.11
Both mastery and the hybrid condition of mes-
tizaje are key here, for they illuminate the cal-
culation that an artist makes as he chooses to
7 See Vojtech Jirat-Wasiutynski, “Van Gogh in the
South: Antimodernism and Exoticism in the Arlesian
Paintings,” in Antimodernism and Artistic Experience:
Policing the Boundaries of Modernity, ed. Lynda Jes-
sup (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2001), 185.
8 Although the work entered an American collection
fairly early on, the reproduction of its image is widely
published. For a list of these publications, see http://
www.nga.gov/collection/gallery/gg84/gg84-46626-
lit.html (accessed 21 August 2015).
9 Vincent van Gogh, “Letter to Willemien van Gogh.
adopt one particular style in order to advance
his or her politics within a locality.
Now for the latter, the endogenous. To be
modern is a response to the customary of a lo-
cale. This might at times result in the formula-
tion of the neo-traditional, a category of art that
renovates local aesthetic motifs, principles and
processes into a modern form with, at times,
a distinct set of institutional practices and do-
mains. This can also be detected in works of art
that emerged from within mediums adopted
from Europe, which is the case with Sudjojo-
no’s Di Depan Kelambu Terbuka. Adhesi’s sickly
body is clumsily propped up against a chair. It
is a body whose posture is unregulated by the
codifed language of performance and gesture
that dominates the classical literary and visual
identity of heroes and villains. Unlike, say, the
vocabulary of erect postures of characters in a
classical wayang repertoire, Adhesi’s body is an
undisciplined, untrained and, therefore, un-
seen body.
It is a trope that carries within it associa-
tions of marginality, baseness and sickness. In
many of his early writings, Sudjojono called for
the depiction of a reality that revolved around
everyday life: the sugar factory, the undernour-
ished farmer, the pantaloons of a young man,
The Woman and the Vista
Arles, between Saturday, 16 and Wednesday 20 June
1888,” Vincent Van Gogh: The Letters, http://vangogh
letters.org/vg/letters/let626/letter.html (accessed
18 August 2015).
10 José Rizal, Noli Me Tangere, trans. Soledad Lacson-
Locsin (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1997),
51.
11 Patrick D. Flores, “Speculations on the ‘International’
via the Philippine,” Filozofski vestnik 35, no. 2 (2014):
175–91.
12 S. Sudjojono, op. cit., 7.
among others.12 As a reaction against prevail-
ing customary codes that regulate representa-
tion of bodily strength and vigour, we might
read Di Depan Kelambu Terbuka as exposing
the hierarchical binary within a customary so-
cial order, and in doing so argues for claiming
a special purchase on the present as a charac-
teristic of modern art. This characteristic is
manifested by the artist training his vision on
the broader social reality of Indonesia that had
hitherto been sidelined.
This transformation signals a move to-
wards sympathising with the base, and con-
stitutes the language of politics during the
Indonesian revolution of 1945. The coming
together of artists and the public at many of
these junctures points to a desire to shape a
new space for the modern. This aspiration was
often collective and collaborative, spurred on
by an urgency to remake the artist as partisan
to political struggle. One popular anecdote
concerns the production of a poster by Af-
fandi, Boeng, Ajo Boeng (Come On, My Com-
rade!) (1945). This poster, created during the
struggle for independence, was intended to
mobilise the Indonesian masses against the re-
turning Dutch. It features Indonesian painter
Dullah as the fgure breaking free from the
205
 13 This account of the genesis of the poster is widely
circulated in Indonesia today. It was also reproduced
in the wall text at the Affandi Museum in Yogyakarta.
14 Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Refec-
tions on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, rev. ed.
(London: Verso, 1991), 6–7.
15 See Judith Butler, Bodies that Matter: On the Discur-
sive Limits of “Sex” (New York: Routledge, 1993).
16 Thum Ping Tjin, “‘Flesh and Bone Reunite as One
Body’: Singapore’s Chinese-speaking and their Per-
chains of colonial oppression. While the poster
was a call to arms, it is also a deceptively witty
one. The phrase “boeng, ajo boeng” is said to have
been contributed by Indonesian poet Chairil
Anwar, who based it on the teasing and coquet-
tish words that prostitutes cry out when solic-
iting customers.13 By transforming this phrase
that originally carries perhaps a slightly manja
or teasing tone into a war cry, both Chairil and
Affandi succeed in injecting sensual frisson into
the serious business of revolution.
The poster also attempts to connect po-
litical struggle with the language of the street.
After all, the soliciting cries of the prostitute are
most often heard in the pasar or marketplace.
The sex worker has always been seen as an ab-
ject fgure, whose profession is often questioned
by those who wield moral authority. However,
in Chairil’s wordplay, the allusion to the speech
of the sex worker as representative of the down-
trodden suggests that Affandi’s poster is not
just animated by sympathy for the underclass.
It is a mode of revolutionary enjoinment that
draws from the linguistic resource of the street,
and claims it as a central site for both truth-
telling and power—aligning the legitimacy of
the revolution with the class of the oppressed,
the outsider.
206 Simon Soon
spectives on Merger,” Chinese Southern Diaspora
Studies 5 (2011–12): 29–56.
17 Chan Cheow Thia & Teng Siao See, “Interview with
Lee Leong Seng,” in Education-at-Large: Student Life
and Activities in Singapore 1945–1965, eds. Teng Siao
See, Chan Cheow Thia & Lee Huay Leng (Singapore:
Tangent; World Scientifc Publishing, 2013), 160.
18 Ho Hui Lin, “The 1950s Striptease Debates in Sin-
gapore: Getai and the Politics of Culture,” (master’s
thesis, National University of Singapore, 2014).
On days when I make imaginative leaps,
I like to think that the poster is what the pub-
lic is looking at in this supposedly unfnished
painting titled Perusing a Poster (fg. 10.3), also
by Sudjojono. It was painted in 1956, almost
a decade and a half later, when he had turned
towards a more realist rather than expressionist
mode of representation, arguing that this was
the jiwa kethok of nation-building after inde-
pendence had been secured. The painting more
likely captures the mood of the 1955 election,
the frst democratic election in the new nation
of Indonesia.
Yet as I make this imaginative leap by sug-
gesting what they are seeing is (speculatively)
Boeng, Ajo Boeng, I am also suggesting that
Sudjojono’s aesthetic sympathy mirrors what
he saw in the democratic ideal of Indonesia,
an ideal that expresses a politics of intimacy
and inclusion. As Benedict Anderson notes,
the “imagined community” of the nation pro-
duces a mental image of affnity, even if citizens
belonging to the same nation will never get to
know most of their fellow citizens in real life.
At the same time, this claim of belonging and
inclusion therefore resides in the minds of each
member, creating what Anderson calls a “hori-
zontal comradeship.”14
 Sudjojono, after all, became a member of
the parliament under the ticket of the Com-
munist Party of Indonesia (Partai Komunis
Indonesia, PKI) in 1955. In this sense, the bod-
ies that are captured as representative of a cross-
section of society on the streets in this painting
are “bodies that matter.” Referring to Judith
Butler’s book of the same title is intentional,
for I want to underline the citational politics
evident in regimes of representation that regu-
late social identities, even if in my use of the
phrase, I have expanded the term to canvas the
broader political tenor of the postcolony.15
Ultimately, these bodies—along with that of
Adhesi the prostitute—are bodies regarded
by Sudjojono as worthy of making visible the
soul in Indonesian modern art. So in spite of
the performative being, in many senses, itera-
tive—trading in stock characters—in making
visible these tropes through painterly means,
the confgurations of identities become open to
slippages and contestations.
The Vista: Homeland for the Future Past
The trope in which one may detect a contend-
ing vision in Malaya is centred on a different
set of relational dynamics. Tan Tee Chie’s Giv-
ing Instructions (1958, fg. 15.2) is exemplary
here. It depicts a mother fgure kneeling next
to her child. She wears a samfoo, the typical eve-
ryday attire of women from southern China.
She kneels in protective embrace of the child
as she points towards a vista flled with coco-
nut trees and rolling hillocks. The tropical
landscape is bathed in the rays of sunlight that
are represented by strong lines issuing from
behind the hilly backdrop. The woman in the
picture surveys the land with her child and,
we may assume from the title, conveys to the
child a sense of a new beginning. The gesture
of pointing out towards the horizon suggests
that she is imparting a newly discovered con-
cept of homeland in this part of the world to
her progeny.16 Encapsulated in the work is a
The Woman and the Vista
prospect offered to a new generation: the story
of mobility and arrival. Here, both land and
landscape signify “belonging.” Essentially, the
print tells an intergenerational story of Chinese
migration to the Nanyang region. At the same
time, the woman and child are stand-ins for a
community whose horizons are embodied in
the landscape. Giving Instructions expresses an
idea of a people whose vision of a homeland is
encapsulated in the vista.
The larger narrative, as will be explored
in this section, speaks of a hope that proceeds
from a familial bond and is linked to the aspi-
rations of a politicised student body in search
of a poetics of homeland in 1950s Malaya.
Unlike the Indonesian example, where revolu-
tionary action and its imagined public can be
traced back to a love story centred around the
image of the fallen woman, opinions about the
raucous public in Singapore were coloured by
puritanical suspicion. This was fuelled by the
anti-yellow movement, which emerged and
became a cultural proxy for the anti-colonial
struggle from the 1950s onwards in Singapore.
According to Lee Leong Seng, a student in the
1950s:
Yellow culture of that time refers to rep-
resentations that were more obscene or
engaged in excessive exposure, especially
in the depiction of women … There was
a book entitled Lan Pi Shu (Blue Paper).
Lan Pi Shu was a famous “yellow” publica-
tion. It was from Hong Kong.17
The word “yellow” in this context not
only connotes immorality, but also identifes
the source of immorality as stemming from the
crass materialism of Western cultural decay that
contributed to the weakening of China since
the 19th century. Moreover, the repercussion of
this cultural decadence was perceived to have
distracted the local populace from addressing
more pressing social issues as well as pursuing
independence from colonial rule.18
207
 As a new puritanical mindset took hold,
it was directed at the numerous entertainment
venues that provided popular night-time diver-
sions to the urban populace from the 1920s
to 1960s. Venues such as New World, Great
World and Happy World provided affordable
entertainment for Singaporeans. They offered
a mixture of programmes that catered to the
city’s diverse demographics, from cabaret per-
formances to ronggeng, Hollywood movies to
bangsawan plays, shopping to circus acts.19
These venues were cosmopolitan “worlds,” in
a sense. They were crossroads, at which a broad
section of the diverse multicultural populace
came to be entertained.
Even though these entertainment parks
were increasingly regarded as disreputable as
the 1950s marched on, they were also regarded
as signifcant public spaces. For instance, the
Singapore Chinese High Schools’ Graduates of
1953 Arts Association chose to hold a fundrais-
ing concert for Nanyang University at Happy
World in 1955. In addition, students used the-
atres located in the amusement park to stage
modern Chinese plays such as Lei Yu (Thun-
derstorm) and Qun Dai Feng (Nepotism), but
made it clear that these theatrical productions
were “healthy entertainment” to distinguish
them from other more salacious forms of en-
tertainment normally associated with these
venues.20 Singaporean artists responded to the
moralising pressure of the anti-yellow move-
ment, and saw their art as a tool to help address
the moral disorder of colonialism.
Take, for example, Lim Mu Hue’s depic-
tion of the 1958 Teachers’ Day rally (fg. 15.3).
In Lim’s satirical take on the event, he shows
a group of seemingly respectable teachers mill-
ing around Happy World park under a ban-
ner which reads “Long Live the Celebration
of Teachers’ Day!” Above the banner are three
oversized female striptease dancers performing
to a crowd at the entrance of the park. This is
based on a photograph published in the local
daily, The Straits Times. The teachers were in
208 Simon Soon
fact simply using the park as a venue for their
rally, given that it could accommodate large
congregations, without realising that the media
could cast the event in such a negative light.
It was Lim Yew Hock, then Chief Minister of
Singapore, who, when invited to speak at the
rally, subsequently saw the salacious posters
and roundly condemned them as “defnitely
not Chinese culture.”21
The irony is that while both right-wing
and leftist movements in Singapore did not
see eye to eye—for instance, Lim Yew Hock
himself treated the leftist movement oppres-
sively—one thing the both camps did agree
on was what did not constitute Chinese cul-
ture.22 Tan Tee Chie’s A Dark Alley (1953,
fg. 15.4) is another example. Here we see a very
different view of prostitution compared to the
Indonesian example mentioned earlier. Unlike
the redeeming fgure of Adhesi in Sudjojono’s
Di Depan Kelambu Terbuka, Tan shows two
prostitutes being surrounded by men in a back
lane. The scene depicts the women cornered by
leering men, and addresses the issue of sexual
exploitation in a pointed manner. There is little
ambiguity in the message the artist is trying to
convey here. Viewers of the print are compelled
to weigh in their moral conscience.
The larger debate then, however, re-
volved around the question of what exactly
was Chinese culture. The search for an answer
was also in part coloured by the need to ad-
dress a second question: How was it relevant
to Malayan culture? In attempting to answer
these questions now, I suggest that the vista
is a form of landscape that appears as a trope
and conceptual metaphor to convey notions
of belonging. This sense of belonging is con-
nected to the question of the place of Chinese
political and social identity within the Malayan
imagination, as well as an idea of homeland. In
the case of Singapore, then, we see an attempt
by the cultural left to distance themselves from
a particular kind of urban condition, in order
to advance an idea of nature as an alternative
19 Jürgen Rudolph, “Amusements in the Three ‘Worlds,’”
in Looking at Culture, eds. Sanjay Krishnan et al. (Sin-
gapore: Artres Design and Communications, 1996).
20 Ji Yan, “Malayan Chinese Literature: Development in
the Midst of Turbulent Torrents,” in The May 13 Gen-
eration: The Chinese Middle Schools Student Move-
ment and Singapore Politics in the 1950s, eds. Tan
Jin Quee, Tan Kok Chiang et al. (Petaling Jaya: Stra-
tegic Information and Research Development Centre,
2011), 266.
21 “Naked Girl Posters Anger the Chief Minister,” The
Straits Times, 10 October 1958, 7.
22 Lim Yew Hock was an ambivalent fgure. His sup-
pression of teacher and student movements led to
his eventual defeat in the 1959 general elections.
However, his commitment to Chinese culture was ex-
space for the public, outside the kind of per-
ceived immoral zones of contact that existing
entertainment venues within Singapore’s urban
fabric afforded.
In Chua Mia Tee’s 1959 essay “Shitan
fengjing hua de yiyi” (On the signifcance of
landscape paintings), he acknowledges that
“different genres are incommensurable.” Us-
ing an analogy, he notes, “we cannot judge the
value of a million word novel against that of
a deeply moving lyrical poem of merely four
lines.”23 Reacting in part against the prevail-
ing tendencies in Chinese landscape painting
connoisseurship and in part against the fetishi-
sation of formal innovations in modern artis-
tic movements such as Cubism, Fauvism and
Post-Impressionism, Chua calls for a form of
landscape painting that is not “obsessed with
minute details,” in which the viewer “becomes
amazed by the painter’s trifing skills and more
knowledgeable about the physical structure of
the scenery’s individual components.”24
Instead, he prescribes an approach to land-
scape painting defned by a sense of totality.
For Chua, painting landscape is an ability to
present “nature in its entirety, about the atmos-
The Woman and the Vista
pressed in his support for Nanyang University and the
eventual granting of university status to the Chinese-
language institution.
23 Chua Mia Tee, “Shitan fengjinghua de yiyi” [On the
signifcance of landscape paintings], in From Words
to Pictures: Art during the Emergency, republished
from an essay written in 1959 for the catalogue of
the Second Equator Art Society Exhibition in 1960
(Singapore: Singapore Art Museum, 2007), 22–3.
24 Ibid.
25 Ibid.
26 Kevin Chua, “Painting the Nanyang’s ‘Public’: Notes
towards a Reassessment,” in Eye of the Beholder: Re-
ception, Audience, And Practice of Modern Asian Art,
eds. John Clark, Maurizio Peleggi & T.K. Sabapathy
(Sydney: Wild Peony Press, 2006), 86.
phere and feelings generated by the integrative
image consisting of the various elements of the
scenery.” Through this attitude and approach,
the work of art is able to:
directly or indirectly ennoble a viewer in
terms of virtues and values as he basks in
aesthetic pleasure and his feelings for the
scenery. This helps to increase patriotic
awareness and a sense of loyalty to our
country.25
This statement suggests an attempt to situ-
ate the landscape of Malaya in the new politi-
cal horizon of the nation. Indeed, artists were
often trained in plein-air painting. Many Equa-
tor Art Society members received their art edu-
cation at the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts
(NAFA), where, as art historian Kevin Chua
suggests, they inherited the “critical realism” of
the Nanyang painters and proceeded to dem-
onstrate how the rural idyll recorded by many
of those artists represented a desire to arrest
the fast-disappearing local worlds faced with
the onslaught of modernisation.26 In relation
to this, I suggest that what they furthermore
209
 27 See Huawen biye ban tongxue Xingzhou yijiuwu-
san niandu yishu yanjiuhui zhuban meishu xunhui
zhanlan tekan [Singapore Chinese High Schools’
Graduates of 1953 Arts Association travelling art
exhibition catalogue], exh. cat. (Singapore: Yishu
Yanjiuhui, 1956), 11. Author’s translation.
28 Lai Chee Kien, personal communication with the
author, May 2015.
29 Its exhibition history was later recounted in From
inherited from their teachers at NAFA was
the desire to pictorialise a sense of place and
homeland. Therefore, “critical realism” as a di-
mension introduced by the painters was also an
attempt to bridge the landscape with the social.
Perhaps what Chua Mia Tee had in mind
when he wrote the above was the epoch-
defning painting he created four years earlier.
Beyond its obvious patriotic register, the paint-
ing also argued for a belief that landscape was a
genre of social and political signifcance. Titled
Epic Poem of Malaya (1955, fg. 15.5), the paint-
ing shows a group of young people dressed
in white, suggesting that they are high school
students. The central fgure towers over the
group of students, huddled together, seemingly
engrossed by whatever he is telling them. This
fgure holds up his right hand, his palm reach-
ing up in a gesture that suggests he is delivering
a rousing speech. In his left hand he carries a
book with a red cover, which is presumably the
eponymous title of the painting.
An accompanying caption in a catalogue
describes the scene:
Who does not passionately love his ances-
tral country? Who does not passionately
love his own kind-hearted compatriots?
The fate of the people of any country, and
their country’s fate are forever inseparable.
As a citizen of Malaya, to be deeply
moved by the recitation of an epic poem,
210 Simon Soon
Words to Pictures, op. cit. However, no context was
given for these events.
30 Cheng Yuit Tung, “Statement,” in The Communist Or-
ganization in Singapore, 1948–66, ed. Lee Ting Hui
(Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies,
1976), 19.
31 Nantah Song (Singapore: Ren Jian Chubanshe, 1955).
32 For the concept of “imagined community,” see Ander-
son, op. cit.
which documents the encounter with one’s
ancestral land, this is only natural. Even
if each person may have different level of
experiencing the above, even if this was
only one part of a picnic’s divertissement
program.27
The catalogue was printed on the occasion
of the 1956 exhibition organised by the 1953
Arts Association. The last sentence provides an
indication of the nature of the activity, even if
the historical specifcity has been largely skirted
around by numerous iconographical readings
since the painting entered Singapore’s Na-
tional Collection in 1999.28 Primarily serving
as a narrative of nation-building, such readings
place great emphasis on how a migrant Chinese
community fnally took root in this part of the
world, fltered through the discourse of “Ma-
layanisation,” the rising colonial (and, later,
anti-colonial) ambition to produce a singular
post-war cultural and political identity for the
disparate populace that inhabits the British ter-
ritories on the Malay Peninsula.
However, the scene also describes a very
specifc event. What was taking place was in
fact a student picnic. Such excursions were
often organised under the auspices of left-
leaning student bodies and were commonplace
throughout the 1950s.29 Workers would join
the students on many of these events, which
were typically held on the beaches along the
east coast or other rural areas in Singapore. The
organisers of these events would arrange trans-
portation, and ask participants to assemble at
an appointed location—Majestic Theatre was
one—to be picked up. During these picnics,
there were games and entertainment, as well as
poetry recitals and singing. Amidst the revelry,
covert communist party members would step
up and speak about their political goals within
the framework of an independence struggle,
often connected to the desire to reconnect the
British Crown colony of Singapore with Ma-
laya. Hence, these gatherings were popularly
known as “communist picnics.”
A participant of a picnic, Cheng Yuit
Tung, who was then 20 years old, recalls:
Upon arrival at the picnic site, we were
given the opportunity of free activities …
After lunch we were instructed to form
into a big circle where we played many
types of games … After that some organ-
isers came up to tell stories during which
they introduced topics on world events.
They concentrated mainly on the events
and revolution in China.30
One could read Chua’s Epic Poem of Ma-
laya as transforming the “communist picnic,”
with some level of symbolic fourish, into a
moral allegory. This is suggested by the colour
of the book that the central fgure is holding
with his left hand: the revolutionary red of so-
cialism. But how is this imagined textual work
connected to an idea of landscape?
One possible connection is a text pub-
lished in 1955, the Nantah Song, by the
1953 Arts Association to raise funds for the
establishment of a Chinese-language tertiary-
education institution. This text would not
have escaped Chua’s notice, since he was a
member of both the 1953 Arts Association
and its successor organisation, the Equator
Art Society. The opening verse is worth quot-
ing here at length:
The Woman and the Vista
Our days on the equator is like an endless
song … We sing to the mighty mountains,
we sing to the blazing sun, we sing to the
rich blue sea, we sing to the hardworking
ordinary people, we sing to our great an-
cestors, we sing to the brilliance of Chi-
nese culture, sing to the birth pangs that
accompany the birth of Nanyang Univer-
sity! O, Malaya, we are here, we call out to
you, sing to you!31
If this text was the basis of the imagined
epic as hinted by the title of the painting, then
the book in the painting also symbolises the ir-
redentist goals of these students. The Chinese
school students saw the history of the Malayan
nation as resonating with the socialist goals of
their present-day struggle. The confation of
the mythic landscape into a real-life scenario
in this painting spells out a contradiction. On
the one hand, it draws on the conventions of
history painting, with its connection to the
institutional prestige of the academy and the
hierarchy of genres, using symbolic function to
compose a grand narrative suited to national-
ist aspiration. On the other hand, the paint-
ing also attempts to forge a history from the
ground up, showing a group of high school stu-
dents within a rural setting, being roused into
political awareness.
In Chua’s estimation, landscape had to
contain more than a sentiment of belonging. It
had to be imbued with great ideological weight
and agency, which also defned the terms of
one’s dream of independence and homeland to
the broader goals of a socialist commonwealth.
For Chua, the purpose of landscape as genre, as
a means to pictorialise totality, was to convey a
sense of the whole through the vista as nation.
The genre serves as a complementary alterna-
tive to Benedict Anderson’s thesis that the “im-
agined community” is primarily proliferated
through the printing press.32
The painting was part of a travelling art
exhibition, a point that is also seldom discussed
211
 in the history of the work’s production and re-
ception. The exhibition began at the Chinese
Chamber of Commerce before moving to the
Hokkien Huay Kuan (Fujian Clan Associa-
tion). Though not mentioned in the catalogue,
the exhibition also travelled to Kuala Lumpur.
It was then staged in the community halls of
villages that dotted the outskirts of Singapore
township.33 In this sense, the circulation of
Epic Poem of Malaya in the form of a travelling
exhibition mobilises this visual discourse of the
vista, interacting across both urban and rural
spaces.
As the title suggests, the red book is also
an epic. This conveys a sense that the text and
the discourse were thought of as having a per-
formative quality to them.34 The enactment of
history, requiring oratorical prowess, becomes
a communal event that takes place outdoors in
nature. For the migrant Chinese community
who were torn between acknowledging China
or Malaya as their homeland, the concept of
an epic was not only about striking deep roots;
it also summoned the spectre of history as a
means to identify oneself with the land. It is
an attempt to defne a homeland for a kind of
future past, predicated on a pseudo-predictive
notion of time, whereby both a future for a
nation-in-waiting and a past for a nation-that-
is-already-there are collectively imagined as a
dialectical realisation of a communist utopia.
In this sense, Epic Poem of Malaya at-
tempts to write a different history and future
into the land. As a response to the predomi-
nant view accorded by the British that the land
was known as Tanah Melayu, or Malay soil,
the painting creates a counter argument that
the land and landscape are able to imagine a
more accommodating history, one that is not
bound by the exclusionary categorisation of
race, or the privileging of one racial group over
another. Featuring students as principal actors,
the painting does not fall into the conventional
genre of landscape painting. Instead, one can
say it offers an invitation to imagine, to be
212 Simon Soon
roused by speech and enter into a landscape of
collective imagination—it proposes an idea of
the land as a welcoming vista, an international
in the communist sense of the word, accom-
modating and inclusive of those coming from
other parts of the world.35
Conclusion
This essay has ventured two instances in which
interpersonal affection, whether the private
love between an artist and his model or the
intergenerational bonds between mother and
child, is entwined with a larger ideological dis-
course. Even if such intimacy associated with
the interpersonal is often regarded as bourgeois
in value and character, therefore excised from
conventional account of revolutionary struggle
focusing on the broader issue of class, I suggest
that the interpersonal as a framework is sig-
nifcant as a locus for the larger politics of in-
clusion that challenge the way we think about
social spaces and bonds.
Such representations have engendered a
way to characterise politicised action as a form
of intimate revolt. A reading that explicates
the politics of the cultural left along this line,
which sustains both micro-history and the larg-
er political forces that shape one’s experience of
modernity, is an attempt to recover from our
modern past, a social art history that doubly
serves as a history of emotion.
This essay points to two examples. The
frst example illustrates how the image of the
prostitute by Sudjojono provides a revolution-
ary baseline for the discourse of intimacy and
inclusion in Indonesia’s independence struggle
that was then deployed in agitprop created by
Affandi and Chairil Anwar during Indonesia’s
War of Independence as a call to arms. The
second example elaborates on the concept of
landscape in relation to Nanyang and the sub-
sequent treatment of landscape as a locus of
history in the promulgation of a communist
irredentism, and how the concept of the travel-
33 Tay Boon Pin, interview with the author, May 2012.
34 The Chinese word for “epic poem” used in Chua’s
painting is “shishi.” It suggests a long narrative poem
in the Homeric sense, ordinarily relating details of
heroic deeds and signifcant events connected to a
particular culture or nation.
ling exhibition then became a means through
which such ideas were disseminated. In both in-
stances, spaces became both pictorial tropes and
actual sites in which the experience of modern
life was expressed and circulated to a public.
In doing so, we may think of the spatio-
visual quality that an image possesses as car-
rying affective charge. Iconographic analysis
focusing solely on the ideological message of an
artwork limits our understanding of objects to
The Woman and the Vista
35 This refers to Friedrich Engel’s rejection that class
struggle and revolution can take place in one coun-
try alone, arguing instead for change that is global
in character. This is unlike, say, Stalin’s notion of “so-
cialism in one country.”
content. Instead, the emotional scale that we
may experience in works of art is always already
spatial in character, whether this pertains to the
history of its reception and patterns of circula-
tion, or the undercurrent of feelings shaped by
the personal and social compact, which spurs
one’s regard for others. The passions that drive
politics begin with those closest to oneself,
which propels ideas, moves people, enters new
spaces and opens new vistas.
213
 15.1

426 Simon Soon

0328-Charting Thoughts.indd 426 28/3/17 2:55 PM

 15.3

15.1 Vincent van Gogh

La Mousmé
1888
Oil on canvas
73.3 x 60.3 cm
15.2 Chester Dale Collection
National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.

15.2 Tan Tee Chie

Giving Instructions
1958
Woodblock print on paper
10.3 x 15.5 cm
Collection of Fukuoka Asian Art Museum
© Tan Tee Chie’s Family

15.3 Lim Mu Hue

Celebrating Teachers’ Day
Undated
Pen and ink on paper
27.3 x 18.6 cm
Estate of Lim Mu Hue, National University
of Singapore Museum Collection

The Woman and the Vista 427

0328-Charting Thoughts.indd 427 28/3/17 2:55 PM

15.4 Tan Tee Chie
A Dark Alley
1953
Woodblock print on paper
15.5 x 20.5 cm
Collection of National Gallery Singapore

15.5 Chua Mia Tee

Epic Poem of Malaya
1955
Oil on canvas
112 x 153 cm
Collection of National Gallery Singapore

15.4

428 Simon Soon

 15.5

The Woman and the Vista 429

0328-Charting Thoughts.indd 429 28/3/17 2:55 PM

 1 For an introduction to the trade networks of South-
east Asia, refer to Anthony Reid, Southeast Asia in
the Age of Commerce, 1450–1680 (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1988).
(16)
Cultural Wars in Southeast Asia:
The Birth of the Critical Exhibition in the 1970s
Seng Yu Jin
What is the art historical signifcance of exhi-
bitionary histories in Southeast Asia, and how
is it meaningful to study this comparatively
across this region? To answer these questions, it
is critical to acknowledge that Southeast Asia is
not a natural region but an artifcial notion—a
social construct—born from a collective social
imagination and geography in terms of territo-
rial proximity, economic exchanges and inter-
territorial movement of peoples. Southeast Asia
was carved out by almost every major colonial
power in history, each vying for the region’s
rich material resources. This intensity of co-
lonial intervention provides a real collective
historical experience in the region. The Portu-
guese were the frst to arrive in the Sultanate of
Malacca in 1511, followed by the Spaniards in
the Philippines, the Dutch in Indonesia, Brit-
ish in Singapore and Malaya, the Americans in
the Philippines and fnally the Japanese during
World War II. These colonial powers consoli-
dated their political and economic control over
their colonies, and constrained existing trade
networks that had previously connected places
and cities, moved peoples and transferred ideas
in this region.1
214 Charting Thoughts
2 Amitav Acharya, Singapore Biennale 2013, If the
World Changed (Singapore: Singapore Art Museum,
2013), 15–9.
3 Ibid.
Despite the region’s diversity, the concept
of “Southeast Asia” has gained traction in aca-
demia, state discourses and even in the minds
of the peoples who live here. Amitav Archarya
draws on Benedict Anderson’s concept of nation-
states as “imagined communities” to develop
what he terms as “imagining the region” where-
by Southeast Asia is an “imagined and socially
constructed community.”2 Archarya outlines
the material comprising territorial proximities,
geographical and economic interconnections,
and the ideational that thrives on a desire for
region-ness and regionalism.3 This sustained
desire and search for the concept of regionalism
is based on ideas and myths of shared past histo-
ries decisively and signifcantly shaped by local
actors. These ideas of region-ness manifest in:
oral histories of myths, poems, literature, illus-
trations, institutions, artworks, material culture
and, as this thesis argues, also in exhibitions;
in particular, art exhibitions that functioned as
vehicles of resistance against colonialism. Such
exhibitions generated and disseminated shared
ideas of a postcolonial reality and empowered
people by creating new subjectivities to chal-
lenge existing ones forged by colonialism. Prolif-
erating across the region, art exhibitions served
as ideational signposts that mapped the inclina-
tions of artists, who were imbued with agency
to engage with and surmount the singular to be-
long to an imagined collective with shared ideas
for a postcolonial future for Southeast Asia. An
analysis of these regional exhibitions also re-
veals a pattern of a new exhibitionary mode: the
“critical exhibition,” which shares ideas to ad-
vance different ways of conceiving the making
and practice of art. Yet, as this essay will show,
it was up to the artists to produce these critical
exhibitions through their own agency, without
preconceived notions of constructing a regional
art form. In order to understand this shift to the
critical exhibition that occurred in the 1970s, or
the continuation of past exhibitionary modes,
we need to examine intersections between the
changing global, regional and local contexts that
corresponded with the changing art worlds.
Intersections between Changing Contexts
and Art Worlds of Southeast Asia: Salon,
National and Internationalist Exhibitions
from 1945 to 1973
Art exhibitions are time-specifc events that
bring together an ensemble of disciplines,
practices and technologies, as a primary site
of exchange and construction, to mediate be-
tween the art worlds and their contexts. The
art worlds in Southeast Asia operate with their
own institutional structures and discourses that
are in turn engaged with local, regional and
global social, political and cultural conditions.
This history of exhibitions in the region serves
to study the patterns of the changing exhibi-
tionary modes with shifting inclinations, af-
fnities and sympathies to new realities. The
art exhibition as a site for exchanges brings to-
gether disciplines that have affnities with each
other but are separated by boundaries, such as
art history, art criticism, curation, postcolo-
nial and Southeast Asian studies, technologies
of display and discourse analysis. As a site of
Cultural Wars in Southeast Asia
construction, the art exhibition is imbued with
agency to generate and deconstruct knowledge
by mapping and, in the process, making visible
its orders, categories and structures. Tracking
the exhibition as a pervasive form and format
to understand its impact on modern art devel-
opments in Southeast Asia requires attending
to the ruptures and continuities within chang-
ing art worlds that they are an indispensable
part of, and the wider social and political con-
texts that in turn shape these worlds. It is there-
fore the task of this essay to trace the history
of art exhibitions by focusing on their struc-
tures and formats—not all are alike. Exhibition
types which existed before 1945, such as solo,
group, ethnic and Salon-type displays, reveal
continuities in format, while new ones, such
as medium-based, national and internationalist
shows, were invented and mushroomed, post-
1945, across the region. By the turn of the 20th
century, survey exhibitions (solo and group)
became established as the primary way of dis-
playing art.
Scholarship on Southeast Asian art has
tended to represent exhibitions as monolithic
and static, however its structures, formats and
discourses have changed over time in two phas-
es. The frst phase (from the turn of the 20th
century to 1973) saw the emergence of differ-
ent exhibitionary formats, the most dominant
of which were national, ethnic-based, medium-
based and internationalist exhibitions. The sec-
ond phase started from 1974. It spawned the
emergence of a new exhibitionary mode—the
critical exhibition—that has produced mani-
festos, challenged dominant categories of art,
envisioned a new role for art in society, and
proposed new ways of thinking and making art.
The Rise of the National and the
Regional in Salon Art Exhibitions
Exhibitions in Southeast Asia in the 1950s were
dominated by Salon-type displays, modelled
after the Salon de Paris that was frst organ-
215
 ised by the Académie des Beaux-Arts in 1725
and, from 1881 onwards, the Société des Ar-
tistes Français. Salon de Paris exhibitions were
held annually or biannually and, from 1748
onwards when they introduced a jury prize,
achieved the status of an arbiter, determining
taste and quality of art. John Clark in Modern
Asian Art identifes art societies that founded
art schools and organised exhibitions to sup-
port their own schools. For instance, the In-
dian Society of Oriental Art (founded in 1907)
started an art school and organised exhibitions
to promote the Bengal School, revealing an in-
cipient network of art academies, art societies
and exhibitions.4 Initially organised by fne art
societies, some of the Salon exhibitions sub-
sequently became institutionalised as national
art salons, performing “the important function
of defning what is national art, categorising
works and certifying artists by giving awards
and stimulating a national art market to create
a standard for adjudicating price.”5
In this region, the Salon exhibition as an
exhibitionary mode stamped its infuence on
the art worlds by becoming not only an im-
portant stable fxture where artworks could be
exhibited and artists recognised nationally, but
also a guardian of artistic quality that shaped
tastes and determined the pecking order of
artists. Clark’s study of Salon-type exhibitions
in Calcutta and Tokyo can form the basis of
comparative studies in the history of exhibi-
tions, understood within the art world, involv-
ing its network of the market, exhibition, and
discourse; these determine how art is received,
legitimised and understood in Southeast Asia.
Other Salon-type national art exhibitions
discussed by scholars offer different ways in
which exhibitions can be appraised. Boitran
Huynh-Beattie regarded the 1959–1964 an-
nual Spring Painting Awards organised by the
Department of Culture in Vietnam as herald-
ing a “Golden Age” for artists from the Soci-
ety of Young Saigonese Artists, as its members
such as Nguyễn Trung and Đình Cương won
216 Seng Yu Jin
awards and gained national fame.6 The annual
Spring Painting Awards, fashioned after the
Salon d’Automne exhibitions that coincided
with the changing seasons, were consolidated
and institutionalised, becoming permanent
fxtures of the Vietnamese art world. In Singa-
pore, this was achieved partly through building
exclusivity seen in the formation of the Société
des Artistes Chinois or the Salon Art Society,
subsequently renamed the Society of Chinese
Artists (SCA). Registered on 20 January 1936,
the SCA quickly established itself as the most
prestigious art society in Singapore and, hence-
forth, was exempted from registration by the
British administration. From the SCA’s found-
ing up to 1941, it successfully organised fve
Society of Chinese Artists Annual Art Exhibi-
tions, only to be disrupted by World War II.7
Salon-type exhibitions primarily organised by
art societies gradually institutionalised and
gained a measure of stability after the War, as
countries in Southeast Asia stepped into decol-
onisation fuelled by independence movements.
Stringent entry requirements into the
SCA created a perceived exclusivity, further
amplifed by its accomplished members, such
as Tchang Ju Chi, Dai Yinlang, Chen Puzhi,
Chen Chong Swee and Liu Kang, who were
recognised not only as prominent artists but
also intellectuals with qualifcations conferred
by prestigious academies in China. Gaining
acceptance into the SCA was immediately rec-
ognised as an artistic achievement. The SCA’s
penchant for inviting renowned artists like Xu
Beihong and Liu Haisu to exhibit, give talks
and raise funds for the Sino-Japanese War
further raised its profle and status (fg. 16.1).8
These means, therefore, enabled the SCA to ac-
cumulate symbolic capital through its annual
Salon-type exhibitions, and secure its position
as the most prominent art society in 1930s Sin-
gapore.
The concept of a national art exhibition
differentiates itself from the Salon-type exhibi-
tion in its search for the national; it is, like the
4 John Clark, Modern Asian Art (Hawaii: University of
Hawaii Press, 1998), 175–9.
5 Ibid., 181.
6 Boitran Huynh-Beattie, “Saigonese Art during the
War: Modernity versus Ideology,” in Cultures at War:
The Cold War and Cultural Expression in Southeast
Asia, eds. Tony Day & Maya H.T. Liem (Ithaca: Cornell
Southeast Asia Program Press, 2010), 95.
7 According to Yeo Mang Thong, the sixth Annual Art
Exhibition scheduled in December 1941 did not
materialise due to the encroaching Japanese army.
See Yeo Mang Thong, “The Society of Chinese Artists
(1935–1941): The First Organizationally Complete
Chinese Art Society in Singapore,” in Essays on the
concept of citizenship, often tied to a particular
country and attempts (either silently or overt-
ly) to construct a national cultural identity
through art. It is premised on the notion that
art and artists, as a unifying cultural force, can
be marshalled to serve a country striving for na-
tionalism and independence. Art was thought
to somehow exhibit and manifest the nation
and its identity, and national art exhibitions
evidenced the “national characteristics” of art.
Apinan Poshyananda in Modern Art in
Thailand identifed this role played by the Na-
tional Exhibition of Art, organised primarily
for art students from Silpakorn University and
Po Chang School to showcase their talents by
saying that when “placed under the rubric ‘na-
tional exhibition,’ it affrmed for the viewers an
acceptance of modern Thai art being practised
by local artists.”9 Silpa Bhirasri, who was in-
strumental in the founding of Silpakorn Uni-
versity (established on 12 October 1943) and
taught at its only faculty then, the Faculty of
Painting and Sculpture, represented a promi-
nent voice that championed the need for Thai
artists to be free in their creative practice in
tandem with how “contemporary art all over
Cultural Wars in Southeast Asia
History of Pre-War Chinese Painting in Singapore
(Singapore: Singapore Society of Asian Studies,
1992), 41.
8 Xu Beihong gave talks on the two occasions he came
to Singapore by invitation of the SCA in 1939 and
1941. Liu Haisu gave a talk in 1941 when he came to
raise funds for the war in China.
9 See Apinan Poshyananda, Modern Art in Thailand:
Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1992), 55.
10 See The 1st to 13th National Exhibition of Art Cata-
logue 1949–1962 (Bangkok: Silpakorn University,
2002), 8.
11 Ibid., 8–9.
the world has freed itself from traditional styles
which relied on academism in order to express
artistic personality from feeling and tech-
nique.”10 Tasked to be jointly responsible for
organising the inaugural National Exhibition
of Art, roles they played until its 14th edition,
Silpakorn University and Bhirasri were given
the power to shape the direction of the exhi-
bitions in line with the education curriculum
of the University. For instance, the exhibition
accepted entries in numerous categories of art
such as painting, applied arts, children’s art,
decorative arts, advertising, graphic arts, draw-
ing, painting and sculpture, which coincided
with subjects taught at Silpakorn University,
giving artists an additional impetus to work
and develop in these areas.11
In A Brief History of Malayan Art, Marco
Hsu identifes Salon-type national art exhibi-
tions, such as the National Art Exhibition held
at Kuala Lumpur for artists from the Federated
States in 1959 and the 1961 second art exhi-
bition of the Festival of Arts organised by the
Ministry of Culture in Singapore, as signs of
a maturing art community. Although Boitran,
Apinan and Hsu do not analyse such exhibi-
217
 12 Marco Hsu, A Brief History of Malayan Art, trans. Lai
Chee Kien (Singapore: Millenium Books, 1999), 81.
13 Huyhn-Beattie, op. cit., 93.
14 Andrew Ranard, Burmese Painting: A Linear and Lat-
eral History (Chiangmai: Silkworm Books, 2009), 160.
15 Ma Thanegi, Paw Oo Thett (1936–1993): His Life and
His Creativity (Yangon: Daw Moe Kay Khaing, 2004),
8–9.
16 Magtanggul Asa, The First Exhibition of Non-Objec-
tive Art in Tagala (Manila: House of Asa, 1954), iii.
17 ASEAN first comprised five countries—Indonesia,
Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thai-
land— and was expanded to include Brunei Darus-
tions (termed “salon national art exhibitions”
by Clark) as a mode that has defned, catego-
rised, legitimised and infuenced the reception,
dissemination and conception of art in the art
world, the importance of this type of exhibi-
tion is registered in their narratives.
The shift from Salon-type exhibitions to
internationalist exhibitions that promoted
specifc styles, media and ideologies sourced
from around the world began in the 1950s
and 1960s across Southeast Asia. Social realism
and abstraction represented two trajectories of
internationalism that marked this shift in the
region. The social realist strand of internation-
alism manifested in the Equator Art Society. In
his book A Brief History of Malayan Art, Hsu
devotes an entire chapter, “Vibrant Young Art-
ists (B),” to the 1956 exhibition organised by
the Singapore Chinese High Schools’ Gradu-
ates of 1953 Arts Association and the exhibi-
tions by the Equator Art Society. He traces
discourses centred around these exhibitions
by highlighting specifc artworks and essays in
their respective catalogues and quoting exhibi-
tion texts (such as “Art belongs to society—it is
public, and should serve the public”) to mark
these exhibitions as ideologically drive, describ-
ing them, stylistically, as “mainly realist in na-
218 Seng Yu Jin
salam (1984), Vietnam (1995), Laos and Myanmar
(1997), and Cambodia (1999).
18 T.K. Sabapathy, “Thoughts on an International Exhi-
bition on Southeast Asian Contemporary Art,” in 36
Ideas from Asia: Contemporary South-East Asian Art
(Singapore: ASEAN COCI & Singapore Art Museum,
2002), unpaginated.
19 Message by Salvador H. Laurel in the Anugerah Se-
nilukis Kumpulan Syarikat Philip Morris [The Philip
Morris Group of Companies Art Awards] (Kuala
Lumpur: Balai Seni Lukis Negara, 1998), unpaginated.
20 ASEAN Plan of Action on Culture and Information
(Jakarta: ASEAN Secretariat, 1993), 43.
ture.”12 Solo exhibitions that propelled “avant-
garde” styles like Cubism and abstraction were
mounted by individual artists, such as Tạ Tỵ
who was described by Boitran as being com-
mitted to “Cubism for a brief period of time
before venturing into abstract art.”13 Andrew
Ranard recounted Paw Oo Thet’s solo exhibi-
tion in Burma, described as groundbreaking
for adopting Cubist and semi-abstract styles,
“as the spark which ignited the ‘modern art
movement’” in 1963.14 This show was held at
the Burma-America Institute, a cultural centre
sponsored by the United States Information
Service (USIS), and opened on the same day
American President John F. Kennedy was assas-
sinated in Dallas (22 November 1963). It was
a great success for Paw Oo Thet. Most of his
works were sold even though his paintings drew
from the Cubist visual language, a modernist
break from “traditional” paintings dominated
by realism.15 In the Philippines, the 1953 exhi-
bition The First Exhibition of Non-Objective Art
in Tagala featured non-representational works
that included Cubist, semi-abstract and sym-
bolist paintings, marking the emergence of ex-
hibitions based on propagating styles conceived
as “non-objective.” This went against the tide
of the dominant Amorsolo school that featured
realist and idealised landscape and fgure-types
which embodied the imagined Philippines.16
From 1957 a new exhibitionary mode
emerged—the regional exhibition—with a
scope and scale much larger than Salon
and national art exhibitionary modes. The
First Southeast Asia Art Exhibition: A South-
east Asian Competition and Exhibition organ-
ised by the Art Association of the Philippines
marked the birth of the regional exhibition. It
was soon followed by other regional art com-
petitions like the Philip Morris ASEAN Arts
Awards in 1994. Patrick Ng Kah Onn’s paint-
ing, titled Batek Malaya, won frst prize at the
1957 exhibition, a signal that batik as a textile
was imbued with an imagined “region-ness.”
Ng’s painting on batik, which evokes the “na-
tional” and the “regional,” partly reinvented
batik painting as a hybrid genre: a traditional
textile craft and an easel format infused with
regional pictorial idioms. This is a refection
of why Seah Kim Joo’s batik painting was ac-
cepted by the Modern Art Society as the bas-
tion of avant-garde artistic practices 15 years
later in the 1972 exhibition that also did not
show Cheo Chai Hiang’s conceptual 5′ x 5′
(Singapore River). Besides exhibitions, the 1964
Seminar on Fine Arts of Southeast Asia, un-
der the auspices of the Association of South-
east Asian Institutions of Higher Learning,
nurtured a growing interest in understanding
art from a regional perspective.
The Association of Southeast Asian Na-
tions (ASEAN) was established in 1967.17
This grouping of countries represented South-
east Asia in fostering regional cooperation
based on the principle of equality and respect
for the sovereignty of individual nation-states.
Regional cooperation was skewed towards forg-
ing economic exchanges and interdependence,
but the forging of a regional identity received
a measure of focus through the ASEAN art ex-
hibitions.
In art historical terms, the birth of ASEAN
heralded a new era of cultural cooperation
Cultural Wars in Southeast Asia
among its members. As art historian and critic
T.K. Sabapathy noted, “Art exhibitions are one
of several cultural initiatives which are deemed
as useful in displaying regional consciousness
and diversity.”18 The frst exhibition to mark
the establishment of ASEAN was held in Jakar-
ta in 1968. In 1972, the ASEAN Art Exhibition
was organised to mark the 5th ASEAN Ministe-
rial Meeting in Singapore where the fve found-
ing members of ASEAN (Singapore, Malaysia,
Indonesia, Thailand and the Philippines) held
an exhibition of paintings and photography.
The concept of a roving or mobile exhibition
that would travel to the various capitals of the
participating countries was mooted and actu-
alised in the 1974 ASEAN Mobile Exhibition
in Kuala Lumpur. The ASEAN Committee
on Culture and Information (COCI), which
was set up in 1978, inherited the objectives of
ASEAN as an institutional endeavour to pro-
mote a “sense of regional identity and con-
tribute to the enrichment of the culture of
ASEAN.”19 The Bali Summit in 1976 laid the
groundwork for the establishment of COCI
as its framework, and included the support of
“ASEAN scholars, writers, artistes and mass
media representative to enable them to play an
active role in fostering a sense of regional iden-
tity and fellowship.”20 Cultural activities, of
which the visual arts were a part, were deemed
useful for forging a regional identity through
ASEAN. The ASEAN exhibitions exemplifed
how art could be pressed to serve diplomacy, a
connection that forms the very basis of COCI’s
existence. The signifcance of “culture and in-
formation” was of vital importance to ASEAN,
especially during its early years when some
member countries were wary of each other’s
intentions. It was ASEAN’s programmes on
culture and information which served as the
spadework that generated the spirit of regional-
ism during ASEAN’s infant years.
The South East Asia Cultural Festival
organised by the then Ministry of Culture in
Singapore continued the regional exhibition-
219
 21 Jennifer Lindsay, “Festival Politics: Singapore’s 1963
South-East Asia Cultural Festival,” in Cultures at
War, op. cit., 228.
22 Ibid., 243.
23 Ibid., 229.
ary mode where “national, regional and global
factors intersect in cultural display.”21 Jennifer
Lindsay provides a way of examining a mode of
exhibition organised by the state that involves
strategic systems of representations by project-
ing Singapore as “a nation of gathered races
performing to and each other, a vision extend-
ed to Southeast Asia as a whole”; a multiracial
exemplar that embodies the culture and racial
strands of this region traced to its Malay, Chi-
nese and Indian sources corresponding to Sin-
gapore’s racial make-up.22 Such state-sponsored
and choreographed exhibitionary displays are a
mode of exhibition and a site where the net-
works of the art world and “cultural networks
cut across political and ideological ones.”23
Lindsay’s focus on the politics of constructing
national and regional cultural identities within
the context of the Cold War provides another
way of studying modes of exhibitions as strate-
gic systems of representation, where national,
regional and global forces intersect.
This review of current scholarship on ex-
hibitions in Southeast Asia in the 1950s and
1960s reveals how exhibitions can be viewed
not just as types, such as solo or group exhibi-
tions as in the majority of current literature,
but as modes of exhibitions. The approaches
employed by scholars like Clark, who looked
into national art salons as a mode of exhibi-
tion, and Apinan, who looked into the recep-
tion of exhibitions, offer different and useful
ways to appraise exhibitions, further developed
by 1970s scholarship on exhibitions and exhi-
220 Seng Yu Jin
24 See “Introduction,” in Student Activism in Asia: Be-
tween Protest and Powerlessness, eds. Meredith L.
Weiss & Edward Aspinall (Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press, 2012), 5.
bitionary discourses. These scholars deepened
analysis of exhibitionary discourses that deploy
strategic systems of representation in the dis-
play, reception and discourse of art by under-
standing the national salon and regional types
as exhibitionary modes that were new before
the 1970s. Another type of exhibition—the
critical exhibition—that emerged only in the
1970s in the region had not yet been conceived
and historicised. The rest of this essay will fo-
cus on the social, political and cultural condi-
tions that provided the context for the birth of
the critical exhibition in the 1970s.
The Birth of the Critical Exhibition
in Southeast Asia in 1970–1994
The late 1960s and 1970s period was key in
the history of exhibitions in Southeast Asia. It
was a tumultuous time, characterised by radi-
cal student activism; a push for economic de-
velopment by governments across the region
that resulted in an unprecedented expansion of
higher education; the spread of authoritarian
and military regimes, as in the cases of Thai-
land, the Philippines and Indonesia; and the
looming spectre of the Cold War as manifest-
ed in the intensifcation of the Vietnam War
(1955–1975) in the early 1970s, resulting in
the eventual withdrawal of American forces in
1975. This was a period when ideas and ide-
ologies mattered, marked by a resurgent youth
movement that mainly involved students from
higher education institutions such as univer-
sities and fne art academies that were either
part of these universities or autonomous insti-
tutions. Students in this period of social and
political upheaval saw themselves as the elite
intellectual vanguards of their country, a moral
force for social justice, and a bastion against
corruption. They could claim to be so by their
perceived lack of vested interests to advance
their careers within the political system, and
did not stand to receive any fnancial gain. Aca-
demics who taught in these tertiary institutions
identifed with them to a similar but lesser ex-
tent. Unlike the academics and lecturers who
were clearly professionals, students occupied
an in-between status, neither wholly profes-
sionals nor marginalised elites whose roles were
defned more exclusively in terms of their con-
tributions to nation building and economic
development.24 Student activism provides an
important context for understanding the emer-
gence of critical exhibitions in the early 1970s
because many of them were also artists enrolled
in academic art institutions such as the Indone-
sian Academy of Fine Arts (Akademi Seni Rupa
Indonesia, ASRI) in Yogyakarta and the Fac-
ulty of Painting, Sculpture and Graphic Arts
at Silpakorn University. These artist–students
were the heartbeat of the new critical exhibi-
tion, a mode that was socially engaged, concep-
tual and, in the display of art, shifted towards
public spaces as well as propelled artists to the
intellectual forefront of broader movements
concerned with poverty, democracy, the social
and economic conditions of the people, anti-
colonialism and nation building.
1974: The Birth of Critical
Exhibitions in Southeast Asia
The late 1960s and 1970s was marked by
waves of student movements in Thailand, the
Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Burma and
Singapore. The frst wave was a leftist one
beginning in the late 1950s through to the
early 1970s, in which students fought for a
Cultural Wars in Southeast Asia
more egalitarian society and were against pro-
American policies which they viewed as being
neo-imperialist and pro-capitalist. The New
Left—which departed from the Marxist focus
on the labour movement and class struggle,
as well as communism’s tendency towards au-
thoritarianism to broaden the range of reforms
to include democracy, human rights, gay rights
and freedom of speech—could be seen in the
Philippines and Thailand. Mao Zedong’s ideas
on art were particularly infuential on the New
Left in the Philippines and Thailand, derived
from his 1942 Talks at the Yan’an Forum on
Literature and Art that called for the arts to
serve the people. The second wave that began
around the late 1960s and continued through-
out the 1970s saw student protestors who were
initially sympathetic to the developmentalist
goals of regimes turn against these very same
regimes. In their eyes, these governments had
become too authoritarian and corrupt. These
students sought for reformation through insti-
tutional critique, counter-hegemonic discourse
(in the form of manifestos) and social engage-
ment to restore the meaning and relevance of
art to people’s lives. Their aim was to restore
these regimes to their ideological origins by “re-
turning to the people”; this was most evident
in countries like Indonesia, Thailand and the
Philippines. The emergence of the critical exhi-
bition began in the context of the second wave
of student protests, although its roots could be
traced to the frst wave of student movements
in Southeast Asia.
The Rise of Artist–Student Activism and
the Emergence of Critical Exhibitions
The Black December Incident in Indonesia
1974 is a historically signifcant year for stu-
dent movements across Southeast Asia. Suhar-
to’s New Order was established in the wake of
a coup that ended the rule of Sukarno and the
Communist Party of Indonesia (Partai Komu-
221
 nis Indonesia, PKI) in 1965. The coup which
occurred on 1 October resulted in the death
of Indonesia’s highest-ranking generals, whose
bodies were unceremoniously thrown into a
well. The PKI was held responsible and banned
in 1966. A purge ensued with thousands of
communists killed or imprisoned, regardless
of whether they were proven or suspected. The
military, as led by Suharto, pursued a develop-
mental regime focused on economic growth
and destroyed the ability of the working class,
farmers and the economically disenfranchised
to represent themselves politically. But its over-
all developmental strategy soon appeared to
excessively beneft foreign investors and select
elites.25 The New Order was perceived as hav-
ing deviated from its original ethos of reform-
ing Indonesia for its people, to become corrupt
and authoritarian. This culminated in the Ma-
lari affair on 15 January 1974. The “vanguard
in vacuum” created by the New Order and its
repressive policies allowed students to assume
the role as leaders of society, a moral force that
would rescue the nation. Widespread rioting
and student protests broke out in Jakarta and
across campuses in the early 1970s, criticising
the government for its corrupt activities as well
as and ignoring the plight of the poor.
Connections between the student move-
ments raging in Indonesia and artist–students
were clearly made in FX Harsono’s solo ex-
hibition titled FX Harsono: The Life and the
Chaos of Objects, Images and Words, organised
by the Erasmus Huis, the cultural centre of
the Netherlands in Jakarta, in 2015. This solo
exhibition followed recent awards: the Prince
Claus Awards of the Netherlands (2014) and
the Joseph Balestier Award for the Freedom of
Art in Singapore (2015). Both awards recog-
nised Harsono’s role as a socially engaged art-
ist whose works address the issue of democracy
and the need for counter-hegemonic histories
that are alternatives to state-controlled narra-
tives and give a voice to the marginalised and
disenfranchised. This exhibition featured a
222 Seng Yu Jin
timeline that started with the Malari Incident
as the catalyst, and context in which one could
understand the soon-to-occur Black December
Incident.
Harsono was one of the leading propo-
nents of the Black December Incident in 1974.
This has been cited by art historians as the pre-
cursor to the emergence of the New Art Move-
ment (Gerakan Seni Rupa Baru, GSRB) in
1975.26 Prior to the Black December Incident,
groups of young artist–students in Yogyakarta
and Bandung had begun to experiment with
new art forms that challenged the aesthetic and
theoretical conventions of modern art, which
were largely defned by painting and sculpture
as taught in the art academies. These artist–
students critiqued their academic art curricu-
lum as being too conservative and restrictive
for limiting fne art to disciplines defned as
painting, sculpture, printmaking and graphic
arts. They advocated alternative art forms that
offered new ways of using non-art materials
such as found objects and organic materials
from everyday life that the rakyat or people
could easily relate to. One such group was
based in Yogyakarta and formed the Group of
Five (Kelompok 5), which comprised Hardi,
FX Harsono, B. Munny Ardhi, Nanik Mirna
and Siti Adiati, all students from ASRI. The
Group of Five proceeded to organise exhibi-
tions in many cities such as Surabaya and
Solo, questioning the institutional structures
of ASRI that were shaped by the practices of
painting and sculpture. The mass media cov-
ered their activities with great interest.
In 1974, members of the Group of Five
were involved in a dispute between the stu-
dents and the ASRI administration, culminat-
ing in the Black December Incident. At the
1974 Grand Exhibition of Indonesian Paint-
ing, the jury’s decision favoured works by more
established artists such as Widayat, Abas Ali-
basyah and A.D. Pirous. The Black December
Manifesto was issued in reaction, proclaiming
the following:
25 Edward Aspinall, “Moral Force Politics and the
Struggle Against Authoritarianism,” in Student Activ-
ism in Asia, 160.
26 Sumartono, “The Role of Power in Contemporary
1. Diversity is undeniable in Indonesian
art, even if diversity does not by itself
signify a desirable development.
2. For the sake of a development that
ensures the sustainability of our culture,
it is the artist’s calling to offer a spiritual
direction based on humanitarian values
and oriented towards social, cultural
and economic realities.
3. Artists should pursue various creative
ways in which to arrive at new perspec-
tives in Indonesian painting.
4. Thereby, Indonesian art may achieve a
positive identity.
5. Obstacles in the development of Indo-
nesian art come from outdated concepts
retained by the Establishment by art
business agents as well as established
artists. To save our art, it is now time
for us to pay tribute to the established
by giving them the title of “cultural
veterans.”27
14 artists, including FX Harsono, signed
the document. The protesting artists sent a
wreath on the day the fve winners were an-
nounced. The wreath read: “Our condolences
upon the death of the art of painting.” The fve
winners were Widayat, Irsam, Aming Pray-
itno, Abad Alibasyah and A.D. Pirous. This
protest by these 14 artist–students can be seen
Cultural Wars in Southeast Asia
Yogyakartan Art,” in Outlet: Yogyakartan within the
Contemporary Indonesian Art Scene (Yogyakarta:
Cemeti Art Foundation, 2001), 21–2.
27 Ibid., 23–4.
in context of the broader student movement
of 1974 that peaked with the Malari Incident.
Like the larger student movement, the 14 art-
ists who issued the Black December Manifesto
were seeking to reform ASRI and its perceived
conservatism. The Manifesto was welcomed
in Jakarta and Bandung, with the exception
of ASRI which suspended those students who
signed it.
Just eight months after the Black Decem-
ber Incident, the Group of Five and other art-
ists from Bandung, together with noted art
critic and lecturer Sanento Yuliman, established
the GSRB and organised an exhibition in Au-
gust 1975 at the Jakarta Arts Centre (Taman
Ismail Marzuki, TIM). Works presented in this
exhibition were socially engaged, raising issues
concerning injustices beyond the feld of art
to include socioeconomic and political issues
aligned with the Black December Manifesto’s
call for artists to develop socially engaged artis-
tic practices. Works shown by the GSRB artists
included a wide range of art forms (such as in-
stallation art) that questioned the defnition of
art circumscribed by the aesthetic conventions
and practices of painting (fg. 16.2). The use of
everyday materials in art expanded what were
traditionally considered as art materials, such
as oil and watercolour paints, to include found
objects that embodied local cultural and politi-
cal meanings.
223
 28 Sinsawat Yodbangtoey, ed., Building and Weaving
the 20 Year Art Legacy, The Artists’ Front of Thailand
1974–1994 (Bangkok: CON-tempus, 1994), 8–33.
29 Prajak Kongkirati, “The Cultural Politics of Student
Resistance,” in Student Activism in Asia, 231.
30 Ibid., 237.
31 Poshyananda, op. cit., 165.
32 Ibid., 164.
33 Ibid. These cheap and widely circulated books were
collectively termed “one-bhat books.”
The Artists’ Front of Thailand
The Artists’ Front of Thailand (AFT) was
formed the year after the military dictatorship
of Thanom Kittikachorn, Praphat Charusatien
and Narong Kittikachorn was toppled by a stu-
dent movement in October 1973. The AFT op-
posed art that was produced by those in power
and big businesses for capitalism, and called for
art to be relevant to the common Thai worker
and farmer, and bring culture to every Thai.28
Like the artist-students who initiated the Black
December Incident that led to the formation
of the GSRB, the AFT grew out of a larger stu-
dent movement, in this case one that success-
fully demonstrated against and brought about a
change of government in Thailand. The estab-
lishment of Thammasat University, a product
of the 1932 revolution led by the People’s Party,
resulted in an open admission policy that gave
all Thais, regardless of their economic back-
ground, the opportunity to receive a university
education. This was unlike Chualalongkorn
University, which catered largely to the elite.29
Post-war Thammasat University became a hot-
bed for student activism, with students from
different economic classes, including the work-
ing class, spearheading anti-imperialist protests
against Japan as led by Pridi Banomyong from
224 Seng Yu Jin
34 Giles Ji Ungpakorn, “The Impact of the Thai ‘Sixties’
on the People’s Movement Today,” Inter-Asia Cultural
Studies 7, no. 4 (2006): 574.
35 George N. Katsiafcas, Asia’s Unknown Uprisings Vol-
ume 2: People Power in the Philippines, Burma, Tibet,
China, Taiwan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Thailand, and In-
donesia, 1947–2009 (Oakland: PM Press, 2013), 305.
36 Ibid.
37 Clare Veal, “Collective Ruptures: Visually Document-
ing the Precarious Nature of Thai Politics After 2010,”
Modern Art Asia 12 (November 2012): 6.
the Free Thai Movement. Unlike other univer-
sities in Thailand that shifted their emphasis to
hard sciences as dictated by the military regime,
Thammasat University focused on expanding
its departments of humanities and social sci-
ences, whence many of the student protestors
came.30 Both student movements in Thailand
and Indonesia believed that they were a moral
force above the corruption of which their gov-
ernments were guilty; this gave them a sense of
being privileged. They sailed on the powerful
potential of youth, shaped by the ideas of the
New Left, transforming society by challenging
the institutions that propped up authoritarian
capitalist and developmental regimes.
On 14 October 1973, around half a mil-
lion people, a large proportion of whom were
students, gathered to protest. A violent mas-
sacre then broke out between the student and
civilian demonstrators, and the military and
police, which left many dead. While the protest
resulted in the collapse of the military dictator-
ship, the ensuing act of suppression also ended
the country’s attempt at a democratic transition
in leadership. The military replaced elected in-
terim prime minister Sanya Thammasak with a
civilian dictatorship led by Thanin Kraivixien.
Just after the massacre, the Dharma Group that
artist Pratuang Emjaroen had founded in 1971,
organised its third exhibition. Dissenting artists
who were horrifed by the violent clashes that
had just taken place gathered around Pratu-
ang and joined the Dharma Group. The work
Pratuang exhibited was a massive oil-on-canvas
painting that stretched to almost six metres,
titled The Days of Disaster (1973–1974). It
employs potent symbols drawn from the very
notion of “Thai-ness” as steeped in Buddhism.
Buddhist iconography was reinvented by Pratu-
ang to include a fag riddled with bullet holes,
dismembered limbs with blood pouring out,
and the face of Buddha covered in bullet holes,
melting under the streaks of intense light pen-
etrating it. Seen together, these powerful sym-
bols make a political statement about this pro-
test and its aftermath. Another painting, made
a few years later, Red Morning Glory and Rotten
Gun (1976, fg. 16.3) reinforces Pratuang’s revul-
sion towards violence and killing by hybridising
realist and Surrealist visual languages. To decry
the actions of the military and its betrayal of
Buddhism, he uses a rotting gun and the back
of a decapitated Buddha statue as symbols.
In October 1974, the AFT organised a
large display of more than a thousand paint-
ings and posters on Rajadamnern Avenue to
commemorate the student victory which oc-
curred exactly one year ago. This critical exhi-
bition challenged the gallery exhibition format
by displaying artworks in public spaces, involv-
ing artists and the public, especially students,
as a form of social engagement, and rethinking
art as a form of performative action—a gesture
of anti-imperialist and anti-authoritarian pro-
test—against a military regime. Works by both
artists and students were shown in this outdoor
exhibition, demonstrating the close relation-
ship between the AFT and student activists.31
Further evidence that the AFT was part of a
broader student activism can be seen from the
strong support that it drew from students in
vocational institutes and the Po Chang School
of Arts and Crafts.32 Kamchorn Soonpongsri
was the chairman of the AFT. His thinking on
Cultural Wars in Southeast Asia
art had been shaped by earlier Thai socialist
discourse that had been recycled and become
popular with both the AFT artists and stu-
dent activists, the most infuential of which
was Chit Phumisak’s Art for Life and Art for
the People, frst published in 1957 and widely
circulated.33
The AFT was not alone in deploying
critical exhibitions for political agitation. In
October 1975, the Coalition of Thai Artists or-
ganised street exhibitions of “people’s art” along
Rajadamnern Avenue as a symbolic gesture of
democracy, displaying agitational banners
against American military bases making air
strikes in Vietnam.34 These critical exhibitions
formed part of a larger ground-up initiative
calling for “art for the people,” “art for life” and
“songs for the people” (which effectively re-
placed foreign-language songs with Thai lyrics)
and “theatre for the people.”35 Other forms of
cultural resistance against the military regime by
student activists “responded with conceptual-
ism, surrealism, and other forms of experimen-
tation—including the transformation of tradi-
tional forms that were rejuvenated as well.”36
Art historian Clare Veal locates these art groups
like the AFT and the Coalition of Thai Artists
as “modernists” as they had “defnite member-
ships; worked under the auspices of manifestos;
and stylistically their works were within the
parameters of Surrealist and Expressionist dis-
courses, already largely accepted by the estab-
lishment art system. This meant that, despite
their political radicalism, members of these art-
ists’ groups were easily reabsorbed into offcial
arts systems in the 1980s.”37 While some of
the leading artists from the AFT and Dharma
Group (for example, Pratuang) became estab-
lished and recognised as artists later in Thai-
land, the moment of artistic resistance against
the military regime in the 1970s deployed the
critical exhibition as a new exhibitionary mode
that abandoned the gallery for public spaces,
using a range of artistic strategies that included
social engagement and the conceptual.
225
 Veal locates the manifesto as a product of
modern art within the Western context pro-
pounded by artist groups such as the Futurists
and Surrealists. The art manifesto in South-
east Asia takes on a different meaning in the
postcolonial context as artists deployed it in
the 1970s as counter-hegemonic discourse, a
form of cultural resistance against imperial-
ism during the Cold War, most keenly felt in
America’s military intervention in the Vietnam
War. The critical exhibition became the vessel
in which the art manifesto corralled its ideo-
logical force into action through its artworks
and discourse. Art historians have, such as
Patrick D. Flores in his study of exhibitions,
focused on art manifestos by tracing its pro-
liferation across the region as a “proxy for the
work of art itself,” a “document of alterity” and
a “dissemination of text as collective undertak-
ing and the polemical fre it sparks.” Flores ex-
amines the manifesto as “a vehicle of agency,”
driven by the “desire to re-think the world” in
its rebellion against authority strategies of in-
stitutional critique.38 He is not alone in iden-
tifying the manifesto as a potent instrument
wielded by artists in the 1970s. Sabapathy
located moments of “contemporary turns” in
Southeast Asian art in his exhibition Intersect-
ing Histories: Contemporary Turns in Southeast
Asian Art (2014) within the ambit of exhibi-
tions and the manifesto as a form of exhibi-
tionary discourse. Both Flores and Sabapathy
cite manifestos, some of which were directly
produced from exhibitions such as Towards a
Mystical Reality: A Documentation of Jointly
Initiated Experiences by Redza Piyadasa and Su-
laiman Esa (1974), and GSRB (1975), and yet
other manifestos or treatises were issued and
disseminated publicly by artist collectives and
artists like the Kaisahan, AFT and Cheo Chai
Hiang in the Philippines, Thailand and Singa-
pore respectively. Both Flores and Sabapathy
refer to the primacy of exhibitions as sites hos-
pitable to the production of such exhibitionary
discourses.
226 Seng Yu Jin
The Rise of the Left in the Philippines
July 1974 was a turning point in the Philip-
pines. The United Progressive Artists and Ar-
chitects (Nagkakaisang Progresibong Artists at
Arkitekto, NPAA) and other mass organisations
in the urban areas were dissolved as part of the
the NPAA’s broader strategy to deploy their
forces to the countryside. Peasants were new
recruits and became the lifeblood of the organi-
sation, a move aligned with the New People’s
Army’s strategy to create a rural power base.
The NPAA had been formed in 1971 as part of
a struggle in the Philippines that rose up against
American imperialism, in tandem with student
movements all over the globe, such as in France,
America and Japan, that likewise arose in re-
sponse to American imperialism. Its infuence
on students was exercised through educational
institutions such as the University of the Philip-
pines, University of Santo Tomas and St Mary’s
College.39 The NPAA was a collective of artists
and a cultural organisation that produced revo-
lutionary propaganda in the form of portable
murals, banners, illustrations, posters, comics,
photography and paintings as anti-bourgeois
art that depict the real social conditions of the
proletariat. The transference of the NPAA art-
ists from the urban centre to the countryside
created a vacuum for another artist collec-
tive—the Kaisahan group—to establish itself
in 1976 in metropolitan Manila and create
artworks based on political and social themes.
The Kaisahan comprised artists across different
socioeconomic classes, some of whom included
Renato Habulan, Edgar Fernandez, Al Man-
rique, Jose Tence Ruiz and Pablo Baen Santos.
Besides exhibitions, they organised workshops,
lectures and exhibitions on sociopolitical issues
concerning the Philippines.40
Like the AFT, the Kaisahan produced
a manifesto to state its ideology on the pur-
pose of art—that it should be people-oriented
and shape a national identity. The Kaisahan’s
manifesto differed from the AFT’s in its desire
38 Patrick D. Flores, “First Person Plural: Manifestos of
the 1970s in Southeast Asia,” in Global Studies: Map-
ping Contemporary Art and Culture, eds. Hans Belt-
ing, Jacob Birken & Peter Weibel et al. (Ostfldern:
Hatje Cantz, 2012), 264.
39 Alice G. Guillermo, Protest/Revolutionary Art in the
Philippines 1970–1990 (Quezon City: University of the
Philippines, 2001), 51.
40 Ibid., 62.
to open the aesthetics of political art to allow
more room for creativity, whereas the latter fo-
cused on using art as a tool to instil what they
considered to be Thai art, and to resist the
power of the “big people” (such as those with
economic and political authority) in favour of
the “small people” (the working classes). In
this aspect, the Kaisahan and GSRB shared
the desire to expand the thinking and mak-
ing of art by being socially engaged without
necessarily reducing art to mere propaganda.
Mao’s 1942 Talks at the Yan’an Forum on Lit-
erature and Art infuenced both the Kaisahan
and AFT to deploy art more democratically
for the masses rather than for a small urban
elite class, and, as mentioned, Mao’s ideas pro-
vided a powerful postcolonial attack on impe-
rialism and authoritarian regimes in Thailand
and the Philippines. In 1977, an exhibition
titled Notes on the Hayuma Exhibit was held.
It can be considered a critical exhibition for
bringing together paintings from the Kaisahan
artists and poetry from the Galian sa Arte at
Tula (GAT) poets in an interdisciplinary col-
laboration to make art that was “relevant to
the people and their lives.”41 This exhibition
conceived of art as a vehicle for social change,
an alternative to the art from the academies
and salons, and intimated that art went be-
yond the gallery space to public spaces the
Cultural Wars in Southeast Asia
41 Ibid., 65.
42 Notes on the Hayuma Exhibit by the Kaisahan and
the Galian sa Arte at Tula poets in ibid., 244.
43 The University of Singapore and the University of
Malaya became a national university for Malaya by
legislation in 1962, with Tunku Abdul Rahman as the
frst Chancellor. The University of Singapore eventu-
ally became the present-day National University of
Singapore.
way the AFT went into schools, streets and
plazas.42 The GSRB, AFT and Kaisahan were
aligned in their emphasis on the “concrete and
the everywhere,” an aesthetic based on the real
conditions of the urban poor, for instance the
pollution, struggles and desires of the common
people as seen in Pablo Baens Santos’ Bagong
Kristo (New Christ) (fg. 16.4). Their common
aspirations for “the concrete” and “the real”
were drawn from a confuence of ideas around
socialism, informed by Mao’s Yan’an Forum,
local socialist intellectuals, the energy of stu-
dent movements, anti-imperialism against the
Vietnam War, as well as the corruption and au-
thoritarianism of developmental regimes.
The Mystical Meets Nature:
Conceptual Shifts in Malaysia
Malaysia in the early 1970s experienced a mix-
ture of three waves: nationalism, the rise of the
Left and Islamisation. Meredith Weiss, a scholar
on Southeast Asian political science, situates
the rise of post-war Malayan nationalism in the
formation of the University of Malaya (UM) in
Singapore on 8 October 1949. The UM was
eventually split into two autonomous campuses,
the University of Singapore and the University
of Malaya in Singapore and Kuala Lumpur
respectively.43 The UM proved to be an im-
227
 44 Meredith L. Weiss, Student Activism in Malaysia: Cru-
cible, Mirror Slideshow (Singapore: NUS Press, 2011),
176.
45 Nur Hanum Khairuddin, “Anak Alam: Behind the
Scenes,” in Reactions—New Critical Strategies (Kua-
la Lumpur: RogueArt, 2013), 25.
46 Ismail Abdullah, “Pameran Catan dan Arca Anak
Alam,” Dewan Budaya, Feburary 1980, 45.
47 Latiff Mohidin, Catatan Latiff Mohidin (Kuala Lumpur:
Maya Press, 2010).
48 See “Experimentation the Anak Alam Way,” New
Straits Times, 19 October 2013, accessed January
2015 , http://www.nst.com.my/opinion/columnist/
portant institution for fostering a Malayan na-
tional consciousness and produced left-leaning
journals like Fajar, published by the University
Socialist Club. The leftist wave in the early
1970s was led by student activism propelled by
international concerns engendered by the Vi-
etnam War and conficts in the Middle East,
such as the 1973 Arab–Israeli War. The student
movement centred in universities was joined by
other leftist forces, such as students and trade
unions, which had convergent political inter-
ests. These left-leaning trade unions protested
against imperialism, unfair state economic
policies biased towards development and so-
cial injustice.44 The Malay Muslim Student’s
Society and the UM Student Union actively
organised protests for social justice and pro-
poor policies, which the government tried to
rein in by passing the Schools Societies Regula-
tions in 1960 to little effect. Race riots in 1969
led to the introduction of the New Economic
Policy in 1971, meant to reduce poverty, cur-
tail the domination of certain occupations by
specifc races and improve Malays’ access to
higher education through quotas. The religious
wave or Dakwah activism frst began in 1965,
228 Seng Yu Jin
experimentation-the-anak-alam-way1.379212#ixzz
31n3oGvtr.
49 Ibid.
50 Hanim, op. cit., 29.
51 Ibid., 25.
52 Anak Alam, “Manifesto Generation Anak Alam,” in Re-
actions New Critical Strategies: Narratives in Malay-
sian Art Vol. 2, trans. Wong Hoy Cheong, 23.
53 Sulaiman Esa & Redza Piyadasa, Towards a Mystical
Reality: A Documentation of Jointly Initiated Experi-
ences, exh. cat. (Kuala Lumpur: Dewan Bahasa dan
Pustaka, 1974).
led by the Pertubuhan Al Rahmaniah at the
UM, which identifed Islam as a religion that
could deal with social issues such as corruption
and poverty. By the 1970s, Dakwah activism
quickly became synonymous with Islamisation
of the state due to its broad spectrum of reli-
gious activities, from personal religious study
groups to moderately violent protests against
perceived decadent Western cultural infuences
like pop culture.
1974 also saw the formation of the Chil-
dren of Nature (Anak Alam, AA) and heralded
Towards a Mystical Reality, a critical exhibition
organised by Sulaiman Esa and Redza Piyadasa.
Several names were initially suggested for the
group, including Angatan Pelukis Contem-
porary (Assembly of Contemporary Painters),
Avant Garde Group and Angkatan Kreatif
(Creative Assembly). However, Anak Alam, a
name proposed by artist and poet Latiff Mohi-
din, was subsequently chosen.45 “Anak Alam is
process, therefore it is full of possibility” was Is-
mail Abdullah’s assessment of this loose collec-
tive of artists, painters and theatre practitioners
in his essay in Dewan Budaya, a magazine that
featured critical writings on contemporary art
and culture, published by the Dewan Bahasa
dan Pustaka (DBP).46 Formed on 1 May, the
AA occupied a mansion named Taman Budaya
located at 905 Periaran Tun Ismail in Kuala
Lumpur. It focused on interdisciplinary prac-
tices and the process of art-making, evident in
its frst exhibition in 1974, Nature Day, a two-
day-and-night event with “spontaneous and
creative activities by and for the whole family;
events day and night, including enviro-sculp-
ture, drama, pantomime, play reading, and
mini-kata; poetry readings, bamboo gamelan,
and much more.”47 The AA became a place
for artists such as Latiff Mohidin, Yusof Os-
man, Zulkifi Dahalan, Mustpha Ibrahim, Siti
Zainon Ismail, Tajuddin Ismail, Ali Rahamad
and others to exchange ideas, exhibit and make
art across disciplines. Street and experimental
theatre, led by Omar Abdullah, Muhammad
Abdullah and Khalid Salleh, among others, be-
came an important part of the AA and were
part of the student activist movement spear-
headed by the UM’s Experimental Theatre and
other campuses protesting against American
imperialism, government corruption and cir-
cumstances that made it diffcult for univer-
sity graduates to secure reasonably paid jobs.48
Teater Kecil was the brainchild of Omar and
Muhammad who produced impromptu theatre
in street spaces, bringing plays from the stage
to the street and thus directly to the public,
much akin to the broader leftist wave in Malay-
sia, the Philippines, Thailand and Indonesia.49
The AA expressly shunned state bureaucracy,
but ironically were supported by infuential
cultural fgures and patrons like Usman Awang,
a poet who also worked as the senior research
fellow at the DPB, and Ismail Zain who served
as Director of the Balai Seni Lukis Negara, now
known as the National Visual Arts Gallery, Ma-
laysia, and Director-General of Culture at the
Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sports.50
Like the other artist collectives across the
region who produced critical exhibitions, the
AA was frmly rooted in a student movement
Cultural Wars in Southeast Asia
that was locked in a struggle to produce socially
engaged art for the common people, address
the issues of corruption and resist the forces of
imperialism. “The Anak Alam of that era was
full of the words of ‘protest’” was how Raja
Zahabuddin described them.51 The manifesto
was also a potent vehicle for action and change
deployed by the AA in their declaration to pro-
duce art that is not based on ethnicity:
with no divisions of ancestry,
of skin colour,
of beliefs,
of age,
of gender and length of hair
in this generation of nature’s children.52
This desire for art to be ethnically inclusive and
constrained only by the artist’s ability to imag-
ine was a response to the 1969 race riots and
the 1971 First National Cultural Congress held
to construct a Malaysian national culture and
identity through art based on elements drawn
from relevant cultures and Islam.
Towards a Mystical Reality was organised by
Esa and Piyadasa who both taught fne art at the
Mara Institute of Technology (now known as
Universiti Teknologi Mara) in Kuala Lumpur.
The exhibition shared the anti-imperialist tenor
of the other critical exhibitions organised by art-
ist collectives in Southeast Asia, and produced a
manifesto calling for Asian artists to “emphasise
the ‘spiritual essence’ rather than the outward
form” as an alternative way to think about and
make art, based on a different concept of reality
that is not scientifc but meditative and expe-
riential, to break away from the hegemony of
Western art and its art history.53 Although both
Piyadasa and Esa were lecturers and not stu-
dents, they were nonetheless part of the broader
student movement and political environment
that shifted towards art-making as a socially
engaged and intellectually rigourous activity, a
powerful political and cultural actor that con-
tributed to the process of decolonisation.
229
 Conclusion
This essay has traced the emergence of the
critical exhibition within the changing and
overlapping contexts of student movements,
the rise of the New Left, decolonisation, emer-
gent nationalisms, anti-imperialism, as well as
cultural resistance against authoritarian and
developmental regimes from the 1950s to the
1970s in Southeast Asia. The historical devel-
opment of the salon, national, regional and in-
ternationalist-type exhibitions as earlier forms
of modernist exhibitions that dominated the
art worlds of the various countries in Southeast
Asia continue to exist to this day, even if they
have been eclipsed by the critical exhibition.
In particular, the emergence of the inter-
nationalist exhibition format in the 1950s and
1960s was an important precursor to the criti-
cal exhibition in the 1970s. The internation-
alist exhibition imagined itself as part of two
main trajectories in the form of social realism
and abstraction that encouraged deepening
knowledge about art theory and art history,
even as these knowledges were Western-centric.
Continuities between the internationalist and
critical exhibitions could be seen in the pro-
duction of art manifestos. The difference be-
tween these two modes of exhibitions was in
how critical exhibitions deployed art manifes-
tos not as a way to connect with broader art
movements in the West but to engage with
their existing social, cultural and political con-
texts. The postcolonial condition, driven by
student movements across the region against
imperialism and most concretely manifested
230 Seng Yu Jin
in the Vietnam War, was supported by most
authoritarian developmental regimes. Critical
exhibitions embodied a powerful force that
repudiated the slavish deference to Western
ways of thinking about and making art, and
explored new ways and approaches to concep-
tualise art that were different from the West,
most boldly declared as its objective by the
critical exhibition Towards a Mystical Reality.
Other critical exhibitions rode on the tide of
student movements as many of these artists
who produced critical exhibitions were artist–
students themselves, or lecturers in tertiary-
education institutions. The infuence of social-
ism and the New Left in student movements
proved to be a popular alternative to the West-
ern model of capitalism, and the pursuit of
economic development for its own sake with-
out addressing the issue of poverty, resulting in
the call for critical exhibitions that were social-
ly engaged. This reframed exhibitions so that
they were not only a way of displaying art but
also vehicles of resistance and change for the
common people. However, there was an inter-
nal contradiction. These student movements
that resisted Western capitalism and its modes
of art-making continued to refer to “Western”
ideas of socialism and the New Left. “Art for
art’s sake” was now reconfgured as “art for life”
or “art for the people.” The emergence of criti-
cal exhibitions marked a shift away from earlier
exhibitionary modes that were produced from
colonial contexts, to the reality of actual social,
political and cultural conditions of countries
in Southeast Asia in a period of decolonisation
and nationalist movements.
Cultural Wars in Southeast Asia 231
 16.1

Speaker Date Location

He Xiang Yi 26 October 1929 Singapore

30 October 1929 Singapore

1 November 1929 Singapore

Wang Ji Yuan 5 April 1938 Singapore

Zhang Dan Nong October 1938 Singapore

Weng Zhan Qiu 28 January 1939 Singapore

20 March 1939 Singapore

Xu Qian 3 January 1939 Kuala Lumpur

January 1939 Kuala Lumpur

30 January 1939 Singapore

Xu Bei Hong 11 February 1939 Singapore

13 February 1939 Singapore

14 March 1939 Singapore

29 March 1939 Singapore

19 August 1939 Singapore

23 December 1940 Singapore

13 February 1941 Kuala Lumpur

15 February 1941 Kuala Lumpur

25 February 1941 Kuala Lumpur

1 April 1941 Penang

3 June 1941 Singapore

8 September 1941 Singapore

Yu Shi Hai October 1939 Singapore

Liu Hai Shu 18 January 1941 Singapore

30 January 1941 Singapore

1 February 1941 Singapore

12 March 1941 Singapore

29 March 1941 Singapore

2 May 1941 Singapore

Total Number of Talks

Singapore: 23
Malaya (Kuala Lumpur and Penang): 6

430 Seng Yu Jin

0328-Charting Thoughts.indd 430 28/3/17 2:55 PM

 16.1 Talks Given by Visiting Artists from
China Held in Singapore, Penang
and Kuala Lumpur (1938–1941)

16.2 FX Harsono
Bunga Plastik
1975
Mixed media
Dimensions variable

16.2

Cultural Wars in Southeast Asia 431

0328-Charting Thoughts.indd 431 28/3/17 2:55 PM

 16.3 Pratuang Emjaroen
Red Morning Glory and Rotten Gun
1976
Oil on canvas
133 x 174 cm
Collection of National Gallery Singapore

16.4 Pablo Baens Santos

Bagong Kristo (New Christ)
1980
Oil on canvas
122.4 x 86.6 cm
Collection of National Gallery Singapore

16.3

432 Seng Yu Jin

0328-Charting Thoughts.indd 432 28/3/17 2:55 PM

 16.4

Cultural Wars in Southeast Asia 433

0328-Charting Thoughts.indd 433 28/3/17 2:55 PM

 1 Luis Camnitzer, Jane Farver & Rachel Weiss, fore-
word to Global Conceptualism: Points of Origin,
1950s–1980s, ed. Philomena Mariani (New York:
Queens Museum of Art, 1999), vii–xi.
2 The writers point to a wide range of destabilising
circumstances coincidental with the emergence of
this art. “The emergence of conceptualist art also
coincided with broadly destabilizing sociological and
technological trends propelled by large historical
forces, as the political, economic and social land-
scapes of large parts of the world underwent signif-
cant, often traumatic, transition.” Ibid., vii.

(17)

Reading Conceptual Art in Southeast Asia: A Beginning

T.K. Sabapathy

I The citation has remained in my thoughts and

When the National Gallery Singapore (hereaf-
ter the Gallery) invited me to write an essay
on conceptual art in Southeast Asia for a pro-
posed publication, I accepted without hesita-
tion and, I must add, without much thought. I
would, I assured myself, settle on an approach
soon enough. After all I had dealt with aspects
of conceptual art when examining practices of
artists in Malaysia and Singapore, and when
curating exhibitions featuring art produced in
the 1970s, regarding it as new, different from
the modern. Matters came to a head about a
year ago when the Gallery requested an out-
line for a text. Without pausing, I submitted
a page consisting of preliminary notions orbit-
ing a citation of the foreword for a publication
on Global Conceptualism, convened as an ex-
hibition in New York in 1997.1 In it, curators
and writers indicated interests in appraising
conceptual art produced in locations globally,
along comparative trajectories, and historically.
increasingly assumed emblematic signifcance.
Yes, it could serve as a point of entry for
thinking on, researching and writing for the oc-
casion. There is another matter springing from
reading Global Conceptualism; it is personal
and important. In this publication is a text on
conceptual art in Southeast Asia, the earliest
known to me. It is written by Apinan Poshya-
nanda, for whom I have immense regard. Our
paths crossed especially in the 1990s, when a
handful of historians of art, curators and aca-
demics from countries in the region were ear-
nestly, energetically engaged in representing
art in Southeast Asia in national, regional and
international forums. Apinan registered a voice
signifcantly and was sought after, globally. A
network was forged linking one another in the
region and fostering scholarship—individually
and at times collectively.
Apinan and I have not met frequently
enough these past 15 years, although each
heeds what the other has written. In this situ-

232 Charting Thoughts

ation, reconnecting with Apinan has been via
reading his essay; it has been vicarious. The
pleasure in reading a text in this instance is
sparked by connections such as these.
Reading Global Conceptualism and Api-
nan’s account of conceptual art in Southeast
Asia (South Asia is also included in it) has
spurred thoughts on an approach for this oc-
casion. Could I deal with this topic by read-
ing writings on it? Who are the writers? What
do they say? How is conceptual art represented
in the region, textually? Is it conceivable, in
our midst, to write on art by examining writ-
ings on art exclusively? Is art in Southeast Asia
interpretable, inter-textually? These questions
propel this account. I do not offer a theoreti-
cal exegesis on reading texts on conceptual art
in Southeast Asia. I offer a kind of guide for
reading a handful of writings, while suggest-
ing that deeper registers for reading these and
other writings may be developed.
I examine texts from three sources in
which Southeast Asia is declared as of pri-
mary consideration in writing on conceptual
art; without exception, they are published in
conjunction with exhibitions, which are pre-
dominant sites for writing on art, here. Even
as Southeast Asia is fagged as of abiding in-
terest in these publications, focus is on indi-
vidual countries that constitute the region or
constitute the region partly. The command of
country is powerful. Be that as it may, I have
tended to read country-based accounts rela-
tive to thinking on the region. This is not an
exhaustive treatment of the topic; it marks a
beginning of a study of textual representations
of a category of Southeast Asian art.
It is with deep regret that I omit discus-
sion of Concept Context Contestation: Art and
the Collective in Southeast Asia (edited by Iola
Lenzi and published by the Bangkok Art and
Culture Centre in 2014), which features a con-
stellation of texts on conceptual art. Reading
and discussing texts from the three sources have
consumed more attention than anticipated;
Reading Conceptual Art in Southeast Asia
I had run out of time and needed to hand in
this essay; schedules for readying submissions
could no longer be delayed. This publication
is undoubtedly important for appraising con-
ceptual art; I aim to deal with it on a future
occasion.
II
In 1997 an exhibition titled Global Conceptu-
alism: Points of Origin, 1950s–1980s was con-
vened in the Queens Museum of Art, New
York. Its impetus may be discerned in the fore-
word of the publication issued in conjunction
with the exposition. It is useful to read an ex-
tract from it, as it is pertinent for the present;
the extract is the very one that appeared promi-
nently in a draft submitted to the Gallery and
was mentioned earlier.
The exhibition traces the history of a key
development in 20th-century art in which
art’s response to both its traditions and its
immediate milieu shifted from a consider-
ation of the object to that of the idea. This
shift with its inevitable destabilization of
artistic convention occurred in locations
around the world in two relatively distinct
waves of activity: the frst from the late
1950s to around 1973, the second from
the mid-1970s to the end of the ’80s.2
The claim is that over a span of nearly 40
years (i.e. from about the end of the 1950s un-
til the 1980s), disturbances were registered in
art worlds virtually everywhere. Disturbances
instigated by artists who produced work (I use
the term here, elastically) in which interest is in
the idea rather than in artistic form as embody-
ing meaning and signifcance. The shift from
seeing art as an aesthetic entity or artefact to
encountering art that is an idea is recognised as
heralding a turn towards the conceptual in art.
A move such as this took root and prevailed
in many locations in the world. So much so, a
233
 new term was coined to deal with it as mark-
ing a signifcant moment in 20th-century art,
namely: conceptualism.
The writers of the foreword devote atten-
tion to terminology, distinguishing conceptual
art from conceptualism; it is important to heed
their distinction. While conceptual art refers
to formalist practices developed in the after-
math of increasing reductionist tendencies in
producing works as art, conceptualism signifes
a wider swath of involvements, attitudes and
expressions. Yes, the role of the art object is
decreased and its material integrity degraded;
there is more. Conceptualism is esteemed as
reaching out even further, nudging art into as-
suming connections with other constituencies
or realities that are embraced as forming mi-
lieus in which artists pursue their practice, such
as the social, the political and the economical.
Artists yearn for open, immediate connections
with various publics, collectively and informal-
ly. The appeal of conceptualism springs from
attributes and principles such as these. It is ac-
knowledged and installed in discourses on art
as profoundly altering what art is or “destabilis-
ing” it, in many respects.3
These disturbances did not occur simulta-
neously in all locations in the world. The writ-
ers of the foreword gauge them as surfacing in
two consecutive although distinct, temporal
waves. Their claim is also that movements giv-
ing rise to these disturbances and their out-
comes are globally extant, substantially and
suffciently consistent to represent them as an
exhibition set along historical perspectives and
write about them historically. The conceptual
in art is susceptible to (art) historical explica-
tion. The 1997 show in New York bears testi-
mony to these claims.
Global Conceptualism features works sig-
nifying conceptualist attributes, traits, tenden-
cies, properties and principles, by artists from
“locations around the world.” Locations are
categorised variously; at times they are iden-
tifed as countries (Japan, South Korea, the
234 T.K. Sabapathy
Soviet Union). At times they are gathered as
country-clusters, in which instances the com-
ponents that make up the clusters are regarded
not necessarily as equal to one another (Aus-
tralia and New Zealand; mainland China, Tai-
wan and Hong Kong). At times locations are
geographically subsumed as regions (Western
Europe, Eastern Europe, Latin America, South
and Southeast Asia) and even as continents (Af-
rica, North America).
It is not clear how these variables could
yield satisfactory exhibitory and textual repre-
sentations of the conceptual in world art. The
intention is, nevertheless, to widen the terrain
for dealing with the topic by devising platforms
for appraising the conceptual comparatively,
and do so with curatorial vigour and critical
discrimination. In this vein, the aim is to remap
a signifcant chapter in 20th-century art without
only endorsing practices and productions, and
texts from sites in Europe and the United States
as reigning paradigms for defning world art.
Global Conceptualism is undeniably ambi-
tious. The project’s complexity and diffculties
are acknowledged in the foreword. Neverthe-
less, redrawing the map of world art in order to
represent the conceptual with requisite histori-
cal sensibilities is clearly stated as a goal. Hence
the exhibition (and the accompanying publica-
tion) “intends to revise conventional historici-
sation of conceptual art through the strategic
addition of multiple, poorly known histories
presented as corollaries rather than append-
ages to a central axis of activity.”4 This is not
to say that the exhibition surveys the geogra-
phies (known and newly known) of conceptual
art, comprehensively; this is impossible. The
exhibition consists of “emblematic works and
movements” specifc to locations.5 Southeast
Asia enters a stage featuring global conceptual-
ism in New York in 1997 along these passage-
ways. It is represented by Apinan Poshyananda,
a historian of art and curator.
It is a strange entry on a number of counts.
I highlight two of them.
3 Ibid., viii.
4 Ibid., xi.
5 Ibid.
6 Ibid.
Firstly: How and why might South and
Southeast Asia appear as con-joined? A basis for
coupling the two regions is not clearly stated
either by the exhibitors or by Apinan. A consid-
eration that might be interpreted as testimony
for connecting the two appears at the end of
the foreword, where it says:
We have invited Dr Apinan Poshyananda
to contribute an essay to this catalogue on
the activities of conceptual artists working
in South and Southeast Asia today. Since
the end of the Cold War, South and South-
east Asia, the Middle East, and other rap-
idly developing areas have seen the rise of
identity politics, ethnic cleansing, nation-
alism, and the theocratic state. Currently,
like others before them, artists in these re-
gions are adopting conceptual practices in
their work, opening new chapters in their
ongoing history.6
This does not qualify as an explanation.
It is made up of surmises and generalisations
hastily assembled in order to justify a deci-
sion rather than knowingly illuminate or se-
cure South and Southeast Asia as con-jointly
fecund locations for generating conceptual
art practices. In any case we might ask how
“identity politics,” “ethnic cleansing” and “a
theocratic state” in and of themselves prompt
or instigate artists to produce work that is
conceptual in tenor! As listed in the foreword,
these do not lead to the provision of answers
to these questions.
Reading Conceptual Art in Southeast Asia
7 Apinan Poshyananda, “‘Con Art’ Seen from the Edge:
The Meaning of Conceptual Art in South and South-
east Asia,” in Global Conceptualism, 147.
Apinan treads gingerly when treating the
two as connected locations. In his writing he
shies away from relating them directly and
consistently; preferring, instead, to juxtapose
them beside one another discreetly. An excep-
tion to such an arrangement is noted when
he highlights tensions/crises/violence instigat-
ed by religious fervor demonstrated in public
domains, aimed at forcibly asserting the domi-
nance of one religion over another. Spurred by
encountering such events or situations, Api-
nan names a number of artists who produce
very different works. Montien Boonma (from
Thailand/Southeast Asia), for instance, creates
environments for contemplation and intro-
spection. On the other hand, Vivan Sundram
and Sheela Gowda (from India/South Asia)
create conceptualist works consisting of “frag-
ments of riot scenes, an image of a dead vic-
tim, and a monumental gateway.”7 And so on.
South and Southeast Asia are not symmetri-
cally aligned; Apinan’s principal interest is in
Southeast Asia.
The second count by which the en-
try of these two enjoined locations is gauged
as strange is their absence in the exhibition.
The catalogue does not furnish data and in-
formation of works by artists mentioned and
discussed by Apinan. When we consult the
checklist of works in the exhibition, there are
none from South and Southeast Asia. Artists
from these two regions are not registered in sec-
tions devoted to artists’ biographies. The pub-
lication features chronologies of events deemed
as signifcant landmarks for the advent of the
235
 8 Unless we read the following as an explanation:
“Limitations of physical space, and of the possible
scope of inquiry of a single exhibition, preclude the
inclusion of the dozens or hundreds of other artists
who are un- or underrecognized.” Carmnitzer, Farver
conceptual in art in various locations; South and
Southeast Asia are not represented. Four pages
in the publication contain bibliographies perti-
nent to discourses on the conceptual in locations
named as making up global conceptualism; here
too, South and Southeast Asia are absent.
The absence is not noted or mentioned by
anyone from the Queens Museum of Art or the
writer of the essay; the silence is incomprehen-
sible.8 Rather than speculate on it, I propose
to deal with Apinan’s writing as the only testi-
mony of the inclusion of South and Southeast
Asia in this project; extensive geographies and
complicated histories are, in this instance, rep-
resented textually. I focus on Southeast Asia.
Apinan’s is the earliest text on conceptual
art in Southeast Asia. There are earlier studies
on conceptual artists in locations-as-nations in
the region; writers of these accounts occasion-
ally and feetingly look across borders at move-
ments in neighbouring locations. By and large,
their attention is focused frmly on matters that
are local. In these regards Apinan’s writing for
this occasion stands apart from extant publica-
tions on conceptual art and conceptualism as
an artistic phenomenon.
It stands apart for other reasons as well.
It bears hallmarks of the author’s irrepressible
involvement with wordplay and with idiosyn-
cratic coining of words and phrases. The ab-
breviation of conceptual art as “con art,” for
example, is characteristic of Apinan’s aim at
defating names, terms, labels installed in his-
tories of art with defnitional aura or status by
236 T.K. Sabapathy
& Weiss, op. cit., xi.
9 Poshyananda, op. cit., 146.
10 Ibid.
11 Ibid., 147.
writers in institutions in Europe and the Unit-
ed States. “Con art” immediately conveys pros-
pects of encountering deceit, the dubious and
the unreliable; its insertion in quotation marks,
however, indicates we need not read it literally
to imply these meanings. The title of his es-
say reads as: “‘Con Art’ Seen from the Edge:
The Meaning of Conceptual Art in South and
Southeast Asia.” As a word gesture “con art”
may strike as coarse and crude; in all likelihood
such an impact is intended. These are devices
the author employs to stir readers into assum-
ing wary, watchful stances when encountering
dominant ideologies, systems and apparatus
for interpretation, in the worlds of modern and
contemporary art.
He begins his account by noting that while
conceptual art is understood in artistic terms as
giving increasing prominence to the idea in a
work over form or over things created as mate-
rially signifcant, such a view is expanded to in-
clude other considerations. Southeast Asian art-
ists are not mere recipients of conceptualist im-
pulses from the West. They have actively shaped
them while residing and working in locations
in the West and have relayed these involve-
ments on their return. Artists have also created
conceptualist works spurred by circumstances
that are specifc to locations in the region. In
some of these outcomes, the conceptual slides
into other, unorthodox kinds of practices such
as installation and performance. These may not
be pursued or developed in terms of clearly de-
lineated categorical involvements.
 In this regard, he remarks that conceptual
art is translated in the Thai language as sinlapa
ruapyad and “refers variously to installation,
performance, and the use of readymades.”9 It
may well be that Apinan is pointing towards
conceptualism as spurring a wide range of ex-
perimental practices and actions intended to
counter prevailing orthodoxies in art worlds
in the region, affliated largely with the mod-
ern. Hence, four of the six illustrations in his
essay are of artists shown in performative ac-
tions (Heri Dono, FX Harsono, Santiago Bose
and Kamol Phaosavasdi) in the 1990s.
Apinan suggests that actions by artists in
the early 1970s, levelled at challenging, and
replacing authoritarian institutions in art (and
in the political sphere), led to new practices,
some of which are affliated with conceptual
tendencies. By doing so, the conceptual as such
in Southeast Asia is seen as conforming to the
second wave, proposed in the foreword of the
exhibition’s publication. The New Art Move-
ment (Gerakan Seni Rupa Baru, hereafter the
GSRB), in 1975, in Jakarta (Indonesia) and the
student uprisings against the military dictator-
ship in Thailand in 1973 and 1976, are featured
prominently for ascertaining shifts: changes that
affect art profoundly in locations in Southeast
Asia. These have been examined closely in sub-
sequent writings by several writers and installed
as signifcant in nascent historical accounts of
recent art in the region. Apinan features an en-
larged detail of a work by Jim Supangkat titled
Ken Dedes (produced for the inaugural GSRB
event) as a frontispiece illustration for his text.
This production has assumed emblematic stat-
ure in discourses of the conceptual and in sig-
nifying new, contemporary developments in
Southeast Asia.
While acknowledging conceptual art prac-
tices as distinct, Apinan demonstrates that they
are also advanced in relation to other uncon-
ventional ways of producing art; these inter-
relations are complicated and entangled. The
task of analysing them awaits future researchers.
Reading Conceptual Art in Southeast Asia
We leave reading Apinan with two im-
pressions. The frst is that towards the end of
the 20th century, or at the time of writing his
views, conceptual art practices are “widely ac-
cepted in the art arenas of Southeast Asia. To
varying degrees, artists in Indonesia, Thailand,
Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore have
adapted conceptual strategies as vehicles for
critique and refection on their rapidly chang-
ing societies, and several international exhibi-
tions in Asia and Australia have legitimized
these forms of conceptualism based on local
idioms.”10
The second impression hoists the concep-
tual in Southeast Asian art onto historically
conscious registers. Hence we are urged to ac-
knowledge that artists in the region “recognize
that conceptual art in the West has its geneal-
ogy, but their own interpretations of such art
have often derived from different trajectories.
Artists have developed conceptualist prac-
tices to the extent that various networks have
formed within the region.”11 Attention is on
relations between artists and their practices, on
surveying and analysing them so as to yield an
understanding of conceptual art as it is a phe-
nomenon in this region. We leave Apinan for
the present and move away from New York to
read texts from sites in Southeast Asia.
III
In 2007, ten years after Global Conceptual-
ism was staged in New York, Ahmad Mashadi
curated an exhibition titled Telah Terbit (Out
Now): Southeast Asian Art Practices during the
1960s to 1980s in Singapore (part of the title
is derived from an artwork by FX Harsono
named Telah Terbit). The show was organised
as a special event as part of the inaugural Sin-
gapore biennale in 2006. It is frequently cited
as an exemplar for curating and exhibiting
Southeast Asian art. The topic for the exposi-
tion and its publication is the contemporary in
the region’s art.
237
 12 Ahmad Mashadi, Telah Terbit (Out Now): Southeast
Asian Contemporary Art Practices During the 1960s
to 1980s (Singapore: Singapore Art Museum, 2007).
13 T.K. Sabapathy, “Intersecting Histories: Thoughts on
the Contemporary and History in Southeast Asian
Art,” in Intersecting Histories: Contemporary Turns in
Southeast Asian Art, ed. T.K. Sabapathy (Singapore:
School of Art, Design and Media, Nanyang Techno-
logical University, Singapore, 2012), 46–7.
14 In a foreword to this exhibition’s publication, Kwok
Kian Chow amplifes the twin topics set out by Ma-
shadi. I cite a section at length, as it illustrates varying
accents in discussions of conceptual art.
“FORM in the context of this exhibition relates to con-
ceptualism, a term used in the art world to designate
In the exhibition Mashadi boldly sketches
chronologies for the contemporary, commenc-
ing in 1962 when Jose Joya and Napoleon
Abueva participated in the Venice biennale that
same year, and rounding his survey in 1980
with the Contemporary Asian Art Show at the
Fukuoka Asian Art Museum in Japan. This is
not to say that Mashadi shows that the contem-
porary dries up and fades in 1980 but that the
two decades spanning the 1960s and the 1980s
may measure its frst coming.12 I have com-
mented on this exhibition elsewhere.13 For the
present, interest is on the treatment of the con-
ceptual in art in this show and the writing on it.
To talk of conceptual art is to talk of the
contemporary in art. The contemporary is topi-
cally exhibited and written along two routes.
One is labelled as form and the other as fgure;
both are conceived as turning away from the
modern. Mashadi employs them as signifying
distinctive traits and particular values for see-
ing the contemporary. He also employs them
as propelling contemporary art practices in the
region, historically and critically, along compet-
ing contemporaneous trajectories. Form has to
do with conceptualist thinking and presentation
whereby artists are introspective, refexive, criti-
238 T.K. Sabapathy
the questioning of the central position of material-
ity in art. In conceptualism artists started to explore
the boundaries of art, and questioned the relation-
ship of art practice, history, criticism and aesthetics.
The reexamination of the conceptual assumptions of
art then used form (or ‘undoing’ of form) to critique a
modern art that privileged abstraction. By doing so,
artworks were deemed to have taken on commentary
on values ascribed to conventional forms along with
the social systems that substantiated such values.
The title [re-form] given by the curator designates this
new understanding.
FIGURE is mainly concerned with the idea of the
fgurative or representational, in the sense of recog-
nizable objects, to specifcally refer to contemporary
cal in regarding the making, the appearance, the
material constitution and reception of art and
artworks. Figure has to do with representations
of strife, confict, exploitation of peoples, pri-
marily by fgural and narrative schemes.14
Mashadi conveys his thoughts on the con-
temporary and his intentions for the exhibi-
tion in the following disclosure.
The exhibition is divided into two inter-
related sections. [re:form] includes works
that explicate the articulation of the visual
language which includes a rethinking into
the constitution of art and its theoretical
and material references. [re:fgure] looks at
attempts to situate contemporary practices
into the contextual grounds of social and
political engagements, through re-privileg-
ing of the fgurative and narrative.15
He draws attention to the contemporary
as made up of two major intersecting trajec-
tories; conceptual art is ascertained along one
of them, namely: [re:form]. It is not, in other
words, possible to consider it in isolation, on
its own. In dealing with this matter, I forward
four observations.
 practices in situating itself in the context of social
and political activities, and how this is related to the
renewed emphasis on the fgurative and narrative in
works which also critiqued the privileging of abstract
art in the 1960s and 1970s. Figurative art was also
a means to reach a broader base of audience. Social
realist art and religious art are two such cases that
often use fgurative techniques. In these cases, fgu-
rative art is used for its narrative and descriptive pur-
poses. Figurative art is also often the choice for artists
when they are seeking to elicit strong emotions from
the viewer in reference to certain events and social
messages.” Foreword to Telah Terbit (Out Now), 9–10.
15 Ahmad Mashadi, introduction to Telah Terbit (Out
Now), 11.
Firstly, conceptual art is a subset in the con-
temporary art feld; historically and geographi-
cally it signifes the contemporary. Secondly,
it is distinguishable in relation to other art
practices that are also claimed as new and of its
time. Mashadi positions it alongside the fgural
as embodying varieties of realism. Thirdly, con-
ceptual art practices intersect with and bleed
into other media and spheres, demonstrating
inter-disciplinary tendencies.16 When saying
this we are reminded of Apinan’s explanation
of the translation of conceptual art in the Thai
language, when it refers to installation, perfor-
mance and the use of the readymade (in which
instances conceptual art as such may well have
elided into conceptualism).
Fourthly, conceptual art emerges in South-
east Asia historically. Mashadi’s interest is in
the region. He delineates a regional map of the
contemporary in art by means of an exhibi-
tion, positioning conceptual art as one of two
landmark developments, raised prominently
between the late 1960s and the 1980s, in it.
Even as his interest is internally focused, this is
not to say that he is ignorant of or indifferent
to connections between Southeast Asia and the
geographies and histories that make up other
Reading Conceptual Art in Southeast Asia
16 For discussion of complexities related to inter-media
and interdisciplinary ambitions see Alex Coles &
Alexia Defert, eds., The Anxiety of Interdisciplinarity
(London: BACKless Books & Black Dog Publishing,
1998); Gunalan Nadarajan, “Not Modern: Theses on
Contemporary Art,” in Contemporary Art in Singapore
(Singapore: Institute of Contemporary Arts Singa-
pore, Lasalle-SIA College of the Arts, 2007), 19–23.
17 Tony Godfrey, who is from the United Kingdom,
was appointed to teach and coordinate a master’s
degree course in contemporary art in Sotheby’s
Institute of Art Singapore. The institute was estab-
lished here in 2007. In 2011 it was closed. Godfrey
continues to reside in Singapore and in locations in
Southeast Asia.
locations. Apinan’s brief is, on the other hand,
to nudge conceptual art practices and artists
in South and Southeast Asia into assuming
relationships with those in locations globally.
When we read what each has to say, we hear
their texts resonating somewhat with one an-
other although each is differently oriented. In
their accounts, conceptual art is distinctive in
the 1970s, cresting as a frst wave in that dec-
ade in the region and as part of a second wave
globally.
IV
In 2012 Marcel Duchamp was envisioned as
having visited Southeast Asia. No, this is not
a spectre conjured from my feverish adoration
or veneration of an artist of undeniable re-
nown and enduring enigma. I am not afficted
by such a malady. It is a topic of an exhibi-
tion conceived and curated by Tony Godfrey
in 2012 in Singapore. Titled matter-of-factly
and with tongue-in-cheek certainty as Marcel
Duchamp in South-East Asia, it springs from a
programme of the Equator Art Projects based
at Gillman Barracks in Singapore, for which he
was the director of exhibitions.17
239
 18 Tony Godfrey, introduction to Marcel Duchamp in
South-East Asia (Singapore: Equator Art Projects,
2012), 4.
19 Ibid.
20 FX Harsono, “Aku Tak Kenal Duchamp (I Do Not Know
Duchamp),” in ibid., 28.
21 Ibid., 4.
22 Tony Godfrey, Conceptual Art (London: Phaidon, 1998).
Godfrey’s premise for this enterprise ap-
pears in an introduction disguised as a conver-
sation with himself; it is made up of answers
to questions set out sequentially in a publica-
tion bearing the show’s title. In it, Duchamp’s
visit is cast fctively and bandied as an absurdist
device for remembering this artist. Underlying
such jocular, benign posturing are historically
weighted and culturally demanding intentions.
These are borne by convictions that Duchamp’s
“presence lingers here as elsewhere. [Hence]
this is an opportunity to think about him and
his work and show something that can help us
think usefully and pleasurably about that lin-
gering presence.”18
The exhibition was to consist of two com-
ponents. One would show about one hundred
objects and prints by Duchamp, the frst such
exposition in Southeast Asia. The other, paral-
lel component would display Southeast Asian
artists’ works that “in some ways refect on the
work or legacy of Marcel Duchamp.”19 The frst
mentioned part was deferred and did not ma-
terialise. Duchamp was not materially present
in Southeast Asia. What we see are imprints of
his lingering presence, residual concretions of
his legacy. Might this be a not-so-disguised ma-
noeuver to demonstrate the paternity of certain
kinds or categories of art practices in the region?
Is Duchamp’s visit to Southeast Asia a measure
for legitimising “con art” from the edge (echo-
ing Apinan’s bemused anxiety)?
240 T.K. Sabapathy
In conjunction with Godfrey’s imagined visit by Du-
champ it is useful to read The Duchamp Effect: Essays,
Interviews, Round Table, eds. Martha Buskirk & Mignon
Nixon (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press & October Magazine,
Ltd., 1996).
23 Agung Hujatnikajennong, “The Duchamp Look: Revisit-
ing Gerakan Seni Rupa Baru Indonesia,” in Marcel Du-
champ in South-East Asia, 33.
These are not merely tub-thumping, de-
fensive questions posed for effect (Duchampi-
an and otherwise). One artist in this show was
riled enough by such perceived impositions to
make a submission spurred by denial. FX Har-
sono titled his gesture Aku Tak Kenal Duchamp
(I Do Not Know Duchamp). This is not all.
The denial is substantiated by a fery accusa-
tion and an equally fery disavowal. It appears
in the exhibition’s publication on a page facing
an illustration of Harsono’s work. This is what
he says:
My participation in this project is caused
by my desire to assert that Western domi-
nance is still felt in the Asian art scene. A
statement that I do not know Duchamp is
an assertion that ideologically and histori-
cally I am not related to Marcel Duchamp
at all. So why do I have to make such a
work related to Duchamp? I could choose
not to participate in this activity, but in-
stead use this exhibition as a means to ex-
press my disapproval of all efforts that try
to demonstrate the superiority of the West
over other nations.20
A vociferously protesting participant, a
self-proclaimed outcast, Harsono does not turn
his back on moves to incarnate Duchamp in
Southeast Asia. He registers, instead, a dissent-
ing voice, projects a disavowing presence, pro-
claims severance of lineal connection with an
artistic fatherhood and resists being culturally
disempowered in and by an exhibition that ap-
pears as staged for venerating a godhead. His
submission may be gauged as aimed at dispel-
ling the lingering presence of Duchamp in the
region.
Not all artists who decided to participate
were similarly incensed. There were submis-
sions conceived as homage to this artist; some
others were emulations of particular works by
Duchamp. I leave these matters and turn to in-
terests in conceptual art in this exposition. Are
there any and how are they spoken of? In devel-
oping answers to these questions I look at writ-
ings published in Marcel Duchamp in South-
East Asia, especially those in which conceptual
art is mentioned and discussed.
Its frst mention is in Godfrey’s intro-
duction, appearing boldly and commandingly.
What is more, its paternity is clearly, singularly
underlined. Joseph Kosuth’s voice is enlisted
to announce its origin and advent. His often-
cited declaration that all art after Duchamp is
conceptual was republished for this exhibition,
signifying, no doubt, its reigning resonance in
and for this region; and underscoring Kosuth
as a formative agency for transposing Duchamp
into assuming conceptual art’s fatherhood.
Godfrey bolsters the authority of these moves
by saying “Duchamp created the paradigm shift
in and how we think about and make art.”21
Duchamp is the primal cause for creat-
ing and apprehending art anew, then and now,
everywhere. It follows that if he is not actually
present (say in Southeast Asia), Duchamp as an
idea, Duchamp as a presence is pervasive and
consequential for making and beholding art in
Southeast Asia.
Thoughts such as these may well have
prompted Godfrey when composing his intro-
duction. Needless to say, Harsono thought oth-
erwise. A note has to be entered on Godfrey’s
involvement with Duchamp and conceptual
art. It did not spring unaccountably. In 1998
Reading Conceptual Art in Southeast Asia
he published a book-length account of con-
ceptual art, providing a critical survey of the
principal trajectories along which this category
of art was developed in Europe and the United
States, especially in the latter half of the 20th
century. It remains a signifcant publication on
the topic. In it Duchamp is installed impor-
tantly. Marcel Duchamp in South-East Asia is
a platform devised by Godfrey to further his
interest in this artist and in conceptual art in
the region, and for securing credentials for rep-
resenting art practices here.22
Agung Hujatnikajennong endorses the au-
thority of Duchamp in the contemporary art
world. His interest in writing for the show’s
publication is to deal with “conceptualism as a
discourse in Indonesian art.” Such a discourse
is, he says, spurred by the impact of Duchamp.
Hujatnikajennong states this as a given, as self-
evident, without scrutinising it. He then nomi-
nates the GSRB, which is installed with land-
mark status in recent Indonesian and Southeast
Asian contemporary art, as exemplarily mani-
festing conceptualism.23
He cites Duchamp as directly affecting de-
cisions and actions by artists in the GSRB at its
inaugural exhibition in 1975. He points to their
employments of discarded, ordinary, everyday
materials which are inserted in an exhibition
space and displayed as objects enlisting some
interest in the realms of art. These things and
materials are derived from Duchamp’s arrange-
ments of readymades. However, we remember
that at the time Duchamp featured them in
exhibitions, they were not represented or in-
terpreted in conceptual art terms; they were
recognised as such in Europe and the United
States in the 1960s and in Southeast Asia in
the 1970s. It would be tenable to propose Du-
champ as historically signifcant for the GSRB
through complex relays of conceptual art and
conceptualism’s developments within and
without Southeast Asia, and not directly.
In his discussion Hujatnikajennong high-
lights rapid changes within the GSRB, espe-
241
 cially when gauging its goals in its 1978 show
titled Pameran Presantasi (Presentation Exhi-
bition), when its scope extended beyond the
domains of art. The conceptual traits that pro-
pelled its 1975 inaugural show sprang, in part,
from seeking to counter, bypass conventions of
the modern as these were associated with in-
stitutions in Indonesian art; in part, they were
spurred by actions for creating alternative,
open platforms for producing and appraising
art. The aims for the 1978 presentation were
expansive. Hujatnikajennong says that they
have to do with “the totality of the feld of art,
where the process of creation, mediation and
art appreciation are inseparable from the feld
of economic and political power.”24 Conceptu-
al art and conceptualism in Southeast Asia tend
to be distinguished by locating them amongst
these intersecting “felds,” and interpreted as
related to them.
Hujatnikajennong concludes his assess-
ment of the GSRB and of conceptualism in
Indonesia on this note. In doing so, he turns
to Pasaraya Dunia Fantasi (The Fantasy World
of the Marketplace), which was staged in 1987.
A manifesto was published for the occasion,
signaling its bequest to the world of art. “At
this point,” says Hujatnikajennong, “conceptu-
alism turned into a political statement aimed
against the elitism of high art.”25
Lee Weng Choy writes on conceptual art
in Singapore. It is the only text in Marcel Du-
champ in South-East Asia in which this category
of art as a subject is declared up front. The title
of his essay is “Missing and Public: Conceptual
Art in Singapore.” The qualifcations he enters
alert readers not to expect a recounting of con-
ceptual art in a location in the region in 500
words, neatly encapsulating history for easy,
undemanding reading. He does deal with the
historical, though, in order to signal that when
writing history we do not necessarily show the
past as such, as unravelling continuously along
a single, uninterrupted plane. What do we do
when writing history?
242 T.K. Sabapathy
Lee Weng Choy replies:
When we write history, what we produce
is not just a picture of the past; what we
conjure is a snapshot of a present com-
prised of a complicated, unfxed past. His-
tory pivots on the question, who are our
contemporaries? And the answer is not
just those contemporaries in the conven-
tional sense, near to us in time and space,
but also those with whom we fnd some
remote resonance and relation—regard-
less of how distant in history and geog-
raphy.26
Writing history in this vein is chiefy aimed
at justifying, validating the present; it is a view
that prevails in Lee’s thinking and in accounts
of the contemporary in art. It does not ex-
clude or invalidate other interests in thinking
on history. Hujatnikajennong’s account of the
GSRB’s historicalness is, vis-à-vis Duchamp
and conceptualism, aligned along the very
trajectory proposed by Lee. There are differ-
ences separating the two. While Lee proposes
that connections between the contemporary
and the past may historically be felt as distant,
at times remote and complicated, the GSRB’s
link with Duchamp is said to be direct and pat-
ent. For Lee, the present resonates with history;
it is important to discern this resonance even
when routes along which relations between the
two appear circuitous and entangled. The con-
ceptual credentials of his two nominees from
Singapore—namely: Lim Tzay Chuen and Ho
Tzu Nyen—are forwarded and appraised along
such pathways.
What did the two artists produce? Lim in-
tended to ship the Merlion, a sculptural repre-
sentation of a recently devised mythical animal
form, installed at the mouth of the Singapore
River and symbolising the city-state (which
he named Mike), to Venice as his (and Singa-
pore’s) entry for the biennale there in 2005.
Permission to do so was refused (by the Singa-
24 Ibid.
25 Ibid., 34.
26 Lee Weng Choy, “Missing and Public: Conceptual
Art in Singapore,” in Marcel Duchamp in South-East
Asia, 43.
pore Tourism Board which commissioned its
creation and is its custodian). In its absence the
artist displayed a signboard saying, “I wanted
to bring Mike over” on one side and illustrat-
ing a printed icon of the Merlion on the other,
and two toilets—one male and one female
(fg. 17.1). These were placed in various loca-
tions in the area designated as the Singapore
pavilion. The absence fagged in the essay’s title
alludes to the non-appearance of the Merlion
or Mike in Venice. Of course the Singapore
pavilion was not completely emptied, as there
was a signboard and two toilets standing in for
another intended presence!
Considerable publicity was sparked by
the absence of Mike. Lee submits the public-
ity that was circulated as bearing signifcance
related to conceptual art and to understanding
such art. Conceptual art is, in this instance,
constituted by texts and the reading of them.
We are reminded of another absence and
the provision of writing as ameliorating non-
appearance of art, intended as conceptual. We
zoom back to Global Conceptualism and recall
the non-show of South and Southeast Asia in
Queens Museum of Art in New York in 1997.
When discussing it I remarked that the two
regions were represented only textually. The
public encountered conceptual artists and art
from Southeast Asia, in that exhibition, when
reading Apinan Poshyananda’s written ac-
count. Then too, as in Venice, conceptual art
is apparent, textually.
Reading Conceptual Art in Southeast Asia
27 Ibid., 46.
28 See especially Harold Bloom, The Anxiety of Infu-
ence: A Theory of Poetry (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1997).
29 Lee, op. cit., 46.
We are led to Ho along this very regis-
ter. Lee introduces this artist by saying: “I
want to end not with an artwork of Ho’s but a
text he wrote for a web-anthology project.”27
In it Ho talks about prevailing sensibilities
amongst writers who write on artists and art
in Singapore, historically. He highlights anxi-
eties infecting writers, especially when exam-
ining artistic infuences (he singles this writer,
i.e. Sabapathy). Ho points out that there is a
tendency to adopt defensive stances when dis-
cussing infuences. This arises from fear; to
say an artist has been infuenced by another
(especially from the West) is to cast that artist
as inferior and to diminish or deny originality
in one’s practice. Ho urges writers to set aside
anxieties regarding infuence (he is deeply af-
fected by Harold Bloom’s thesis on the topic)
and to write history from seeing art without
inhibitions and dynamically.28
Lee concludes his essay and his view of Ho
by remarking “Ho’s own wish is for art critics
and historians to face questions of infuence
‘free of defensive anxieties’. He dreams of ‘an
art history without names’, when we no longer
worry about missing fathers, but are able to
look at what isn’t there, and enjoy the view.”29
There are matters in this concluding
note that need attention. I will touch on the
issue of “missing fathers” and skew its treat-
ment towards the abiding interest in this essay,
which has to do with reading conceptual art in
Southeast Asia. “Missing fathers” could refer to
243
 Duchamp or to one of manifold personifca-
tions of Duchamp.
Lee begins his text by installing Duchamp
as a fountainhead for talking about art that
is recognised as conceptual art (although he
notes that Duchamp is a conceptualist through
adoption by artists in the 1960s in the United
States) and about two artists from Singapore.
When we regard Lim and Ho as they are pre-
sented by Lee, we lose sight of Duchamp and
keep faith with conceptual art somewhat faint-
ly. Hence when we read of Mike as missing in
Venice and leaving a trail of texts and informa-
tion, and of anxieties when writing on art in
Singapore historically, Duchamp is so remote
as virtually not to matter. If we are to regard
these two artists in conceptual art terms as they
appear in this writing, criteria for doing so are
no longer beholden directly to Duchamp (as
Lee intimates) but determined differently.
Yet Duchamp is not completely absent or
cast adrift in the telling of his visit to South-
east Asia, although his relation with conceptual
art practices is not overtly, evenly discernible.
I round off this account by reading one more
text from Marcel Duchamp in South-East Asia
in which we hear passing mention of conceptu-
al art. It features Roberto Chabet prominently,
heroically even. In and through him, Duchamp
is venerated and incarnated in the Philippines
as in no other location in the region.
Chabet is esteemed as a conceptual art-
ist; in association with Raymundo Albano, the
two are hailed as “champions of conceptual-
ist art.”30 In Ringo Bunoan’s telling, Chabet
was the frst to employ arrangement of things/
objects recognised as readymades in a 1969
exhibition in Manila. Works that he produced
and displayed in the 1970s are seen as closely
related to Duchamp’s set-ups and gestures;
so much so that Ringo Bunoan positions the
two as assuming conjointly comparable pres-
ences. In doing so, Bunoan adopts an adorer’s
worshipful attitude towards her master (Cha-
bet).31 There is more!
244 T.K. Sabapathy
Chabet memorialises Duchamp; here is a
description of what may well have been an an-
nual remembrance:
Chabet celebrated Duchamp, literally,
by organizing exhibitions on Duchamp’s
birthday at the University of the Philip-
pines College of Fine Art, where he taught
for over thirty years. While he did not im-
pose a Duchampian kind of practice, he
did introduce a conceptual way of think-
ing about things.32
An immediate reaction to this report is to
recall Harsono’s disavowal of Duchamp as a fa-
ther. Chabet and Harsono are placed at polar
ends in regarding an artist who is installed in
some of these accounts as a progenitor of con-
ceptual art.
V
I do not aim to end on this note. There
is another matter germane to the topic in this
essay, and it is more suitable for affording a
pause in these readings of writings on concep-
tual art in Southeast Asia. It has to do with the
description of birthday celebrations initiated
by Chabet. Even as he venerates Duchamp,
Chabet is said to avoid transferring his esteem
onto his students and introduces, instead, “a
conceptual way of thinking of things.”33 I ap-
preciate Bunoan’s discrete positioning of Cha-
bet and Duchamp with regard to the practice
of conceptual art. She hints at separating Du-
champ’s practice from the emergence of con-
ceptual art in the late 1960s and 1970s (we
recall Lee entering a similar observation, ear-
lier). It is important to keep this in mind and
furnish it with historical frames.34 I end on
this note and with two observations.
Firstly, a distinction is to be made be-
tween Duchamp’s provocations and arrange-
ments that appeared and were presented in
Europe and the United States early in the 20th
30 Leonides V. Benesa, “Printmaking: Art for Many,” in
Art Philippines: A History 1521–Present, eds. Juan
T. Gatbonton, Jeannie E. Javelosa & Lourdes Ruth
R. Roa (Pasig: The Crucible Workshop, 1992), 369. In
2015 a comparable view was presented by the Na-
tional Gallery Singapore, in descriptive terms. “In the
Philippines, conceptually oriented artists Roberto
Chabet and Raymundo Albano developed an exhi-
bition space and programme at the Cultural Center
of the Philippines (CCP) that sought to promote a
conducive environment to support new artistic ap-
proaches in the country, which would be regarded
as a form of resistance to the Modernist tenor and
internationalist ambitions (favoured by the Marcos
regime) dominating the Philippine art scene during
the Martial Law era.” Adele Tan, “Re:Defning Art,” in
Between Declarations and Dreams: Art of Southeast
Asia since the 19 th Century, ed. Low Sze Wee (Singa-
pore: National Gallery Singapore, 2015), 62–3.
31 There is tendency to claim Chabet as the originat-
ing wellspring for conceptual art and conceptual-
ism in the Philippines. The situation is a little more
complicated than it is customarily made out to be.
David Medalla, for instance, is absented and yet felt
as a spectral presence in inaugurations of new, un-
orthodox, experimental practices in the Philippines.
Researched accounts may well signify Medalla as a
century from conceptual art movements which
emerged in Southeast Asia in the 1970s. One is
not necessarily manifested as the other without
mediation.
Secondly, the lineage of conceptual art
(and conceptualism) in Southeast Asia does
not settle upon Duchamp (or anyone else) as a
primordial ancestor. Its genealogies have to be
Reading Conceptual Art in Southeast Asia
formative precedent for conceptual art and concep-
tualism in Southeast Asia.
32 Ringo Bunoan, “Duchamp: Re-Made and Unmade: A
Partial History of the Readymade in the Philippines,”
in Marcel Duchamp in South-East Asia, 17.
33 Ibid.
34 In her essay on Duchamp visiting and being sighted
in Southeast Asia, Adele Tan remarks swiftly and
grandly: “Duchamp’s presence is gleaned from the
extensive engagement with other art movements
such as Dada, Surrealism, Pop Art, Fluxus, Concep-
tual Art, and Arte Povera whose ideas made their
way to Southeast Asia from the 1970s on.” Adele Tan,
“Did Marcel Duchamp come to Southeast Asia? They
Came, We Saw, He Check-Mated,” in Marcel Duchamp
in South-East Asia, 66. Presence is the thing!
35 John Clark writes that modern art in Southeast Asia
“exists in a context of severe historical disjunction be-
tween the different linguistic and cultural situations
inherited from colonialism or neo-colonialism.” This
is not to signal that writing histories of the region’s
modern art is not feasible. The task is to write these
disjunctions historically; or, as Clark remarks provoc-
atively “there are also broken genealogies which serve
as historical parallels between different countries in
the region.” John Clark, “Modern Art in South-East
Asia,” Art and Asia Pacifc, Sample Issue (1993): 35–6.
mapped by tracking wellsprings and resources
from diverse geographies and histories, includ-
ing those within the region of Southeast Asia.
In all likelihood, the ensuing schemes will not
yield continuously linked lineages but broken
and separate genealogies.35 These need sepa-
rate studies. The texts I present for reading
may foster such studies.
245
 17.1

434 T.K. Sabapathy

0328-Charting Thoughts.indd 434 28/3/17 2:55 PM

 17.1 Lim Tzay Chuen
Mike
2005
Singapore Pavilion Courtyard
51st Biennale of Venice
Image courtesy of the artist

Reading Conceptual Art in Southeast Asia 435

0328-Charting Thoughts.indd 435 28/3/17 2:55 PM

 1 World Bank, The East Asian Miracle: Economic Growth
and Public Policy (New York: Oxford University Press,
1993).
2 Folker Fröbel, Jürgen Heinrichs & Otto Kreye, The New
International Division of Labour: Structural Unemploy-
ment in Industrialised Countries and Industrialisation
in Developing Countries (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-
versity Press, 1981). The original German edition was
published in 1977.
(18)
The Singapore Contemporary and Contemporary Art in Singapore
C.J.W.-L. Wee
Time is active, by nature it is much like a verb,
it both “ripens” and “brings forth.” […] But since
we measure time by a circular motion closed in on
itself, we could just as easily say that its motion
and change are rest and stagnation.
Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain,
1924
The idea of contemporary art entails, as a
presupposition, the existence of an idea of the
contemporary. The structure of temporality, in
turn, is to be comprehended as the way time is
understood, or conceptualised, and lived out in
society. The contemporary is therefore both an
idea of the time in which we are in and a goal of
reacting more effectively to the demands of the
immediate present. What then is contemporary
art in Singapore, and how does it relate to the
sociopolitical context within which it func-
tions, one in which culture as a notion from the
1980s becomes more prominent?
246 Charting Thoughts
3 Fredric Jameson in Nico Baumbach, Damon R. Young
& Genevieve Yue, “Revisiting Postmodernism: An In-
terview with Fredric Jameson,” Social Text 34, no. 2
(June 2016): 144.
4 C.J.W.-L. Wee, “Capitalism and Ethnicity: Creating
‘Local’ Culture in Singapore,” Inter-Asia Cultural
Studies 1, no. 1 (April 2000): 129-43.
5 Tony Blair, The Third Way: New Politics for a New Cen-
tury, Pamphlet 588 (London: Fabian Society, 1998), 7.
I frst want to suggest in this essay that
“we” in Singapore since the 1980s, as the so-
called East Asian Miracle unfolded, entered
a new historical period that no longer felt a
need to catch up with the paradigms of the
advanced economies.1 The result of the post-
independence Singapore government’s commit-
ment to modernising the island-state’s society
and culture in the name of an export-oriented
industrial modernity was that the former colo-
ny seemed to have breached a Euro-American
enacted divide between First and Third World
global zones. Singapore, from the late 1960s,
had been among the early countries to beneft
from the increasing economic interdependence
of the world system, initially described in 1977
as the New International Division of Labour
(NIDL) and later as globalisation.2 Foreign Di-
rect Investment (FDI) fowed into Singapore,
and, arguably, by the 1980s, elites in the city-
state felt more coordinated with the spaces and
time of the metropolitan West. The literary-
cultural critic Fredric Jameson has noted:
It seems to me that everybody recognizes
some kind of postmodern break, whatever
name they give it, that takes place in 1980
or so, in the Reagan/Thatcher era, with
the advent of economic deregulation, the
new salience of globalization, and so on.
[… I]t does seem to mark the end of the
modern in all kinds of ways, from com-
munications technologies and industry all
the way to forms of art.3
The systematic subsumption of Singapore
under capitalism, unsurprisingly, lead to the
volatilisation of society and its culture, broadly
understood as both ways of living and the arts:
capitalism requires the absorption (or totalisa-
tion) of the world’s multiplicities or heteroge-
neities for standardised predictability.4 Conse-
quently, I also wish to suggest that culture’s vol-
atilisation at least partially explains the emer-
gence of contemporary art in the city-state, as
artistic space opened up for new expressions of
the local that captured the effects of economic
transformation—the incomplete fragments of
life in the historical present wrought by rap-
id modernisation from the late 1960s. The
1980s increasingly see an artistic move away
from the destabilised prominence (if not quite
orthodoxies) of Nanyang “Style” modernism
(the hybrid techniques of Chinese colour and
ink and the School of Paris), social realism in-
spired by mainland Chinese arts developments
and what might be called the Singapore lyrical
exotic—paintings of the Singapore River and
Chinatown.
The newer art that emerged can be loosely
described as a fexible art practice that breaks
with a modern art that was medium-specifc
and object-based to take on a transmedia or
perhaps trans-category orientation. Its fexibil-
ity in engaging with the contemporary moment
comes from recognising that while art is con-
The Singapore Contemporary and Contemporary Art in Singapore
stituted by concepts, this does not mean that
art’s aesthetic dimensions should be eliminated.
Rather, it can lead to an expanded use of seem-
ingly non-aesthetic material for expression and
art-making. Contemporary art also drew upon
what might be called an “alternative” or perhaps
suppressed tradition of modernism as seen in
the legacy of Surrealism, the Dada movement
and Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968). We can say
that aspects from a combination of the historical
avant-garde of the 1910s and 1920s, the post-
war neo-avant-garde’s revision of avant-garde
devices and conceptualism were taken up in Sin-
gapore, in which the principles of autonomous
art were contested in the name of connecting art
with life, though searchingly interpreted for the
needs of the “local” in terms of content and cul-
tural orientation. Perhaps this was art suitable
for a society in which art did not have an estab-
lished role. There was no direct repetition of the
avant-garde, given the pre-war avant-garde’s cri-
tique of art institutions: such institutions were
weak in 1980s Singapore. More sophisticated
art institutions only emerged from the 1990s.
It is with the above in mind that we can
use “the contemporary” as a periodising term
that enables an insight into where we “are” in
matters of cultural identity and the modulat-
ing patterns of what being contemporary im-
plies. And this brings me to my fnal issue: the
importance of culture, broadly writ to include
the arts and heritage, as part of the present that
Singapore sees itself within. In 1998, former
British prime minister Tony Blair wrote of “a
dynamic knowledge-based economy” that is
possible after traditional industrial manufac-
turing waned.5 Culture, combined with the
stunning developments in information and
technology, can contribute to a post-industrial
economy in which the management of creativ-
ity, ideas and images mattered. Culture hence
becomes a defning sign of the contemporary
that the city-state must possess after the initial
decades of pragmatic materialism. The state in-
creasingly begins to deliver infrastructural and
247
 monetary resources for arts development from
the 1990s that was literally unimaginable in the
1970s, in spite of an ongoing regime of censor-
ship.6 While this extolment of culture might
seem to contrast with the tension in the 1980s
and throughout the 1990s between emergent
art and the state’s desire to attain synchronic-
ity with the advanced West, this tension has
not completely dissipated—even as a current
public-policy goal is to be a competitive global
city with edgy contemporary art.
Culture, the Arts and the
Will to be Contemporary
In the revealing book titled From Third World
to First, the frst prime minister of Singapore,
Lee Kuan Yew (1923–2015), wrote about the
tight link between politics and capitalist devel-
opment: “During the Cold War, when it was
far from clear in the 1960s and ’70s which side
would win, we aligned ourselves with the West.
[…] By the late 1980s, it was clear that we were
on the side of the victors.”7 With that victory,
the manifestly incomplete modernisation of a
backward, colonial-era modernity also seemed
to have been transcended, but some caution
was still necessary: “[I]t will take another
generation before our arts, culture and social
standards can match the First World infrastruc-
ture we have installed.”8 Culture seemed to be
the last barrier to overcome the system of Oth-
erness that emerged during the age of European
colonialism. But, by 2000, when From Third
World was published, culture had more than
come to the fore in the Singapore state’s will to
be contemporary.
In 1989, literary critic Koh Tai Ann ex-
amined how the People’s Action Party govern-
ment—the party that has ruled Singapore since
1959, when self-rule was gained—changed
their approach to cultural matters in the 1980s:
The offcial sign that the 1980s would
see more emphasis on the development
248 C.J.W.-L. Wee
of the arts as a community activity to en-
courage individual creativity, and as part
of a growing entertainment and leisure
activity, came with the establishment of
a Cultural Development Committee in
1980 by the [then-]Ministry of Culture.
Not surprisingly, when the People’s Action
Party (PAP) issued its election manifesto
in 1984 called Agenda for Action … A
Vision of Singapore by 1999, the catch-
phrase was “a cultured society” and the
target “Singapore—City of Excellence.”
The Agenda’s notable feature was to take
Singapore beyond being a developed soci-
ety in the economic sense; it is also to be
“a society culturally vibrant,” “a cultured
people fnding fulflment in non-material
pursuits.”9
The need for individual creativity, the
wish for “a cultured people” with “non-material
pursuits” were to be markers of a genuinely de-
veloped society. These terms had less purchase
in the decade before, when the sociopolitical
and economic project of modernisation pos-
sessed philistine dimensions and the cultures
it paid most attention to were multiracial cul-
tures and inter-ethnic tensions. While art is
a privileged conveyor of modern culture and
values, petit bourgeois mores concerned with
the disciplined manufacturing of products by
multinational corporations rendered art and
creativity irrelevant to economic growth.
Koh went on to note that in March 1985,
the state’s Sub-Committee on Services for the
Economic Committee had “review[ed] the
progress of the Singapore economy and [went
on to] identify new areas of growth,” envisag-
ing that “a vibrant cultural and entertainment
services industry would enhance our image as
a tourist destination, make Singapore a better
place to live in, and also help to attract profes-
sional and skilled workers in Singapore.”10 The
government had not gone soft: individualistic
cultural development could support pragmatic
6 Clarissa Oon, “Time to Review Arts Regulation: There
is a Need to Exempt Major Arts Bodies from Licens-
ing Requirements, and Release More Information
on Controversial Cuts,” The Straits Times, 8 October
2015, http://www.straitstimes.com/opinion/time-to-
review-arts-regulation (accessed 1 March 2016).
7 Lee Kuan Yew, From Third World to First: The
Singapore Story: 1965–2000 (Singapore: Times Me-
dia Pte. Ltd. & Singapore Press Holdings Ltd., 2000),
13.
8 Ibid.
9 Koh Tai Ann, “Culture and the Arts,” in Management
of Success: The Moulding of Modern Singapore, eds.
Kernial Singh Sandhu & Paul Wheatley (Boulder, Col-
orado: Westview Press, 1990), 713.
10 Cited in Ibid., 715.
11 Chan Heng Chee, “The Arts Power On,” The Straits
(then a favoured adjective in PAP discourse)
development. Nevertheless, this mix of goals—
high cultural and creative cultivation com-
bined with the ongoing emphases on ethnic
cultural expression to maintain a harmonious
multiracial national identity—indicate that the
1980s was a decade of adaptation for policy on
culture and the arts.
Though the question of the instrumentali-
sation of the arts does not recede, then or now,
we do witness the incremental formation of
cultural policies less to do with race or ethnicity
and more to do with the arts and, increasingly,
with information, the media and what are now
referred to as the “creative industries.” These
changes have intensifed since the 1980s, and
have transformed Singapore from being pri-
marily a functional city of economic develop-
ment in the 1970s to becoming, by 2000, not
only a global city, but an aspirational Global
City for the Arts. The current National Arts
Council (NAC) chair, Chan Heng Chee, has
noted:
In the 1960s and 1970s, the focus of the
Government was on economic develop-
The Singapore Contemporary and Contemporary Art in Singapore
Times, 4 July 2015, http://www.straitstimes.com/
opinion/the-arts-power-on (accessed 13 July 2015).
The National Theatre was built in 1963 and had a
distinctive cantilevered steel roof. It was demol-
ished in 1986. Chan has been chair of the National
Arts Council since September 2013; before that, she
was ambassador for Singapore to the United States
in 1996–2012. On being named as ambassador, she
had this to say: “I’m anti-establishment and was a bit
of a dissident before I was appointed ambassador.
It came as something of a shock to me when I was
offered the ambassadorship because I was highly
critical of government in a society that is not used to
being critiqued.” (“Verbatim: Singaporean Ambassa-
dor Heng Chee Chan,” Washington Life Magazine, Dec-
ember 2004, http://www.washingtonlife.com/issues/
2004-12/verbatim/ (accessed 1 February 2016).
ment, defence, housing, healthcare and
education.
The arts were not a priority, though
along the way the Government built the
National Theatre on the slopes of Fort Can-
ning Hill. Visitors to Singapore saw a suc-
cessful economy but a “cultural desert.”11
“Cultural desert” was an expression much used
to describe the city-state in decades past.
The changing prospects for culture and
the arts, we could venture to say, were enabled
further from the 1990s because culture gained
an enhanced role in the advanced West. In
1997, Tony Blair proposed that a “Cool Bri-
tannia” tagline be part of a national branding
exercise in which the arts were repackaged with
other more obviously proftable enterprises,
such as advertising or writing computer soft-
ware, into a category called the “cultural and
creative industries”; and a Creative Industries
Task Force was set up in the new Department
of Culture, Media and Sport. The inclusion
of the term “creativity” is to be noted, for
“‘creativity’ escaped the snobby association of
‘culture,’ and gave more substance to the post-
249
 12 Robert Hewison, Cultural Capital: The Rise and Fall of
Creative Britain (London: Verso, 2014), 39.
13 Ministry of Information and The Arts, Renaissance
City Report: Culture and the Arts in Renaissance Sin-
gapore (Singapore: The Ministry, 2000), 4. Two objec-
tives were stressed: the frst, to establish Singapore
as a global arts city conducive to creative, knowledge-
based industries and talent; and the second, to
strengthen national identity and belonging among
Singaporeans by nurturing an appreciation of shared
heritage. Cf. Jinna Tay, “Creative Cities,” in Creative In-
dustries, ed. John Hartley (Malden, Massachusetts:
Wiley-Blackwell Publishing, 2005), 225.
14 National Arts Council, “About Us,” https://www.nac.
gov.sg/naccorp/naccorp/aboutus/mission-vision.
html (accessed 1 February 2016).
15 Advisory Council on Culture and the Arts, Report of
the Advisory Council on Culture and the Arts (Singa-
pore: The Council, 1989).
industrial economy of signs and symbols.”12
While artists such as playwright Mark Raven-
hill criticised the superfciality of this brand-
ing, in Singapore the state followed with the
articulation of its own creative city policy, the
2000 Renaissance City Report, which reinforced
the position of its 1992 Singapore—Global City
for the Arts report:
We want to position Singapore as a key
city in the Asian renaissance of the 21st
century and a cultural centre in the glo-
balised world. The idea is to be one of the
top cities in the world to live, work and
play in, where there is an environment
conducive to creative and knowledge-
based industries and talent.13
In 2016, the cultural vision for the city-state
has not changed; the NAC’s website says its
mission is: “To develop Singapore as a distinc-
tive global city for the arts.”14
The key moment—now widely accepted—
when the changes afoot in the 1980s came to a
250 C.J.W.-L. Wee
16 Committee on Visual Arts, Committee on Visual Arts
(Advisory Council on Culture and the Arts) Report,
November 1988 (Singapore: The Committee, 1988).
Another specialised committee, chaired by the
poet–academic Edwin Thumboo, undertook work
on literary development, resulting in the publica-
tion: Committee on Literary Arts, Report of the Com-
mittee on Literary Arts (Singapore: The Committee,
1988). Visual and performing arts development has
been more prominent than its literary equivalent,
if for no other reason than just the simple fact that
the physical infrastructure for their display is more
spectacular.
17 Chinese-language theatre is represented, for ex-
ample, by the 1960s and 1970s productions by Kuo
Pao Kun (1939–2002); see Quah Sy Ren & Pan Cheng
Lui, eds., The Complete Works of Kuo Pao Kun, Vol.
One: Plays in Chinese—The 1960s and the 1970s
(Singapore: Practice Performing Arts School and
head, and when substantial new administrative
structures were put in place by the government,
is 1989, with the publication of the Report of
the Advisory Council on Culture and the Arts.15
The report’s weight was reinforced by the fact
that the council was led by then-second dep-
uty prime minister, Ong Teng Cheong. This
report was based on the earlier work of more
specialised committees, such as the Commit-
tee on Visual Arts’ report published in 1988,
which observed that thus far cultural activities
had largely been left to individuals and private
groups.16 However, as we have seen, the varied
impetuses that led to the new attitude to the arts
were already taking place earlier in the decade,
making the 1980s a dynamic decade for cultural
change, when the city-state increasingly turned
away from philistine modernisation.
The times, they were a-changin’, with
the prospect of reform in arts policy, and cer-
tainly some of the political elites in leadership
seemed reassured that there was less need to
fret over the teleological implications of 1960s
modernisation theory: History had not left Sin-
 Global Publishing, 2005). In terms of the visual arts,
the post-war Nanyang School has received much
more attention than post-war social realist painting
and woodblock caricatures. This is partially due to
the more politically sensitive nature of some of the
artworks produced by the Social Realists. (Or, alter-
natively, it might be said that the project to repre-
sent Nanyang—the South Seas, or broadly speaking
Southeast Asia—was less sensitive than the social
realist project to represent ordinary Singapore life.)
Social realist painting attempted to capture the
truth of everyday life and had, at the very least, a
left-leaning, egalitarian bent. For more on such vis-
ual work, see Singapore Art Museum, From Words to
Pictures: Art during the Emergency, exh. cat. (Singa-
pore: Singapore Art Museum, 2007).
18 The phrase “Asian renaissance” was frst used in
1996 by then-deputy prime minister of Malaysia,
Anwar Ibrahim; he wrote that the Asian rebirth in
gapore behind. A major sign of the times for
Singapore was the fnal “end” of the politically
and economically unstable mid-1940s to the
1960s, Singapore’s “post-war” period, it could
be said. Those unsettling years saw the decolo-
nisation of Malaya in 1957, the formal ending
of the Malayan Emergency in 1960, the for-
mation of the Federation of Malaysia in 1963
and Singapore’s economic survival after it left
(or was ejected from) the Federation in 1965.
The challenges posed in the name of The People
by the Left in Singapore (including its artistic
manifestations in Chinese-language theatre and
post-war social realist painting and woodblock
caricatures) effectively ended with the death of
Mao Zedong in 1976 and the announcement
of economic reforms called “Socialism with
Chinese characteristics” at the end of 1978 in
mainland China.17 It is said that the events of
1989 brought the Cold War to a close, but for
East and Southeast Asia (if we avoid taking a too
overtly Eurocentric perspective), China’s initial
economic reforms mark at least the modulation
of the Cold War’s most diffcult aspects.
The Singapore Contemporary and Contemporary Art in Singapore
the wake of economic progress should concern itself
with “the revival of the arts and the sciences under
the infuence of classical models based on strong
moral and religious foundations; a cultural resur-
gence dominated by a re-fowering of art and litera-
ture, architecture and music and advancements in
science and technology.” (Anwar Ibrahim, The Asian
Renaissance (Singapore: Times Books International,
1996), 18.) This was an articulation with a stronger
humanistic element than in Singapore. Singapore
certainly seems to have won a reputation as a cross-
cultural facilitator which could help others to navi-
gate this “century”; see, for example, Gabriele Gio-
vannini & Emanuele Schibotto, “Singapore and the
Asian Century: The City-State Has a Potentially Vital
Role to Play in the West’s Engagement with Asia,”
The Diplomat, 19 February 2015, http://thediplomat.
com/2015/02/singapore-and-the-asian-century/
(accessed 2 February 2016).
The 1980s thus inaugurated the city-state’s
post-war as well as post-independence period.
Arguably, at this juncture, the “old” phase of
Singapore’s recent modern history is left behind,
and in place we see a strengthening will to being
contemporary. The developmental goal then was
to be a top player within the “Asian renaissance”
in the much-ballyhooed “Coming Asian Centu-
ry,” a phrase that could smack of triumphalism,
and that, not accidentally, frst occurs in the
1980s.18 The global system of Otherness that
colonialism created was substantially weakened
during the height of post-war decolonisation,
but the question of economic equality was still
a thorny matter. The appearance of the world
market intensifed the two-way interpenetration
of First and Third World such that countries
like Singapore wanted to obliterate the non-
synchronous socio-economic temporalities that
the poles of London and Singapore represented.
The 1980s economic game was differ-
ent from the one played during the modern-
ising haste of the 1970s. With “the end of an
essentially modernist feld of political struggle in
251
 19 Fredric Jameson, “Notes on Globalization as a Philo-
sophical Issue,” in The Cultures of Globalization, eds.
Fredric Jameson & Masao Miyoshi (Durham, North
Carolina: Duke University Press, 1998), 55.
20 Peter Osborne, Anywhere or Not at All: Philosophy of
Contemporary Art (London: Verso, 2013), 21.
21 Theodor W. Adorno & Max Horkheimer, The Dialec-
tic of Enlightenment, trans. John Cumming (London:
Verso, 1979), 158, 161.
22 Art and Globalization, eds. James Elkins, Zhivka Val-
iavicharska & Alice Kim (University Park: Pennsylva-
nia State University Press, 2010).
which the great ideologies [such as nationalism]
still had the force and the great authority of the
great religions,” and with less-modernised states
like Singapore seeming less the past of modern
states in the West, it might also seem time to
proclaim the “disappearance of History as the
fundamental element in which human beings
exist.”19 However premature such proclama-
tions seem, the attention that international
media paid to the collective economic success
that the four Asian mini-dragons of Singapore,
Taiwan, Hong Kong and South Korea had at-
tained by the 1980s implied that Singapore and
some parts of East Asia were inhabiting at least
more of an equally shared present with the ad-
vanced economies.
The above in itself does not mean that eco-
nomic insecurity was left behind: staying con-
temporary, like becoming modern, feels like a
race run on a treadmill. The island-state now
had to be more of a transnational space than
when it was an early benefciary of outsourcing
during the pressing nation-building phase of
the late 1960s and 1970s. Capitalism had pen-
etrated social forms (“national communities,”
“societies,” “cultures”) and consequently, global
and regional economic interdependence was a
reality, meaning that the older modern idea of
self-suffcient nation-states went out the win-
252 C.J.W.-L. Wee
23 The Global Contemporary and the Rise of New Art
Worlds, eds. Hans Belting, Andrea Buddenseig & Pe-
ter Weibel (Karlsruhe, Germany: ZKM/Center for Art
and Media Karlsruhe, 2013); and C.J.W.-L. Wee, “‘We
Asians’?: Modernity, Visual Art Exhibitions, and East
Asia,” boundary 2 37, no. 1 (Spring 2010): 91–126.
24 As has been observed, “Transnationality is the puta-
tive socio-spatial form of the current temporal unity
of historical experience.” (Osborne, op. cit., 26).
25 Russell Storer, “Making Space: Historical Contexts of
Contemporary Art in Singapore,” in Contemporary Art
in Singapore, eds. Gunalan Nadarajan, Russell Storer,
Eugene Tan & Yu-Mei Balasingamchow (Singapore:
dow—this was the cost of existing in the same
time zone, as it were, with the market-oriented
Anglo-American West. The game was upped
such that economies should not just make
things for export, using other people’s technol-
ogy and business models (which worked in the
1970s), but had to be creative and innovative.
And here art had a role: its very uselessness and
perceived autonomy became component parts
of a model of creativity, and in keeping with
what was transpiring in cutting-edge metro-
politan centres, state policy and rationality no
longer negated autonomy but employed a “new
systemic functionalization of autonomy itself,”
as the philosopher Peter Osborne puts it.20
During the phase of industrialised modernity in
the advanced West, the “principle of idealistic
aesthetics [regarding the work of art]—purpose-
fulness without a purpose”—was “replaced by
exchange value,” which itself was part-and-par-
cel of the “commercial system.”21 Now, in post-
industrial contexts, creativity and autonomy are
taken to drive new commercial innovation.
The three key art institutions of note to
emerge since the 1989 Advisory Council re-
port are the Singapore Art Museum (SAM;
1996), the Singapore Biennale (2006) and, the
most recent, the National Gallery Singapore
(2015), brought into existence at the cost of
 Institute of Contemporary Arts Singapore, 2007), 12.
While it is reasonable to contend that “inter-nodal
negotiations between the [contemporary] artists,
state, public and commerce are entangled and most
importantly, not necessarily adversarial[,] as TAV had
shown [the] willingness to use funds from the state
and corporations to gain a wider audience for their
art,” this does not lead to the writer’s conclusion that
artists in the 1960s and 1970s were more independ-
ent than contemporary artists (Seng Yu Jin, “Re-Vis-
iting the Emergence of The Artists Village,” in The Art-
ists Village: 20 Years On, eds. Kwok Kian Woon & Lee
Wen, exhibition booklet (Singapore: Singapore Art
an astonishing S$532 million (then approxi-
mately US$370 million). The frst and third
institutions showcase historical modern and
recent contemporary art from Singapore and
Southeast Asia, and the second—the premier
globalised exhibition form—offers themed ex-
hibitions that bring in the newest of emerging
experimental art from the immediate region.22
Collectively, the three institutions interpret
and present the inter-regional diversity of so-
cial experience as embodied by art within novel
cultural spaces committed to the exploration
of multicultural similarities and differences.
Such forms of social experience, from where
some still consider the semi-periphery of the
advanced capitalist world, have been present-
ed within the framework of a common world
only recently.23 Thus, the three institutions are
at least partially de-bordered or post-national
spaces that present the complex and even dis-
junctive, multicultural contemporaneity of
Southeast Asia.24 They are poster children of
the city-state’s will to contemporaneity even
while they simultaneously serve to articulate
non-metropolitan representations of “our” own
modernist and contemporary art.
The presentation of contemporary art
necessarily entails the possession of a domes-
tic contemporary art to showcase as well—or
The Singapore Contemporary and Contemporary Art in Singapore
Museum, 2009), 14.) (For a related and more detailed
argument, see Yvonne Low, “Positioning Singapore’s
Contemporary Art,” Journal of Maritime Geopolitics
and Culture 2, nos. 1 & 2 (2011): 115–37.) The expec-
tations of public fnancial support only reveal how
artists, given their own (post)colonial backgrounds,
expect the arts to be subsidised as a public good, as
is the case in Britain and Western Europe in general;
this is unlikely to be out of step with the assumptions
of a large part of the citizenry.
26 Koh was the founding chair of the NAC, and served
from 1991–1996.
else it may seem that the cultural desert still
exists. Ironically, if contemporary artists such
as the near-iconic Tang Da Wu (b. 1943) and
those who were part of the artists’ colony he
was so involved with in 1988, The Artists Vil-
lage (TAV), said to embody “alterity” in art,
had not existed, arts policy would have had to
invent them. Curator Russell Storer assesses
the signifcance of TAV in the city-state’s re-
cent cultural history thus: “With an emphasis
on performance and installation, artists at TAV
experimented with forms and ideas with a new
level of criticality and openness, with Tang act-
ing as a mentor fgure for many of the younger
artists.”25
While contemporary art has benefted
from increased state funding, the interactive
conditioning of state-linked cultural institu-
tions and artwork became more pronounced
only from perhaps 2002, the year that the arts
complex, Esplanade—Theatres on the Bay, was
opened. The signature arts centre, now a literal
and symbolic centre of the arts in the city-state,
was constructed at the cost of S$600 million
(then approximately US$400 million) and had
to be defended by NAC chair, Tommy Koh.26
To return to the 1980s, though, the grad-
ual appearance of contemporary art then was
more directly concerned with the conditions
253
 of stern modernisation and less with art insti-
tutions; Singapore is in the position of having
had artistic margins with avant-garde inclina-
tions that presumably wanted to question artis-
tic authority and conventions ahead of the au-
thoritative arts-institutional centre that could
sanction and canonise art.
Contemporary Art’s “Arrival” and
Flexible Postconceptual Art
It has been argued, as I have noted, that from
1980 or so, capitalism more and more be-
comes “an omniscient form of our existence”
that affects communication technologies to art
forms.27 The question then arises of whether
this is another Eurocentric statement: if capi-
talism is everywhere, is it really quite the same
thing everywhere even in a relatively small re-
gion like Southeast Asia? I think we can say, in a
qualifed way, that yes it was everywhere in the
region because of the Cold War; but we must
add that it appeared with different accents in
different locales.
A brief comparison of how contemporary
art “arrives” in a few Southeast Asian countries
from the 1970s will indicate the distinctiveness
of Singapore’s relation to capitalism—owing to
its deliberate capitalist self-subsumption—and
the resulting specifcity of its contemporary art.
What also arises as a question—one that cannot
easily be avoided—is: what does it mean when
art travels? Do we speak of a Singapore contem-
porary art or contemporary art in Singapore?
The same type of question could be applied to,
say, the Philippines or Indonesia.
Such questions, though, should not pre-
sume any essentialist conceptions of contempo-
rary art. The fexible art practices of the 1980s
employed a number of post-formalist strategies
in art-making. Drawing upon the practice of
conceptual art, broadly taken, the strategies
used were based on the understanding that art
derived its critical meaning not from external
aesthetic dimensions of the artwork, but from
254 C.J.W.-L. Wee
its internal structure. However, the understand-
ing that art need not be aesthetic unexpectedly
freed up the thought parameters of what consti-
tuted “artistic material,” resulting in what has
been described as the “postmedium condition”
of art.28 In Singapore (and around the region)
medium-specifc and object-based art are rein-
corporated as component parts of an expansive
artistic practice that, following Peter Osborne,
can be called postconceptual art. Singapore
art thus went beyond the thoroughgoing anti-
aesthetic of a purist notion of conceptualism,
towards being an expanded art that featured, in
particular, performance and installation sculp-
ture blended (or co-existing) with painting and
drawing—within which, in both latter media,
fguration might appear; while oil painting or
easel painting lost its position of primacy, paint-
ing did not disappear as it should have, if we fol-
low the theorisations of art development under-
taken decades ago.29 The blended art practices
facilitated engagements with the contemporary
fragments of life that were part of the Singapore
condition of rapid modernisation.
The Contemporary Arrives—and Takes Off
How art travels and is reshaped is not a predict-
able business. Historical contexts are different
in various locales, and the lineaments of a Euro-
American art history—often an art history seen
from the point of view of institutions in the
United States that have been dominant since
1945—unsurprisingly do not apply in a neat
way to Southeast Asian contexts. Further, even
the geopolitical term “Southeast Asia” cannot
be invoked easily as a destination for art, given
the cultural differences between the Malay Ar-
chipelago or maritime Southeast Asia (e.g. Sin-
gapore, Indonesia, the Philippines) and main-
land Southeast Asia or Indochina (e.g. Laos,
Cambodia, Vietnam).
If we stay with the Philippines and Indo-
nesia, we might generalise that the 1970s wit-
nessed the near-simultaneous appearance of:
27 Jameson in Baumbach, Young & Yue, “Revisiting
Postmodernism,” 144.
28 Rosalind E. Krauss, “Reinventing the Medium,” Criti-
cal Inquiry 25, no. 2 (Winter, 1999): 296.
29 See, as an example, Lucy Lippard, Six Years: The De-
materialization of the Art Object from 1966 to 1972
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973).
30 Ahmad Mashadi, “Framing the 1970s,” Third Text 25,
no. 4 (July 2011): 410.
31 The art that came out of this Cold War period from
the Malay Archipelago was featured in a Special Pro-
two broad approaches [in art-making]—
conceptualism and statement-making[,
…] as well as realism [in more established
medium-based art] and forms of activism.
However, these approaches should not be
seen as mutually exclusive, but instead as
trajectories founded upon shared contex-
tual concerns.30
That is to say, conceptually oriented work coex-
isted or even combined with realism to give rise
to the plural or even eclectic practice of con-
temporary art that may not be easily recognised
as such in the metropolitan centres. The over-
arching shared historical-contextual concerns
for the 1970s were the Cold War that framed
the results of decolonisation from the 1940s to
the mid-1960s and the question of how nation-
al identity and culture should be expressed in a
tumultuous region. Artistic experiments had to
ascertain what the “post” in “postcolonial” im-
plied for artistic processes. This was the crucial
factor that mediated the post-war regional prac-
tices of both modern and contemporary art.
The quasi-authoritarian governments that arose
after the colonialists left, and were tolerated by
the United States of America because of their
anti-communism, complicated artistic-cultural
thinking.31 Two brief examples illustrate the re-
The Singapore Contemporary and Contemporary Art in Singapore
gramme of the inaugural 2006 Singapore Biennale,
Telah Terbit (Out Now), held at SAM. See Ahmad Ma-
shadi, Telah Terbit (Out Now): Southeast Asian Con-
temporary Art Practices during the 1970s, exh. cat.
(Singapore: Singapore Art Museum, 2006).
32 Patrick D. Flores, “Missing Links, Burned Bridges: The
Art of the ’70s,” in Pananaw 2: Philippine Journal of
Visual Arts (Manila: National Commission for Culture
and the Arts, 1998), 53.
33 Ahmad, “Framing the 1970s,” 413.
gional “art world’s overlapping—because com-
bined and uneven—modes of production,” as
art historian Patrick Flores phrases it.32
On 8 September 1969, the Cultural Cent-
er of the Philippines (CCP), constructed with
fnancial support from the United States, was
opened. As the nation lurched towards the dec-
laration of martial law in 1972, the CCP was
taken by some to be a cultural expression of
the Marcos regime. Artists such as Pablo Baen
Santos (b. 1943), one of the founders of the
Kaisahan (Solidarity) Group of realist paint-
ers, were committed to the urban poor; for
him and those likeminded, “[r]ealism was de-
ployed in order to critique the state’s patron-
age of the arts through such institutions as the
CCP, which tended to favour abstraction and
conceptual practices that for many appeared ar-
tifcial, mannerist and overly indexical of inter-
national movements.”33 In this case, modern-
ist abstraction and contemporary conceptual
practices, though considered incommensurate
as visual arts practices, are yoked together as
parts of an international culture some saw as
antithetical to a more genuine or representative
national culture.
In contrast, we can take the artists linked
with the New Art Movement (Gerakan Seni
Rupa Baru, GSRB) in Indonesia. After the
255
 34 Agung Hujatnikajennong, “The Contemporary Turns:
About the Indonesian Art World and the Aftermath of
‘the 80s’,” in Beyond the Dutch: Indonesia, the Neth-
erlands and the Visual Arts from 1900 Until Now, eds.
Meta Knol, Remco Raben & Kitty Zijlmans (Amster-
dam: KIT Publishers, 2010)
35 Jim Supangkat, “Multiculturalism/Multimodernism,”
in Contemporary Art in Asia: Tradtions/Tensions, exh.
cat. (New York: Asia Society Galleries, 1996), 80.
36 Jim Supangkat offers a timely warning that contem-
porary artwork from “developing societies” should
not be pigeonholed as consistently being about “so-
ciopolitical content”; the danger would be a stereo-
type “that developing nations are repressive states
in which democracy cannot develop or expand. […]
Whereas there was once a [colonial-era] distinction
between ‘modern’ and ‘traditional’ societies, using
progress as the measure, now the division is be-
tween ‘developed’ and ‘not-yet-developed’ societies,
using democracy as the measure.” (Ibid.)
37 Osborne, op. cit., 21.
38 James Elkins, “Afterword,” in Art and Globalization, 264.
fall of Sukarno and the suppression of com-
munism, with Suharto’s New Order set up,
art and cultural expression were depoliticised.
In this environment, abstraction, combined
with work that referenced spiritual expression
and decorative local motifs and patterns, four-
ished. In 1975, the GSRB was established by
FX Harsono (b. 1949) and others, and cham-
pioned a pluralism of artistic expression that
infuenced younger artists such as Dede Eri
Supria (b. 1956), with the result that the use
of ready-mades, found objects and site-specifc
installations spread, becoming an art that was
executed with local sociopolitical concerns and
historical contexts kept in view.34
In both instances of national artistic devel-
opment discussed above, art is politicised. The
geopolitical realities that avant-garde and con-
ceptualism elsewhere understood to concern
itself with questions of autonomous art and
the expressive artist—or also “the oppressive
256 C.J.W.-L. Wee
39 C.J.W.-L. Wee, The Asian Modern: Culture, Capital-
ist Development, Singapore (Hong Kong: Hong Kong
University Press, 2007), 33–52.
40 Cf. Rem Koolhaas, “Singapore Songlines: Portrait of
a Potemkin Metropolis… or Thirty Years of Tabula
Rasa,” in Rem Koolhaas & Bruce Mau, Small, Me-
dium, Large, Extra-Large, ed. Jennifer Sigler (Rotter-
dam: 010 Publishers, 1995); Rodolphe de Koninck,
Julie Drolet & Marc Girard, Singapore: An Atlas of
Perpetual Territorial Transformation (Singapore: NUS
Press, 2008); and Wee, Asian Modern, 77–98.
41 Thomas Crow, “Afterword,” in his The Rise of the Six-
ties: American and European Art in the Era of Dissent
(London: Lawrence King Publishing Ltd., 2004), 185.
42 National Museum of Singapore, “About Us,” http://
nationalmuseum.sg/about-nms/history (accessed
19 February 2016).
43 Susie Koay, “Urban Artists: 25 Years of Singapore
Art: Some Observations,” in National Museum Art
Gallery, Urban Artists: 25 Years of Singapore Art,
exh. cat. (Singapore: National Musuem Art Gallery,
1990), 5.
values of modernism as refected in the policies
of art institutions,” as the Indonesian critic–
curator–artist Jim Supangkat puts it—are
transplanted into different cultural and po-
litical registers.35 The Cold War, authoritarian
anti-communist regimes and the fears of the
Free World were inescapable in the region—
though at the same time, we want to avoid im-
plying that art from developing societies only
deal with sociopolitical content.36 Arguably,
the sociopolitical complexities of 1970s South-
east Asian contemporary art act out, in unex-
pected combinations of forms and styles, the
possibilities inherent within “the more socially
and politically complex perspectives of the his-
torical avant-gardes”—but we might observe
that such “perspectives” were “also revived in
the 1960s and 1970s by a range of work [in
the advanced West], which was either directly
political in character, had strong anti-art ele-
ments, or embodied art-institutional and social
critique.”37 If contemporary art with realist
dimensions in Southeast Asia cannot be un-
derstood as truly sharing a contemporaneous
moment with some of the neo-avant-gardes in
the metropolitan West in the 1970s, the dif-
ference would seem to lie in Southeast Asian
societies’ apparently laggard positions in mod-
ernisation’s telos. As happens when thinking of
non-metropolitan modern and contemporary
art, the issue of their “belatedness” arises (or
their “particularity,” versus the “universal” art
of the Euro-American centres). The art histo-
rian James Elkins acknowledges that: “Belated-
ness is a prickly concept: it forecloses sympa-
thy and prohibits dialogue by offering a value
judgement as a description. It trails a string of
problematic concepts with normative impli-
cations, including the avant-garde, infuence,
originality, and precedence.”38
How did Singapore compare with its sur-
rounding environs? The expression of contem-
porary art in Singapore was rare in the 1970s,
becoming more pronounced by the late 1980s.
Despite this, the city-state shared artistic orien-
tations in common with the region, and it is the
PAP government’s success in engineering rapid
growth that accounts for artistic differences.
The commitment to rapid growth represented
a choice of capitalist development with revised
(and attenuated) social-democratic forms over
even a “hard” leftism. Sociopolitical discipline
and social engineering would create the culture
to transform society.39 These choices made the
city-state stand out in relief against the other
national-cultural ideals that surrounded them.
The upshot of the above leads us to the
broad proposition that contemporary art arises,
erratically and symptomatically through the
1970s, in varying degrees of reaction to the vol-
atilisation of society and culture by a wrenching
catch-up modernisation—which also entailed
intense urbanisation, with the entire island los-
ing the inherited division between town and
country from colonial times—and to the search
for new artistic means not only in the visual
The Singapore Contemporary and Contemporary Art in Singapore
arts, but also in theatre and literature, that al-
lowed sharper engagements with sociocultural
engineering.40 Artistic changes in the metro-
politan centres from the 1950s–1970s, when
many artists seemed determined “to locate their
art as closely as possible to the boundaries be-
tween art’s traditional domain of imaginative
perception and the base materiality of one’s
means of signifcation,” then offered options by
which artists could adapt to create an art that
foregrounded the present’s fragments.41
Such matters formed the thematic core of
an exhibition in 1990, Urban Artists: 25 Years
of Singapore Art, curated by Susie Koay, then
a curator at the National Museum Art Gallery
(NMAG), and, later, the deputy director of the
new SAM. The NMAG, established in 1976,
was a cultural institution that exceeded the his-
torical and ethnological orientation of its par-
ent National Museum (with origins in 1849) in
its commitment to visual art, until the opening
of SAM in 1996 as a full-blown art museum.42
The exhibition is valuable as an authentic rep-
resentative voice from the end of the 1980s that
captures artistic transitions in both aesthetic
media and content.
In the exhibition booklet, Koay writes
that the pre-independence environment of
Singapore was ineluctably transformed after
independence on 9 August 1965, and that art
changed with it. Already, in 1960, the PAP
started “a drive towards industrialization and
rapid urbanization,” and because of “its sus-
tained and offtimes [sic] ruthless urbanization
programme, by the year 1988, a total of 86%
of the population lived in these subsidized sky-
scraper towns.”43 The exhibition offers four
categories of artists in examining the relation-
ship between art and “the current culture”: frst,
artists who directly transcribe the environment
into their work; second, artists who indirectly
or unselfconsciously utilise elements from their
environment; third, artists who “isolate them-
selves to create an inner world within the urban
setting”; and fnally, those whose work is
257
 44 Ibid., 5, 6, 10.
45 Ibid., 6.
46 Kwok Kian Chow, Channels and Confuences: A His-
tory of Singapore Art (Singapore: Singapore Art Mu-
seum, 1996), 92–4. Ahmad Mashadi posits that the
critical artistic formations of the 1970s in West Ma-
laysia, the Philippines and Indonesia, by and large,
“may be seen as a collective critique against the for-
mality, un-refexiveness and repetitiveness of what
in touch with the current environment […
in which] utility services compare favour-
ably with those elsewhere [in the more ad-
vanced world]; [and] where the URA [Ur-
ban Redevelopment Authority] attempts
to preserve […] the old Singapore with
as much earnestness [the] HDB [Housing
and Development Board] had earlier dis-
played in demolishing and rebuilding.44
That is, in a Singapore that felt itself caught
up with metropolitan norms, the aim to wipe
the slate clean of all history and cultural forms
inimical to modernisation has been moderated,
and a will to be contemporary has, in turn, fos-
tered artwork that also wishes to be contempo-
rary. This is the category most pertinent for my
argument.
One pronounced reaction to modernisa-
tion was nostalgia. By the 1970s, the depiction
of tropical landscape was established in Chi-
nese xieyihua-style painting, which attempted
to capture the essence of a landscape or birds
using rapid brushwork. As urbanisation pro-
gressed, the “[d]epiction of recurrent themes
such as the old Chinatown and the Singapore
River can be seen as escape avenues from the
current plastic age,” according to Koay’s es-
say.45 She points out both the nostalgia and
sense of loss embedded in such artwork. The
258 C.J.W.-L. Wee
was called ‘international abstraction’ and ‘provincial
lyricism’ which had dominated art-making.” (Ahmad,
“Framing the 1970s,” 415.) This contention applies
to Singapore from perhaps the late 1970s as well;
pictorial abstraction was notable and the “provincial
lyricism” that is mentioned appears in the guise of
watercolours of a Chinatown and a Singapore River
from yesteryear.
47 Koay, op. cit., 7.
48 In their joint statement, the three artists say this:
Singapore River was a favourite of watercolour-
ists, so much that in 1986, the Arbour Fine Arts
Gallery featured younger artists in a private
exhibition (infamously) entitled Not the Singa-
pore River.46 Given the seemingly unavoidable
presence of the Singapore River, Koay offers,
as part of her second category of artists (those
who indirectly register their environments), a
1975 oil painting done by Nanyang-style artist
Liu Kang (1911–2004), Life by the River (fg.
18.1). The artist is regarded as a “pioneer” art-
ist whose work combined Post-Impressionist
technique with Chinese ink styles in depicting
scenes of Bali or Singapore. Liu Kang’s paint-
ing offers a brightly coloured realist (though
not naturalistic) scene of a village with a river
going through it, with a variety of everyday
life presented: people talk, wash clothes on the
river bank, push their boats in the river, etc.
The presence of community bonds is patent.
Koay conjures up what is not in the scene: “Liu
Kang’s works can be interpreted as an uncon-
scious reaction to the regimented society of
schematic HDB fats which dominates [sic]
[the] Singapore skyline of the 1960s and 70s.
His fgures are not individualized, purposely
lacking distinct features that identify them,
emulating the monotone of rows upon rows of
fats.”47 Already, by the mid-1970s, the force of
a gathering modernisation is felt.
 “Trimurti is a Sanskrit word describing three forms
usually associated with the Hindu Godhead of Brah-
ma, Vishnu and Shiva. […] There is a need to show
that different things can exist together harmoniously
and in perfect equilibrium. It is true that each artist
has his own culture and religious background. Each
is in itself unique, but as a language of the heart,
mind and soul and as an expression of humanity,
is universal. […] Expressing this unity, each artist
shows one aspect of this universal manifestation.”
But of course not all rejoinders to modern-
isation are in the form of nostalgia embodied in
the adapted modernism of the Nanyang Style or
traditional visual languages. Those who “isolate
themselves to create an inner world” (the third
category in her catalogue) include a diverse set
of artists—abstract painters, Chinese-style ink-
and-colour painters and even, we might be sur-
prised, transmedia artists. Koay brings up an
art exhibition/event of 1988, Trimurti, as one
example of this third category. Three younger
artists, S. Chandrasekaran (b. 1959), Goh Ee
Choo (b. 1962), Salleh Japar (b. 1962), staged
a collaborative work at the Goethe-Institut that
combined painting, installation sculpture and
performance art, unifed by the Sanskrit term
trimurti, used to defne a manifestation of three
forces: creation, preservation and destruction.
Hindu, Chinese divinatory as well as Malay-
Muslim cultural and religious elements are ex-
plored by each artist, in the name of how such
differences could also embody the unity of mul-
tiracial identities in Singapore.48 The three art-
ists performed individually on 7 and 12 March
1988, during which they worked and reworked
the central installation in the hall. Koay sees
the event as part of a larger artistic trend, re-
gardless of whether it appears in pictorial or
transmedia guises: “the use of negative space
was important and meaningful in experienc-
The Singapore Contemporary and Contemporary Art in Singapore
(S. Chandrasekaran, Goh Ee Choo & Salleh Japar,
“Trimurti, 1988 Statements and Documentation,” in
Trimurti and Ten Years, ed. T.K. Sabapathy, exh. cat.
(Singapore: Singapore Art Museum, 1998), 11.) A ret-
rospective of Trimurti was staged at SAM in 1998.
49 Koay, op. cit., 8.
50 Ibid., 9.
51 Ibid., 6.
52 Ibid., 11.
ing the beautiful as the forms themselves.”49
And therefore the three, while unusual in their
attempt to blend Asian religious cultures with
installation and performance art, “practise the
same form of escape from the urban environ-
ment” as others.50 Artistic pluralism is a sign of
an artistic transmutation.
By the time Koay reaches her fourth cate-
gory—“works [that] are inspired by the current
environment”—the urge for artistic pluralism is
more marked for both younger and older prac-
titioners, even as the general artistic support for
diversity is not unqualifed.51 Performance art-
ist–painter–installation sculptor Tang Da Wu
is in this fourth category, as is Teo Eng Seng (b.
1938) and younger artists with links to TAV.
She brings up Teo’s The Net: Most Defnitely the
Singapore River (1986, fg. 18.2) as an example of
the artist as “educator” who “recontextualizes
the realities of society and projects or magnifes
the interpretation for the beneft of the view-
er.”52 While she does not say more than this,
Teo’s work is both an experiment in material
and a revaluation of key Singapore art content.
The Net is an installation comprising a fshing
net mounted and stretched out on a wall with
variously coloured pulped paper as sculptural
elements fguring as debris or detritus “caught”
in the net. Teo, who had abandoned painting in
1979, calls this medium “paperdyesculp.” The
259
 53 John Low, “‘Non-Visible Bodies/Spaces’: Interview
with Teo Eng Seng,” in The Substation, Open Ends—A
Documentation Exhibition of Performance Art in Singa-
pore (Singapore: The Substation, 2001), unpaginated.
54 This proposed artwork is now generally referred to as
5′ x 5′ (Singapore River) (1972). The Modern Art Society,
started in 1964, led the way in championing abstrac-
tion, “though such a goal was never explicitly claimed
or articulated by the Society; even so, its propagation
of a new aesthetic implied abstract strategies and
outcomes.” (T.K. Sabapathy, “Contexts and Issues,” in
Cheo Chai-Hiang: Thoughts and Processes [Rethink-
work questions both the use of conventional art
media and the clichéd image of the Singapore
River to represent local identity, given how pol-
luted the river had become by 1986. But while
Teo is anti-conventional, he is no avant-gardist
trying to eradicate art’s aesthetic difference from
life. When interviewed in 2001, and asked to
comment on the increasingly visible artistic di-
versity by the 1980s, he acerbically replied that
this “diversity” was partly the result of poor art
education—a lack of suffcient technical train-
ing—starting in the 1960s, and going into the
1970s, when “[f ]resh idea[s] came in and what
is that fresh idea—talk. Talk a lot? Come out
with very big words.”53
Koay’s emplacement of Teo alongside com-
mitted experimental artists such as Tang Da
Wu is signifcant for its answer to the question,
why does the contemporary take off? Even if
Teo was critical of the perceived lack of con-
ventional skills in contemporary art practices,
he still found in some of the new ways of art-
making a renewed critical capacity to engage
with present-day concerns without resorting to
nostalgia. With the above in mind, we briefy
can revisit three contemporary art events that
were symptomatic of artistic dissatisfaction in
order to bring out a number of common points
260 C.J.W.-L. Wee
ing the Singapore River], eds. T.K. Sabapathy & Cecily
Briggs (Singapore: Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts &
Singapore Art Museum, 2000), 18.)
55 Isabel Ching, “Tracing (Un)Certain Legacies: Concep-
tualism in Singapore and the Philippines,” Diaaalogue,
Asia Art Archive, July 2011 http://www.aaa.org.hk/Di
aaalogue/Details/1045 (accessed 12 February 2016).
56 Curator Low Sze Wee notes that “there is some con-
tention [as to] whether [the proposal] was in fact re-
jected. Some contend that it was left out of the exhi-
bition due to [an] administrative oversight.” (Personal
communication with the author, 27 February 2016).
in diverse arts practices that make them “con-
temporary.”
In the frst of these events, Cheo Chai-
Hiang (b. 1946)—a member of an art group
that privileged abstraction, the Modern Art
Society—in 1972 submitted a proposal for
the Society’s annual exhibition by mail for an
artwork to be titled Singapore River.54 (He was
then living in Birmingham in England, where
he was in an art school.) The proposal was for
a work, measuring 5 feet by 5 feet, to be drawn
partially on a wall and partially on the foor of
the exhibition hall. It not only brought up the
question of art’s materiality but also questioned
how the Singapore River might be reconceived,
given both its importance in Singapore’s his-
tory as an entrepôt and its multitudinous (and
clichéd) appearance in nostalgic and touristic
visual renditions of Singapore.55 The proposal
was rejected.56 What image that has present-
day social facticity might be contained suitably
within Singapore River’s conceptual square?
Teo’s presentist re-examination of the river is
not without precedent.
The second event occurred in September
1979, when Tan Teng Kee (b. 1937, Malaysia),
held an informal outdoor exhibition sponsored
by the Goethe-Institut in a feld outside his
57 T.K. Sabapathy, Sculpture in Singapore (Singapore:
National Museum Art Gallery, 1991), 26.
58 National Gallery Singapore, “Tan Teng-Kee, ‘The Pic-
nic’,” curatorial wall text for the exhibition A Fact Has
No Appearance: Art Beyond the Object, held at Na-
tional Gallery Singapore, 21 January to 19 June 2016.
59 Storer goes on to add: “Tan did not consider himself
as a conceptual artist and never created another
event in this mode, in Singapore or elsewhere.” (Rus-
sell Storer, “Melting into Air: Tan Teng-Kee in Singa-
pore,” in A Fact Has No Appearance: Art Beyond the
Object, eds. Clarissa Chikiamco, Russell Storer &
home of roughly 30 of his Constructivist-styled
metal sculptures and 30 abstract oil paint-
ings. This event is now referred to as The Pic-
nic (1979). He also painted a 100-metre long
painting entitled The Lonely Road that, unpre-
dictably, he offered to cut up into smaller and
more affordable sizes. Even more unpredictable,
T.K. Sabapathy opines, “was the incineration of
his three-dimensional constructions [at dusk];
[… Tan] embarked upon an action which
completely undermined […] the existence of a
work as an object. As a phenomenon it is sin-
gular in Tan’s artistic career and unique in the
story of art in Singapore.”57 The curatorial text
for a 2016 exhibition that featured Tan reads:
“[The Picnic] has been described by art histo-
rian T.K. Sabapathy as the frst ‘happening’ or
performance event to be held in Singapore. Yet
the exhibition came about by circumstance.”58
While recognised as “the frst event of its kind
in Singapore,” as curator Russell Storer notes, it
remains hard to justify an appellation as specifc
as a “happening” to an event that was singular,
sponsored by a cultural organisation and had
art for sale. Nevertheless, the event signifed an
eclectic and exploratory chaffng at convention-
al artistic restrictions, even as there is no com-
plete forsaking of art’s aesthetic dimensions.59
The Singapore Contemporary and Contemporary Art in Singapore
Adele Tan, exh. cat. (Singapore: National Gallery Sin-
gapore, 2016), 58.). In a 2016 interview, Tan says: “I
tried many things and developed my own aesthetic.
I do not know if this is modern art, conceptual art
or performance art. Different people have different
views. As an artist, I was just making art that ap-
pealed to me. Art that was about openness of spirit.”
(Deepika Shetty, “Fiery History of Singapore Art,” The
Straits Times, 21 January 2016, “Life” section). For an
overview of Tan’s work, see T.K. Sabapathy, Tan Teng
Kee: An Overview, 1958–2000 (Singapore: Sculpture
Square Ltd., 2001).
And in the third event, Tang Da Wu, after
art studies in England, presented, in 1980 at the
NMAG, works from 1979, arranged as an en-
vironmental installation exhibition titled Earth
Work (fg. 18.3) that piqued curiosity among art
audiences. The exhibition included Gully Cur-
tains, a set of seven pieces of linens that he had
hung in a gully over three months at a construc-
tion site in (what was then semi-rural) Ang Mo
Kio, and The Product of the Rain and Me, square
wooden boards covered with dried mud in the
shape of circles, held in place by glue while the
rain had largely washed away the mud that sur-
rounded the circles. (The circles referred to the
idea of infnity from the Yi Jing (or I Ching), the
ancient Chinese Book of Changes.) Drawings
made using earth pigments also were displayed.
The very title that Tang chose deliberately in-
voked and indicated his artistic reworking of
1960s land art, or earth art, for his own pur-
poses. A 2016 restaging of Earth Work featured
a letter that Tang wrote to the then-Ministry
of Culture, dated 27 March 1980, requesting a
grant-in-aid for the exhibition:
[The proposed exhibition] is my observa-
tion of the Singapore red earth, it is very
special. I am interested in the changes of
261
 60 Presumably a reference to the Tao Te Ching (or Daode-
jing). This is a fundamental text for both philosophical
and religious Taoism.
61 Tang Da Wu, Letter to the Director, Ministry of Culture,
27 March 1980 (letter on display, Earth Work 1979,
National Gallery Singapore, 22 January to 29 May
2016). Unfortunately, the flm that resulted was lost.
Curator Charmaine Toh suggests that: “Earthdance
is possibly the earliest example of video art in Sin-
gapore. [The flm’s signifcance lies in that r]ather
than simply using the camera to document, Tang was
clearly conscious [in his account to her] of the me-
dium itself, taking it into account in the creation of
work. Using the camera’s viewfnder, Tang marked out
the trapezoid area of the feld framed by the camera.
He then flmed himself repeatedly running along the
the earth due to the rainfalls, the heat and
the gravity, apart from its physiographi-
cal aspect. [sic] […] My way of working
isn’t scientifc, it is very much philo-
sophical, base[d] upon my “zen” studies
and infuence[d] by “Tao” and “I Ch-
ing.”60 I am also making a [sic] 8mm flm
call[ed] “Earthdance” as complementing
to “Earthwork.”61
An experimental and a putative transmedia or
trans-category art practice is wedded, through
Tang’s plain, ingenuous and idiosyncratic rhet-
oric, to an environmental awareness inspired
by Chinese texts and ideas, using earth from
a construction site that was the result of the
state’s ongoing urban development. It is worth
noting that Tang, like Cheo, had been a mem-
ber of the Modern Art Society; he appears to
follow Cheo in pronouncing, implicitly, the
end of “the sovereignty of [modernist] paint-
ing, institutionalised by exclusionary aesthetic
values and positions,” while simultaneously
delivering a quiet critique of urbanisation’s de-
262 C.J.W.-L. Wee
edge of the marked-out area, creating a furrow in the
earth.” (Charmaine Toh, “Notes on Tang Da Wu’s Earth
Work,” in Earth Work 1979: Tang Da Wu, ed. Charmaine
Toh, exh. cat. (Singapore: National Gallery Singapore,
2016), 12–3.)
62 T.K. Sabapathy, “Regarding Exhibitions,” in The Artists
Village: 20 Years On, 8.
63 The space for the Village was lost in 1990, as the land
it was on was acquired by the state for development.
64 Sabapathy, “Regarding Exhibitions,” 7.
65 Ibid.
66 Ibid.
67 Ibid.
68 Ibid.
69 Ibid.
70 Ibid., 7–8.
grading environmental impact, with no recon-
ciliation offered between the value of the red
earth and the urbanisation that has exposed it
to erosion.62 The result is an artwork in which
the historical present of fracture and fragments
is privileged, and this presentism is not vitiated
by the “philosophical” studies undergirding the
circular shapes used in it: the Chinese cultural
texts are not marshalled, as they might be, to
valorise a timeless realm.
The three works or events display the
embryonic elements that become character-
ised as contemporary art in Singapore by the
late 1980s and may be thought of both as a
transmedia enterprise and art that will treat the
incomplete fragments of historical contempo-
rary life. Together, these events are a proleptic
index of what will emerge in 1980s Singapore
as the contemporaneity of contemporary art.
It would appear that the destabilisation of the
entire city-state in the modernisation drive
also made the Nanyang Style or the Singapore
lyrical exotic less feasible as artistic-cultural re-
sources to engage with the present.
 Contemporary Art and
Flexible Postconceptualism
If the 1970s offer the tentative appearance of
contemporary art, the late 1980s offer both
more artists and artists engaged in pluralistic
or heterogeneous art exploration. The question
here is whether there was any understanding—
if only tacit or implicit—as to what contempo-
rary art’s remit was to be; and given what was
being said of the new art’s “alterity” and agenda
of aesthetic transgression, how frmly alterna-
tive was this art exactly?
These questions are raised in a subtle and
searching essay, “Regarding Exhibitions,” by
the long-time observer of Singapore art, T.K.
Sabapathy. When TAV was established in their
founding premises by Tang Da Wu and his art-
ist wife, Hazel McIntosh, in a village in then-
rural Sembawang in June 1988, it became a
magnet of what was regarded as the alternative
in not only artistic but larger cultural terms:
the Village’s notoriety in art circles also drew
non-arts attention.63 Sabapathy tells us that the
ten artists who participated in TAV’s inaugural
show—Tang himself, Amanda Heng (b. 1951),
Vincent Leow (b. 1961) and Baet Yeok Kwan
(b. 1961) among them, all of whom have since
progressed to various levels of distinction—had
uneven art practices, and were attracted to TAV
by particular interests, and undoubtedly, by the
prospects of working with Tang.
What was the general lure of the Village?
Sabapathy suggests the following: openness
and space for advancing individual practices,
combined with collegial yet competitive inter-
action; “provision of a milieu that was physi-
cally expansive and psychologically salubrious
as it was set apart from the uniform, restric-
tive and reductive urbanization of Singapore
in the late 70s and throughout the 80s”; and
“non-dogmatic operatives—although methods
for producing and thinking on art were steered
along refexive paths.”64 The Village embodied
in its rural location the (at least temporary)
The Singapore Contemporary and Contemporary Art in Singapore
ability to escape the disciplined homogenising
modernity of the city-state, with its uniform
slab- and tower-blocks of fats. TAV both signi-
fed and gave literal space for critical refection.
As the Village was claimed to be, as Saba-
pathy writes, “a pre-eminent site for prospect-
ing alterity, it is tempting to cast it as a radical
agency; in which circumstance, its radicalism
is posited in terms of subverting or transgress-
ing […] prevailing conventions, systems and
institutions by advocating activist strategies.
Nothing is further from the case.”65 The last
phrase does not mean that Sabapathy dismisses
the signifcance of the work and the artists as-
sociated with TAV, but emphasises that its ar-
tistic “radicalism” was not as thoroughgoing as
it might appear, even if its larger sociocultural
impact drew “watchfulness or surveillance.”66
He offers his refections on two exhibitions
that took place in 1989 for which he was pre-
sent: the inaugural Open Studio Show (in Janu-
ary) and the Drawing Show (in December).
That the inaugural show was staged in a
literal village meant that art escaped the exclu-
sionary confnes of a high-cultural space, and
could be “diffused” and “dispersed”: the very
mode and location of its exhibitionary condi-
tion signifed freedom for both artists and au-
dience. This also transgressed curatorial norms:
the audience interacted with the art in a non-
hierarchical and non-ritualised manner, with
the result, Sabapathy observes, that art’s auton-
omy was not “sequestered.”67 However, to his
surprise, the show included some paintings and
“sculpture-like formations” that possessed “con-
tinuing or residual affliations with prevailing
modern conventions,” even while other works
showed clear conceptualist inclinations.68 Tang
displayed his own drawings and paintings; “in-
terest in engagement with painting as such was
not trivialized,” as one might expect.69 Amanda
Heng even had six drawings of male and female
nudes on display, “rendered brusquely, vio-
lently, and as a partial entity,” and “the body is
seen as invasively manipulated, even abject.”70
263
 Gender issues are foregrounded, but while the
drawings are hardly conventional, they were
executed while she was a student at the then-
La Salle School of Art.71 While the drawings,
in retrospect, help us to see the continuity in
Heng’s work as it develops in the 1990s and
later, when she starts practising performance
and installation art, life drawings undertaken
in an academy nevertheless “lodged oddly with
anticipations of TAV as a site for alterity.”72
The co-existence of apparently incompat-
ible art forms, even if laced with subversive or
unusual content, also occurs with other youth-
ful artists with partial or no affliation with
TAV. Sabapathy brings up the four-artist show,
Man, Objects and Images, held at the NMAG
in August 1988. There was a willingness, as in
the inaugural Open Studio Show, to break with
the “prevailing […] curatorial operatives […]
customarily seen in art galleries here.”73 Tang
Mun Kit (b. 1955) coordinated the exhibition
“and articulated their aims or premises.”74 The
title chosen for the show, in eschewing “meta-
phorical associations,” signalled an interest in
presenting how both more conventional art
forms (paintings as done by Wong Shih Yaw
[b. 1967]) and found objects (Tang’s “rehabili-
tated discarded materials and found things […]
[which] were cool, unostentatious, yet sustain-
ing”) could be pressured to offer “fresh think-
ing” on art.75 Artistic “impurity” appeared also
in the heterogeneous form of artist-organised
shows. What, as such, is the “contemporary
turn” we witnessed in the late 1980s, when the
conventional and the various anti-formalisms
are yoked together, Sabapathy suggests, with
“distinctiveness”?76
Sabapathy’s critical queries make clear that
the contemporary turn actually was not keen on
the absolute anti-aesthetic of a “pure” concep-
tual art. The issue of art’s necessary constitu-
tion by concepts is accompanied by, minimally,
a practical understanding that all art requires
some type of materialisation and presentation.
Arguably, that which was initially thought of
264 C.J.W.-L. Wee
in the 1960s as “post-formalist” strategies of-
fered some Singapore artists the idea of the
anti-aestheticist use of aesthetic and non-
aesthetic material to engage with questions of
art-making in particularly unprecedented areas
of investigation such as: the environment and
modernisation; gender and sexuality issues;
cultural and ethnic identity—concerns not ex-
actly addressed by abstract pictorialism or, in
fact, by any of the forms of historical modern
art in Singapore.
The contention that Peter Osborne offers
us that contemporary art is postconceptual art
is helpful in siting the indigenous and indi-
genised re-formations of contemporary art in
Singapore. We can begin with the “failure” of
conceptual art:
It was the ironic historical achievement
of the strong programme of “analytical”
or “pure” conceptual art to have demon-
strated the ineliminability of the aesthetic
as a necessary, though radically insuffcient,
component of the artwork through the
failure of its attempt at elimination.77
Osborne then adumbrates upon this “inelimi-
nability”: “The aesthetic concept of art […]
mistakes art’s necessary aesthetic appearance
for the ground of its apparently autonomous,
and hence infnite, production of meaning,
which is in fact historically relational, rather
than ‘positive’ in an aesthetic sense.”78 That is,
while art is constituted by concepts, it also must
have some “felt, spatio-temporal” presentation,
and therefore materiality is ineliminable in that
sense; this in turn leads us to the “critical neces-
sity of an anti-aestheticist use of aesthetic ma-
terials,” which then further leads to an “expan-
sion to infnity of the possible material forms
of art.”79 There is no problem of artistic unity
posed in this expanded feld of art production,
for the “unity of the individual artwork [is dis-
tributed] across the totality of its multiple ma-
terial instantiations, at any particular time.”80
71 From 2007, the school became known as LaSalle Col-
lege of the Arts.
72 Sabapathy, “Regarding Exhibitions,” 8. For an intro-
duction to Heng’s work, see Singapore Art Museum,
Amanda Heng: Speak to Me, Walk with Me, exh. cat.
(Singapore: Singapore Art Museum, 2011).
73 Ibid.
74 Ibid.
75 Sabapathy, “Regarding Exhibitions,” 9. For an intro-
duction to Wong’s work, see C.J.W.-L. Wee, “Christi-
anity, the Work of Wong Shih Yaw and Contemporary
Art,” in The Inoyama Donation: A Tale of Two Artists, ed.
Low Sze Wee, exhibition booklet (Singapore: Singa-
pore Art Museum, 2006), 20–9.
76 Sabapathy, “Regarding Exhibitions,” 9. At this junc-
While the visual-artistic situation in Sin-
gapore did not participate in quite such a
complex discourse on contemporary art, an
understanding of the issues Osborne sets out
reveals how re-energising and, for some, lib-
erating the postconceptual was as it offered
fresh critical means for the exploration of the
present condition of Singapore in the 1970s
and the 1980s.
Conclusion: And the Contemporary Now …?
The contemporary as a goal is shaped by the
particular relations to the immediate past and
to a desired future. For 1980s Singapore, the
contemporary was affected also by the sense of
possibly “fnally” living in the same historical
moment as the advanced West, in contrast to its
neighbours’ slower economic development—
and therefore in contrast to the region’s more
“backward” time. Through the concerted focus
on export-oriented industrialisation (EOI),
the city-state sought to escape the fear that
“geography is destiny.” One Malaysian cultural-
political commentator, Karim Raslan, has
characterised Singapore’s post-independence
The Singapore Contemporary and Contemporary Art in Singapore
ture, we can also recall Trimurti, which was brought
up by Susie Koay in her catalogue essay referenced
earlier: there too we see a clash of elements—reli-
gion and essential(ised) cultural-ethnic identities are
explored in the name of a harmonious multicultural
identity that (admittedly) seems to remain more a
series of juxtaposed multi-racial identities, which are
hardly the predictable contents of contemporary art.
77 Osborne, op. cit., 49.
78 Ibid.
79 Ibid., 48.
80 Ibid.
81 Karim Raslan, “The Singaporean Dilemma,” in
his Journeys through Southeast Asia: Ceritalah 2
(Singapore: Times Books International, 2002), 85.
development as one in which there is “a delib-
erate de-emphasising of the [peninsular South-
east Asian] region—in terms of language poli-
cies, culture and politics”:
The [Singapore state’s] fxation with the
global agenda has made many [younger]
Singaporeans [especially] lose sight of the
imperatives of geography, turning their
backs on the region. The [regional] hinter-
land is steadily being forgotten […]. For
example, less and less Singaporeans can
speak Malay—even pasar [bazaar] Malay
eludes them.81
The differences in Singapore contemporary art
from that of Indonesia and the Philippines in
the 1980s can be accounted for, to a reason-
able extent, by the developmental and global
agenda of the PAP government.
The contemporary in the frst quarter
of the 21st century must not be assumed to
be the same as that of the 1980s–2002. This
essay in fact could be said to have asked, “What
was the contemporary and contemporary art in
the 1980s?” The 2000s witness a turn in the
265
 82 Wee, “‘We Asians?’”
contemporary moment, one in which the ex-
perience of the global city becomes flled not
only with shopping centres but also possesses
museums turned into almost mass-popular
spaces—in a time when the beautiful, in an
image-driven, mass-mediated culture, no long-
er has quite the same capacity to undermine or
surprise, as it did in the late 19th and most of
the 20th centuries.
A major issue now, given that the city-state
has become global and informational in form,
having used its economic capacity to create art
institutions still not quite possible elsewhere in
the region, is whether Singapore contemporary
art is able to practise a double-coding in which
its own artistic signifcations are maintained
even as they are situated in the contemporary
art museum or the Singapore Biennale and
accrue new collective sociocultural meanings—
and also beneft from the sizeable funding the
state puts into the arts.
There is, therefore, also the major art
institutions to think about. The emergence
of East Asian and Australian biennales and
museum exhibitions from the 1990s show-
casing modern and contemporary Asian art,
alongside Singapore art institutions, indicate
that self-refexive investigations have emerged
on how “the rest of the world” produced and
still produces its modern culture out of re-
lated quasi- or directly colonised experiences,
whatever the limitations in funding and other
institutional capacities.82 The relationship of
266 C.J.W.-L. Wee
83 Supangkat, “Multiculturalism/Multimodernism,” 79.
artists in the region to art institutions is not
necessarily one in which, as Jim Supangkat
observes of Indonesian artists, “like many con-
temporary artists worldwide, were question-
ing the authority of art institutions”: modern
Indonesian art museums “hardly exist at all,”
and that “has created the general impression
that the status of modern or contemporary art
is not understood by the Indonesian people.
As a result, all artists in Indonesia—even the
most radical—hope for the greater develop-
ment of art institutions.”83
Singapore art institutions need to nego-
tiate the politics of the Association of South-
east Asian Nations (ASEAN) regionalism and
postcolonial nationalisms to curatorially write
over older and newer contemporary art’s own
signifcations to project the utopian horizon
of sociocultural connection, while struggling
to not allow such projections to take on only
the dystopian form of the market. The contem-
porary now poses new conundrums that could
not have been fully anticipated in the 1980s.
Thanks go to Lee Wen, Elizabeth K. Hels-
inger and Low Sze Wee for responses to an ear-
lier version of the essay, and to Peter Schoppert,
Kwa Chong Guan, Ahmad Mashadi and Koh
Nguang How for related ongoing discussions
and assistance with materials. Also thanks to
Charmaine Oon for the careful and thorough
copyediting.
The Singapore Contemporary and Contemporary Art in Singapore 267
 18.1 Liu Kang
Life by the River
1975
Oil on canvas
126 x 203 cm
Gift of the artist
Collection of National Gallery Singapore

18.2 Teo Eng Seng

The Net: Most Defnitely the Singapore River
1986
Paperdyesculp and net
350 x 350 cm
Gift of the artist
Collection of National Gallery Singapore

18.3 Exhibition poster of Earth Work

1980

18.1

436 C.J.W.-L. Wee

0328-Charting Thoughts.indd 436 28/3/17 2:55 PM

 18.2

18.3

The Singapore Contemporary and Contemporary Art in Singapore 437

0328-Charting Thoughts.indd 437 28/3/17 2:55 PM

 1 See most notably Jeffrey Hantover, “Contemporary
Vietnamese Painting,” Uncorked Soul: Contemporary
Art from Vietnam, exh. cat. (Hong Kong: Plum Blos-
soms, 1991), 19–37 and Nora A. Taylor, Painters in
Hanoi: An Ethnography of Vietnamese Art (Honolulu:
University of Hawaii Press; Singapore: National Uni-
versity of Singapore Press, 2009).
2 Nguyen Quân, “The Avenues of Painting in Vietnam,”
in Tradition and Change: Contemporary Art of Asia
and the Pacifc, ed. Caroline Turner (Brisbane: Uni-
versity of Queensland Press, 1993), 113.
3 For comparison with similar studies of the economic
growth in relation to culture in the region, see C.J.
W.-L. Wee, “Creating High Culture in the Globalized
(19)
Continuity and Change: Vietnamese Art in the Age of Đổi Mới
Nora A. Taylor
Nearly every essay on Vietnamese contempo-
rary art written in the past twenty years has
marked the onset of economic reforms, known
as Đổi Mới, instituted by the Vietnamese gov-
ernment in the mid-1980s, as the birth of con-
temporary art.1 To situate the emergence of
contemporary art within the context of chang-
es in the nation’s economy runs the risk, how-
ever, as prominent artist and art critic at the
time Nguyễn Quân noted, of associating aes-
thetic achievements with the opening of an art
market.2 Although there is no doubt that the
arrival of international tourists, art critics and
collectors had a profound impact on local art-
ists and the domestic art scene, one cannot tie
the course of art history directly to the socio-
economic changes in the country even though
journalists in the early 1990 did not hesitate to
confate the two.3 Sally Goll, for example, in
268 Charting Thoughts
‘Cultural Desert’ of Singapore,” TDR, The Drama Re-
view 47, no. 4, Winter (2003): 84–97.
4 Sally Goll, “Art in the time of Đổi Mới,” Far Eastern
Economic Review, 7 May 1992, 36.
5 Benedict J. Tria Kerkvliet, “Village-State Relations in
Vietnam: The Effect of Everyday Politics on Decollec-
tivization,” Journal of Asian Studies 54, no. 2 (1995):
396–418.
6 Boi Tran Huynh, “Vietnamese Esthetics from 1925
Onwards,” (PhD diss., Sydney College of the Arts,
University of Sydney, 2005).
7 Trường Chinh, “Marxism and Vietnamese Culture,” re-
printed in George Dutton et al., Sources of Vietnam-
ese Tradition (New York: Columbia University Press,
2012), 522.
the Far Eastern Economic Review, noted when
observing a group of artists in a Hanoi cafe that
“there was nothing subversive—or even unusu-
al—about this gathering of Vietnamese artists
and intellectuals […]. Nevertheless, this club-
by, art-flled afternoon testifes to the liberaliz-
ing effects of Đổi Mới.”4 For art historians, Đổi
Mới has become a convenient milestone in the
chronology of Vietnamese art to distinguish it
from times when the country was experiencing
political turmoil. Certainly, Đổi Mới provided
a period of greater mobility, freedom and op-
portunities for artists that continue to evolve
today. One could consider, therefore, Đổi Mới
as a gateway to the art historical period that we
call the “contemporary,” as it provided an av-
enue for experimentation and contact with art
communities around the world. This does not
mean that these elements were non-existent be-
forehand but rather, simply that Đổi Mới cre-
ated an impulse to effect changes in art along-
side the socio-economic tranformations taking
place elsewhere. But these changes, as some
scholars have argued, did not occur simultane-
ously, nor were they put into place at the same
time. It is therefore diffcult to pinpoint accu-
rately the date for renovation per se, nor can we
consider it a phenomenon that can be applied
across the board to all sectors of society. In this
essay, I will regard Đổi Mới as a time period
and examine the artists that were productive
during this period of the 1980s and 1990s. I
will then question to what degree the different
aspects of Đổi Mới can be applied to artistic
breakthroughs, and consider this time as one of
both continuity and change.
What is Đổi Mới?
The Vietnamese term Đổi Mới, literally “new
change,” was applied to the renovation policy
made offcial by the Vietnamese government
in 1986. According to political scientist Ben-
edict Kerkvliet, the policy was devised in re-
sponse to the country’s declining economy in
the late 1970s. When state farms and factories
began to see a drop in production levels, co-
inciding with border clashes with China and
the withdrawal of aid from the Soviet Union,
the party was concerned for the welfare of the
population, especially after decades of hard-
ships in the aftermath of war and the inter-
national trade embargo. It needed to devise
a plan for economic stability within the do-
mestic sphere, and a plan for gradual decol-
lectivisation was put into place.5 The fact that
the Vietnamese government began planning
for market reforms a half-decade prior to the
institutionalisation of Đổi Mới suggests that
the renovation policy was neither as innova-
tive as it was made out to be nor was it a sud-
den decision, but rather, a series of planning
efforts that led to a progressive move toward
liberalisation.
Continuity and Change
The same thing can be said of the arts.
No offcial Đổi Mới art policy was ever insti-
tuted, but the lifting of certain restrictions that
had been imposed on the arts since the 1950s
was interpreted as a gesture toward liberalisa-
tion on par with the tolerance for private enter-
prise. In her unpublished doctoral dissertation,
the late art historian Boitran Huynh-Beattie
argued that 1975 was a far more signifcant date
in the history of Vietnamese art and 1992, a big-
ger catalyst for change.6 1975 marked the end
of the war of reunifcation, and a time of social
and political upheaval was followed by a period
of restructuring and reconstruction. After the
Communist Party victory and ensuing establish-
ment of the nation’s capital in the northern city
of Hanoi, cadres were sent to the South to estab-
lish order and implement the new government
guidelines. Many of those in the South who had
collaborated with the previous regime had either
fed the country or were sent to re-education
camps. This is a far cry from the kind of liber-
alisation that one would expect from a period of
renovation, but the kind of art historical change
that Huynh-Beattie was referring to entails the
resumption of meetings between artists from the
North and those from the South, an exposure
to each other’s work for the frst time since the
country’s division in 1954. An entire generation
of artists in both Hanoi and Saigon had trained
without much knowledge of the work of their
contemporary peers across the border.
Huynh-Beattie’s argument that 1975
marked a signifant change in Vietnamese art
history was based on her study of the Saigon-
ese art world prior to 1975. Between 1954 and
1975, artists in Hanoi were subject to certain
regulations set forth by the Vietnam Fine Arts
Association, a union founded in 1957 under
the government’s umbrella of cultural organi-
sations called the Fatherland Front. Trường
Chinh (1907–1988), second-ranked Commu-
nist leader at the time, published a treatise on
the need for artists to include what he called
“National Sentiment” in their work.7 The cri-
269
 teria for what was considered acceptable under
that banner were representations of farmers,
workers and soldiers in a positive light. Ab-
stract compositions and nudes were strictly
forbidden. These restrictions appeared after a
crackdown on artists and writers that had made
demands for greater creative freedom through
the clandestine publication of two journals:
Nhân Văn and Giai Phẩm. Several writers were
arrested, one was jailed and artists were pre-
vented from joining the Arts Association which
was tantamount to being banned from exhibi-
tion.8 The Nhân Văn Giai Phẩm affair, as it was
known, left a deep scar in the psyche of an en-
tire generation of artists, some of whom never
recovered. 1975, for artists in the North, meant
confronting the differences between their ex-
periences over the past 20 years and those of
their colleagues in the South and contemplat-
ing the possibility of a Vietnamese art world
that would be more open and free. The per-
ception of many artists in the North was that
the Saigonese art world was more tolerant and
experimental in nature.9
For artists in the South, however, 1975
marked the beginning of a 15-year period of
subjecting themselves to the regulations set
forth by the Arts Association established in the
North, of which they now were encouraged to
join. Their work changed as a result. For ex-
ample, Nguyễn Trung was compelled to make
fgurative work whereas he had previously
started to experiment with abstraction. Prior
to 1975, Saigonese artists had explored aspects
of modern painting of which their colleagues
in the North had been deprived. More exposed
to international art movements thanks to the
distribution of French art magazines, some
artists recalled being fascinated by the lyrical
abstraction of the School of Paris because it
combined Chinese calligraphy with Western
oil painting.10 Many of the artists residing in
Saigon between 1954 and 1975 had actually
come from or were educated in Hanoi at the
Trừơng Đại Học Mỹ Thuật Hà Nọi or l’École
270 Nora A. Taylor
des beaux-arts de l’Indochine, founded by the
French artist Victor Tardieu during the colonial
period, which closed in 1945 and reopened in
1954 under the name of Hanoi College of Art,
later became the Hanoi University of Fine Art
and today is known as the Vietnam University
of Fine Art.11 One of the innovators of the
technique of lacquer, Nguyễn Gia Trí (1908–
1993), a native of Hanoi and an early gradu-
ate of the school in 1934, fed to Hong Kong
in 1945 after independence and moved to
Saigon after 1954 where he spent the remain-
der of his life. Trí is credited with enabling
Vietnamese art to remain true to its national
origins while making room for creativity (fg.
19.1). A few artists such as Tạ Tỵ (1920–2004)
fed Vietnam altogether after the Communist
takeover as they did not feel that they could
comply to the Socialist aesthetics that were de-
manded of artists. Tạ Tỵ settled in California
where he became known for his Cubist style,
which he had developed as early as the 1950s
(fg. 19.2). 1975 thus forced a reconsideration
of the very premise of Vietnamese modern art.
It was not, however, until 1992 that
changes in policy toward the arts came into ef-
fect. That year marked the frst time abstract art
and nudity were permitted to be exhibited; an
abstract art exhibition was held at Hông Hạc
Gallery that included artists from the North
and the South. The year before, in 1991, the
frst exhibition of Vietnamese contemporary
art held outside of Vietnam took place. Or-
ganised by Plum Blossoms Gallery in Hong
Kong and titled Uncorked Soul, the exhibition
focused on the theme of unleashed creativ-
ity after years of repression. It included art-
ists from the North, Centre and South. The
accompanying catalogue, with an essay by
Jeffrey Hantover, reiterated the idea of Đổi Mới
as a kind of Glastnost or Perestroika, akin to
the reforms that took place in China and the
Soviet Union that gave artists greater freedom
of expression. Stephen McGuinness, owner
of the gallery, travelled to Vietnam with the
8 See George Boudarel, Cent feurs éclosent dans la
nuit du Vietnam. Communisme et dissidence 1954–
1956 [A hundred fowers bloom in the Vietnamese
night] (Paris: Jacques Bertoin, 1991) and Peter
Zinoman, “Nhan Van–Giai Pham and Vietnamese
‘Reform Communism’ in the 1950s,” Journal of Cold
War Studies 13, no. 1, Winter (2011): 60–100.
9 Boitran Huynh-Beattie, “Saigonese Art during the
War: Modernity versus Ideology,” in Cultures at War:
The Cold War and Cultural Expression in Southeast
Asia, eds. Tony Day & Maya H.T. Liem (Ithaca: Cornell
SEAP Press, 2010), 81–102.
10 Nguyen Trung (b. 1940), personal communication
with author, July 2008.
11 Nguyen Quang Phông, Các họa sĩ Trường Cao Đăng Mỹ
Thuật Đông Dương [Painters of the Fine Arts College
of Indochina] (Hanoi: Nhà Xuật Bản Mỹ Thuật, 1993).
idea of looking for artists that defed the rules
of the party. By comparing artists in Vietnam
with those in China and the Soviet Union,
Uncorked Soul reduced Vietnamese artists to
two categories: “offcial” and “unoffcial” art-
ists. Yet the situation was far more complex,
even in China.12 Artists sanctioned by the
State were not always compliant and artists
who were segregated from the State were often
more patriotic. The boundaries between what
is considered “offcial” art and “unoffcial” art
are often blurred. An example exists in the case
of Bùi Xuân Phái (1920–1988), a 1945 gradu-
ate of the l’École des beaux-arts de l’Indochine.
Phái never joined the Arts Association and re-
fused to comply with the aesthetic rules set out
by the Party. Known for his experimentations
with School of Paris-style modernist composi-
tions and prolifc output, he was marginalised
by the revolutionary zealots and told that his
Hanoi street scenes were too sad (fg. 19.3).13
Similar to the Nhân Văn Giai Phẩm writer
Trần Dần (1926–1997) whose poem “Certain
Victory” famously contained the verse “I do
not see the street/ nor the houses/ only the rain
Continuity and Change
12 See Thomas Berghuis, “Considering Huanjing: Po-
sitioning Experimental Art in China,” Positions 12,
no. 3 (2004): 711–31 and Hou Hanru, “Towards an
‘Un-Unoffcial Art’ De-ideologicalisation of China’s
Contemporary Art in the 1990s,” Third Text 34, Spring
(1996): 37–52.
13 Nora A. Taylor, “Framing the National Spirit: View-
ing and Reviewing Painting under the Revolution,” in
The Country of Memory: Remaking the Past in Late
Socialist Vietnam, ed. Hue-Tam Ho Tai (Berkeley: Uni-
versity of California Press, 2001), 109–34.
14 Trần Dần, “Nhất Định Thắng” [Certain victory], as
cited by Anh-Thuân Trần, “Certain de Vaincre de Trần
Dần: Un renouveau littéraire 30 ans avant le Đổi
Mới” [Trần Dần’s certain victory: Literary renovation
30 years before Đổi Mới] (master’s thesis, INALCO,
1999), 118–9.
falling on red fags,” for which he was chastised
and banned from publishing, Phái’s melan-
choly tone went against the positivist rhetoric
of the time that pushed for heroism and vic-
tory.14 His only solo exhibition took place
toward the end of his life, from December
1984 until January 1985, and he was awarded
the Hồ Chí Minh Prize posthumously in 1996.
For many young artists of the Đổi Mới genera-
tion, Phái symbolises a type of artistic heroism
for never compromising his aesthetic values
for politics. Perhaps one could think of Phái
as emblematic of an idea related to Đổi Mới,
that is, he went against the aesthetic values
established by the State from 1945 until 1984.
It was not until after his death, however, that
he was rehabilitated and allowed to show his
work, and was thereby accepted as legitimate,
even patriotic, by the Arts Association. In this
case, Đổi Mới can mean the transition from a
didactic system of rules governing artistic styles
to one that is more permissible of difference.
Notably, Đổi Mới here does not equate to
total freedom of expression in an anarchic
sense. Rather, it is a means of maintaining a
271
 15 Sherry Buchanan, Tran Trung Tin: Paintings and Po-
ems from Vietnam (London: Asia Ink, 2002).
16 Arlette Quynh Anh Tran & Nora A. Taylor, “Blue Space
Contemporary Arts Center Archive (Beta),” Asia Art
Archive Special Collections, http://www.aaa.org.hk/
certain measure of cultural identity while al-
lowing for individual creativity. In other words,
Phái was rehabilitated because his art could
easily be described in a patriotic language.
His paintings of Hanoi streets, for example,
could be reinterpreted as true, albeit nostalgic,
representations of the actual streets of the
capital. Painters often described them as dem-
onstrating “love” for his city, even if they did
not correspond to the national sentiment pre-
sent in the paintings by the artists recognised
by the State.
Phái remained profoundly critical of the
restrictions placed on artists after 1954 and
never abandoned his modernist style. One can
therefore identify Phái as a Đổi Mới artist be-
fore the Đổi Mới period, casting further doubt
on the very defnition of Đổi Mới as a 1980s
invention. He could therefore be considered
the forefather of the artists who have become
associated with Đổi Mới by the establishment,
such as the Gang of Five: Đặng Xuân Hòa (b.
1959) (fg. 19.4), Trần Lường (b. 1961), Hà Trị
Hiếu (b. 1959), Hông Việt Dung (b. 1962),
Phạm Quang Vinh (b. 1960). Although these
artists were not initially considered offcial art-
ists in the conformist sense of the word, they
had studied at the art school and were members
of the Arts Association.
There were other artists who did not
join the Arts Association or follow the criteria
demanded by the Party, but although ad-
272 Nora A. Taylor
Collection/SpecialCollections/Details/6 (accessed 7
September 2015).
17 Natalia Kraevskaia, Mai Chi Thanh & Nora A. Taylor,
“Salon Natasha Archive,” Asia Art Archive Special Col
lections, http://www.aaa.org.hk/Collection/SpecialC-
ollections/Details/17 (accessed 7 September 2015).
mired by the younger generation of artists, did
not (unlike Phái) offcially receive any post-
humous national accolades. Self-taught art-
ists such as Trần Trung Tín (1933–2008) and
Vũ Dân Tân (1946–2009) rarely fgured in
anthologies or surveys of contemporary art, let
alone given exhibitions in national art spaces
during their lifetime. Tín, born in Hanoi,
started to paint during the 1960s and 1970s
after witnessing the horrors of war. Like many
others of his generation, he had joined the
Resistance movement as a youth but became
disillusioned after seeing the misery that fol-
lowed.15 His painting style can be described
as naive in the sense that he had no formal
training as an artist. His compositions lack
perspective and his fgures are often depicted
very crudely with rudimentary shapes and
lines (fg. 19.5). Yet his subject matter remains
poignant and has been described by writers as
capturing the tortured sentiments of war. He
later moved to Saigon where his wife, Trần Thị
Huỳnh Nga, thanks to a grant from the Ford
Foundation, opened an independent art space
on the Hồ Chí Minh City Museum of Fine
Arts grounds to support younger artists.16 Her
husband’s position as an outsider artist helped
her understand the predicament in which ex-
perimental artists fnd themselves, and the lack
of support for unoffcial artists. Like Phái, Tín
can be seen as a transitional artist from the pre-
to the post-Đổi Mới period.
 Salon Natasha and Đổi Mới before Đổi Mới
As the aforementioned examples above demon-
strate, artistic experimentation did not arrive
in Hanoi or Saigon overnight. It is important
to understand that artistic reforms were not
initiated by the State but rather, came from
individual artists who found creative ways of
bypassing the system that later paved the way
for what we now call the Đổi Mới generation.
One of these trailblazers was Vũ Dân Tân and
the independent art space that he co-founded
with his Russian-born wife Natalia (Natasha)
Kraevskaia, Salon Natasha. Tân had lived in
the Soviet Union from 1987 to 1990. Inspired
by the shifts in art that took place after the re-
forms known as Perestroika were announced
by Mikhail Gorbachev, he decided to turn his
studio on Hàng Bông street, in the heart of
Hanoi, into a space for artistic experimenta-
tion.17 In his view, Đổi Mới and economic re-
forms had still not impacted the arts in the way
that Perestroika had stimulated the surge of ar-
tistic expressions and creative freedom among
Russian artists. He thus turned his home into
a public art space that would be free of State
and offcial interference. He and his wife called
their space a “salon” in order to avoid confusion
with a private gallery and evoke the salons of
17th-century France and 18th-century Russia—
places of gathering and conversation for artists
and writers where ideas freely fowed. Over the
next decade and a half, Salon Natasha became
a place that hosted a variety of experiments in
art-making which was unique and existed no-
where else in the Vietnamese art world. Tân
and Kraevskaia transformed the artist’s studio
and home into an open space that welcomed
creative expression and artist-led initiatives
from their friends and extended network. More
than a site of creation, Salon Natasha became
a veritable nexus of people and ideas that went
far beyond its four walls (fg. 19.6).
Since Salon Natasha was housed in a pri-
vate home, the authorities had relatively little
Continuity and Change
jurisdiction over the actitivities that took place
there, nor were Tân and Natasha always obli-
gated to fle for permission to exhibit works.
They did periodically fle for permission but
found the process opaque as it did not seem
to apply to the private sphere. This relative
lack of surveillance gave artists the liberty and
confdence to try and fnd new ways of making
art. Salon Natasha exercised a literal open door
policy as it availed itself to anyone interested.
To this day, the door to 30 Hàng Bông street
remains open to visitors, whether wandering in
by accident or friends of the artist coming to
say hello, locals and foreigners alike. Because
Salon Natasha was an independent entity, it
is rarely credited for participating in, let alone
initiating, artistic reforms. But the artists that
had made work or exhibited at Salon Natasha
are all known for their bold experimentation
and independent creative spirit. The 1990s
were especially productive for these artists as
no other platform existed. The connections
that were made there also had a profound im-
pact on Vietnamese contemporary art’s global
outreach, for it was at Salon Natasha that artists
encountered and collaborated with an interna-
tional art community. The foremost examples
include Vũ Dân Tân’s invitation to participate
in the Second Asia-Pacifc Triennial of Con-
temporary Art in Brisbane, Australia in 1996
and Nguyễn Minh Thành’s participation in
the Third Triennale of 1999. If Salon Natasha’s
doors had not been open to international visi-
tors, curators would not have been introduced
to the Salon Natasha artists. It was also the
open atmosphere of Salon Natasha that stood
in contrast to the stuffness of the offcial Arts
Association spaces and the commercial “shop”
nature of the galleries, attracting the interna-
tional art community.
Although both Vũ Dân Tân and Natalia
Kraevskaia are to be credited for the success of
Salon Natasha, we can also examine separately
the infuence of Tân as an artist on the devel-
opment of contemporary art and the impact
273
 of the salon itself. Let us, therefore, look back
at Tân’s creative practice. He grew up in the
house that became Salon Natasha. Located in
the heart of Hanoi, it had already been a gath-
ering place for writers thanks to the intellec-
tual pursuits of his father, publisher Vũ Đình
Long (1896–1960). Tân did not study fne
arts formally but had a penchant for language,
poetry, music and drawing, and thanks to his
employment in the animation flm studios of
Hanoi Television, was able to travel to Cuba
and the Soviet Union. Prior to the opening of
Salon Natasha, his home and studio received
a steady stream of visitors including Bùi Xuân
Phái and artists who were more interested in
its informal setting than the spaces set up by
the Arts Association. Not truly a naive or out-
sider artist like Trần Trung Tín, Tân’s art can
be seen as aligned with the spirit of Dada and
the anti-art movements of the 1920s. He was
always looking for playful ways of creating art,
often combining it with language, poetry and
music. He was a pioneer in many ways as he
never followed the academic tradition in which
most artists in Vietnam were trained, bypassing
the formalist education of the art school and
jumping straight to the modernist and contem-
porary vocabulary of the avant-garde. It is dif-
fcult to classify him for that reason, other than
that he embodied the very notion of artistic
freedom since he held no creative or social ties
to the establishment.
He was best known for his paper, card-
board and metal cut-outs, objects he made
from recycled cigarette, whisky and appliance
boxes or containers. He fashioned these into
animals, masks or suits (fg. 19.7). The idea was
to use ordinary household objects as art mate-
rial—a variation on Marcel Duchamp’s notion
of the readymade. Nonetheless, the choice of
material was not always accidental. During the
1980s before the onset of economic reforms,
cigaretttes and whisky were prized black-
market goods, rare commodities from capitalist
countries. Like Duchamp, the artist refected
274 Nora A. Taylor
on the commodifcation of art especially in
light of the onset of the art market during the
Đổi Mới period. Starting in 1994 and span-
ning the period of a decade, he made a series
called Money, which consisted of small draw-
ings composed like currency bills from differ-
ent countries, decorated with made-up icons
and wordplay on the names for the currency
and their respective countries. These were
intended to be humourous substitutes for
dollars, euros, pounds and roubles, as a com-
mentary on the false power of bank notes and
the dynamics of global exchange. The Money
series embodied Tân’s belief that the power of
friendship transcends borders more effectively
than money. He is not the only artist to refect
on the commercialisation of art after the Đổi
Mới period; it so happens that the other art-
ists that addressed the issue of money in their
work were also associated with Salon Natasha.
Nguyễn Văn Cường (b. 1972), a regular par-
ticipant of Salon Natasha activities, created a
series of works titled New Frontiers that poked
fun at the anti-social evils campaign launched
by the government in the mid-1990s. In de-
picting money, in the case of Tân, and cartoon-
like caricatures of Benjamin Franklin, in the
case of Cường, their art pointed at the ironies
of cracking down on prostitution and drug ad-
diction due to the rise of capitalism under Đổi
Mới. While the government championed free
enterprise, these artists were quick to note that
money also has its downside (fg. 19.8).
Cường’s New Frontiers series was created
during his residency at Pacifc Bridge Gallery
in Oakland, California, in the United States in
1998, where Tân also had a residency the fol-
lowing year. There, a recycling company offered
Tân a 1961 Cadillac that he painted gold and
cut into, as if it were one of his cigarette boxes,
giving it wings out of its own metal body. The
title of the piece and its nickname play with the
words “car” and “nation.” Icarus and RienCar-
Nation both contain the words “car,” with the
latter musing on the French word for “nothing”
or “rien,” thereby simultaneously stripping it
of its national identity while giving it new life.
The car was shipped to Vietnam but held at the
port of Haiphong for some time before being
released with its motor removed. Tân consid-
ered the motor to be its heart and kept the mo-
tor in his home as evidence of the car’s life. The
residency at Pacifc Bridge was symptomatic of
the kind of transnational projects in which Tân
and Salon Natasha were involved. In 1996, Tân
was one of the frst Vietnamese artists invited
to participate in the Second Asia-Pacifc Trien-
nial. There he met artists with whom he formed
close bonds and who subsequently invited him
to participate in other projects elsewhere. One
example includes his meeting with Indian art-
ist Vivan Sundaram (b. 1943) who asked him
to join a Sahmat Collective project called “Gift
for India” in 1997.18 These opportunities
linked Tân to a global network of artist com-
munities, independent of offcial diplomatic
or commercial circuits. Over the next decade
and to some extent, until today, Salon Natasha
became a veritable hub for exchanges between
Vietnamese and international artists.
This artistic fow that emanated from Sa-
lon Natasha parallels, rather than intersects, the
artistic reforms that were instituted by the Arts
Association, and in many ways could arguably
be considered more liberal than those initiated
by offcial organisations. Merely allowing for
an art market to thrive and lifting a few restric-
tions such as bans on abstraction and nudity
do not match the kind of opening to experi-
mentation, access to global contemporary art
networks and free thinking that Salon Natasha
created. These multiple avenues toward reno-
vation only confrm that Đổi Mới cannot be
defned by a single policy, idea or time period.
It is worth noting that the artists who became
associated with Đổi Mới fell into two catego-
ries: those who were members of Salon Nata-
sha, and those who were quickly adopted by
the art market. And if we compare the two,
the Salon Natasha artists in effect took greater
Continuity and Change
risks. Aside from Vũ Dân Tân and Nguyễn
Văn Cường, one can count Trường Tân (b.
1963), for example, who was the frst openly
gay artist unafraid to address taboo subjects
of homosexuality and religion in his work (fg.
19.9) and Lê Hồng Thái (b. 1966), who became
one of the earliest experimenters with abstract
lacquer paintings (fg. 19.10). Salon Natasha was
also a connecting point for international artists,
writers, art historians and students who came
to live in Hanoi. German artist and educator
Veronika Radulovic (b. 1954), for example,
thanks to an agreement with the German Aca-
demic Exchange Service (DAAD) in Germany,
taught at the Hanoi University of Fine Arts
between 1993 and 2005. She was instrumen-
tal in developing curatorial projects and work-
shops with her students, many of whom be-
came affliated with Salon Natasha artists such
as Nguyễn Quang Huy (b. 1971) and Nguyễn
Minh Thành (b. 1971). Finnish artist Maritta
Nurmi (b. 1953) who came to Hanoi in 1994
often participated in Salon Natasha projects.
French artist Eric Leroux (b. 1959) who lived
in Hanoi teaching French from 1991 to 1998,
initiated a number of events at Salon Natasha.
International artists were welcome participants
in Salon Natasha activities; unlike the offcial
art institutions, being a Vietnamese citizen or
Arts Association member was not a criteria for
exhibiting there.
The Offcialisation of Đổi Mới
If we consider Đổi Mới to be a gateway toward
the development of contemporary art and a
transition from strict regulations and compli-
ance with nationalist aesthetics to a freer form
of expression, then Salon Natasha artists can be
thought of as pioneers of the movement. How-
ever, if we take the more offcial defnition of
Đổi Mới as economic reform, we can then turn
to the more commercially successful artists as
examples of renovation in the arts. These artists
are not necessarily the artists that curators and
275
 18 Jessica Moss & Ram Rahman, The Sahmat Collective:
Art and Activism in India since 1989 (Chicago: Smart
Museum, 2013).
19 See for example, Geeta Kapur, When Was Modern-
ism: Essays on Contemporary Cultural Practice in In-
dia (New Delhi: Tulika Books, 2000) and Simon Soon,
“When Was East and Southeast Asia’s Modernism in
art historians would see as contemporary in the
sense that they still cling to modernist ideas
and have been surpassed by the current genera-
tion in terms of aesthetic inovation, but they
do fulfll the idea of Đổi Mới as a transitional
period between the modern and the contempo-
rary, between the local and the global.
The list of those artists is too long to in-
clude here but we can think especially of the
artists in Saigon whose work came to be rec-
ognised only after the mid-1990s but who had
started experimenting with abstraction at least
a decade prior such as Nguyễn Trung (b. 1940)
and Đỗ Hoàng Tường (b. 1960), or hyperreal-
ism as in the case of Đỗ Quang Em (b. 1942).
These, together with the artists from Hanoi
such as the Gang of Five mentioned earlier, be-
came commercially successful precisely because
their work stood as evidence of change from
the previous generation of nationalist painters.
They might not have been noticed had it not
been for the Uncorked Soul exhibition in Hong
Kong or without the pioneering art criticism
of Nguyễn Quân (b. 1948), himself a mathe-
matician-turned-painter who spent formative
years in East Germany before returning to Viet-
nam after the war. Quân and his knowledge of
Western art history had a strong infuence on a
group of artists that gathered around the home
of poet-translator Trần Dường Tường (b. 1932)
276 Nora A. Taylor
Art?: Comparisons and Intersections,” in The Mod-
ernist World, eds. Stephen Ross & Allana C. Lindgren
(London: Routledge, 2015), 78–87.
20 Jürgen Habermas, “Modernity: An Unfnished Pro-
ject,” in Habermas and the Unfnished Project of Mo-
dernity, eds. Maurizio Passerin d’Entrèves & Seyla
Benhabib (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1997), 38–58.
in the early 1990s. Not exactly an experimen-
tal art space like Salon Natasha, it was sympto-
matic of the kinds of informal spaces in which
artists and writers congregated in the pre-Đổi
Mới era. Café Lâm was another such legend-
ary place where Phái and others traded draw-
ings for cups of coffee in the 1970s and 1980s.
What Đổi Mới did was make offcial the open-
ness to different kinds of art that Salon Natasha
and other spaces and gatherings provided. Like
the recurring question that scholars of Asian art
have been unable to answer since the 1990s—
“When was Modernism?”—it is diffcult to as-
certain when was Đổi Mới.19 The 1990s were
formative years mostly because of the economic
boom that the opening to the West provided,
but as this essay has shown, artistic innovations
occured at times in the 1980s in Hanoi, the
1960s in Saigon, and in the case of offcial insti-
tutions, one may consider that reforms have yet
to occur. Vietnam still has no contemporary art
museum and the Arts Association is composed
mostly of wartime artists and/or conservative
former graduates of the national art schools.
New Media arts and performance are not part
of the art school curriculum and all exhibitions
still need permission from the Ministry of Cul-
ture before opening. Perhaps, akin to the mo-
dernity Jürgen Habermas described, Đổi Mới is
likewise an “unfnished project.”20
Continuity and Change 277
 19.1

438 Nora A. Taylor

0328-Charting Thoughts.indd 438 28/3/17 2:55 PM

 19.2

19.1 Nguyễn Gia Trí

Landscape of Vietnam
c. 1940
Lacquer on board
159 x 119 cm
19.3 Collection of National Gallery Singapore

19.2 Tạ Tỵ
Nude
Oil on canvas
49 x 36.5 cm
Collection Saigon,
Nguyen Thi Lan Huong

19.3 Bùi Xuân Phái

Hanoi Street
1985
Oil on cardboard
17 x 24 cm
Collection of Natalia Kraevskaia
Image courtesy of Natalia Kraevskaia
Photographer: Natalia Kraevskaia

Continuity and Change 439

 19.4

19.5

440 Nora A. Taylor

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 19.4 Đặng Xuân Hòa
Human Objects No. 12
1992
Gouache on paper
80 x 100 cm
Collection of Singapore Art Museum

19.5 Trần Trung Tín

Mother Holds Her Child’s Hand
1972
Oil on newsprint
55 x 39.5 cm
Collection of National Gallery Singapore

19.6 Vũ Dân Tân and Bùi Xuân Phái at Salon

Natasha in 1986.
Image courtesy of Salon Natasha
Photographer: Unknown

19.7 Vũ Dân Tân

19.6 Box
1998
Recycled cigarette boxes, ink and
synthetic paint on paper, wooden box
with glass lid
30 x 40 cm
Private collection
Image courtesy of Natalia Kraevskaia
Photographer: Natalia Kraevskaia

19.7

Continuity and Change 441

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 19.8

19.9

442 Nora A. Taylor

0328-Charting Thoughts.indd 442 28/3/17 2:55 PM

 19.10

19.8 Nguyễn Văn Cường

Cultural Pollution
2000
Ceramic
28 x 10 x 12 cm (5 pieces of identical size)
Collection of Singapore Art Museum

19.9 Trường Tân

Untitled 23
1994–1995
Chinese ink and gouache on paper
54 x 78 cm
Collection of National Gallery Singapore

19.10 Lê Hồng Thái

Alone
1994
Lacquer on board
90.2 x 180.3 cm
Collection of Singapore Art Museum

Continuity and Change 443

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 1 “History” is written with “hi” in parentheses to de-
note my understanding of history as a subjective
and fallible arrangement of stories, whose reception
is more-over contingent on a constellation of varia-
ble factors. In this paper, the word “Burmese” is used
to mean the language, culture or people of Myanmar,
instead of “Myanmar” whose spelling is undifferen-
tiated from the country’s name. John Okell’s system
of romanisation is referenced for the transliteration
of Burmese words, with the exception of names and
titles. To date, Ranard’s study is the most compre-
hensive survey of Burmese painting in the 20 th cen-
tury. See Andrew Ranard, Burmese Painting: A Lin-
ear and Lateral History (Chiangmai: Silkworm Books,
2009).
2 When modernist artist Khin One (1947–2000) wrote
(20)
Unpacking the Legacy of an Exceptional Artist from Myanmar:
Bagyi Aung Soe (1923–1990)
Yin Ker
There is no spell more potent than that cast by
mysterious symbols of which the meaning has been
forgotten.
Sir Ernst Gombrich, The Sense of Order: A
Study in the Psychology of Decorative Art, 2002
When you call a thing mysterious, all it means is
that you don’t understand it.
Lord Kelvin, The Life of Lord Kelvin, 1976
The most beautiful thing we can experience is the
mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that
stands at the cradle of true art and true science.
Albert Einstein, Living Philosophies, 1931
In the emerging (hi)story of 20th-century
Burmese art, Bagyi Aung Soe (1923–1990)
is unparalleled, exceptional (fg. 20.1).1 He was
hors concours when alive, and continues to be
regarded as such by Myanmar’s artists, afcio-
278 Charting Thoughts
his book on modern abstract art in 1970, it was “seik-
ta-za-pan-gyi” that was chosen as the title, and it
is debatable if it should be translated as “modern
art, abstract art or modern abstract art” or “mod-
ern painting, abstract painting or modern abstract
painting.” The misnomer is believed to have arisen
from Aung Soe’s non-fgurative illustrations for Kyi
Aye’s short stories in Shumawa magazine in Janu-
ary and February 1953. To trace the evolution of his
art through his thousands of illustrations, see “On-
line Database of Illustrations by Bagyi Aung Soe: A
(Hi)Story of Art From Myanmar: 1948–1990,” http://
www.aungsoeillustrations.org (accessed 3 February
2016). On Aung Soe and illustration in Myanmar, see
Yin Ker, “L’ ‘art fou’ ou l’art moderne birman selon les
illustrations de Bagyi Aung Soe” [“Mad” art or mod-
nados and amateurs of art. Today, he is chiefy
commemorated as the pioneer, leader or fa-
ther of modern Burmese art, Myanmar’s most
prolifc illustrator for over four decades from
1948 to 1990, and the begetter of the misno-
mer “seik-ta-bay-da” or “seik-ta-za-pan-gyi,”
meaning psychotic painting, which is still
loosely used to mean any work of art that is
not a painting in the naturalistic style.2 He is
no less remembered for his prodigious persona
that earned him the reputation as the enfant
terrible of Yangon’s art world: the charismatic
movie star who delighted in playing the villain,
the beloved teacher of art history and graphic
art at the Rangoon Institute of Technology
and Rangoon University, the trendsetting bo-
hemian with shoulder-length hair, the mercu-
rial rebel who dropped his lower garment in
public, the soft-spoken gentleman dressed like
a Himalayan yogi one day and a trendy urban-
 ern Burmese art with reference to the illustrations
of Bagyi Aung Soe], in La question de l’art en Asie
orientale [The question of art in East Asia], ed. Flora
Blanchon (Paris: Presses de l’Université de Paris Sor-
bonne, 2008), 387–404. Aung Soe’s title as forerunner
of modern Burmese art departing from the tradi-
tion of Impressionistic oil and watercolour painting
is only contested by Kin Maung (Bank) (1908–1983),
whose depictions of local subject matter in Western
modernist styles are no doubt unprecedented in the
context of their debut in Mandalay in the 1940s, but
whose lack of synthesis with any home-grown mode
of image making casts doubts on his credibility as
a contextually sensitive artist of modern Myanmar.
Sonny Nyein likewise broached the topic in his talk
titled “Myanmar Modernism to Contemporary Art”
ite the next, the mad sage incarcerated at the
psychiatric hospital on numerous occasions,
the tempestuous alcoholic who sent his peers
running for cover, the free-spirited maverick
who distanced himself from commercial en-
gagements, the impoverished genius who drew
at teashops, the artist of the common people
who accepted the equivalent of fve dozen eggs
or less for each work, and the devout Buddhist
who took to meditation like a duck to water
and subsequently made Buddhist practice the
path and goal of his art. He made such an im-
pression on his contemporaries that novelist
Shwe Aung Thein modelled the protagonist in
The Madman (1969) on his persona. Without
a doubt, Aung Soe stood out in multiple ways,
and his memory is a complex one. How is the
art historian to make sense of his artistic legacy
in relation to his untrammelled life and art as
played out in postcolonial and socialist Myan-
mar? This paper addresses the question of Aung
Soe’s legacy in tandem with his exceptionality
in two parts: the frst half refects on the chal-
lenges and implications; the latter half scans
his career and oeuvre to elicit the most salient
traits of his exceptionality in conjunction with
his legacy.
Unpacking the Legacy of an Exceptional Artist from Myanmar
(Burmese) at River Ayeyarwaddy Gallery in Yangon
on 21 June 2015. On Kin Maung (Bank), see Ranard,
op. cit., 217–25; for a discussion on the differences
between the two artists’ approaches to the modern,
see Yin Ker, “Tantao xiandai Miandian yishu de xingqi:
Jinmaung (1908–1983) yu Angsuo (1924–1990)”
[Kin Maung (Bank) (1908–1983) and Bagyi Aung
Soe (1924–1990): Two models of “Modern” Myanmar
art and the question of its emergence], Modern Art
Quarterly 173, June (2014): 62–75.
3 The same observation can be made of Fua Haribhitak
(1910–1993), Aung Soe’s Thai counterpart who simi-
larly studied in Śāntiniketan, though a decade before
him in 1941 and 1942.
4 For a list of texts by and on Aung Soe, see “Online Da-
tabase of Illustrations by Bagyi Aung Soe,” op. cit.
­—
If Aung Soe has been perceived as peerless, it is
also because he has neither predecessor nor suc-
cessor. While it is untrue that his art left abso-
lutely no discernible echo in modern and con-
temporary Burmese art, the imprints have been
implicit, random or feeting: Moat Thone’s (b.
1956) sweeping strokes of alternating thick-
nesses in his illustrations, Htein Lin’s (b. 1966)
indigenous esoteric symbols in his “prison
paintings” from 1998 to 2004, or Aung Soe’s
neighbour and student Bagyi Lynn Wunna’s (b.
1970) emphasis on forceful line work, for ex-
ample—none of which measures up to expecta-
tions of an artist of his stature.3 In other words,
Myanmar’s reputed leader of modern art did
not beget any momentous movement. The
Burmese’s reticence with respect to the exposi-
tion of his artistic vision and distinction is no
less glaring and suggests an incognisance accen-
tuated in contrast by their unreserved admira-
tion for him. The many articles written on him
are essentially anecdotal and even hagiographic
in tone and intent.4 Understandably, recollec-
tions of his life’s tragicomic episodes are easier
to engage with than concerted research on his
279
 5 On several occasions, Aung Soe referred to his art as
the fruit of “all the traditions of the world.” Due to dif-
fculty in hearing during the later years of his life, he
communicated in writing. These written exchanges in
the hands of family, friends, students and collectors
remain unpublished.
6 Kaung Nyunt, “The Artist–Illustrators of Periodicals:
Bagyi Aung Soe,” unidentifed publication (c. 1987):
128–36.
7 Bagyi Lynn Wunna, oral communication with Yin Ker,
May 2016.
8 Kin Maung Yin, oral communication with Yin Ker, Jan-
uary 2001.
9 Bagyi Aung Soe bemoaned this fact in “Burmese
Painting,” Padauk Pwinthit, October ([c. 1987] 2006):
86–7. In 1978, Aung Soe published two anthologies:
one of his previously published articles and another
practice and art, whose confuence of conven-
tionally incompatible felds and processes—
tradition and modernity, natural sciences and
tantra, eroticism and wisdom, spiritual trans-
formation and artistic creation—stupefes and
disconcerts (fgs. 20.2–20.7). Synthesising the
linguistic rationales of a multitude of picto-
rial idioms, they embraced what he referred
to as “all the traditions of the world” from the
East and the West, the ancient and the modern
worlds.5 Aung Soe’s equivocal and seemingly
contradictory responses to queries about his
works did not facilitate insight into his art ei-
ther. For example, in spite of maintaining that
there is always a meaning behind each drawing
or painting, he would argue: “It is because you
absolutely demand to know that I invented an
explanation; in fact, there is no meaning to this
drawing.”6 His colossal production numbering
thousands of works is likely to have been an-
other deterrent.
Beyond his art’s arcane nature and the gov-
erning authorities’ ignorant disapproval, which
constricted scrupulous studies of it and its in-
fuence, tendencies in his compatriots’ recep-
tion of him and his art have been compelling
280 Yin Ker
one of his illustrations. See Bagyi Aung Soe, From
Tradition to Modernity (Yangon: Khin May Si Sapay,
1978); Poetry Without Words (Yangon: Wun Shway
Ein, [1978] 1993).
10 Inspired by Rabindranath Tagore and Nandalal Bose,
Bagyi Aung Soe wrote: “Nature will choose the good
traditions out of the old, and sincerity and truth out
of the new [modern]. Not everything old is decadent,
not everything new [modern] is revolutionary. We
have to search for the soul in the old, and foster the
progress of the new [modern].” Bagyi Aung Soe, From
Tradition to Modernity, 217–22.
11 See Rabindranath Tagore, Nationalism (San Fran-
cisco: The Book Club of California, 1917), 94.
12 The Legacy of Bagyi Aung Soe: 20 th Death Anniversary
(Yangon: Swiftwinds, 2010).
factors. Looked upon as resolutely enigmatic
and beyond the understanding of mere mortals,
everything about Aung Soe—his words, his ac-
tions, his art—has been taken for granted as
extraordinary and inimitable, even deifc. The
penetration and implantation of the modern
myth of the artist, against which Myanmar’s
political isolation between 1962 and 1988 was
impuissant, have cast his idiosyncrasies as the
hallmark of artistic genius. This apotheosis bol-
stered his aura as the artist par excellence, but
garbled his art in the process: on the one hand,
Aung Soe’s exceptionality sealed his fame; on
the other, it eclipsed his art. The latter was
furthermore bedimmed by his alcohol depend-
ency which was only overcome around 1985.7
Modernist Kin Maung Yin (1938–2014), for
example, admitted to not taking the artist seri-
ously for this reason and only realised what the
Burmese art world had lost after his death in
1990.8 Aung Soe was not oblivious to the mis-
conceptions and incomprehension shrouding
his art. Towards the end of his life, after almost
four decades of writing and publishing in peri-
odicals of signifcant readership, he lamented
that no artist had read his many articles, some
of which had been republished in 1978 in an
anthology titled From Tradition to Modernity.9
While various Burmese artists have cited his
publications for initiating them to the works
of artists like Jamini Roy, Amrita Sher-Gil and
Kitagawa Utamaro, he apparently did not con-
sider them to have understood what they had
read. Indeed, if his thesis on the necessary sym-
biosis of the old and the new in artistic crea-
tion had been understood, Burmese arts today
would not remain stranded in the stalemate of
antagonism between traditional and contem-
porary forms and expressions.10
Exceptionality concurs with solitariness,
whether as a contributing factor, a corollary or
both. It precipitates displacement in a no man’s
land due to incomprehension, and triggers
mystifcation. For a Burmese artist operating
on the fringes of Euro-American centres of art,
exceptionality additionally implicates expo-
nential exclusion from the Euro-American or
“international” narrative, whose homogenised
and homogenising modi operandi curb imagi-
nation and impede the exploration of innova-
tory contextualised (hi)stories of art capable of
accommodating difference, unevenness and the
nonpareil. In 2016—more than a quarter of a
century after Aung Soe’s demise—his art con-
tinues to be framed within exoticised niches
such as “Burmese art,” “Southeast Asian art”
and “Buddhist art,” whose historiography re-
mains unchecked and whose premises are in
urgent need of housekeeping. In fairness, if
knowledge about these categories of “art” has
yet to be even articulated in and on their own
terms, how can Aung Soe’s exceptionality be
integrated into their hackneyed narratives
without escaping truncation? If Aung Soe’s
countrymen have mainly upheld his memory
in a panegyrical mode, it is also because there
are no stable points of reference to articulate
his exceptionality. The fact that none in the
country is known to have trained in art his-
tory aside, the theoretical tools of the discipline
premised on the Greek eidos, as interpreted and
Unpacking the Legacy of an Exceptional Artist from Myanmar
propagated by historians of Western art like
Johann Joachim Winckelmann and Heinrich
Wölffin, offer Aung Soe no relief. To begin
with, his unwonted synergy of disparate picto-
rial strategies and processes from varied spaces
and times resists and eludes prevailing art his-
torical frameworks conditioned by an exclu-
sively modern Euro-American experience and
agenda; its transcendence of dualistic thinking
and dichotomies such as the fgurative and the
abstract fouts the very fundamentals of mod-
ern thought and art. His groundbreaking con-
ception of the modern as autonomous of the
West, as inspired by the teachings he received
at the Viśva-Bhāratī University in Śāntiniketan,
whose founder Rabindranath Tagore (1861–
1941) argued that “true modernism is freedom
of mind, not slavery of taste” and “independ-
ence of thought and action, not tutelage under
European schoolmasters,” is moreover a poten-
tial embarrassment to today’s experts and insti-
tutions of art and higher learning that have yet
to wean themselves off the anachronistic prem-
ises, frameworks, narratives, affliations and
practices bequeathed by imperialist powers.11
How was it assumed that political decolonisa-
tion would amount to the restoration of intel-
lectual sovereignty? Collateral casualties.
The commemorative anthology published
in Yangon on the occasion of Aung Soe’s 20th
death anniversary in 2010 bears the title The
Legacy of Bagyi Aung Soe: 20th Death Anniver-
sary.12 But for an artist whose impact on the
development of art in his own country has been
curtailed by his prodigiousness, and whose
prominence in the “international” (hi)story of
art has been diminished by the coincidence of
his peripheral location and his defance of its
rules and regulations, is there still a legacy to
speak of? If we must speak of Aung Soe’s “lega-
cy,” it is a peculiar one that begs investigation,
clarifcation and justifcation. What did he
leave behind that has been valued, preserved
and perpetuated? What might be the medium
of this legacy, given that it eludes visual detec-
281
 tion to a large extent? A key means by which to
elucidate the nature and import of this legacy
is to unpack his perceived exceptionality, whose
paradoxical offshoot is precisely his faint vis-
ibility in the works of his fellow and succeed-
ing artists, as well as his faltering destiny in
the nascent (hi)stories of Burmese and South-
east Asian art. It is necessary to begin with the
conditions and factors lending to the acknowl-
edgement of his exceptionality, and its meta-
morphosis into what might now be understood
as his legacy. Contextual studies of Aung Soe’s
frst public is not an option in this endeavour,
since an artist is entirely dependent on his or
her audiences with regard to both the valida-
tion of his or her artistic talent and the com-
memoration of his or her legacy; exceptional-
ity is conditioned by myriads of factors and
agencies. As such, Aung Soe’s exceptionality
must be examined and understood against the
context of the Yangonite art world where many
avant-garde artists from Upper Myanmar like
Paw Oo Thet (1936–1993), Win Pe (b. 1936)
and Paw Thame (1947–2014) relocated.13 To
investigate the conditions, mechanisms and
dynamics giving rise to his exceptionality, this
paper takes heed of, though not without adapt-
ing, what Alan Bowness refers to in The Con-
ditions of Success: How the Modern Artist Rises
to Fame as the “successive circles of recognition
through which the exceptional artist passes on
his path to fame”: peer recognition (by fellow
artists), patronage (by Yangon’s writers, poets,
editors and artists), and fnally, public acclaim
(which in Aung Soe’s case, includes readers of
publications featuring his illustrations and arti-
cles, amateurs of art and fans of his movies).14
Our refections on the legacy of Aung Soe,
in conjunction with his exceptionality, pro-
ceed from visual and textual sources along-
side frst-hand oral accounts. The veridicality
of anecdotes on Aung Soe must be ceaselessly
probed and tested, since no informant is en-
tirely disinterested and unbiased; all aspirations
of objectivity remain mere aspirations, includ-
282 Yin Ker
ing this paper’s. To begin with, recollections
are not unlike hazy refections projected onto
stained mirrors. In itself, memory is a site of
perpetual transformation, and each era con-
structs, deconstructs and reconstructs the (hi)
stories it inherits. As such, in a space-time like
Aung Soe’s whose memories have been writ
in the ephemerality of oral transmission, the
pursuit of absolute truth is futile. Already in
his lifetime, there was more than one Aung
Soe, and there will be more to come—none of
which is more or less authentic than another.
Even our appreciation of his life and oeuvre as
it now stands is constantly evolving in response
to fresh recollections shared by informants and
newly discovered works. Indeed, art historians
merely tell stories of mosaics of stories, some of
which are more veridical than others, but none
entirely so. While this is no concession to dis-
pense with rigorous historical enquiry, Claude
Lévi-Strauss’ argument that “it is vain to go to
historical consciousness for the truest mean-
ing” is an opportune reminder of the limits
of our endeavours as meanings, being socially
made, are never “the right one.”15 Conditioned
by variable constructs subject to manipulation,
misinterpretation and transformation, this pa-
per’s objective is less to separate myth from re-
ality, than to distil perspectives on Aung Soe’s
exceptionality with respect to his legacy based
on its author’s grasp of the state of affairs to
date. Its merit is hence limited to the explo-
ration of the topic’s terrain and boundaries, as
well as the methods and directions of enquiry
that are likely to problematise our perspectives
on Aung Soe’s art in relation to the (hi)stories
of modern Burmese and Southeast Asian art
within which it is embedded.
Given that the locus of this topic lies out-
side the centres of Euro-American art history,
it is inadequate to rely on methods that have
generally enriched studies of art thus far. In
this impasse whereby the very tools that are
supposed to serve actually derail and pervert,
those of disciplines like anthropology and soci-
13 Yangon’s art scene is not representative of all Myan-
mar. Artists like Kin Maung (Bank) and intellectuals
like Ludu U Hla (1910–1982) from Mandalay were
also active in exploring new aesthetic expressions
beftting modern times. While the two former capi-
tals are generally perceived in opposition, it would
be simplistic to overlook shared aspirations and the
movements of artists between them.
14 Given that there was no substantial art market to
speak of during the socialist period between 1962
and 1988, the second and third of Bowness’ scheme
of four circles of recognition that are patronage by
dealers and patronage by collectors have been re-
ology offer invaluable problem-solving stimuli.
Sociologist Nathalie Heinich’s research on the
factors conditioning the status and fame of
the artist in the Western world deserves special
mention, although an experiment utilising her
framework for the study of Aung Soe has yet to
be implemented.16 Inevitably, in the context of
Myanmar, the scarcity of precise data such as
the dates of exhibitions, the sale of works and
reviews further complicates the undertaking,
although the possibility of gleaning insights
with the potential to unwind the stalemate re-
mains. Recourse to the strategies of other disci-
plines must not however be confused with their
practice in place of art history’s; for is it not
natural and mandatory of any conscientious
study to consult the perspectives of affliated
disciplines while remaining rooted in its own
feld of study, whose revitalisation is precisely
dependent on dialogues, debates and nego-
tiations with unaccustomed and even contrary
patterns of thought? For the same reason, the
rubric of “interdisciplinary studies,” “multidis-
ciplinary studies” or “transdisciplinary studies”
is superfuous. Shepherding the appropriated
strategies whose application awaits rationali-
sation, but not necessarily theorisation, is art
historian Michael Baxandall’s “inferential criti-
Unpacking the Legacy of an Exceptional Artist from Myanmar
placed by patronage by Yangon’s intelligentsia and
artists: editors commissioned illustrations and art-
ists ran galleries. See Alan Bowness, The Conditions
of Success: How the Modern Artist Rises to Fame
(London: Thames and Hudson, 1989), 11.
15 See Claude Lévi-Strauss, The Savage Mind (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1966), 253.
16 See notably Nathalie Heinch, La gloire de Van Gogh
[The glory of Van Gogh] (Paris: Les éditions de minuit,
1991).
17 See Michael Baxandall, Patterns of Intention: On the
Historical Explanation of Pictures (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1985).
cism.”17 In rejecting the “clerkly apparatus”
of eminent but contextually irrelevant prede-
termined models in favour of the authority of
the common experience, and engaging with the
subject matter as an evolving process in an ex-
periment whose results must remain wide open
to scrutiny, it prioritises contextual signifcanc-
es, relativises the hegemonic, circumvents top-
down procedures and is capable of conjoining
with or absorbing other theoretical strategies
and frameworks. It is hence the most appropri-
ate tool of thought to grapple with a persona
and art like Aung Soe’s that straddle times,
spaces and disciplines. Although Baxandall ar-
ticulated this framework in relation to visual
experience of a pictorial order, its underlying
universality and organicity are entirely apropos
to this paper’s probe into what might constitute
the legacy of an exceptional artist located in the
marginal site of 20th-century Myanmar.
There is no overarching theoretical frame-
work adopted in this investigation beyond
the rule of thumb consisting of intimate en-
gagement with or immersion in materials via
scrupulous close-reading, the sustained cross-
examination of the processes of distillation
of postulations which must remain open to
scrutiny (as argued by Baxandall), and fnally,
283
 18 On the pertinence of the Śāntiniketan model for in-
terpreting Aung Soe’s art and practice, see Yin Ker,
“Bagyi Aung Soe: Strategies for an Autonomous
Artistic Modernity” (paper presented at the confer-
ence Southeast Asia and Taiwan: Modernity and
Postcolonial Manifestations in Visual Art, Taipei Fine
Arts Museum, Taipei, 21 November, 2015).
the formulation of made-to-measure strategies
attuned to the singularities of materials in con-
nection with their endlessly evolving matrixes.
Neither is there the intention to contrive one
along with a precise methodology addressing
artistic exceptionality and legacy that might
also serve the study of other artists abiding as
shadowless spectres invisible to specialists of the
Euro-American “international” circuit, South-
east Asian or otherwise. The circumstances for
Aung Soe’s art and, in general, oeuvres on the
fringes of the canon, are in themselves unusual
and exceptional by “international” standards.
If the theorisation of the exceptional is deemed
imperative, then that of the contended un-
exceptional and “normal” must precede, but
“normal” according to who, what, when and
where? Still, it is not merely because the feld is
raw and the points of reference are defcient; it
is also due to the necessity to respect the state
of fux in which these nodes of art historical
enquiry thrive. The exceptional fickers and
futters; legacies wax and wane at rhythms less
predictable than the earth’s rotation about its
own axis around the sun. In point of fact, is
it not their nebulousness that amplifes their
hold on our imagination as well as their appeal
in this (hi)story of art that is being (re)written?
While legacies may be chronicled without fuss,
their sui generis character risks being straitjack-
eted if theorised, for ossifed formulae promote
scientifc plans of action through homogenisa-
284 Yin Ker
19 For an analysis of Aung Soe’s vision of modern art,
see Yin Ker, “Modern Art According to Bagyi Aung
Soe,” Journal of Burma Studies 10 (2006): 83–157.
20 See Min Thu Wun, “The Beginning of the Story of
Bagyi Aung Soe,” unpublished manuscript in Bur-
mese, c. 1991.
tion, regimentation and moderation! If writ-
ing were a pharmakon, what more of frame-
works, theories and systems? In lieu of formu-
laic shortcuts, it is perhaps fux that we must
work with and learn from. The regeneration of
knowledge and the expansion of consciousness
call for more than positivist methods.
The propensity to seek out and rely on
hard and fast theories and methodologies in
writing (hi)stories of art, as if there were pos-
sibly a panacea capable of conquering art’s
multidimensional complexities, is acute. How
many papers and lives have been mobilised to
disentangle local manifestations, agents and
(hi)stories of art from the sweeping Euro-
American narrative and its methods, or to de-
vise adapted methodologies and theories of art?
But how is the substitution of one model with
another not the perpetuation of the paradigm
of hegemonic discourse? Today’s science is pos-
sibly tomorrow’s myth. Is it meaningful to as-
sign future scholars of art (assuming that the
construct of “art” endures) with more theoreti-
cal relics to be undone? Not even the universal-
istic model of Tagore’s Śāntiniketan which fts
Aung Soe’s art like a glove can claim to be the
answer.18 Each accomplished artist is excep-
tional and merits an adapted narrative based
on scrupulous study and cross-examination;
each (hi)story of art must move freely between
the macro and the micro, between the artist
and the historian or storyteller of art without
being subsumed by any one system of thought.
Indeed, it is our blind faith in frameworks,
theories and systems, all of which are inexo-
rably conditioned by prejudices and have, in
truth, fared no better than fashion come and
gone, that begs intervention. Surely, the art
historian’s vocation is not to run artistic pro-
ductions through theories and methodolo-
gies, as do computers with fles using software
programmes. Besides, writing (hi)stories of art
through a series of localised responses targeting
specifc problems that arise from an evolving
process, in lieu of the execution or pursuit of a
specifc theoretical framework, restores creative
thinking. The ideal would be mobility between
shifting vantage points and methodologies so
as to behold and interpret the evolving phe-
nomenon in its fullest dimensions; it is diver-
sity and dynamism that must be embraced. To
draw on multitudinous ways of thinking and
writing extracted from various disciplines and
traditions without theorising any is moreover
analogous to the procedures of Aung Soe and
many of his non-Western peers, who took full
advantage of the smorgasbord of artistic prac-
tices and products streaming piecemeal out
from the Western world. For these reasons, this
study of the legacy of the exceptional Aung Soe
gravitates towards syncretism, synthesis and
synergy, rather than theorisation. Theories and
methodologies, if any, are internalised.
— of Myanmar’s art world? What made his fel-
Aung Soe’s fame was not posthumous. If this
paper brings into focus his debut in Yangon,
it is because he was even then perceived as
outstanding; the germ of his legacy was al-
ready sown in his early career. His ascension
to the foremost position in modern Burmese
art began in 1948 when he broke into the art
world as an illustrator for the progressive lit-
erary magazine Taya founded by Dagon Taya
(1919–2013), the leader of the New Literature
(sa-pay-thit) movement lauded as the khit-san
Unpacking the Legacy of an Exceptional Artist from Myanmar
of khit-san (“khit-san” meaning to test the new
age). Barely three years later, at the tender age
of 27 in 1951, he received from Zawgyi (U
Thein Han) (1908–1990) and Min Thu Wun
(U Wun) (1909–2004), the country’s fore-
most intellectuals and esteemed exponents of
the khit-san literary movement, the mandate
to rejuvenate traditional Burmese art in the
form of an Indian government scholarship to
study in Śāntiniketan. The question begs to
be asked: how did a fedgling artist come to
be perceived as a more eligible candidate than
the many better-established artists like U San
Win (1905–1981), U Ohn Lwin (1907–1988,
fg. 20.8) and U Ba Moe (1912–2000)? Subse-
quently, in spite of prematurely terminating
his studies in India without informing the au-
thorities and causing much embarrassment to
his benefactors, how did Aung Soe go on to
win the favour of Yangon’s intelligentsia, be-
come lauded as the poet’s artist and be granted
carte blanche in illustration—the platform for
avant-garde pictorial experimentations in My-
anmar for almost the entirety of the 20th centu-
ry? Eventually, how did he come to be hailed as
the leading exponent of modern Burmese art,
in spite of the incomprehension surrounding
his singular conception of the modern inher-
ited from Śāntiniketan?19 Not even Min Thu
Wun who held Tagore in admiration seemed to
have understood.20 In other words, what was
it about Aung Soe that made him the darling
low artists applaud and love, but also fear him?
How about the Yangonite intelligentsia’s indul-
gence of him? In the absence of professional
art critics in Myanmar, it was her intelligentsia
made up of journalists, writers, poets, editors
and artists whose verdict sealed an artist’s des-
tiny. Lastly, how did the layperson uninitiated
to art also come to revere him? These ques-
tions are less about Aung Soe’s meteoric rise
from anonymity to distinction per se, than the
forces bracing his rise and sustaining his glory
beyond the grave: the ethos of a community
285
 grappling with the Trojan horse of modernity
steeped in colonial cultural and intellectual in-
doctrination.
While Aung Soe’s earliest surviving works
from the 1940s in the form of pencil sketches
and unicolour illustrations demonstrate frm
line work, a talent for portraiture, effective
communication of the subject’s psychological
state and even bold stylistic experimentations,
none can be deemed exceptional in terms of
subject matter or execution. They are above the
average and possibly excellent, but certainly not
exceptional; fgurative representations of urban
life and romanticised landscapes were then
run-of-the-mill, and remained so for decades to
come. Regardless, by the late 1940s, Aung Soe
came to be known as the artist devoted to de-
vising new pictorial strategies beftting the new
era into which the country had entered.21 This
preoccupation echoed the writers’ aspirations
to modernise literature since two decades prior,
and in all likelihood, it was what made Zawgyi
and Min Thu Wun decide to endorse the dilet-
tante assisting artists on their outdoor paint-
ing trips.22 Their decision is in spite of the fact
that there is no known work by Aung Soe from
this period that hints at any interest in tradi-
tional art or evinces the slightest aptitude for
the reinvigoration of Burmese art in the man-
ner of the Bengal School in India. Even though
the literary giants were not alone in their high
opinion of the young artist—senior artist U Ba
Yin Galay (1915–1988) was so impressed that
he debated with Dagon Taya on the most ap-
propriate artistic education for him—there was
certainly an element of a leap of faith.23 Ad-
mittedly, Aung Soe’s early success was not due
to artistic accomplishment alone. Comparative
studies of his works with his peers’ do not yield
convincing explanations; qualities pertaining
to his ingenious personality and a visionary
outlook also set him apart.
There is no doubt as to Aung Soe’s artis-
tic credibility, especially his gift for rendering
poems pictorially, but the reasons for his pre-
286 Yin Ker
rogatives within the Yangonite literary circle,
which led to illustration becoming the show-
case for his artistic experimentations over four
decades, must likewise be sought beyond his
art. Throughout his life, he favoured illustra-
tion over the art gallery in spite of the latter’s
greater fnancial returns, empathised with the
poets’ and writers’ precarious fnancial situ-
ations and accepted nominal fees for illustra-
tion that no other artist would. He addition-
ally wrote for magazines, declaring: “The rec-
ompense of writing in magazines is the youth’s
respect; I die happy.”24 Understandably, poets,
writers and artists held him in high regard, and
editors reciprocated in kind by according him
the freedom to illustrate as he deemed ft, inde-
pendently of the text in question as he would a
work of art. Even when alcoholism, ill health,
brushes with censorship and competition with
younger artists caused him to lose favour with
some editors in the 1980s, others like Maung
Wuntha (1945–2013), editor of Atway Amyin
magazine, continued to commission illustra-
tions from him (fg. 20.5). Demonstrably, illus-
tration was a feld operating through networks
of friendships and favours, and within this
closely knit community, virtue ethics such as
compassion, altruism and gratitude mattered.
Is it not Aung Soe’s veneration of the maxim
inherited from his frst guru U Hla Bau (1904–
1949), “Truth is the only beauty,” that Shwe
Min Tha made the focal point in his article on
the artist?25 Indeed, as inscrutable as his art
may remain to many, his qualities like integ-
rity, candour and generosity have been plain for
all to see, and they outweighed the less deco-
rous aspects of his life. Through his countless
illustrations gracing the most widely circulated
magazines like Myawadi and Ngwaytayi, as well
as his movies in the dozens, even the bus driver,
student, hawker and farmer unacquainted with
art came to know and adore him. No doubt, in
extolling Aung Soe, it is also him, in addition
to his artistic distinction, that the Burmese seek
to honour; it is not only his contributions as an
21 Ma Thanegi, written communication with Yin Ker,
October 2015.
22 On the khit-san movement’s modernisation of Bur-
mese literature, see Anna Allot, “The Study of Bur-
mese Literature,” in Southeast Asian Languages and
Literature: A Bibliographical Guide to Burmese, Cam-
bodian, Indonesian, Javanese, Malay, Minangkabau,
Thai and Vietnamese, ed. Ernst Ulrich Kratz (London:
artist that mark him as exceptional, but also his
relentless efforts at being a better human being.
As said, homages to Aung Soe’s artistic ge-
nius are abundant, but precisely what did the
Burmese understand of his art that led them
to regard him as unparalleled? As early as the
1950s after his return from India, his illustra-
tions were distinctively innovative in concep-
tion and outstanding in skill; one need not
rely on his signature in the form of a circle
surrounded by eight smaller circles to iden-
tify them. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s,
he continued to dazzle his audience with the
sheer quantity of his output, his technical vir-
tuosity and stylistic versatility: Burmese classi-
cal and folk art, Japanese woodblock print, Pop
Art, children’s art and much more (fgs. 20.2 and
20.3). To the Burmese, an artist’s ability to wield
diverse skills, styles and tasks is a hallmark of
exceptionality, not amateurism as deemed by
the Euro-American canon, and Aung Soe in-
carnated this fair like no other. Mostly fgura-
tive, these works were by and large accessible.
The same cannot be said, however, of Aung
Soe’s signature works from the 1980s aimed at
rendering manifest—not merely picturing—
Buddhist teachings such as the Three Marks of
Existence (Pāḷi: anicca, dukkha, anattā) (fgs.
20.4–20.7). This he christened “manaw ma-
heikdi dat painting,” meaning, in Burmanised
Pāli, the painting of the fundamental elements
through the power of intense mental concen-
Unpacking the Legacy of an Exceptional Artist from Myanmar
Tauris Academic Studies, 1996), 14–8.
23 Dagon Taya, oral communication with Yin Ker,
December 2007.
24 Bagyi Aung Soe, written communication with un-
known interlocutor, c. 1985. Collection of Maung
Maung Soe, Bagyieain Foundation.
25 Shwe Min Tha, “Bagyi Aung Soe: The Truth that
Touches,” unidentifed periodical (c. 1991): 63–5.
tration. They were nothing that Myanmar or
even the world beyond had ever seen. None
to date in Myanmar has formulated his or her
understanding of manaw maheikdi dat paint-
ing’s manner of operation with the exception of
Lynn Wunna, and even then, only at random
in conversations. While this is possibly due to
the lack of profciency in articulating the sig-
nifcance of this abstruse pictorial idiom in art
historical terms, could it also be that the basis
for the recognition of Aung Soe’s artistic excep-
tionality derives from something other than a
rational understanding of his art’s formal prop-
erties? Could his art’s exceptionality be more
a matter of the instinctive appreciation of its
force, energy or power instead? To begin with,
the very nature of manaw maheikdi dat painting
is the inexpressible beyond form and concept,
which must nonetheless take form in order to
be known. It is the mediation between truth,
form and language that is every Buddhist im-
age maker’s insoluble problem and struggle; the
inability or reluctance to formulate how these
mysterious images might be traces of spiritual
transformations is also symptomatic of lan-
guage’s limitations, which is markedly different
from ignorance.
Over and above outdoing his peers in
terms of the esotericism of his pictorial idiom,
his colossal output and the wide reach of his
audience thanks to the medium of print that
was socialist Myanmar’s window to the outside
287
 26 On Śāntiniketan’s concept of art and the artist, see R.
Siva Kumar, Śāntiniketan: The Making of Contextual
Modernism, exh. cat. (Delhi: National Gallery of Mod-
ern Art, 1997), unpaginated.
27 Bagyi Aung Soe (Note, c. 1980). Aung Soe Family Col-
lection.
28 Zaw Hein (Min Zaw), “Studies on the Works of Bagyi
Aung Soe, A Modern Painter” (Essay in Burmese sub-
world, Aung Soe distinguished himself through
his concept of art, which is again indebted to
Śāntiniketan.26 Adamant against the com-
modifcation of art and in the hope that more
laypersons might beneft from his art, he illus-
trated and priced his works at less than a tenth
of gallery prices. Despite his dire fnancial
situation, he opined: “As much as they would
like to buy, they cannot afford to spend more
money […]. That is why I reduced the price
to 10 kyats. This is fair to everyone; I want my
works to be accessible to all.”27 None of his
predecessors and contemporaries are known to
have been as intransigent on this point. In the
frst place, there is no ground for comparison
between Aung Soe’s and his fellow Burmese
artists’ notion of artistic modernity. While he
pursued Śāntiniketan’s universalistic vision in
which the Euro-American model of art was but
one amongst many, his contemporaries were
largely divided into two camps correspond-
ing to two phases of European art history:
the Impressionist tradition in the vein of U
Ba Nyan (1897–1945, fg. 20.9), U Ngwe Ga-
ing (1901–1967) and U Lun Gywe (b. 1930),
and modernist experimentations promulgated
by artists like Kin Maung (Bank) (1908–1983,
fg. 20.10), Aung Khin (1921–1996) and Khin
One (1947–2000). Consequently, if there is no
known sustained exchange between him and
any of his peers as equals, it is not merely be-
288 Yin Ker
mitted for Diploma in painting, University of Culture,
1998), 7.
29 On Bose’s pedagogical programme, see K.G. Sub-
ramanyan, “Nandalal Bose,” in Nandan: Nandalal
(Kolkata: Viśva-Bhāratī, 1982), 1–22.
30 Htein Lin recalls censorship offcers ridiculing Aung
Soe as such at his frst solo exhibition in 1996. Htein
Lin, oral communication with Yin Ker, May 2016.
cause they were terrifed of his nerve-wrecking
shenanigans when inebriated (which included
declaiming their names as enemies of the mili-
tary government). His unabated dialogues with
the aspirations of Śāntiniketan, followed by
an amalgam of schools of Buddhist thought,
anointed and isolated him. When he did en-
gage with the local art community, such as
through Peacock Gallery between 1982 and
1985 upon the request of his friend and stu-
dent Sonny Nyein (b. 1949), it was in the ca-
pacity of a supportive and nurturing elder, not
merely an artist amongst others.
Returning to our earlier question of the
medium, nature and import of Aung Soe’s pe-
culiar legacy eluding visual detection, this paper
proposes that above and beyond his incarnation
of the modern myth of the artist, his solidarity
with the literary world, his compassion for his
countrymen, his charismatic (screen) presence
and of course, his artistic excellence, it was his
being absolute freedom that makes the force of
his legacy. In point of fact, “freedom” is what
Burmese artists and amateurs of art ascribe to
him and art in general, as simplistic as the cor-
relation may be! To Aung Soe, who had to clean
the latrines of a monastery for an indeterminate
period in order to convince U Hla Bau of his
sincerity to study art, “art” was unlikely to have
meant mere “freedom” in terms of the licence
to do as one pleases.28 Neither could it have
represented a naïve refuge from the pressures of
daily life and society. The price of freedom in
a conceivably repressed society under authori-
tarian rule could not have been insignifcant,
and for an independent-thinking artist battling
(self-)censorship to choose to be it nonetheless,
even if it meant being taken for a lunatic, ac-
cused of destroying art, deprived of housing
benefts or incarcerated, is nothing less than
a demonstration of extraordinary fortitude in
the spirit of Albert Camus, whose 1975 Bur-
mese edition of The Stranger Aung Soe illus-
trated. Aung Soe’s tenacious pursuit of a mod-
ern and Burmese pictorial idiom according to
Tagore’s vision of true modernism as “freedom
of mind” and “independence of thought and
action,” with its back turned against the impe-
rialist culture of subservience and conformity,
is in itself an expression of absolute autonomy
and freedom—albeit a choiceless one, follow-
ing the awakening to the truth of the mirage of
Western modernity. Indeed, his insistence on
pushing the boundaries of the norm and chal-
lenging conventions in a climate of oppression
can be understood as the fulflment of one’s
duty towards society, as per the ffth considera-
tion in the pentatonic pedagogical programme
formulated by Tagore’s right-hand man at
Śāntiniketan, Nandalal Bose (1882–1966).29
While Yangon had no shortage of dissi-
dent and individualist artists—outspoken Paw
Thame and ludic Kin Maung Yin who was
similarly disinterested in the art market, for ex-
ample—none went as far as Aung Soe in the
pursuit of absolute autonomy at all levels, sacri-
fcing fnancial security, family ties, good name,
health and more. All things considered, it is
this unparalleled embodiment of freedom that
explains why Burmese artists today, including
performance, installation and new media art-
ists, exalt his memory, regardless of the absence
of any explicit citation of his art in theirs. It is
why they relish recounting anecdotes of his life
in conversations as well as in writing, for they
are lessons on artistic and human integrity from
Unpacking the Legacy of an Exceptional Artist from Myanmar
which they draw strength. The chief impetus of
Aung Soe’s exceptionality, in tandem with the
medium and nature of his legacy, is thus none
other than his resolve to think, speak, draw,
paint and dress freely in the face of tyranny both
specifc and general, manifesting in multiple
sites. The inheritance of this artistic legacy is
located in a transmuted artistic consciousness
expressing itself through the rejection of the
status quo; it does not necessarily take tangi-
ble form. Like manaw maheikdi dat painting
whose ingenuity lies not only in the fnal prod-
uct labelled as “art,” but in its process of spirit-
ual transformation by means of time-honoured
techniques of mental cultivation, Aung Soe’s
legacy is mind-borne. It is not contingent upon
form and it leaves no material traces. Veritably,
it is the contextual exigency of the notion of
freedom in conjunction with his art’s emanci-
pation from a strictly formal expression that has
signalised his memory and legacy, however am-
biguous and uncertain. It is by virtue of the fact
that the inspiration that he continues to be can-
not be censored as conveniently as an artist, a
work of art or an exhibition that the authorities’
condemnation of him as a failure unworthy of
emulation has been unavailing.30
Beyond Myanmar, what might be the fate
of Aung Soe’s art and legacy in the “interna-
tional” art world that has proven itself to be
ruthless in blanching contextual vibrancy?
That the crux of Aung Soe’s legacy lies in its
transcendence of art as an object of display
and site of spectacle, to bespeak a resolutely
autonomous mode of seeing, thinking about,
representing and being in this world, is a point
to which modern arbiters of art are unaccus-
tomed. Many are likely to associate it with con-
ceptual art whose tenor is alas alien to the two
beacons in Aung Soe’s practice: Śāntiniketan’s
vision of art as a pulsating living tradition to
be experienced and not merely admired, ra-
tionalised or theorised, and Buddhist spiritual
practice whose path and goal are beyond form
and the conceptual. Modern Western art’s as-
289
 31 Bagyi Aung Soe, written communication with Sonny
Nyein, c. 1987. Collection of Sonny Nyein.
sumption of the conceptual as the sole site of
non-form is inapposite in the frst place, and
without the awareness that Aung Soe did not
necessarily subscribe to the prevalent construct
of “art” which is no more than the invention
of an almost exclusively modern European his-
torical experience, it is unlikely that the legacy
of this reluctant “Burmese Picasso” can be dis-
cerned.31
As artful as it might be to conclude that
the verdict of the Global North’s art profession-
als and institutions on Aung Soe’s exceptional
mode of legacy in no way alters the essentia of
his presence in the consciousness of those mak-
ing up the (hi)story of Burmese art, the reality
is less upbeat; for it does dictate his position in
the “international” (hi)story of art about which
he founders today. To pause this investigation
into Aung Soe’s legacy in conjunction with his
exceptionality, this paper proposes a few ques-
tions: what are the chances of Aung Soe’s art
surviving into a future that might be fnally ca-
pable of seeing through and not merely looking
through the premises, ambitions and strategies
of Western visual culture? What are the chances
of art history evolving to such an extent as to
be emancipated from hegemonic discourses
and gain profciency in engaging with the sui
generis nature of each artistic expression on its
own terms? What are the chances of the art
historian preserving or acquiring the curios-
ity, artlessness and shrewdness of a child’s gaze,
while being armed to the teeth with intellec-
tual rigour and possessing the linguistic arsenal
of a wordsmith? Can we ever be disenthralled
290 Yin Ker
32 See Guy Debord, La société du spectacle [The society
of the spectacle] (Paris: Editions Gallimard, 1992).
from the idolatry of systematised theories and
grand narratives, so as to restore the authority
of common sense and the common experi-
ence? Ironically, it is in fulflling modern art’s
fetish of originality that Aung Soe has been
let down: His art is so “original” that modern
conceptual tools and language fail to do justice
to its distinction. The silence emanating from
his works—rare, extremely rare in our société du
spectacle of extravagant reproduction and inor-
dinate intellectualisation—is barely audible.32
Refections on the exceptionality of Bagyi
Aung Soe are indebted to the promptings made
by research co-supervisor T.K. Sabapathy at the
viva voce of Figurer, voir et lire l’insaisissable: la
peinture manaw maheikdi dat de Bagyi Aung
Soe (1923/24–1990) [The making, reading and
seeing of the formless: The manaw maheikdi
dat painting of Bagyi Aung Soe (1923/24–
1990)] held at the École normale supérieure,
Paris on 10 December 2013. This paper owes
much—as ever—to the generosity of Aung
Soe’s friends and family, especially U Sonny
Nyein, Ma Thanegi, Bagyi Lynn Wunna and
Maung Maung Soe. Special words of gratitude
go to Lilian Handlin, as well as Kriz Channyein
and Lin Lei Lei Tun whose untiring assistance
with the appreciation of the Burmese language,
culture and much more has been invaluable.
It has also benefted signifcantly from the re-
views provided by Patrick D. Flores and Low
Sze Wee, and proofreading and copyediting by
Genevieve Ng.
Unpacking the Legacy of an Exceptional Artist from Myanmar 291
 20.1 Bagyi Aung Soe
Self-Portrait
c. 1980
Oil on board
59 x 44 cm
Collection of National Gallery Singapore
© Maung Maung Soe, Bagyieain
Foundation, Yangon, Myanmar

20.2 Bagyi Aung Soe

Untitled
c. 1970
Reverse painting on glass
11 x 15 cm
Private collection
Photographer: Yin Ker

20.3 Bagyi Aung Soe

Untitled (Cover for Moway Magazine)
August 1979
Media and dimensions of original
work unknown
Photographer: Yin Ker

20.4 Bagyi Aung Soe

Untitled
c. 1983
Felt-tip pen on paper
35 x 27 cm
Collection of Gajah Gallery
Image courtesy of Gajah Gallery
20.1

20.2

444 Yin Ker

0328-Charting Thoughts.indd 444 28/3/17 2:55 PM

 20.3

20.4

Unpacking the Legacy of an Exceptional Artist from Myanmar 445

0328-Charting Thoughts.indd 445 28/3/17 2:55 PM

 20.5

20.5 Bagyi Aung Soe

Untitled (Cover for Atway Amyin Magazine)
September 1987
Media and dimensions of original
work unknown
Photographer: Yin Ker

20.6 Bagyi Aung Soe

Untitled
1989
Felt-tip pen on paper
18.5 x 13.5 cm
Collection of Bagyi Lynn Wunna
Image courtesy of Bagyi Lynn Wunna

20.7 Bagyi Aung Soe

[Title unknown]
(I DRAW FOR YOU SOLAR ENERGY NO. 9)
1989
Felt-tip pen on paper
27 x 18 cm
Collection of National Gallery Singapore
© Maung Maung Soe, Bagyieain Foundation,
Yangon, Myanmar

446 Yin Ker

0328-Charting Thoughts.indd 446 28/3/17 2:55 PM

 20.6

20.7

Unpacking the Legacy of an Exceptional Artist from Myanmar 447

0328-Charting Thoughts.indd 447 28/3/17 2:55 PM

 20.8

20.9

448 Yin Ker

0328-Charting Thoughts.indd 448 28/3/17 2:55 PM

 20.10

20.8 U Ohn Lwin

Untitled (Illustration for the
cover of Taya Magazine)
1949
Gouache on paper
35.5 x 24.5 cm
Collection of National Gallery
Singapore

20.9 U Ba Nyan
Jetty at Sinde
c. 1925–1927
Oil on canvas
36 x 46 cm
Collection of National Gallery
Singapore

20.10 Kin Maung (Bank)

Mandalay Zaycho
1981
Oil on canvas
52.5 x 78 cm
Collection of Kelvin Chia
Image courtesy of Kelvin Chia

Unpacking the Legacy of an Exceptional Artist from Myanmar 449

0328-Charting Thoughts.indd 449 28/3/17 2:55 PM

 1 Yvon Chalm, Catalogue raisonné, 2013, unpublished,
68–9. Thanks also to James Mizerski for the back-
ground on the reproduction history of these two
pieces. Notes in the voice of Vann Nath recorded in
the Catalogue raisonné attribute the pencil sketch
to 2006, presumably in the context of preparing the
2007 digital print exhibition and sale. This chronol-
( 21)
Emergenc(i)es: History and the Auto-Ethnographic Impulse
in Contemporary Cambodian Art
Ashley Thompson
Vann Nath painted Seeing Myself in a Piece of
Mirror in 1996, nearly two decades after the
moment it depicts. A pencil sketch of the same
scene also exists. Both were digitally reproduced
in a limited edition of prints as part of a fund-
raising effort by a group of Vann Nath’s friends
to alleviate the artist’s medical costs (fgs. 21.1
and 21.2).1 It is a scene of self-recognition in the
split second of misrecognition, a distant echo,
if not a refection, and certainly not a citation
of what Lacan called the Mirror Stage, the frst
step in the constitution of the human subject as
fundamentally and constitutionally alienated.
“Is that me? Is this me?” Vann Nath asks him-
self at once innocently and knowingly, in 1978,
and again, if otherwise, decades on as he paints
and draws the scene. Time is out of joint, as
memory is retrieved, from the very frst itera-
tion of the scene when he frst re-sees himself
in the mirror.
In 1978 Vann Nath was held in S21, or
Tuol Sleng, the infamous Khmer Rouge tor-
292 Charting Thoughts
ogy is not, however, confrmed in the materials as-
sociated with the 2007 and subsequent print exhibi-
tions which posit the pencil drawings as preparatory
sketches for paintings.
2 Vann Nath, quoted in ibid., 69.
3 Pamela Corey, “The ‘First’ Cambodian Contemporary
Artist,” Udaya, Journal of Khmer Studies 12 (2015): 87.
ture and execution processing centre in Phnom
Penh. One February day in that year, he was
brought from the prisoners’ cell to, in his own
words, “complete a short questionnaire be-
fore being allowed to clean myself of flth and
animal-like bodily odors.”2 Washing oneself
is always something of a renewal, perhaps a
constitution of human subjectivity through
the removal of a perceived mark of animality,
a more-or-less ritualised process of portraying
oneself with or without an actual mirror prop.
And perhaps it is the use of the mirror which
makes a distinction between the animal and
the human intent on cleaning themselves. At
that moment, preparing to apply water to his
body, or having just done so, he saw himself
as a radically different person—nearly an ani-
mal—from the one he had seen in the mirror
of the modern artist before the war. Yet in this
estranged fgure he saw himself. The multiple
reproductions of the scene, where he applies
paint or lead to (represent) himself clutching
a fragment of a mirror, themselves constitute
a representation and a recognition of himself
as fundamentally alienated, in their very multi-
plicity—the repetition belying a certain anxiety
over the success of the depiction—(re)enacting
the alienation as a privileged mode of self-
identifcation. This is a refection of the artist’s
condition, of course, evidenced by the traces of
preparatory sketches and pentimenti. But for
Vann Nath, the artist’s condition overlays that
of the survivor.
Many metaphors of the passage of time
characterise accounts of the Khmer Rouge
period. Time is said to have stood still; or the
clock is said to have been turned backwards,
as society reverted to a primitive state. The
Khmer Rouge declaration of 1975 as Year
Zero is now infamous. Vann Nath, like many
others under the regime, kept close count of
the agonisingly slow passage of time as it hap-
pened. The phrase “three years, eight months
and twenty days” has taken on the status of a
proper name in Khmer, synonymous with the
“Pol Pot period” (17 April 1975–7 January
1979). Vann Nath’s subsequent recounting of
his time under the Khmer Rouge often incor-
porated literal re-counting, on the order of the
February day specifed here, along with a con-
tinued counting of the passage of time since his
liberation. Together, however, the two counts
of time progressing perpetually ran up against
another equally real compression of time in his
lived experience. The mirror image, seen and
then seen again in art, participates in this un-
canny experience whereby time progresses by
way of an unsettling presence of the past.
The process of self-other (mis)recognition,
as of the dual quality of time upon which that
process is premised, is interrupted in the painted
image. Pamela Corey has written astutely of the
triangulated gaze at work in the mirror paint-
ing, with the two guards looking at the prisoner
looking at himself.3 While the artist appears on
the one hand to be protected from view behind
the wooden barrier, the lack of spatial depth in
Emergenc(i)es
the broader foreground composition compro-
mises his intimacy: what we see is that he is seen
even when apparently hidden. The single open
barred window of the white structure looming
behind yet pressed fat against the wooden bar-
rier enhances this effect, as if a monstrous Cy-
clops of a panopticon prison holds the scene in
its scopic grasp. The artist’s self-seeing moment
is not cut short in this way in the drawing of
the same scene. In the drawing, the foreground
depth accords with the guards’ gazes turned
on themselves to separate the two groups, the
man-with-urn-and-mirror on the left, and the
men-with-cigarette set slightly back on the
right, affording the artist time in all its com-
plexity. With the guards drawn at once in and
out of the picture, and no looming Cyclops, the
artist is, for a moment at least, the exclusive fo-
cus of his own gaze. Whether the drawing was
a preparatory sketch for a painting or a piece
specifcally produced for sale after the painted
fact, the private exchange it renders, whereby
the prisoner would have momentarily gained
some form of sovereignty, would seem to not
have been initially offered up to the gaze of the
audience that we are.
I take Vann Nath’s Seeing Myself in a Piece
of Mirror as emblematic of a seminal source
of what I will call an “ethnographic impulse”
in contemporary Cambodian art. The “im-
pulse” in question has multiple origins, many
of which are shared across the Southeast Asian
region if not globally. We might note that Hal
Foster’s 1996 “Artist as Ethnographer” was
contemporaneous in real terms with Vann
Nath’s mirror painting, though of course Vann
Nath’s concerns arguably had little to do with
those of the artist–ethnographer under Foster’s
critical microscope. In this sense, the contem-
poraneity of the two interventions seems little
more than an historical artefact, and yet the
two resonate meaningfully in the newly insist-
ent mobilisation of and concern with “ethno-
graphic” questions in more recent Cambodian
art. Time, from this perspective, was and is still
293
 out of joint. On the one hand, what Foster de-
scribed in 1996 as an “ethnographer-envy” that
“consumes artists today” might be said to apply
to the Cambodian art scene over the past 20
years.4 In Cambodia, as in many other places,
this tendency refects, at least in part, a recog-
nisable and ultimately rather banal identitarian
and oftentimes nationalist orientation—even,
often, when nationalism is purportedly under
fre. However, there is simultaneously a histori-
cal Cambodian singularity that overlays and
overdetermines this development, as articu-
lated by Vann Nath in 1996: the brutal rupture
of the Khmer Rouge period. For more than
anything else, in Cambodia today, this artistic
slant is auto-ethnographic, and one haunted
by a singularly alienating inheritance with re-
gard to sociocultural identity, in which radical
estrangement from and within a sociocultural
body has triggered a nexus of art and ethnog-
raphy. In no way do I mean to reduce post-
1975 Cambodian art to an effect of the Khmer
Rouge period; nor do I mean to subsume the
vastly diverse aesthetic dimensions of this art
under an authoritative political, social and cul-
tural contextualisation. With reference in par-
ticular to Jim Supangkat’s caution of drawing
the materials into a mainstream discourse, also
published in 1996, these risks are duly noted,
and mitigated, I hope, by an attentiveness to
more than one haunting of history entangling
collective and individual lives.5
In what follows I will briefy examine a se-
ries of historical ruptures layered at once under
and over that of the Khmer Rouge, and par-
ticipating, for themselves but also as integral to
a process of repetition, in what I will now call
the Cambodian auto-ethnographic impulse.
As time would have it, there is no clear stra-
tigraphy, no simple chronology; events which
by one historical count occurred earlier are
manifest in apparently later ones, with a kind
of after-effect that might best be described in
psychoanalytic terms, but which here has an
objective historical raison d’être. My choice of
294 Ashley Thompson
the term “impulse” over that of the more obvi-
ous “turn”—as in the “linguistic turn”—evokes
the latter while emphasising those dimensions
of the phenomenon in question which trouble
any interpretation singularly bound to a linear
chronology of events. “Impulse” gestures to
the internalisation of external events, with at-
tendant processes of reorganisation thereof on
individual and collective registers; and synchs
with the “emergenc(i)es” of our title announc-
ing breakthroughs associated with but not
necessarily operating breaks with the past. I
will examine these layers of historical rupture
through the person of one other man who, as
far as I know, did not know Vann Nath person-
ally but whose ethnographic lifework otherwise
intersects with the work of the artist and, I will
argue, will have been otherwise pivotal in the
emergence of contemporary Cambodian art.
—
In 1994, Cambodian anthropologist Ang
Choulean returned to Cambodia to pick up,
in a sense, from where he had left off 20 years
before. As a student at the Department of Ar-
chaeology of the Royal University of Fine Arts
(RUFA), Phnom Penh, from 1968 to 1974,
he had studied classical Cambodian art and
archaeology, Sanskrit and ethnography. The
curriculum was based on that of the École des
Beaux-Arts in Paris, but integrated a focus on
Cambodian classical art from its inception and
included an ethnography component.
The founding of the Department of Ar-
chaeology in 1965 was part of a national
programme, spearheaded by King Norodom
Sihanouk and his architect of independence,
Vann Molyvann, to establish the institutional
infrastructure of a modern state after the coun-
try gained independence from France in 1953.6
It was one of a number of departments, insti-
tutes and academies comprising the new RUFA,
situated in a complex of buildings including
the National Museum and what had previously
4 Hall Foster, “The Artist as Ethnographer?,” in The Re-
turn of the Real: The Avant-Garde at the End of the
Century (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1996), 305.
5 Jim Supangkat, “Multimodernisms,” in Contemporary
Art in Asia: Traditions/Tensions (New York: Asia Socie-
ty, 1996), 80. See also my concerns with the category
of post-Khmer Rouge art and mainstream discourse
in Ashley Thompson, “Forgetting to Remember, Again:
On Curatorial Practice and ‘Cambodian’ Art in the
Wake of Genocide,” Diacritics, Review of Contempo-
rary Criticism 41, no. 2 (2013): 82–109.
6 Reyum Institute of Arts and Culture, Cultures of In-
dependence: An Introduction to Cambodian Arts and
Culture in the 1950s and 1960s (Phnom Penh: Reyum,
2001). Helen Grant Ross & Darryl Leon Collins, Build-
ing Cambodia: ‘New Khmer Architecture’, 1953–1970
been called the École des Arts. The complex is
situated adjacent to the Royal Palace, and was
designed to harmonise with it. While the De-
partment of Archaeology represented a new ad-
dition to academic training in the arts, the Fine
Arts components comprised a renovation of
the École des Arts founded by the French out
of Palace workshops in the early 20th century.
The National Museum had also been founded
by the French concomitantly with the École
des Arts: Regular observation of museum mas-
terpieces and reproduction of traditional deco-
rative motifs anchored the study programme
which was distinctly oriented to the produc-
tion of traditional, not modern art. While new
techniques, objects and styles of representation
considered to be modern were programmati-
cally introduced in the wake of World War II
in the lead-up to independence and further
institutionalised with the founding of RUFA,
pedagogies of reproduction established in the
colonial École des Arts proved tenacious.7
Emergenc(i)es
(Bangkok: The Key Publisher Company, Ltd, 2006), 167.
7 Ingrid Muan, “Citing Angkor: The ‘Cambodian Arts’ in
the Age of Restoration” (PhD diss., Columbia Universi-
ty, 2001); Gabrielle Abbe, “Le développement des arts
au Cambodge à l’époque coloniale: George Groslier
et l’École des arts Cambodgiens (1917–1945)” [The
development of the arts in Cambodia in the colonial
period: George Groslier and the Cambodian School
of Arts (1917-1945)], Udaya, Journal of Khmer Stud-
ies 12 (2014) : 7–40; Pamela Corey, “The Artist in the
City: Contemporary Art as Urban Intervention in Ho
Chi Minh City, Vietnam, and Phnom Penh, Cambodia”
(PhD diss., Cornell University, 2015), 20, 119.
8 Ang Choulean, Les êtres surnaturels dans la religion
populaire khmère [Supernatural beings in Khmer
popular religion] (Paris: Cedoreck, 1986).
In 1974, as a fnal-year student in archae-
ology, Ang Choulean received a fellowship
to undertake graduate work in ethnography
in France. In Paris he studied under Franco-
Vietnamese ethnographer Georges Condomi-
nas at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences
Sociales, where he produced an encyclopaedic
PhD dissertation on the hosts of supernatural
beings who populate the Cambodian cultural
landscape.8 He considered responding to the
Khmer Rouge 1975 appeal to intellectuals liv-
ing abroad to return to Cambodia, but decided
not to. In Paris he was at the heart of a group of
Cambodians studying Old and Middle Khmer
language and texts with Cambodian linguist
Saveros Pou. In the 1990s, he began to return
to Cambodia on research missions supported
by the École francaise d’extrême-Orient, dur-
ing which he renewed professional and person-
al ties with the Department of Archaeology at
RUFA. In 1994 he returned permanently, with
his family, and began what has proven an in-
295
 9 Both journals are now housed by a cultural insti-
tute, Yosothor, founded by Ang Choulean in 2012. See
Yosothor—For Khmer Culture, http://yosothor.org (ac-
cessed 23 November 2016) which provides a histori-
cal presentation of Yosothor as well as the journals
it now houses, along with online access to the latter.
tensive and ongoing career at the Department,
where he has taught both ethnography and Old
Khmer epigraphy. He co-founded and co-edits
two journals, Udaya, a trilingual (Khmer–Eng-
lish–French) interdisciplinary academic journal
of Cambodian culture, and KhmeRenaissance,
a Khmer-language journal with a similar in-
terdisciplinary cultural remit, but privileging
short, abundantly illustrated articles, accessible
also to a non-academic audience.9
From the turn of the millennium, Ang
Choulean worked periodically with Reyum
Institute of Culture in Phnom Penh and, to a
lesser degree, Phare Ponleu Selpak in Battam-
bang, the two main poles of contemporary art
production at that time. The formation and de-
velopment of the ethnographic research com-
ponents underpinning the contemporary art
programme of Reyum were thoroughly indebt-
ed to Ang’s work both through direct counsel
and through his RUFA students employed by
Reyum. In addition to participating in a series
of activities at Phare, he sat briefy on the insti-
tution’s Executive Board.
In the conclusion of this essay, I will at-
tempt to demonstrate ways in which Ang
Choulean’s pedagogical work and published
oeuvre, along with his role taken more broadly
as mentor or model, have had many informal
incarnations and repercussions in the contem-
porary Cambodian art world within and be-
296 Ashley Thompson
10 From Levi-Strauss’ 1963 Structural Anthropology,
quoted in John & Jean Comaroff, Ethnography and
the Historical Imagination (Boulder: Westview Press,
1992), 7.
11 Ibid.
yond these two formal institutional contexts.
In fact, I believe that Ang Choulean’s unique
position in Cambodia, not just the exceptional
depth and breadth of his knowledge or the
fact that so few intellectuals of his generation
survived the Khmer Rouge period, but his par-
ticular constellation of knowledge, abilities and
interests, his virtually secret wilder poetic side,
his commitment to a discreet form of critical
refection and his dogged dedication to work
at RUFA for more than two decades now has
had as much of an impact on the evolution of
contemporary art practice as it has had on the
development of the ethnographic feld itself in
Cambodia. I would also argue that the condi-
tion of possibility of Ang Choulean’s work has
to some degree been the resonance it has had in
diverse communities, some close to, but some
quite far from RUFA. In fact, something that
interests me here is the way that what I have
just called a “resonance” appears to move some-
times in one direction, sometimes in the other,
and often seems to function at a distance, with
no clear or obvious chain of cause and effect.
One crucial shared concern involves a stub-
born determination to think the past and the
present together, despite the impressive institu-
tional, intellectual and cultural resistances this
determination encounters at every turn. I am
referring most pointedly to the resistance that
quickly became an unspoken colonial trope,
confrmed even in the few notable and laudable
exceptions, regarding the absolute disjunction
between the “ancient period” and the “modern
period.” Had there not been a collective sense
of urgency for tying the present to the past, in
subtle or overt, unconscious or conscious def-
ance of the historically repeated violent (decla-
rations of ) disjunctions between the two, Ang
Choulean’s work would not itself have evolved
as it has. Had he not persevered, the sense of
urgency in this regard would not, I believe,
have found the expression in contemporary art
practice we know today. Before, however, tak-
ing a look at artworks which bear the traces of
this particular history, I will probe the historical
moments of (mis)recognition in self-othering
incorporated into Ang Choulean’s professional
trajectory as I have described it here.
Education
The study of art in Cambodia has long served
as handmaiden to the heroic progress of the
historical and archaeological sciences, with
over a century of meticulous attention to style
and iconography enabling the establishment of
a remarkable evenemential history of the rise
and fall of the Angkorian empire. Rooted in
this nexus of art and history, Khmerological
scholarship long found a justifcation for its
notable disengagement (save exceptions) from
the “contemporary” in its enabling or consti-
tuting objects. The postcolonial period ushered
in the possibility of new perspectives on, and
respect for, the contemporary, whereby the
classical traditions would fnd continuity rather
than rupture between the people and practices
of Cambodia past and present, demonstrating
the political underpinnings of the narrative of
rupture by which European scholars appeared
as saviours and protectors of a noble culture—
now their own.
Ang Choulean’s two pedagogical paths,
ethnography and Old Khmer, may appear in-
congruous, but they are not. The drive behind
Emergenc(i)es
both is a commitment to identifying and teach-
ing—and perhaps thereby conserving—histor-
ical continuity between ancient and contempo-
rary Cambodia. In a frst instance, Ang’s trajec-
tory can be interpreted as evidencing the struc-
tural relation between the disciplines of history
and ethnography explored by the Comaroffs
via Levi-Strauss. “Both history and ethnogra-
phy are concerned with societies other than the
one in which we live. Whether this otherness is
due to remoteness in time … or to remoteness
in space, or even to cultural heterogeneity, is
of secondary importance compared to the basic
similarity of perspective.”10 But the postcolo-
nial post-Khmer Rouge trajectory veers from
the Levi-Straussian path in the bodies of those
practitioners for whom the difference with re-
gard to the object of study—be it the tempo-
rally distant Other of history or the spatially/
culturally distant Other of ethnography—is
emphatically subjugated to its opposite: same-
ness and proximity. For Levi-Strauss,“in both
cases [history and ethnography] we are dealing
with systems of representations which […],
on the whole, differ from the representations
of the investigator.”11 For Ang Choulean it is
the latent sameness underlying the difference
exaggerated if not veritably constructed and
certainly reifed through politico-academic
violence which must now be uncovered and
preserved. Ang’s politico-academic drive differs
signifcantly from the universalist dimension of
that informing structural anthropology in its
infancy, for here we see a distinct affrmation
of difference traced between the whole of the
colonised politico-cultural entity called Cam-
bodia and that of the Euro-American Other in
particular, an essential difference premised on
a primary discourse of sameness between the
investigator and the temporal and spatially dis-
tant Others located within the newly circum-
scribed domain of study.
This was the imperative variously driv-
ing the Cambodian study group of which Ang
was a part in Paris, an imperative formed in
297
 response to the colonial excision of the con-
temporary from the scope of scholarly inquiry.
The narrative characterising colonial expansion
globally took particular form in Cambodia and
over time, but never lost its core: When not
veritably seen as a different race from those who
built Angkor, contemporary Cambodians were
projected as a degenerate race vis-à-vis their
ancestors; they held poor, if any, knowledge of
the ancient past, which could only be properly
accessed through European science. Ethno-
graphy as a discipline arrived relatively late on
the European academic stage, and has always
been a poor cousin to archaeology and monu-
mental art history. In the Cambodian case, the
European mission to recover the ancient past
did not spur the establishment of a school of
archaeology or art history for Cambodians. In-
stead, it led to the founding of a School of Arts
where those deemed capable of best scrutinis-
ing and appreciating the fnest work of Angkor
could train Cambodians to reinvigorate local
craft production on its models.12 The Pro-
tectorate’s investment in “contemporary arts”
was subjugated to that in classical art and ar-
chaeology insofar as support for contemporary
production was strictly channelled to ensuring
reproduction.
The roots of what I see as a privileged rela-
tion between ethnographic and artistic practice
in Cambodia today can also be located here, in
the assimilated (mal)formation of the two disci-
plines. Within the Protectorate’s formal educa-
tional system, the two were effectively reduced
to a spare one, as the study of traditional form
was thoroughly instrumentalised to underpin
reproduction thereof. The reinvigoration of
“tradition” inevitably contributed to a reifca-
tion thereof. The forward march of the disci-
plines of art history and archaeology, not taught
to Cambodians in Cambodia, hinged upon this
marginalisation of academic work attentive to
contemporary creativity. The contemporary re-
lation between the artistic and ethnographic
practice is a legacy of this colonial context, as
298 Ashley Thompson
well as of its fraught negation in postcolonial
times. After independence, as national arts ed-
ucation emerged as a privileged site of nation
building, ethnography and art practice were
taught as modern disciplines and disciplines
of the modern, alongside those disciplines of
the past: art history and archaeology. The con-
tradictions typical of postcolonial societies,
well documented now in academia, were evi-
denced in many ways in the Cambodian con-
text. RUFA, for example, adopted a curriculum
aimed at promoting (knowledge of ) national
culture based on European models, and largely
taught by foreigners. The self-other mirroring
of ethnographic practice found itself creatively
reproduced in the French teaching of the dis-
cipline to Cambodians, who were effectively
called to other themselves in order to play the
role of the self, and so to see the other in Cam-
bodians sited outside the closed yet necessarily,
structurally open because now ethnographically
inclusive academic circuit. So too did the self-
conscious introduction of (European) mod-
ern art to Cambodian art students engender
a transpersonal metamorphosis on the part of
the artists as they were brought to adopt new
media, technique and subject matter. Repro-
duction of Khmer “tradition” was still high on
the artistic agenda, but the Cambodians were
no longer made to strictly and exclusively re-
embody their artistic predecessors; instead, at a
great distance from them, they were enabled to
depict “tradition” in the form of painted land-
scapes, agricultural labourers and Cambodian
beauties holding cooking pots. In such, they
adopted new selves in identifying with those
they simultaneously posited as Other. Self-
identifcation emerged through a new process
of alienation. The tensions between the reac-
tionary and the progressive characterising co-
lonial investment in contemporary Cambodian
art production were displaced but not resolved.
The post-independence mission of which
RUFA was an integral part in the decade be-
tween 1965 and 1975 took on new meaning af-
12 For consideration of the development of the broader
feld of Southeast Asian art history out of this foun-
dational rupture between the classical and the mod-
ern/contemporary, see Nora A. Taylor, introduction
to Studies in Southeast Asian Art: Essays in Honor of
Stanley J. O’Connor, ed. Nora A. Taylor (Ithaca, New
York: Southeast Asia Program Publications, Cor-
nell University, 2000), 9–14; and Nora A. Taylor, “The
Southeast Asian Art Historian as Ethnographer?,”
ter the war. In 1980 art practice components of
RUFA reopened as a secondary School of Arts,
including training in fne arts, drama, dance,
music and circus performance. In 1988 the
School was expanded to include archaeology
and architecture, and administratively trans-
formed into a university. The demonstration of
continuity with the past at this historical junc-
ture, so widely perceived as having been broken
by the genocide and so fraughtfully embedded
in RUFA’s post-independence foundations, was
doubly important. The reopening of RUFA was
itself emblematic of continuity. The pre-war
curricula was theoretically reinstated in the De-
partment of Archaeology though many factors
(limited teaching resource, the precarious edu-
cational and socio-economic situation of staff
and students, the political context, a sense of
need for modernisation … ) militated against
full implementation. From the early 1990s, the
Department of Archaeology benefted from a
UNESCO-sponsored pedagogical programme
incorporating a range of international teachers
and bolstering the national teaching staff. Over
the years, RUFA has hosted numerous interna-
tional artists and teachers, some independent,
others backed by institutional contributions to
the Department. Under Ang Choulean’s direc-
tion, ethnography, taught in Khmer, became a
Emergenc(i)es
Third Text 25, no. 4 (2011): 480.
13 For a cogent discussion of the evolution of fne
artists’ training at RUFA and through associated
scholarship programmes in the Soviet-Eastern bloc
throughout the 1980s and early 1990s, in contrast
with a decline in dynamism after this period, see Co-
rey op. cit., 128–40.
14 Ibid., 156–7.
strong dimension of the archaeology curricu-
lum. Set within the larger RUFA context, and
inheriting from the history described above,
ethnography at RUFA has been oriented frst
and foremost towards indigenous aesthetics.
This ethnographic exploration of the aesthetic
might be said to privilege the visual, but is not
limited to it. A keen attentiveness to the aes-
thetics of language also characterises the work
in a signifcant way, and is key to the ongoing
“Khmerisation” of the discipline. This is one
crucial intersection between Ang’s dual focus
on Old Khmer epigraphy and ethnography. As
an object of study, old and new, Khmer lan-
guage use informs ongoing refnement of the
language as a pedagogical tool.
A relative lack of focused, sustained and
productive nurturing of contemporary art
practice within RUFA’s Department of Fine
Arts, particularly since the mid-1990s and the
nominal transition to democracy, contrasts
with the story just told of ethnography within
the Department of Archaeology. As Corey has
noted, many aspiring or established Cambodi-
an artists turn away, disillusioned, from RUFA’s
Fine Arts Department today.13 For Cambodian
inspirational models they look instead to the
“self-trained modern artist,” embodied in an
exemplary manner by Vann Nath.14 They look
299
 15 Grégory Mikaelian, “L’aristocratie khmère à l’école
des humanités françaises,” [The Khmer aristocracy
and the French humanities] Bulletin de l’Association
Française des études Khmères 19 (2014), http://
aefek.free.fr/pageLibre00010c37.html (accessed 23
also, if often indirectly, to the ethnographer,
who looks himself to other types of self-made
men and women, those contemporary artisans
who devote themselves to nurturing the aes-
thetics of everyday life.
Class
Other roots of the auto-ethnographic arts can
be located in a recently reconfgured middle
class consciousness. There is, frst, a residue of
the failed Khmer Rouge championing of a per-
ceived oppressed and authentic Khmer people
far from bourgeois urban worlds. Many harbour
regrets in this regard. But the regrets for a cata-
strophically failed defence of the rural poor are
at the same time intensely contemporary, and
for this, shared by Ang Choulean with pockets
of young RUFA students and graduates, as well
as many contemporary artists in Cambodia.
Though in many different ways, they each bear
witness to and experience the contemporary
disappearance of deeply rooted cultural forms
of all sorts in the current sociopolitical context,
where the countryside is emptied of both its
forests and its youth seeking employment in the
factories of the capital or the migrant market of
Cambodia’s neighbouring nation-states while a
small elite accumulates an ever-greater portion
300 Ashley Thompson
November 2016). See also Pierre L. Lamant, L’Affaire
Yukanthor, autopsie d’un scandale colonial [The Yu-
kanthor affair, autopsy of a colonial scandal] (Paris:
Société française d’histoire d’outre-mer, 1989).
of the national wealth. If only the time of an
interview, a performance or an exhibition, the
artist and the ethnographer identify themselves
in more ways than one with the disappearing
rural fgure or dispossessed urban migrant in
counter-distinction to the urban elite made
highly visible through the pageantry of money
and politics. In this, ethnographic and artistic
practice share an activist dimension.
Generations
At the same time and in some ways quite para-
doxically, the radical rupture accomplished by
the Khmer Rouge, reiterated in ways I have just
suggested in the ongoing post-Khmer Rouge
period, has triggered a nostalgic relation to pre-
war Cambodia. Any identifcation of the causes
of the rise of the Khmer Rouge in the consoli-
dation of modern forms of social inequality
again, if otherwise, manifest in the contempo-
rary condition does not necessarily go hand in
hand with a rejection of the forms that moder-
nity took. Contemporary artistic research also
arises from a burning desire embodied by many
born during or after the 1970s to know the pre-
war past. The ethnographer, who in his own
person and body of work bridges the temporal
and societal gap, is a precious source of inspira-
tion as much as information. As a transmitter
of the past whose lifework has been devoted to
seeing the self in the other, he carries a promise
of the relocation if not also the reinvention of a
lost modern Cambodia.
Diaspora
Much Cambodian contemporary art is made
in or out of a diasporic space opened up lit-
erally and in some ways metaphorically by
the Khmer Rouge period, but again not lim-
ited to this singular historical source in expe-
riential terms. Cambodia’s diasporic popula-
tions, like many others, can fnd themselves
at home nowhere, at once belonging and not
belonging here or there. They can also fnd
themselves at home everywhere. The separa-
tion from “home” perpetuated even when
ostensibly home, and often intensifed in the
experience of return, resonates with the artis-
tic and ethnographic iterations of the Mirror
Stage discussed in opening: one sees another
and oneself at the same time. Ang Choulean
can be said to inhabit this impossible place by
wielding the one, ethnographic investment,
against the other, diasporic alienation. In this,
he takes ambivalent inspiration from certain of
his predecessors reanimated of late in research
undertaken by one of his successors. I refer to
Grégory Mikaelian’s work on Aruna Yukan-
thor, the famous late 19th-century named heir
to King Norodom’s throne who, in publicly
challenging, on French soil, the ways in which
the Protectorate violated French Republican
principles, was disowned by his father back
home; Yukanthor’s son, Areno Vachiravong Yu-
kanthor, an accomplished artist, poet and Ori-
entalist who pursued, also on French soil, the
challenges brought by his father, exiled in Sin-
gapore and then Bangkok, to the Protectorate,
only to end himself in a cloud of rumours of
reclusive madness in his mother’s Phnom Penh
residence; and Au Chhieng, a brilliant Cambo-
dian scholar whose 1941 doctoral dissertation
Emergenc(i)es
in Law at the University of Paris comprising
a critical analysis of the legal foundations of
the Protectorate was completed and printed
in multiple copies before being rejected, seized
and destroyed on the orders of the French po-
lice, and whose subsequent critiques of the co-
lonial relationship were articulated in a rather
more oblique manner via the study of Cambo-
dian Sanskrit epigraphy in Paris, where he lived
out his life.15 The fgure of Ang Choulean, in
turn, serves as a model or a sounding board of
sorts for the globetrotting contemporary artist
whose condition with regards to home is not
unlike that of the diasporic fgure, and who,
in the Cambodian case, often comes, at some
point in his or her life, from abroad.
—
There are numerous recent artworks which
evoke the ethnographic in more or less literal
terms. Than Sok’s 2009 Negligence Leads to
Loss; Attention Preserves (fg. 21.3), a video piece
staging the burning of what appears to be a tra-
ditional spirit house but made of incense sticks
rather than wood, set inside an installation
featuring a sturdy gold-painted concrete spirit
house of the kind favoured by most who can
afford them today, is a prime example of this
genre. The work is now held by the Singapore
Art Museum and was included in a group ex-
hibition curated by Phnom Penh resident Erin
Gleeson titled Phnom Penh: Rescue Archaeology:
Contemporary Art and Urban Change in Cam-
bodia. Amy Lee Sanford’s Full Circle (Day 3)
(fg. 21.4), co-produced by the artist and Dana
Langlois of Phnom Penh’s JavaArts, is a perfor-
mance piece which makes use of a traditional
clay cooking pot to explore cultural and per-
sonal integrity or, more precisely, the loss and
reconstitution thereof in a highly ritualised
process of breaking and meticulously repair-
ing pots—a process itself citing at once Bud-
dhist meditation and archaeological practices.
On the cover of the French catalogue of Kh-
301
 vay Samnang’s performance/video installation,
Rubber Man, also curated by Gleeson, we see
a passage from an article by Ang Choulean on
the material forms given relations between soil
and ancestors in traditional Cambodian cul-
ture.16 The text runs off the cover, front and
back, and, in conjunction with photographic
stills of the performance, participates in the art-
work rather than explicating it.
Pich Sopheap’s redeployment of an arti-
sanal practice of rattan weaving to make rep-
resentational forms rather than utilitarian ob-
jects is well known internationally. The gesture
of pouring a liquid substance over one’s own
head, seen in diverse work by Khvay Samnang
(Rubber Man, for example) and Tith Kannitha’s
Heavy Sand, evokes the traditional ritual ges-
ture of consecration (fgs. 21.5 and 21.6). In its
most formal mode, the consecration of a king
or a Buddha statue, the ritual is called “ab-
hisheka,” but it can take a range of more banal
forms. The twist these two artists give to the
gesture is in the turn to the self, where the sym-
bolically pure ritual substance which has been
materially or contextually denatured is poured
by the artist over his or her own head, effec-
tively reinventing a consecration inseparable
from desecration.
But the relation I am attempting to dem-
onstrate here, between art and auto-ethno-
graphy in the contemporary Cambodian con-
text, is not wholly dependent upon evidence
of direct morphological, gestural or material
citation. Nor is it dependent upon the infu-
ence suggested by any individual artist’s actual
contact with the person or work of an ethnog-
rapher. It is situated rather in shared processes
of self-(mis)recognition. Much of the work I
have just cited has, as an ostensible goal, an
estranging of the self. Khvay Samnang’s Rub-
ber Man is the eerie naked and white rubber-
covered anthropomorphic manifestation of
an ever-disappearing territorial spirit. Like
Samnang, Tith Kannitha strips down to then
cover herself with a liquid of the earth—wa-
302 Ashley Thompson
ter and sand. The distorted consecration ritual
renders the artists strange creatures rather than
societally integrated ones, unrecognisable but
in the space of performance. This staged dena-
turing of the social body is a (re)naturalisation
thereof, a means by which the artist asserts,
if only momentarily, self-controlled embodi-
ment, extending a fragile dominion over social
space. With reference to anthropologist James
Siegel’s “supplementary notion of recognition
by which I discover something in myself always
there and that makes me what I have become,”
it is a means of groping his or her way to a
modern identity through the purposeful em-
bodiment of a “natural foreignness.”17
Some work explicitly turns the mirror onto
others. Anida Yoeu Ali’s Buddhist Bug Project
and Svay Sareth’s series of durational perfor-
mance pieces culminating at one stage in Mon
Boulet are exemplary in this regard (fgs. 21.7 and
21.8). Staging themselves in extravagant cross-
ings of public space, the artists trigger (mis)
recognition. The picture of a fantastic saffron-
robed female-faced veiled creature travelling in
and out of others’ everyday lives is strikingly
reminiscent of that of Svay Sareth, like a beast
of burden, dragging a gigantic metal ball along
decrepit Highway 6, through village after vil-
lage from Siem Reap to Phnom Penh and then
through the blaring traffc of the capital. Both
artists act themselves—as if nothing were out
of place. Yet these selves are animal-like, shar-
ing with Vann Nath, then, the discovery of
misrecognition at the heart of self-recognition,
and demonstrably offering the effect of the
mirror to their audiences. They do not seek
to preserve this or that. Nor do they analyse
the other. Instead, their art comprises felds of
(mis)recognition. Their chance viewers have
double takes—momentary interrogations of
just who, where and what they are—before also
continuing along their ways. Ali periodically
scrutinises those scrutinising her (fg. 21.9). But
she does this with a steady leaning forward and
a studied stern blank gaze which returns to the
16 Khvay Samnang, Rubber Man (Dijon: les presses du and the CAPC musée d’art contemporain de Bordeaux.
réel, 2015). The trilingual (French-Khmer-English) cata- 17 James Siegel, Fetish, Recognition, Revolution (Prince-
logue was produced for exhibitions at the Jeu de Paume ton: Princeton University Press, 1997), 159.

viewer more than it takes from it, like the gaze
she projects into space with no direct address.
Her staged stills jolt the viewer into seeing the
unrecognisable in the apparently familiar street
or bucolic scene, to ponder the appearance of
harmony enabled by the Bug’s disruption of so-
cial space (fg. 21.10).
— practice harbours a theoretical promise for eth-
We appear to be witnessing a turning of the ta-
bles whereby ethnography in Cambodia, while
still informing art practice, also now emerges
as beholden to it. This is the case, I believe, in
terms of public recognition of ethnographic
practice. The making of art in Cambodia to-
day makes ethnography relevant, not just as it
appeals to or uses ethnography, but as it trig-
gers and probes (mis)recognition, exploring,
we might say, the wilder side of ethnographic
practice. For its acts of disruption, where reso-
nance and dissonance meet, contemporary art
nography in Cambodia today to skirt the risk
of falling prey to reductive reappropriating nar-
ratives of continuity on the one hand or pro-
gress on the other. Like time, it tells us we are
out of joint. And for this, I am grateful.

Emergenc(i)es 303
 21.1

21.2

450 Ashley Thompson

0328-Charting Thoughts.indd 450 28/3/17 2:55 PM

 21.1 Vann Nath
Seeing Myself in a Piece of Mirror
1996
Acrylic on canvas
Collection of Katie de Tilly
Image by James Mizerski
© Family of Vann Nath

21.2 Vann Nath

Seeing Myself in a Piece of Mirror
Date unknown
Print from pencil on paper
28 x 48 cm
Image by James Mizerski
© Family of Vann Nath

21.3 Than Sok

Negligence Leads to Loss;
Attention Preserves
2009
Single-channel video installation,
9′ 42′′ Installation view, Singapore
Art Museum, 2012
Collection of Singapore Art Museum

21.3

Emergenc(i)es 451

0328-Charting Thoughts.indd 451 28/3/17 2:55 PM

 21.4

21.5

452 Ashley Thompson

0328-Charting Thoughts.indd 452 28/3/17 2:55 PM

 21.6

21.6

21.4 Amy Lee Sanford

Full Circle (Day 3)
Durational performance, 2012
Image courtesy of the artist

21.5 Khvay Samnang

Rubber Man
2014
Performance
Image courtesy of the artist
and Sa Sa Bassac

21.6 Tith Kanitha

Heavy Sand
2012
Performance
Images courtesy of the artist

Emergenc(i)es 453

0328-Charting Thoughts.indd 453 28/3/17 2:55 PM

 21.7 Anida Yoeu Ali
Buddhist Bug Project
Around Town 2
2012
Performance
Image courtesy of the artist

21.8 Svay Sareth

Mon Boulet
2012
Performance
Image courtesy of the artist
and Sa Sa Bassac

21.9 Anida Yoeu Ali 21.7

Buddhist Bug Project
Refection #1
2013
Performance
Image courtesy of the artist

21.10 Anida Yoeu Ali

Buddhist Bug Project
Oxcart Grazing
2014
Performance
Image courtesy of the artist

21.8

454 Ashley Thompson

0328-Charting Thoughts.indd 454 28/3/17 2:55 PM

 21.9

21.10

Emergenc(i)es 455

0328-Charting Thoughts.indd 455 28/3/17 2:56 PM

 1 The exhibition was made in celebration of the 40 th
anniversary of the CCP.
2 Patrick D. Flores, “The Philippine Modern: Conceiv-
ing a Collective Category,” in Suddenly Turning Visible:
The Collection at the Center (Manila: Cultural Center
(22)
Rhetorical Postures and the Photographic Condition:
A Minor Malaysian Detour
Adele Tan
In his 2009 essay for the Cultural Center of the
Philippines (CCP) exhibition catalogue Sudden-
ly Turning Visible: The Collection at the Center,
art historian and curator Patrick D. Flores begins
his narrative with the pivotal role played by art-
ist and curator Raymundo Albano (1947–1985)
in the productive artistic and collection develop-
ments of the CCP.1 Albano was the director of
museums and non-theatre operations there from
1971 to 1985. My purpose here, however, is not
to examine Albano’s achievements; rather, it is
to cast a small light on a neglected aspect of dis-
course and semiotic construction—that of the
deployment of the “artist-as-photograph” (and
in most cases it is also “artist-in-photograph”)—
enlisted into various discursive forms but which
often goes unremarked or is complicit with the
institutional strictures that try to repress it (as
was said of the CCP).
In the margins of Flores’ essay as laid out
in the catalogue Suddenly Turning Visible, is
a half-body portrait shot of the bespectacled
304 Charting Thoughts
of the Philippines, 2009), 7–8. The essay is also re-
produced in the Philippine online journal Ctrl+P 15
(2009). This online version, however, omits the por-
trait and archival photos of the protagonists in the
catalogue essay.
Albano (fg. 22.1), his slight fgure lying on the
foor with his right arm outstretched towards
the photographer and his left hand gripping
a small Minolta SLR camera that is balanced
below his chin and resting on his chest. In a
majority of instances, the artist is presented as a
headshot, or more often is the case, seen posing
with his or her artworks, thereby cementing the
intimacy between the artist’s personage with his
or her art. Seldom do we ask why some things
look the way they do; why do we preface articles
on artworks with images of the artist? Is what
or how the artist looks like important? My at-
tention is drawn immediately to this selection
and placement of a photographic illustration
in the catalogue, and to the subtle refexivity
or the “strategically ludic mode” (words used
by Flores to describe Albano’s own curatorial
disposition) demonstrated on the page with
regard to the relationship between the image
and the text that lies next to it and follows on
from it:
 The CCP thought of the period from
1971 to 1975 as the “exposure phase” in
which “advanced art—experimental in na-
ture—were deployed in the galleries. The
use of sand, junk iron, non-art materials
such as raw lumber, rocks … were com-
mon materials for the artists’ development
strategies. People were shocked, scared, de-
lighted, pleased and satisfed even though
their preconceived notions of art did not
agree with what they encountered.” This
“curatorial stance” was provocative: it may
have insinuated a level of democratic habit
within a possible Kantian sensus communis,
an engagement with strangeness and an
encounter with disbelief, into an institu-
tion that was complicit in repressing the
body politic in no uncertain terms. In all
this, Albano was convinced that the at-
mosphere at the CCP “made one relatively
aware of an environment suddenly turning
visible.” The Center, hence, was conceiv-
ing a world and its spellbound subjects,
inventing an indispensable mythology of
freedom and prefguring the unknown in a
regime that had claimed unerring destiny:
tadhana, a fate written in the stars.2 (em-
phasis mine)
In this passage by the author, who took
pains to vividly evoke the intellectual gambit
of Albano, Flores also unexpectedly raised two
phrases to the reader’s consciousness, “exposure
phase” and “suddenly turning visible.” These
are phrases related to the practice of photogra-
phy and darkroom techniques, both of which
worked with and mirrored Albano’s portrait
image so as to surface and confrm the mes-
sage—the importance of exposing or the expo-
sition, the visual and the visible, all concerted
tenets and objectives of the CCP in the 1970s.
Flores was to again use this image of Albano
in his essay “Turns in Tropics: Artist-Curator”
(2012) and in his presentation for the 2016
symposium How Institutions Think at the Cent-
Rhetorical Postures and the Photographic Condition
er for Curatorial Studies, Bard College. And as
an artist deeply committed to play and experi-
mentation with the medium of photography,
it is striking that Albano himself chose to be
photographed with his camera, and on another
occasion with a camera tripod (without the
camera). In comparison, Roberto Chabet, the
founding museum curator-director at the CCP,
was represented in Flores’ catalogue essay with
a nondescript headshot, although a more well-
known image composition of Chabet would
show him in a classroom setting, the preferred
mode of reference, as Chabet was a long-
serving professor of art studies at the University
of the Philippines.
And, indeed, it is about exposing and turn-
ing visible some of the conditions and conven-
tions that structure the visual presentation and
construction of the artist. In ways these photo-
graphs function as if they were the literal non-
coded message, or denoted image, whereby the
signifer and signifed are the same; what you
see is what you see. Yet, we should call the bluff
of these merely “denotative” images, because
as the French semiotician and philosopher Ro-
land Barthes reminds us, the absence of a code
only reinforces the myth of photographic “nat-
uralness” (although Barthes rejects the possibil-
ity of the purely denoted image) and it only
naturalises, supports and contextualises the
symbolic, connoted messages held within the
overall image structure by making them look
innocent. The hyperdistribution of images in
the Information Age also means that the ap-
praisal of imaging becomes more challenging
as more images circulate but are going away
unremarked, and the balance of power between
maker, user and receiver is shifting constantly.
As Barthes writes, with regard to the advertis-
ing photograph as denoted image:
The denoted image naturalizes the sym-
bolic message, it innocents the semantic
artifce of connotation, which is extremely
dense, especially in advertising. Although
305
 3 Roland Barthes, “The Rhetoric of the Image,” in Im-
age—Music—Text, trans. Stephen Heath (New York:
Hill and Wang, 1977), 45–6.
4 The genesis of this paper and my desire for looking at
photographs of artists is indebted to Craig Owens’ two
essays “Posing” and “The Medusa Effect or, The Spec-
ular Ruse,” in his notable (posthumous) volume, Be-
yond Recognition: Representation, Power and Culture,
eds. Scott Bryson et al. (Berkeley: University of Cali-
fornia Press, 1994), 191–217. Particularly important is
Owens’ consideration of Victor Burgin’s photographic
suite Gradiva (1982) on page 208: “Composed of seven
photographs with accompanying narrative captions
(photo-graphie), Gradiva is not simply a series of
straightforward illustrations for Jensen’s text; nor is
it as is sometimes said dismissively of Burgin’s work,
merely an ‘illustration’ of (psychoanalytic) theory. For
what is illustrated here is the process of—the desire
for—illustration itself. To illustrate a text is in a sense
to punctuate it, to arrest its development by the inser-
the Panzani poster is full of “symbols,”
there nonetheless remains in the pho-
tograph, insofar as the literal message is
suffcient, a kind of natural being-there
of objects: nature seems spontaneously to
produce the scene represented. A pseudo
truth is surreptitiously substituted for
the simple validity of openly semantic
systems; the absence of code disintellec-
tualizes the message because it seems to
be found in nature the signs of culture.
This is without doubt an important histori-
cal paradox: the more technology develops
the diffusion of information (and notably of
images), the more it provides the means of
masking the constructed meaning under the
appearance of the given meaning.3 (empha-
sis mine)
In this small excursus of the Philippines, I
want to put forward that images of artists, used
in their myriad ways, are not merely decorative,
illustrative, secondary material.4 They all come
306 Adele Tan
tion of a gaze in the form of a fgure of illustration—a
gaze which brings the textual machine to a standstill.”
5 In an attempt to push the boundaries of photography,
and to distinguish his practice from journalistic or
documentary photography, Filipino conceptual artist
Johnny Manahan made the work Self-Portrait with
Lens Cap On (1972), which had, however, proceeded
to deny the viewer the visual index of the referent
and instead presented an endgame scenario. The
work comprised an entire flm roll of 36 photographic
prints of blackness (or blankness) which Manahan
later developed after he had taken self-portraits by
aiming the camera at himself with the lens cap on.
See Clarissa Chikiamco, “Making ‘Marks’ and Leaving
‘Evidences’: The Art of Johnny Manahan 1971–82,”
in A Fact Has No Appearance: Art Beyond the Object,
exh. cat., eds. Clarissa Chikiamco, Russell Storer &
Adele Tan (Singapore: National Gallery Singapore,
2016), 19–20.
6 Puah’s reference to photography can be situated
together to concoct the visual feld in which
we receive the artists and their work. Analy-
ses at present must therefore be diverse, fuid
and inventive, taking into account the varying
contexts and usages, and critical orthodoxies
frequently renewed and reappraised.5
If the camera was the abiding device in
the photographic images taken of Albano, the
camera also comes front and centre in the sur-
really funny but conceptually serious paintings
of Malaysian artist Kok Yew Puah (also known
as George Puah, 1947–1999). Although not
photographs, Puah foregrounds the signifcant
use and appreciation of the photographic appa-
ratus in artistic practice and in the conveyance
of the artistic self as image.6 In Camera View of
the Artist (1993, fg. 22.2), Puah paints himself
into a scene as if looked upon through a camera
viewfnder. In a later work from the Camera
View series, Camera View of Two Tourists in a
Malaysian Town (1995), the artist shows a scene
framed again by the camera viewfnder, but this
time of two tourists, one of whom is pointing
 within and differentiated from a trend in the 1980s
and 1990s in Malaysia, which the art historian Za-
karia Ali has asserted as a market-driven endeavour
where artists “gather a stock of ready-made ideas”
from Kodak prints, “modifying, expanding, distorting
as they go along” so as to create paintings “with pho-
tographic qualities: clear, crisp, hard-edged” for their
corporate buyers. See Zakaria Ali, “Modern Malaysian
Art in Search of an Identity,” in Malaysian Art: Selected
Essays 1979–2009 (Tanjong Malim, Perak: Penerbit
Universiti Pendidikan Sultan Idris, 2010), 261.
7 See Puah’s 1995 Camera View of Two Tourists in
a Malaysian Town, http://www.theedgegalerie.com/
hidden-meanings/ (accessed 25 July 2016). Another
painting that utilises the same fgural composition is
In Front of an Indian Temple (1997) except that in this
case the backdrop is that of an Indian temple in Ma-
laysia. Malaysian curator Beverly Yong has written: “In
the Camera View paintings exhibited at his last solo in
1997, Kok Yew Puah discovered a brilliant conceptual
his camera towards us, the viewer (although in
a preparatory watercolour study of the work,
the fgure on the right is photographing the
fgure on the left, who is taking a puff of his
cigarette, rather than holding the camera look-
ing out for the next shot).7 The most intrigu-
ing aspect of this 1995 painting is, however, the
jumble of street and traffc signage in different
languages in the background, a seeming ap-
peal to the viewer to treat the picture (whether
painting or photograph) as a complex semiotic
and visual composition rather than merely at-
tempt at reading it biographically or geographi-
cally. The New Straits Times arts journalist Ooi
Kok Chuen, in a presciently titled article “See-
ing Beyond His Canvas,” stated that “his por-
trait works relied heavily on photography. Pho-
tography re-affrmed a reality, showing him at a
certain place at a certain time […]. The camera
viewfnder device helped him create a sense of
detachment between artist/viewer-voyeur and
the subject depicted.”8
Ooi denied that it was anything to do with
Rhetorical Postures and the Photographic Condition
and formal framing device—the camera viewfnder.
He chose favourite familiar places—an Indian temple
near his house, the Yacht Club in Klang and nearby
Pulau Ketam, for example, and made these the back-
drop of various portraits of himself, friends and family.
He made these special places iconic, representative
of our cultural heritage or our modern aspirations.
The scenes are painted in vivid colourful detail, layer
upon layer built up lovingly, only to appear fattened
ultimately. The fgures likewise are brought out in in-
tense detail—the psychological probity of Kok Yew
Puah’s portraits undercut the fatness of his painting
and the posturing of his subjects. The emotional tex-
ture and frst impulses of his work can be seen clearly
in his drawings and watercolours. See “A Malaysian
Version,” in Kok Yew Puah: A Tribute, exh. cat. (Kuala
Lumpur: Valentine Willie Fine Art, 2004), 5–6.
8 Ooi Kok Chuen, “Seeing beyond his Canvas,” New
Straits Times, 24 April 1999, 24.
9 Ibid.
“artistic ego when Kok Yew insinuated himself
into one of his paintings” but posited that the
focus was on the idle boats in the background
which indicated “an overwhelming urge to re-
claim a fast disappearing past of the Klang that
he grew up in.”9 Yet the artistic ego or artis-
tic subjectivity is precisely something which is
aligned with the discourse of photography, not
simply because the camera is used to take the
myriad shots of the artist-fgure, but also that
photography is deeply mired in the debates and
stakes surrounding subjective positions created
by a supposed objective recording device (the
denoted image that Barthes speaks about). Ma-
laysian writer Alexandra Tan perhaps comes
closest to articulating the investment Puah has
as an artist with the act of seeing and vision-
ing. For Tan, Puah is fascinated with the seem-
ingly superfcial world of the tourist, a class of
individuals who visit a range of places and in
the process encounter the foreign and absorb
new cultural signifers along the way, all within
this important act of “looking and gazing” as
307
 10 Alexandra Tan, “Kok Yew Puah: Looking In or Out?,”
The Edge Galerie—News, http://www.theedgegalerie.
com/kok-yew-puah-looking-in-or-out/ (accessed 12
June 2016).
11 Puah dropped out of making art in the mid-1970s
and went into his family’s food business, and re-
turned to art only in the mid-1980s with the encour-
agement of Piyadasa. Piyadasa regarded Puah an
“important fgure for the social content and context
of his works” and held him in high esteem together
with younger artists like Wong Hoy Cheong, Bayu
exemplifed by the tourist snapshot. Yet this
is again a two-way relationship for Puah—the
viewfnder motif reminds us that we, viewers
of the painting, are also looking out from the
vantage point of the camera lens, collapsing
two different moments of voyeurism into a
chiastic layer, that which is still an active pro-
cess, a visual process ironically immortalised
as a painting but not yet as celluloid, or until
a photographic image is taken of the painting
itself. Further, Tan also teases out the relation-
ship between photography and painting, the
interdependence these two modes have in the
regimes of representation and, more crucially,
self-representation of the artist:
What does it mean to render the act of
photography in the medium of paint? Any
image is supposed to be a durable, perma-
nent thing. Modern photography allows
us to capture feeting moments in a lasting
way. Puah immortalises the activity of the
scene, as does the painted photographer.
The character holding the camera to his
face is hypothesized to be Puah himself. If
so, he is then being mirrored by Puah the
painter. The dialectic of the relationship
between artist, painting and viewer is en-
hanced by Puah looking at himself looking
at us looking at him.10
308 Adele Tan
Utomo Radjikin and Haron Mokhtar. See Ooi, “Seeing
beyond his canvas,” op. cit., 25.
12 As T.K. Sabapathy writes: “In Bentuk Malaysia Tulen,
Piyadasa presents an image of himself as a site on
which authenticity and purity (attributes affliated
with the word tulen) can be negotiated and tested.
He simulates a capacity to read and write jawi, hence
the inclusion of the script in the upper zone of the
composition, written in the formal hieratic style. Will
he qualify? Is he a true authentic Malaysian? Can he
claim to speak on these matters? Whereas in Self-
The conscious scrutiny of the artistic self
has continued for Puah beyond the remit of the
camera viewfnder and can be gleaned in other
paintings such as Colour Guide for Self-Portrait
in Four Different Postures (1993) and Colour
Guide for Self-Portrait in Three Different Pos-
tures (1994), both canvases emblazoned with a
horizontal colour bar at the top, as if in antici-
pation of its turning into a printed published
image. But the more peculiar issue that Puah’s
paintings have raised for me is the analytical
invisibility of the artist’s pose in art critical dis-
course in the Southeast Asian region, particu-
larly of those in the panoply of images taken
to illustrate exhibition catalogues, magazines or
newspaper reports. Looking at Puah’s paintings
has prompted me to turn my gaze in the direc-
tion of Redza Piyadasa (1939–2007), an older
peer and friend of Puah and one of Malaysia’s
most prominent artists of the second half of the
20th century. Piyadasa himself was a champion
of Puah’s work (“a signifcant Malaysian artist
whom I genuinely admired and respected”),
and wrote the foreword for Puah’s posthumous
exhibition in 2004.11 Piyadasa himself had
not conscientiously produced copious works
of self-portraiture, apart from examples such
as Portrait of the Artist as a Model (1977) and
Bentuk Malaysia Tulen (1980), which exam-
ined his identity as a conceptual artist and a
 Portrait of the Artist as a Model, he employs the self
to interrogate aesthetic and art historical issues;
here the self is desperately involved in defning le-
gitimacy and in determining identity along social and
political grounds that are slippery. The outcome can
be either life-enhancing or life-threatening; the im-
age of Piyadasa is both vulnerable and defant.” See
T.K. Sabapathy, Piyadasa: An Overview, 1962–2000
(Kuala Lumpur: National Art Gallery, 2001), 92–3.
13 A number of such photographs were published in
newspaper obituaries of Piyadasa. See Ooi Kok Chuen,
Muslim-Singhalese Malaysian.12 Yet it cannot
be denied that he has been prolifcally docu-
mented in numerous profle shots and many
of them with him positioned erect (the photo
of him with his painting Entry Points is par-
ticularly well circulated) and arms crossed or
holding a cigarette in his hand, next to his own
work and fully aware of the photograph that
he is making with art (like the photograph of
him looking through an empty picture frame
towards the camera, fg. 22.3).13 The ineluctable
power and presence of Piyadasa in such photo-
graphs (although the photographers are usually
unnamed) recall American feminist art histori-
an Amelia Jones’ critical dissection of what she
calls the “Pollockian performative,” through
Hans Namuth’s black-and-white photographs
of Jackson Pollock actively working his drip-
and-fick painting technique on his large can-
vases lining the foor of his studio.
Jones is instructive in this regard because
she had articulated how the mobilisation of Na-
muth’s photographs of the artist functioned in
the reception and construction of the artist as
a subject, and his relationship to his work and
his audiences. This was helped by the theatrical
character of Namuth’s images (and the physi-
cality of Pollock’s actions) which overwhelmed
the article layout, and instead of “appearing as
incidental illustrations of the text,” stood out
Rhetorical Postures and the Photographic Condition
“Paying Piya Tribute,” The Star, 10 June 2007, http://
www.thestar.com.my/lifestyle/women/2007/06/10/
paying-piya-tribute/ (accessed 14 June 2016); and
Eddin Khoo, “Death of an Artist,” The Star, 13 May
2007, http://www.thestar.com.my/lifestyle/women/
2007/05/13/death-of-an-artist/ (accessed 14 June
2016).
14 Amelia Jones, Body Art/Performing the Subject (Min-
neapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1998), 53.
15 Ibid., 55.
16 Ibid.
against other conventional imagery of artists
sitting with their easels and trade tools. The
photographic record of the artist is therefore
contingent rather than deterministic, thereby
de-privileging original artistic intentionality
and opening itself up to the expressed recep-
tivity of its viewers.14 The formidable appeal
of the Namuth photographs held sway in the
mythic fabrication of Pollock, such as Ameri-
can critic Harold Rosenberg’s construction of
Pollock as a “labouring existentialist hero,” and
art historian Barbara Rose’s acknowledgement
that “[i]n retrospect, I realize Rosenberg was
not talking about painting at all; he was de-
scribing Namuth’s photographs of Pollock.”15
Stories about the profound effects of Namuth’s
photos have also themselves perpetuated the
art historical narrative that Pollock “became
internationally known through photographs
published in art and popular magazines by the
mid-1950s.”16
But where Jones’ exegesis on the “Pol-
lockian Performative” concentrated on the
outstanding and therefore exceptional shots
of Pollock by Namuth, the photographs that
I would like to pay attention to are the con-
ventional and therefore discursively neglected
or parried shots of artists posing with their
artworks. As a class of image-type, these pho-
tographs nonetheless achieve a great degree of
309
 17 See Ooi, “Paying Piya Tribute,” op. cit.
18 Ronald Achacoso, “Kick in the Eye to Enlightenment
101,” in Roberto Chabet, ed. Ringo Bunoan (Metro
Manila: King Kong Art Projects Unlimited, 2016), 36.
Others who were known to have publicly and acri-
moniously disagreed with Piyadasa include Jolly Koh
and Tan Chee Khuan.
19 Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida: Refections on Pho-
tography, trans. Richard Howard (New York: Hill and
Wang, 1981), 27.
20 Ooi Kok Chuen, “To Seek New Artistic Directions,” New
Straits Times, 19 August 1987, 6.
interpretative currency through their circula-
tion, despite the methodological armoury of
the establishment. For those of us interested in
the practice of Piyadasa, we cannot ignore oc-
casions where he has depicted himself or gave
chance for himself to be depicted as “complex,
diffcult, arrogant;” the photographs that only
demand a cursory glance in newspapers, mag-
azines and books, fashion a distinct atmos-
phere in which the artist is read, and some-
thing which, I argue, can be imbricated with
the practice of the artist and at times provide
countervailing assessments towards prevail-
ing narratives of the artist and the artworks.17
Indeed, accounts of Piyadasa’s personality are
stuff of anecdotal legends in Southeast Asia,
with a particularly well-recounted one of him
dropping by unannounced into a local water-
ing hole called Nanette’s in Manila and at-
tempting to force Roberto Chabet (who was
having his beer and in no mood to entertain
Piyadasa) into a debate about art. This resulted
in fared tempers and Piyadasa apologising to
Chabet days later that he was merely “joust-
ing.” This account would seem unremarkable
except for the intriguing choice of words by
Filipino artist and Chabet’s former student
Ronald Achacoso:
310 Adele Tan
21 J. Anu, “An Artistic State of Affairs,” The Sunday Star,
8 September 1996, 25–6.
22 Marzuki’s article demonstrates passive–aggressive
ambivalence in its treatment of Piyadasa as subject.
Readers are not sure whether her fawning responses
were made sardonically (if she knew what he had pro-
fessionally professed to stand for) or that she genu-
inely admired Piyadasa. Marzuki was a well-known
journalist for the New Straits Times covering issues
and affairs related to women. It is interesting to note
too that later even the obituaries of Piyadasa were
fled under the “Women” section of The Star Online.
The whole episode became a non-incident,
but it presents an interesting study in con-
trast between Southeast Asia’s two fore-
most conceptual artists and educators. I
clearly remember the disappointment in
the Malaysian’s face as he left the wolf ’s
lair. And it seemed he regarded the event
as a potentially signifcant milestone in
Southeast Asian art history while Chabet
dismissed the whole affair and forgot about
it. If we were to read and deconstruct the
“minimalist” encounter between the two,
it would speak volumes, and like a Zen
parable, would be as enlightening for not
having been concluded, the “what might
have been” not as interesting or as resonant
as what never actually took place.18
Although obviously siding with Chabet,
what Achacoso had described was an exquisite
collision between two viewpoints: one mined
or mourned a lost potential, and the other
fatly denying the situation any signifcance.
This misreading or over-reading of what had
happened produced a productive tension, a
quality that is sought by anyone embarking on
the hermeneutics of art. Achacoso’s words also
restored to view the necessity of looking into
missed encounters, the parts which were hast-
ily disregarded and deemed to not have taken
place (or taken its place), could yet be interest-
ing or resonant.
This is the resonance I am giving to the
images of Piyadasa that appear silently in
printed materials, their selection and place-
ment seemingly never to have bothered viewers
to take a second look. For Barthes, these are
the photographs which he deems good enough
only as studium but not as punctum, whereby
the levels of interpretation and investment
would reach those of the cultural, linguistic
and political (the “feld of unconcerned desire,
of various interest, of inconsequential taste”)
but not of the emotional or psychical (“that ac-
cident which pricks me [but also bruises me,
is poignant to me]”).19 But what if the named
and coded photographs under the regime of the
studium are made to be considered differently,
to be looked upon as the punctum of the in-
stitutional world of artwork images, the “sting,
speck, cut, little hole” that is the work of these
photographs when reading them (together with
the headlines and captions on the page) against
the stolid images of pure art? Take for instance
the different uses of Piyadasa’s work Two Malay
Women in the New Straits Times articles. The
1986 article (fg. 22.4) shows Piyadasa as the
gallerist proudly showing off the work in the
background and shoring up the defant head-
line “There’s Still Business in Malaysian Art
Business” and the caption “reputation of a gal-
lery counts a lot.” In the other article in the
following year, Two Malay Women is an image
apart, with a headshot of Piyadasa overlapping
onto it, but signalling a vastly different message
and marking the end of his Saujana Fine Art
Gallery: “To Seek New Artistic Directions.”20
The repeat use of the same artwork is intrigu-
ing, and seems to suggest the breakdown of op-
timism, yet it also points to Piyadasa’s method
of reusing a certain found image and making
numerous variations in treatment of the print
(also by way of painting or collaging) for his
Rhetorical Postures and the Photographic Condition
Malaysian Series, which defned the last phase
of his artistic career.
Images from the 1988 article “Piyadasa—
The Romantic Artist” by Nora Marzuki (fg.
22.5)—which has an affected title that is in-
compatible with the cerebral outlook he had
fashioned for himself—are more revealing of
the artist’s own anxieties and self-regard. This
time a pose with yet another work from his
Malaysian Series (a composite of the Tun Razak
Family which the newspaper mistook for two
separate works) and a candid half-body shot
of the artist seated in a pseudo-pensive pose
and having a smoke, with the words “I’m a
painter and a unique one too” running under
it. The words sound haughty yet they are also
ironic—Piyadasa was not considered a skilful
painter and his later forays into mechanical re-
production for the Malaysian Series meant that
he was not particularly invested in the unique
and original. The intimation of Piyadasa as a
family man by Marzuki is taken up again by
J. Anu’s 1996 article for The Sunday Star, where
Piyadasa’s posed photo with his young children
from his second marriage is included in the
spread that however says very little of his family
life, but works instead to secure Anu’s impres-
sion that Piyadasa was “anxious to put you at
ease,” his reputation for being blunt, impatient
and arrogant notwithstanding.21 The invoca-
tion of the family man in Piyadasa is an odd
gesture, clumsily asserted by Marzuki who read
the presence of heritage family photos in his
works as indicative of him interested in being
a family man.22 By 2001, with his solo retro-
spective running at the Balai Seni Lukis Ne-
gara (presently known as the National Visual
Arts Gallery of Malaysia), the persona of the
family man receded and a different picture of
Piyadasa emerged, this time of photos of the
artist not by himself but with his peers, his ar-
tistic and the Malaysian VIP community. The
images work with the new rubric, describing
an intellectual giant (“Challenging the Con-
cept of Art,” fg. 22.6) and therefore ripe for a
311
 reassessment and critical plaudits (“Remaking
Piyadasa,” fg. 22.7).
Photographs of Piyadasa captured by un-
dergraduate student Peter T. Brown (who ma-
jored in photography) in the mid-1970s at the
University of Hawaii at Manoa where Piyadasa
earned his Master of Fine Arts, however, sur-
faced a view of the artist as already cognisant
of the power of the posed photograph. Simi-
lar to Albano before, Piyadasa is pictured in a
series of photographs carrying a camera. Yet
where Albano was just composing himself as
a picture, Piyadasa not only does this but also
pursued with his camera the actions of Laura
Ruby, a Hawaiian artist and University of Ha-
waii art department faculty member who made
a mock-conceptual work in protest against the
conceptual “con-job” art that he was promul-
gating. Like a double entendre, Piyadasa turns
around in one shot and looks smugly into
Brown’s lens (fg. 22.8), and then in another,
proceeds to track the activity of Ruby with
his camera. By posing with Ruby’s work and
standing proudly erect and chest puffed, Piya-
dasa enacts a visual sleight of hand—he made it
look as if it were his own artwork (fg. 22.9). We
should not be too surprised then that Piyadasa
was further captured in a proclamatory gesture,
arms outstretched with papers with a fower
garland around his neck (instead of a camera),
and standing next to a painting emblazoned
with the stencilled words “ART IS A LIE.” It
was a painting he had acquired from his un-
dergraduate friend Malcolm Wong at the Uni-
versity of Hawaii, who had completed it as a
class assignment on Willem de Kooning. Piya-
dasa proceeded to appropriate Wong’s painting
through the refexive addition of words that re-
marked upon its own condition and existence.
With these foregoing examples, the Pen-
ang collector, gallerist and aspiring art historian
Dato’ Dr Tan Chee Khuan was perhaps para-
doxically prescient and astute in his assessment
of Piyadasa, despite disparaging him as an in-
veterate “pastiche” artist who being “unduly in-
312 Adele Tan
fuenced by another,” makes work lacking indi-
viduality and originality—“In conceptual art,
the concept is paramount since there is very lit-
tle aesthetic. Borrowing the concept and add-
ing in local favour does not exclude it as pas-
tiche.”23 Tan had also proceeded to illustrate
this by way of his own “artwork,” a crude post-
er titled Pastiche Stinks (fg. 22.10), parodying
Piyadasa’s Portrait of the Artist as a Model where
the painting is reproduced in miniature on the
right and captioned underneath with the words
“historical transgression 1977 to 1994.” This
is, however, undermined by a caricature of Al-
fred E. Neuman, the fctitious mascot of Mad
magazine, with his fngers stuck up his nostrils
and broadcasting his riposte: “The reader may
ask, ‘What is a pastiche?’ or ‘Whose pastiches
are we talking about?’ ”24 Whilst careful not to
say that art does not proceed from infuence
by predecessors, Tan enlisted art critics such as
Robert Hughes and Suzi Gablik to his cause to
decipher the conditions of pastiche, but in the
very same gesture, he brings to the fore con-
siderations of fraudulence, charlatanry, mim-
icry, imitation, dissimulation, camoufage and
counterfeiting, aspects of which are precisely
what occurs for Barthes, who wants a “history
of looking,” in the act of posing for a photo-
graph.
In Camera Lucida, Barthes examines and
philosophises on the centrality of forced and
conscious duplicity (“a sensation of inauthen-
ticity, sometimes of imposture”) of someone
posing for the “whole photographic ritual” or
“social game” (and even when one is observed
without knowing it, one can often know the
feeling of being observed by the lens and once
knowing, it changes everything, leading to a
transformation of the self in advance into an
image) and how the posed photograph gets co-
opted in the construction of self and identity:
I pose, I know I am posing, I want you
to know that I am posing, but (to square
the circle) this additional message must in
23 Tan Chee Khuan, “What is Pastiche?,” in Social Re-
sponsibility in Art Criticism: or Why Yong Mun Sen is
the Father of Malaysian Painting (Pulau Tikus, Malay-
sia: Art Gallery, 1998), 131.
24 This 1994 poster’s background was subsequently re-
touched in 2013 and put up for sale by Tan for MYR
2000.
no way alter the precious essence of my
individuality: what I am, apart from any
effgy. What I want, in short, is that my
(mobile) image, buffeted among a thou-
sand shifting photographs, altering with
situation and age, should always coincide
with my (profound) “self ”; but it is the
contrary that must be said: “myself ” never
coincides with my image.25
Although there is the professed non-
coincidence of the self to the image, there is
however an admission that despite the morti-
fcation of the body by the photograph, “the
Photograph is the advent of myself as other:
a cunning dissociation of consciousness from
identity” and “represents the very subtle mo-
ment when, to tell the truth, I am neither sub-
ject nor object but a subject who feels he is
becoming an object.”26 In other words, when
constituting oneself in the process of posing,
the posed photograph enables the involuntary
presentation of a dispersed self, where the sub-
ject turning into object permits the inhabita-
tion of contradictory dimensions but turns
away from the possibility of ever positing an
objective self in a photograph. Paul Jay has ar-
gued that:
Barthes’s treatment of posing is really
about the impossibility of not posing. It
questions the very concept of authenticity
Rhetorical Postures and the Photographic Condition
25 Barthes, op. cit., 11–2.
26 Ibid., 12, 14.
27 Paul Jay, “Posing: Autobiography and the Subject of
Photography,” in Autobiography and Postmodernism,
eds. Kathleen Ashley, Leigh Gilmore & Gerald Peters
(Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1994),
194–5.
and turns it into a kind of simulacrum in
which the subject cannot stop “imitating”
himself. […] But worse than the specter of
inauthenticity is the specter of objectifca-
tion, the fear that the always-inauthentic
image does in fact constitute the objecti-
fed self. The problem Barthes’s remarks
on posing [reveal] is that the so-called pro-
found or essential self can never be rep-
resented as such. Indeed the very nature
of this essential self becomes paradoxical:
its subjectivity is linked to a notion of au-
thenticity, yet any image of that self is a
sign of its objectifcation, and hence, its
inauthenticity. The authentic self, in Bar-
thes’s terms, is fnally an impossibility, for
it would be a self freed from the process of
becoming an object.27
In short, there is no running away from
the objectifcation of the self, a self which at the
same time requires and acquires its identity and
substance from images that objectify or other
it. In common parlance, the maxim “fake it till
you make (or become) it” applies, as there is no
way, to quote W.B. Yeats, to “know the dancer
from the dance.”
To look at and analyse Piyadasa through
his poses in photographs is especially appo-
site, given his extensive recuperation and use
of found heritage photographic material that
are largely posed studio shots in his by now
313
 28 Piyadasa’s frst forays with photographs in his art-
making were with his two versions of Tribute to
Usman Awang (1980). Piyadasa was commissioned
by the editor of Dewan Sastra to produce an artwork
for the journal’s cover to honour the 50 th birthday of
Usman Awang. Piyadasa was given photographs of
Usman which he subsequently replicated as a bro-
mide halftone image of the poet via an electronic
copying machine, with the help of photographer Is-
mail Hashim. The hand-coloured design was based
on the idea of a postage stamp, the stencilled letters
a carry-over from his conceptual art phase, and the
bromide image pasted on rather than silkscreened
like his later Malaysian Series images.
29 Rodolfo Paras-Perez, introduction to Piyadasa (The
Hague: The Prince Claus Fund, 1998), 4.
30 Paras-Perez took Piyadasa at his own words: “The
more I studied the old photographs, the more I be-
came aware of the documentary power of the pho-
tographic medium, namely its ability to freeze and
record so vividly aspects of social reality. These
were very real people that I was confronting in the
famous Malaysian Series.28 Piyadasa too spent
much of his time thinking about the practice
of photography, particularly portrait photogra-
phy and how it could be co-opted to deliver his
own thoughts and arguments about his place
within the multicultural history and identity
of Malaysia and how the upsurge of ethnically
divisive and polarising Bumiputra politics was
jeopardising all of that. The evocation of these
found photographs by the Filipino artist and
art historian Rodolfo Paras-Perez as “half-for-
gotten,” “unknown,” “distant” and “dated” is
similar to how one might consider the posed
photographs of Piyadasa in newspapers and
exhibition catalogues. Paras-Perez, however, of-
fers up the possibility of redemption through
the manipulation and conversion of these im-
ages into “serious works of art” (by Piyadasa)
where the past and reality are transformed.29
As such, one should pause to wonder: Could it
not be possible too, to entertain ideas about the
314 Adele Tan
photographic images, and I had to consciously re-
tain and project their individual personalities and
also the cultural essence and mood of their times.
In transferring the images to the silk-screens, I
was of course, projecting them twice removed from
their original “reality” but their pertinence as per-
sona was not being diminished in any way, in the
process.” Quoted in “A Dialogue: T.K. Sabapathy and
Redza Piyadasa,” in Piyadasa: The Malaysian Series
(Kuala Lumpur: RA Fine Arts and Asia Contemporary,
2007), 32.
31 Sabapathy, Piyadasa: An Overview, 1962–2000, 95.
32 This was Nirmala’s exhibition titled Keadaan Manu-
sia (The Condition of Being). It was held at the Dewan
Bahasa & Pustaka in Kuala Lumpur for eight days in
January 1981.
33 It is interesting to note that unlike the photographs of
Piyadasa published in the New Straits Times, Nirma-
la’s feature (as does the female batik artist, Fatimah
Chik’s, the frst wife of Piyadasa) credits the photog-
rapher clearly. See also Alina Ranee, “Fatimah Mak-
ing Waves Again,” New Straits Times, 1 May 1985, 8.
incorporation of marginal photos into the art
historical narration of Malaysian artists?
And although Paras-Perez describes Piya-
dasa’s use of collage and serigraphy (“photo-
graphing a photograph—a process that plac-
es the image at a point twice removed from
reality”) as non-threatening to “the subject’s
unique qualities and the specifc referenc-
es,” otherwise known as “Malaysian aura,” I
would suggest that Piyadasa’s method instead
points to a potential change, or even violence,
done not to the superfcial image codes them-
selves but to the reception of the actual ref-
erent—and for my purpose here Piyadasa is
the referent.30 Opening art historical writing
up to embrace this image class of artist poses
and noticing their specifc deployment on the
page provides new interpretative modes that
can be held in contention with each other. To
this end, T.K. Sabapathy provides a far more
accurate reading of the impact and effect of
photography in Piyadasa’s work and on the
artist himself:
The portrait photograph is not a neutral
value-free entity; on the contrary, the
portrait photograph is a fabrication and
consolidation of who one is by means of
complex codes that are transacted and
shared by the subject, the photographer
and the community.31
Sabapathy calls Piyadasa’s method “ag-
glomerative,” where fragments from diverse
sources are arranged, shaped and repeated in a
pictorial scheme. Yet it is also as a collective ar-
rangement that Sabapathy realises such a sche-
ma would already harbour “a hint of a diver-
gence,” with coded images abutting each other,
“prising these interests apart.” The inclusion
of the posed photos of the artists into the art
historical ambit would not be a benign enter-
prise, for the recursive appearance of artworks,
bodily postures and accompanying rhetori-
cal tropes already ensure that dissonances will
arise from the non-contiguity between them.
If Piyadasa was expecting his use of found old
photos of various ethnic families as a means to
interrogate the identity politics of the country,
he would not be too alarmed by the same man-
ner in which photos of him could be taken as
critical resources to appraise his work, attitudes
and politics.
An important counterpoint to Piyadasa to
raise here (as gender is also a missing operative
term when writing about Piyadasa) would be
Nirmala Dutt Shanmughalingam (b. 1941), a
pioneering Malaysian female artist of socially
conscious or committed art, and a peer and
close friend of Piyadasa, who himself had also
authored the catalogue essay of her solo exhibi-
tion in 1981.32 Nirmala, who has an intense
artistic engagement with the plethora of socio-
political photographic imagery gleaned from
topical news media, often feature in her works
photo-silkscreened newspaper images collaged
Rhetorical Postures and the Photographic Condition
onto canvas which are then painted with bold
expressive brushwork or traditional symbolic
motifs. Her themes have regularly focused on is-
sues of war, violence, sexual abuse, poverty and
environmental degradation in local and inter-
national settings from the 1970s right up to the
2000s, frequently foregrounding or addressing
women and children as the primary victims.
Female subjects and roles have featured signif-
cantly too in Piyadasa’s Malaysian Series, par-
ticularly the two Malay women, the Malay and
Nyonya brides and the Indian mother. How-
ever, it is a study in contrast when we compare
the photographic “fortunes” of Nirmala and
Piyadasa—Nirmala has rarely been the subject
of newspaper or journal features, and hence far
fewer photographs of Nirmala posing with her
work are out in public circulation. One news-
paper article that presented such a photograph
did so with an image of her placing one hand
gingerly on the support on which her works
were resting, and not with her arms crossed in
a defensive posture. Such tentativeness of pose
and posture may strike one as not immediately
ftting for an artist who is seen as vociferously
opposing the inequities of society (fg. 22.11).33
In 1973, Nirmala made a stunning en-
trance at the “Man and his World” competition
organised by the Balai Seni Lukis Negara with
her work Statement 1 (she and Sulaiman Esa
were the two major award winners). The form
it took—documentary photographs in a grid
layout fanked by two boards pasted with news-
paper clippings and her extended artist state-
ment on the growing urban pollution of Da-
mansara in Kuala Lumpur, which was installed
together with the waste she collected from the
area—was so unusual at the time that in the
place of medium, the work was just described
as a “concept.” Yet despite her photography-
based art being the voice of justice for the op-
pressed and dispossessed, Nirmala was also well
aware of the limits of photography. In another
work Statement II, she explained: “The cam-
era recorded only a small fraction of what was
315
 seen and experienced by actually being in these
areas. No single medium can actually com-
municate a whole experience.”34 And despite
the innovative treatment of photo imagery by
Nirmala, much less attention was paid to her
craft than to her sentiments, with critics largely
philosophising or pontifcating about the state
of humanity and the world. One such critic,
Zakaria Ali, however, had unwittingly made
a useful observation on her method and her
scale: Nirmala’s work was “heavy stuff, made
even heavier by having these images enlarged.
The viewer has no choice but be confronted
by the gruesome pictures.”35 Unlike Piyadasa,
who is usually seen posing confdently with his
artworks, Nirmala is instead captured rather di-
minutively seated cross-legged and barefoot on
the ground with her work looming behind her;
she also does not look squarely at the camera
but gazes out into the far corner (fg. 22.12).
Disliking labels but vexed by her own vest-
ed interests, Nirmala has declared that she is “an
artist frst and foremost—not necessarily just a
woman artist or feminist artist or political art-
ist” because “once labelled, people feel they can
deal with you. It is easier to control and oppress
you when you are put into a category. But I have
not resolved how to deal with this as I really care
a lot about issues that affect women and chil-
dren.” Her chosen posture in the photograph
may have to do with her expressed desire to not
be pigeonholed and to let the work and the is-
sues speak for themselves.36 Despite her diver-
gent emotional responses of anger and compas-
sion when confronted with issues, she lets on
that she “had to sit through the pain of the in-
cubation period,” where she “might read a book
and try not to think of it” or “do some research
or collect things.” This is because “the subcon-
scious cannot be dictated to but rather, it dic-
tates. And it cannot be forced into action or else
your work will emerge a shallow mess.”37 These
alternating psychical currents and her willing-
ness to work through her own ambivalence may
yet explain why Nirmala the artist has been pre-
316 Adele Tan
sented in oddly contradictory ways to her view-
ers. Her self-portrait from 1999 (fg. 22.13) is a
picture of crimson rage where two frontal head
shots (one a facsimile of the other) are placed
on separate diametrically opposing vectors but
close to the points of convergence and the state
of metaphorical eruption where she then visu-
ally chastises the viewer: “When are you all go-
ing to say enough! And stop it!” On the other
hand, her profle page on The Edge Galerie’s
website is headed by an uncommon pose with
the artist’s head turning away from the viewer’s
gaze and her eyes downcast, as if rejecting en-
gagement with the prevailing visual order of
the world.38 These are, I would argue, the two
poles animating Nirmala’s practice—one be-
ing detached and analytic, and the other being
highly charged empathy, an interpretation sup-
ported too by how she herself is presented and
received through the posed photographs that
are in circulation. Viewers may not be privy to
the intentions of the artist (as the posing sub-
ject), the photographer or the news media staff
(who textually frames the images); these posed
images as artefacts set in motion another form
of agency, urging us to pay heed to the ways
they interpose on how we read the artists, their
art and their unexpected lifeworlds.
To end, I am reminded of what Gilles
Deleuze and Felix Guattari had argued in the
name of “minor literature”: “Create the oppo-
site dream: know how to create a becoming-
minor.”39 Instead of having an “offcial,
referential genre” and the proper assignation of
names and sense, we ought to have “a sequence
of intensive states, a ladder or a circuit for in-
tensities that one can race around in one sense
or another, from high to low, or from low to
high.”40 Any word, name or image need no
longer refer to only one thing but to other
things or conditions—“the becoming-dog of
the man and the becoming-man of the dog.”41
Turning our attention towards photographs of
artists with their artworks that might otherwise
be gleaned only as supplemental and marginal
34 Redza Piyadasa, “The Art of Nirmala Shanmughal-
ingam,” in The Condition of Being (Kuala Lumpur:
Dewan Bahasa & Pustaka, 1981), 12.
35 Ali, op. cit.
36 Wong Hoy Cheong, “Let the Bamboo Grow in Your
Heart: A Conversation with Nirmala,” in Nirmala
Dutt Shanmughalingam: The Making of an Artist as
Social Commentator (Kuala Lumpur: Valentine Wil-
lie Fine Art, 1998), 2.
37 Ibid.
38 See “Nirmala Shanmughalingham, Datin,” in The Edge
Galerie—Artists, http://www.theedgegalerie.com/
artist/datin-nirmala-dutt-shanmughalingham/
(accessed 25 July 2016).
39 Gilles Deleuze & Felix Guattari, Kafka: Toward a Mi-
nor Literature, trans. Dana Polan (Minneapolis: Uni-
versity of Minnesota Press, 1986), 27.
40 Ibid., 21.
41 Ibid.
42 Refer to Deleuze’s comments on the minor in “Gilles
Deleuze in Conversation with Antonio Negri,” Futur
Anterieur 1 (1990), trans. Martin Joughin, http://www.
to an essay is one way of “becoming minor.”
For Deleuze, to invoke the minor is to jettison
the established model for a process, a becoming
that will lead into unknown paths, which does
not in itself jeopardise its ability to acquire a
major model should we wish it to.42 The ac-
quisition of a “major model” was also at the
forefront of the minds of the convenors of the
landmark exhibition Vision and Idea: Relooking
Modern Malaysian Art at the Balai Seni Lukis
Negara in 1994. It was a desire for a master nar-
rative guided by a sense of history and conti-
nuity. Yet as the esteemed Malaysian dramatist
and critic Krishen Jit rightly cautions in the in-
troduction to the exhibition catalogue, “histori-
cal meaning changes over time in perceptions
of art and social contexts” and these are seldom
tackled by art historians in Malaysia. Jit pro-
posed instead to bounce off art and social con-
texts against each other, so that “we could enjoy
the beneft of being both inside and outside the
drama of modern Malaysian art”:
Rhetorical Postures and the Photographic Condition
generation-online.org/p/fpdeleuze3.htm (accessed
16 June 2016).
43 Krishen Jit, introduction to Vision and Idea: Relook-
ing Modern Malaysian Art, ed. T.K. Sabapathy (Kuala
Lumpur: National Art Gallery Malaysia, 1994), 12.
Piyadasa addressed this in his exhibition Art and
the Social Context at the Balai Seni Lukis Negara
in 1991 where he included a selection of cartoon-
ists with other visual artists, making a point about
the privileging of a certain hierarchy in the arts: “It
is about time cartoonists were given their due rec-
ognition. The role of the cartoonist is more impor-
tant than the role of painters who are still operat-
ing in an elitist context.” See also Joseph Edwin,
“Thought-Provoking Art Show,” New Straits Times,
21 June 1991, 25.
44 This makes practical sense too as there is not yet
a plethora of publicly available scholarly books and
documents on artists. Corralling other types of vis-
ual material (which have been hitherto considered
secondary or marginal) could potentially open up
other methodological pathways.
On the one hand, our insideness would be
ensured by our entanglement with the nar-
rative of the relationship between art and
society. On the other hand, the very act
of bouncing off these forces and actions
would release us, even if temporarily, from
the dangers of an incestuous and claustro-
phobic involvement, and thereby help us
to construct a critical distance from the
evolving narrative.43
I would hazard that Jit did not go far
enough. If we are truly concerned with the
social nature of art, we should attend to the
visual universe that the works of art reside in,
and that one way to construct that “critical dis-
tance” and evolve the narrative would perhaps
be to frst expand and include the visual feld of
what can be considered with and next to artists
and art-making—the minor streams of photo-
graphic material which circumscribe our daily
visioning of art, that is.44
317
 22.1

22.2

456 Adele Tan

0328-Charting Thoughts.indd 456 28/3/17 2:56 PM

 22.3

22.1 Photograph of Raymundo Albano.

22.2 Kok Yew Puah

Camera View of the Artist
1993
Acrylic on canvas
163 × 163 cm
Private collection, Singapore
© Family of the late artist

22.3 Redza Piyadasa holding an empty frame.

Image from The Star, Malaysia

Rhetorical Postures and the Photographic Condition 457

0328-Charting Thoughts.indd 457 28/3/17 2:56 PM

 22.4

22.4 Ooi Kok Chuen, “There’s Still Business

in Malaysian Art Business,” New Straits
Times, 9 March 1986, 11.

22.5 Nora Marzuki, “Piyadasa—The Romantic

Artist,” New Sunday Times, 9 October
1988, 11. Layout reconfgured.

458 Adele Tan

0328-Charting Thoughts.indd 458 28/3/17 2:56 PM

 22.5

Rhetorical Postures and the Photographic Condition 459

0328-Charting Thoughts.indd 459 28/3/17 2:56 PM

 22.6 Ooi Kok Chuen, “Challenging the
Concept of Art,” New Straits Times,
7 May 2001, 6.

22.7 Ooi Kok Chuen, “Remaking

Piyadasa,” New Straits Times,
8 May 2001, 2.

22.6

460 Adele Tan

0328-Charting Thoughts.indd 460 28/3/17 2:56 PM

 22.7

Rhetorical Postures and the Photographic Condition 461

0328-Charting Thoughts.indd 461 28/3/17 2:56 PM

 22.8

22.9

462 Adele Tan

0328-Charting Thoughts.indd 462 28/3/17 2:56 PM

 22.10

22.8 Piyadasa photographing Laura Ruby

unveiling her work.
Image courtesy of Malcom Wong
© Estate of Peter T. Brown

22.9 Piyadasa posing with Laura Ruby’s work.

Image courtesy of Malcom Wong
© Estate of Peter T. Brown

22.10 Tan Chee Khuan

Pastiche Stinks
1994–2013
Mixed media on paper
37 × 27 cm
Collection of the artist

Rhetorical Postures and the Photographic Condition 463

0328-Charting Thoughts.indd 463 28/3/17 2:56 PM

 22.11 Ooi Kok Chuen, “Brush with Harsh
Realities of Life,” New Straits Times,
3 May 1992, 12–3.

22.12 Nirmala Dutt Shanmughalingam

with her works.

22.13 Nirmala Dutt Shanmughalingam

Self-Portrait
1999
Acrylic and collage on canvas
101.5 × 91.5 cm
Collection of National Gallery
Singapore

22.11

464 Adele Tan

0328-Charting Thoughts.indd 464 28/3/17 2:56 PM

 22.12

22.13

Rhetorical Postures and the Photographic Condition 465

0328-Charting Thoughts.indd 465 28/3/17 2:56 PM

 1 Kwa Chong Guan, Derek Heng & Tan Tai Yong, Sin-
gapore: A 700-Year History, From Early Emporium to
World City (Singapore: National Archives of Singa-
pore, 2009), 8, 11–2.
2 Lily Kong, Ching Chia-ho & Chou Tsu-Lung, Arts, Cul-
ture and the Making of Global Cities: Creating New Ur-
ban Landscapes in Asia (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar
Publishing Limited, 2015), 6.
3 Caroline Turner, “Internationalism and Regional-
ism: Paradoxes of Identity,” in Tradition and Change:
Contemporary Art of Asia and the Pacifc, ed. Caroline
Turner (Queensland: University of Queensland Press,
1993), xiii–v.
( 23)
Undoing the Global: Contemporary Art of Singapore
June Yap
See fg. 23.1, Conway Mordaunt Shipley, Chinese
and Western Ships in Singapore Harbour (1854).
Lands. Specifc. Edit. Yellow. Contempt. Na-
ked. Weep. Soar. Slip. Thought. Ordinary.
Moist. Millennium.
These words, which have been engraved upon
the green, brown and off-white surfaces of Sim-
ryn Gill’s installation, Washed Up (1993–1995,
fg. 23.2), were, according to the artist, random-
ly compiled. Yet, they are deeply suggestive, as
is the knowledge of whence these otherwise
prosaic shards have been gathered—beaches
of Singapore since reclaimed and areas of Port
Dickson in Malaysia under redevelopment—
intimating their having been swept to shore
by unseen currents. Typifying the material and
318 Charting Thoughts
4 Jim Supangkat, “A Brief History of Indonesian Modern
Art,” in ibid., 47; Redza Piyadasa, “Modern Malaysian
Art: 1945–1991: A Historical Overview,” in ibid., 66;
Apinan Poshyananda, “The Development of Contem-
porary Art in Thailand: Traditionalism in Reverse,” in
ibid., 96–9; T.K. Sabapathy, “Contemporary Art in Sin-
gapore: An Introduction,” in ibid., 85–6.
5 Turner, op. cit., xvii.
6 Sabapathy, “Contemporary Art in Singapore: An In-
troduction,” 86.
7 Peter Osborne, Anywhere or Not at All: Philosophy of
Contemporary Art (London: Verso Books, 2013).
method employed by Gill, of registering the
ebb and fow of a universe of objects and of un-
derstanding through found matter that has in-
cluded stones, shells and circular things, these
travel-worn fragments may be said to embody
the subject of this essay: the global.
The term, global, has become ubiquitous
and would appear to also be central to Sin-
gapore and the exposition of its past, such as
has been documented in Singapore: A 700-Year
History, From Early Emporium to World City.
Written by Kwa Chong Guan, Derek Heng
and Tan Tai Yong, this expansive history pub-
lished in 2009 was manifest as an exhibition at
the National Museum of Singapore in 2014.
Whereas the exhibition emphasised the narra-
tive of the development of the modern state,
noting its gestation in 1299, with the renaming
of the island to Singapura by Sri Tri Buana (also
known as Sang Nila Utama), and elaborating,
in increasing detail as it progressed into the re-
cent half-century, the genealogical rise of the
nation, the intent of the publication that had
been commissioned by the National Archives
was, one might say, rather more “global.” It was
to locate present-day (21st century) global and
economic “aspirations” as having been estab-
lished in the early maritime history of the Mel-
aka Straits, thereby nominating this disposition
for exchange in a continuous trajectory from
pre-colonial emporium to the present as the
island state’s destiny.1 It goes without saying
that an affrmation of a “natural” propensity
for being global is advantageous to the national
narrative, and this advantage extends to its cul-
tural capital, that, as Lily Kong’s study suggests,
provides strategic edge for the aspiring global
city.2 For the aesthetic interpretation, however,
the global is not merely signifcant in a histori-
cal capacity. It also articulates the defnition of
the contemporaneity of art, for Singapore and
also the region.
In 1993, in conjunction with the frst
Asia Pacifc Triennial of Contemporary Art,
the Queensland Art Gallery published Tradi-
tion and Change: Contemporary Art of Asia and
the Pacifc. Within her editorial introduction,
Caroline Turner defned the contemporary as
“a product of tradition, historical cultural en-
counters, the confrontation with the West in
more modern times, and the recent economic,
technological and information changes which
have pushed the world towards a ‘global’ cul-
ture.”3 Charting this contemporary turn, the
essays following her overview highlighted the
Indonesian New Art Movement (Gerakan
Seni Rupa Baru) in the 1970s, neo-regionalist
tendencies from the early 1980s in Malaysia,
syncretic absorption concurrent with tumultu-
ous politics in Thailand through the 1960s and
1970s, and, for Singapore, an alterity in the late
1980s defned by genre-crossing, multidiscipli-
nary and multicultural approaches which were
Undoing the Global
signposted by the beginning of The Artists Vil-
lage and The Space exhibition of 1992.4 Within
these essays, the contemporary condition was
observed in critical refections on the topics
of postcoloniality, nation and identity, which
were addressed as response or counterpoint in a
“paradoxical” struggle to fnd footing between
the global and the regional, after and alongside
Internationalism, resulting in “an appropriate
starting point for new defnitions of national
and cultural identity.”5 Yet, in the case of Sin-
gapore, as T.K. Sabapathy was to remark, this
struggle was produced less in grand gestures
than in an accumulation of aesthetic negotia-
tions across multiple instances. According to
him, alterity as response and critique of cultur-
al, social and political circumstance, was, more
often than not, “circumspect” and implied,
rather than professed; not to mention, it was
also “entangled” with the very establishment it
was to resist.6
Now, Sabapathy’s observation of the alter-
ity of the late 1980s may be brought into rela-
tion with other defning moments of the con-
temporary. As noted by Peter Osborne, three
oft-cited markers of the contemporary in aes-
thetic interpretation are: post-war or post-1945
formalism; the post-conceptual turn of around
the 1960s; and neoliberal globalisation of capi-
tal or post-1989.7 Certainly one might chart
the effcacy of each juncture for a particular
historical discussion of aesthetic contempo-
raneity. But in the context of this exposition
on the global in relation to the contemporary,
as suggested by both Osborne’s third juncture
that coincides with Singapore’s narrative of the
contemporary, as well as the island state’s 700-
year historical narrative, it is proposed that the
entanglement which Sabapathy puts forward
may be expanded in an observation of contem-
poraneity of art in Singapore in relation to the
subject of capital—not only in its expression in
commodifcation, but also in tenet and founda-
tion. Further examining this entanglement of
the global with capital and the nation-state in
319
 a selection of artworks from the 1990s (either
on view in the Gallery’s inaugural exhibition or
else part of the National Collection), the essay’s
analysis from the vantage of the present ap-
praises the subject of the global as found within
these aesthetic expressions in three respects re-
lating to characterisations of the global, specif-
cally in movement or fow, of commensurabil-
ity, and as free or unconstrained: the interrup-
tion, the disjunction, and of limits.
Interrupt
Just as one imagines Gill’s fragments as having
been carried upon waves from one shore to an-
other, Tang Mun Kit’s emergence into the aes-
thetic realm was marked by a drifting, this time
of the artist, that would lead to a process of re-
covery. Tang’s sculptures are the restitution of
his publicly abandoned fnds, extending the life
of apparently exhausted objects in new form,
such as in his Bomb Sculpture series of 1991
(fgs. 23.3 and 23.4). To produce this series, two
chandelier medallions found cast aside were
split, reshaped and washed over with dye, acryl-
ic, enamel and varnish by Tang, to re-emerge
as allegories of redemption and overcoming in
the Nietzschean sense, both for the object and
for the artist. Common to Gill’s ocean-crossing
shards and the spoils of Tang’s wanderings is a
movement and fow that the global encapsu-
lates as its “logic.” As noted by Prasenjit Du-
ara, the “strategies for capital accumulation” are
“primarily deterritorialising”—a course that the
island nation has, without doubt, beneftted
substantially in the provisions of port facilities
and services.8 Such a gambit might be said to
have been performed in the production of these
artworks; though, interestingly, in a doubling
of deterritorialisation—appropriating materials
and objects already displaced. As Tang was to
elaborate in conversation with Sabapathy, the
found object is the “frst stimulus for the con-
cept, the idea, the thought process,” and thus
a “starting point” for the aesthetic mediation.9
320 June Yap
Whereas aesthetic mediation is visible
in Washed Up and Bomb Sculpture in the art-
ists’ mark and modifcation, in the case of M.
Faizal Fadil’s installation, Study of Three Ther-
mos Flasks (1991, fg. 23.5), it is the lack of such
intervention that is its most compelling feature.
Presented at the 2nd National Sculpture Exhibi-
tion at the National Museum Art Gallery, the
artwork assembled three grey metal fasks (ob-
tained from a street market on Sungei Road,
which was popular as a site for the exchange of
the used or unwanted), with evidence of past
utility in plain sight, in the assortment of dents
and one fask having even lost its lid. Variously
interpreted as conceptualist extensions or as
ready-mades, Faizal’s Study was to court a meas-
ure of controversy over “the relationship be-
tween artistic design, fabrication or craft,” and
was also to become ensnared by a charge of pla-
giarism levelled at the artwork when brought
into comparison with a painting of three fasks
from the year before produced by Khairul
Anwar, incidentally, a friend of Faizal’s.10 Para-
doxically, these two contentions may be said to
controvert each other: as the unaestheticised
object, Study could not be accused of imitation
in representation; and aestheticised, one might
interpret the work as Faizal’s substitution of
the material form for Khairul’s representational
one. In the absence of overt aesthetic interven-
tion, Study may have appeared taciturn, but it
disclosed most vividly the circulatory fows of
the global in moving from a utilitarian circuit
to a cultural one, particularly when it was to
become part of the National Collection.
Within the artworks of Gill, Tang and
Faizal, the fow and access that characterise
globalisation are registered in displacement
and trace. That is, in a presentation of the
suspension or interruption of movement and
fow (inasmuch as another fow, aesthetic cir-
culation, takes its place), with the aesthetic act
providing, in Duara’s sense, the opportunity for
reassessing the “rationalising process” of mo-
dernity and, thus, its critique.11
8 Prasenjit Duara, The Crisis of Global Modernity: Asian
Traditions and a Sustainable Future (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2015), 98.
9 Tang Da Wu as quoted in T.K. Sabapathy, “A Conversa-
tion: Tang Mun Kit and T.K. Sabapathy,” in Tang Mun
Kit: Project Mandala (Singapore: Sculpture Square
Limited, 2004), 32–3.
10 For an account of the controversy see Sabapathy,
“Contemporary Art in Singapore: An Introduction,”
87; Yvonne Low compares the installation and paint-
ing in “Making Space in Art History: 4 Objects of
Art,” in Intersecting Histories: Contemporary Turns in
Southeast Asian Art, ed. T.K. Sabapathy (Singapore:
Disjunction
Certainly, in itself, critique is not limited to
the contemporary. However, the proposition
of contemporaneity is that the subject of cri-
tique—globalisation and its effects—may be
said to be particular of its time. Duara’s critique
of ecological sustainability in the wake of glo-
balisation is a case in point, and his exposition,
The Crisis of Global Modernity, presents the
return to Asia’s past as a suggested corrective
to the global problem of “human overreach in
the conquest by man of nature.”12 Duara is not
alone in observing the limits of globalisation;
his perspective is shared by Dani Rodrik in a
sober reminder of the vulnerability of globali-
sation as phenomenon, citing globalisation’s
collapse in 1914 in his examination of the
“global paradox” of economics, or the truth of
its precariousness; as well as by Jørgen Ørstrøm
Møller who cautions the “dangerous stand” of
a globalisation “taken for granted.”13 Whilst
such assertions have become increasingly com-
monplace and pointed in the contemporary,
this refexive perspective had surfaced in art-
works in the 1990s, where, in relation to the
subject of sustainability, one recalls Tang Da
Wu’s Tiger’s Whip (1991, fg. 23.6). Comprising
performances at the former National Museum
Undoing the Global
School of Art, Design and Media, Nanyang Techno-
logical University, 2012), 89–90.
11 Duara, op cit., 1.
12 Ibid., 2.
13 Dani Rodrik, The Globalization Paradox: Democracy
and the Future of the World Economy (London, New
York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2011), 17; Jørgen
Ørstrøm Møller, Political Economy in a Globalized
World (Singapore: World Scientific Publishing,
2009), 2.
14 Duara, op cit., 104.
15 Sabapathy, “Contemporary Art in Singapore: An In-
troduction,” 85.
Art Gallery, and in public spaces in Chinatown
and Marina Square, Tiger’s Whip was intended
to draw attention to the Chinese custom of
employing tiger penises for aphrodisiac use as,
effectively, destroying the species.
From Tang’s perspective, as it was present-
ed in his artwork and performance, it would
appear that the cultural system and its realities
have become disjointed, and, drawing from
Duara’s exposition, this may be understood in
terms of the inherent duality of the “logic of
culture”—as both culture in its everyday thrust
in activity, interaction, and relationships; and
as Culture in its systematised and institutional-
ised sense of “a representation” that lends “dis-
tinctiveness and authenticity,” not to mention,
continuity.14 Commended then by Sabapathy
for its “risky” confrontation of fellow citizens
and, concomitantly, of his own received cul-
tural background and its values, Tang’s ten
white-linen-and-wire-mesh tigers, representing
their spirits having passed on, may be seen as
speaking not only to the issue of the depletion
of the species, but also to this duality and to the
compounding effect of Culture and cultural
practices under globalisation.15
A similar cleft, though on a personal level,
is presented in Amanda Heng’s Another Woman
(1996–1997, fg. 23.7). Produced as a means to
321
 16 Ushiroshoji Masahiro, “Looking for Channels of
Hope—‘Another Woman’ of 1999,” in Amanda Heng:
Speak to Me, Walk with Me (Singapore: Singapore Art
Museum, 2011), 75.
17 Jacques Lacan, “The Mirror Stage as Formative of
the I Function as Revealed in Psychoanalytic Experi-
ence,” (delivered on 17 July 1949, Sixteenth Interna-
reconnect with her mother, within the 14-im-
age photographic installation (which also in-
cluded sculptural forms made from outfts
worn by the two that were starched stiff ), the
artist and her mother are seen in a variety of
interactions: in an embrace, in tandem, along-
side, facing, touching, holding, and across a
dinner table. Another Woman has been read
as the bridging of a generational gap, fltered
through the condition of being female, with
Ushiroshoji Masahiro noting at the artwork’s
1999 presentation for the inaugural Fukuoka
Asian Art Triennale that, in representing the
“smallest unit” of community, Another Women
was critical in its restoration of hope for, what
seemed at that time, a bleak period.16 But be-
yond personal and affective reconnection, sig-
nifcantly, Another Woman presents another
reconciliation: the culture–Culture divide that
Duara speaks of.
This other reconciliation within Another
Woman is of Heng with her Cultural heritage
as idealised and mediated by her mother. With
migration and modernisation, the experiences
of Heng and her mother were worlds apart as
the artist was growing up in Singapore, not
least exacerbated by the linguistic divide that
separated them, with her mother speaking a
dialect in which Heng was not fuent. Yet, in
the performed interaction, as well as its form
of the image, no words are needed and, in-
stead, mother and daughter appear as if refec-
322 June Yap
tional Congress of Psychoanalysis, Zurich) in Écrits,
trans. Bruce Fink (New York: W.W. Norton & Company,
[2002], 2006), 76.
18 Lee Wen, “Journey of a Yellow Man No. 4: LIBIDO,” artist
statement for Sense Yellow exhibition, installation and
performance at Concrete House, Nontburi and Thama-
sat University, Bangkok, Thailand, 9–15 October 1993.
tions in a mirror. In Jacques Lacan’s descrip-
tion of the mirror stage of identifcation, the
refection acts as the “root-stock of secondary
identifcations” which simultaneously “fxes”
the image of the self.17 Read back into Another
Woman, through its representation of mirror-
ing, the culture–Culture divide would appear
to also be reconciled, the representation of this
culminating in the suturing of their separate
worlds within the iconic image with the great-
est contact and thus its resolution: when the
two embrace. This embrace was re-enacted in
2014 as the artwork, Twenty Years Later, that in
image is almost identical to the one from An-
other Woman, excepting natural changes of the
human form with the passage of time.
Whereas in Heng’s act the culture–Culture
divide is palpable in the physical distance and
distinctions between the artist and her mother
—even as they touched—in Lee Wen’s negotia-
tion of this divide, overt disparity would appear
reduced as the artist covered his own body with
yellow paint. Though, perhaps, as a result, it
was also a fssure and variance more intimately
felt. Beginning as a response to having been
frequently mistaken for a mainland Chinese
citizen during his time in London, and mani-
festing frst as a painting in 1990, titled, Yellow
Man, Where Are You Going?, Lee Wen’s explo-
ration of cultural identity in a global context
resulted a number of performances between
1992 and 2001. Appearing to satirise the ide-
19 Singapore Art 97, 29 August–2 September 1997, Sin-
gapore International Convention & Exhibition Centre
(Singapore: National Arts Council & National Herit-
age Board, 1997).
20 Lee Wen, “Journey of a Yellow Man No. 11: Multi-Cul-
turalism,” for SeptFest Art Conference “Multi-Cul-
turalism: In Practice and on Paper” (Singapore: The
alisation of Culture in Duara’s sense, the irony
of assuming superfcial enhancement in order
to confront this cultural conundrum was not
lost on the artist. As Lee Wen was to comment
self-deprecatingly in his performance in 1993,
succinctly capturing this disjunct: “You’re al-
ready yellow, why do you still paint yourself
yellow?!”18
Particularly historic amongst these per-
formances was Journey of a Yellow Man No. 11:
Multi-Culturalism (1997, fg. 23.8) which com-
prised a presentation that concluded with a
performance. Enacted during The Substation’s
SeptFest Art Conference, “Multi-culturalism:
In Practice and on Paper,” Journey of a Yellow
Man No. 11 was a critique of the aesthetic con-
servatism of the time, exemplifed by the na-
tional art exhibition, Singapore Art 97, with its
display of predominantly watercolour and Chi-
nese paintings, and calligraphic works. Howev-
er, it is noted that the exhibition’s 3D section—
its panel chaired by Brother Joseph McNally—
did include a mechanical moving-image instal-
lation, namely, Ming Wong’s Green Snake pro-
duced with Tim Thornton, which referenced
the operatic classic, Madame White Snake.19
But this was an exception. Reading the source
of the limits of the exhibition as symptomatic
of “an obsessive preoccupation with ethnicity,”
the artist presented his performative artwork as
addressing the reality of the global condition
in a self-conscious problematisation of identity
Undoing the Global
Substation, 1997); Lee Wen, Lee Wen: Lucid Dreams
in the Reverie of the Real (Singapore: Singapore Art
Museum, 2012), 114.
21 Lucy Davis, “Wings (Metamorphosis), Lee Wen: Vari-
ations on The Exquisite Body—Lee Weng Choy, Adele
Tan, Lucy Davis, June Yap & Ray Langenbach,” in Lee
Wen: Lucid Dreams in the Reverie of the Real, 35–6.
“with a loud, pronounced yellow.” Yet, as he
was to refexively demonstrate to humorous ef-
fect, this identity was also “tenuous” by sub-
merging his painted body into a tub of water,
and offering his audiences the bottled bathwa-
ter, yellow from having been used to sluice off
this “identity,” and announcing, “Now I am a
watercolourist too!”20
Yellow, not yellow enough, or too yel-
low—the aim of the performance would appear
to be the presentation of the cultural dilemma,
rather than its resolution; as Lucy Davis was to
comment, Lee Wen’s embodiment of the essen-
tialist defnition of his identity in this perfor-
mance was “only part successful,” its “promise
of change […] abandoned half way.”21 But,
perhaps, what is revealed in these refections on
the disjunctions of the global condition, not-
ing what it is, rather than what it is assumed or
prescribed to be—through Tang’s tiger caught
between continuity of Culture and its corpore-
al end, Heng’s desire for familial reconnection,
and Lee Wen’s unsettled embodiment—is that
the foundation of the global, nation, is itself
not untroubled.
Limits
The outlook of nation under the pressures of
global forces do not appear all too favourable;
as Møller describes, the nation state is “no
longer jeune premier,” “performing the dying
323
 22 Møller, op cit., 56, 66.
23 Duara, op cit., 102.
24 Rodrik, op. cit., 238–9.
25 Duara, op cit., 6, 22, 28.
26 T.K. Sabapathy, “Introduction” and “Trimurti: Thoughts
on Contexts,” in Trimurti and Ten Years After, ed. T.K.
Sabapathy (Singapore: Singapore Art Museum, 1998),
8–9, 31; Constance Sheares, “In Conversation with:
S. Chandrasekaran, Goh Ee Choo, Salleh Japar,” in
ibid., 54.
27 S. Chandrasekaran, Goh Ee Choo & Salleh Japar,
“Trimurti, 1988: Statements and Documentation,” in
ibid., 11.
28 Ahmad Mashadi, “‘Different Things’: Trimurti and
swan—sometimes with very little grace, but no
other role is available in the script of history.”22
The waning of nation may, however, not come
entirely as a surprise given its constitution, hav-
ing emerged in “the volatile tension between its
globality and its nationness”as a result of 19th-
century globalisation, which was, effectively, an
exercise of power and empire.23 It is for reason
of “managing” this inherent “tension” between
nation and global desires that Rodrik suggests
the necessity of choosing two of three options
in globalisation’s “trilemma”—hyperglobalisa-
tion, democracy and the nation.24 A similar
sacrifce is suggested by Duara to alleviate the
crisis of sustainability, though, in a “holism”
of authority as a “modern universalism” via
the “revisit [of ] the alternative traditions from
China and India,” to transcend nation in its
basis of a “tribal self-other distinction.”25 Such
a scenario by way of aesthetic response, engag-
ing too with the subject of transcendence in a
convergence of contrasting forces and aesthetic
approaches, may be said to have been the sub-
ject of the seminal exhibition, Trimurti, pre-
sented at the Goethe Institut in 1988 by artists
S. Chandrasekaran, Goh Ee Choo and Salleh
Japar.
324 June Yap
Multicultural Assertions,” in ibid., 32, 40–1.
29 Swaminathan as quoted in S. Chandrasekaran, “In
Conversation: S. Chandrasekaran with T.K. Sabapa-
thy,” in Living Stories, ed. T.K. Sabapathy (Singapore:
S. Chandrasekaran, 2012), 5.
30 Alfan Sa’at, “Empty Signifers Make the Most Noise
(Or, Refections on the Merlion’s Refection),” in MIKE:
Lim Tzay-Chuen Singapore: 51 la Biennale di Venezia
(Singapore: National Arts Council & Singapore Art
Museum, 2005), 13.
31 Duara, op cit., 67.
32 Lily Kong & Brenda S.A. Yeoh, The Politics of Land-
scapes in Singapore: Constructions of ‘Nation’ (New
York: Syracuse University Press, 2003), 153–4.
Trimurti was conceived around the time
of other initiatives such as The Artists Vil-
lage—considered by Chandrasekaran as based
on “Western-oriented concepts” relative to
Trimurti—as well as the sprawling and partici-
patory exhibition, More than 4, by Tang Mun
Kit, Chng Chin Kang, Lim Poh Teck and Baet
Yoke Kuan at the Botanic Gardens and the
former St Joseph’s Institution before it was re-
developed into the Singapore Art Museum.26
As such, Trimurti’s problematisation of infu-
ences and inheritances of culture and identity
as its aesthetic project had company. However,
Trimurti was also exceptional in its approach.
Assuming the Sanskrit word describing the
Hindu Godhead of Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva
re-interpreted as three distinct forces of Crea-
tion, Preservation and Destruction that, re-
gardless, were held in equilibrium, Trimurti
was envisaged as “a total happening” of paint-
ing, sculptures, installation and performance.27
Read as critically responding to historical ex-
periences of the nation in its making that had
necessitated the management of ethnic differ-
ences, Ahmad Mashadi was to retrospectively
remark that, Trimurti nevertheless “[replicated]
the very ideology of multiculturalism” in its
proposition of coexistence.28 Yet, if considered
for its transcendental approach, Trimurti might
be seen as less the presentation of a tempering
of contradictory forces which multiculturalism
may imply, than an emphasis on a dynamism
of interdependence and the problem of illu-
sory appearances—of differences—particularly
when seen in the context of Chandrasekaran’s
sculpture series.
Following Trimurti, Chandrasekaran spent
time in Madras learning and observing wood
carving and temple architecture; his experi-
ments culminating in his bronze sculptures,
Deva Series I–IV (1994, fg. 23.9). Contrary to its
title, the Deva Series approximated, rather than
produced, the deifed form, in a refection on
the ritual of darshan, where the form assumes
godhood. In this ceremonial act, the craftsman
fnishes the eyes of the form he is making in
a ritual that “opens” the Divine gaze. But this
moment is suspended in Deva Series, even as
all the trappings of body (though often lack-
ing the head), posture, accessory, pedestal and
celestial transport or vahana are reproduced.
Through Deva Series, Chandrasekaran was to
create a profane aesthetic that, nonetheless,
appeared divine—or as his peer Swaminathan
was to exclaim, “What is this, it looks like god,
but it is not god!”29 Thus, as with Trimurti,
the Deva Series may be seen as an attempt at
exposing the inner workings of representation,
performed through the use of familiar frame
and reference.
Whilst such an approach may seem to have
overtones of concession, recalling the entangle-
ment suggested by Sabapathy, this complicity
is, however, not incidental. Rather, as a col-
lusive strategy, it is key to the artwork’s thrust
as observed in Vincent Leow’s Lifestyles of the
Rich and Famous: The Three-Legged Toad, with
its subject, the nature of capital. Produced for
The Space exhibition at Hong Bee Warehouse
in 1992, central to Lifestyle was a suit and hat
that Leow fabricated from photocopied repro-
ductions of the American banknote. Donning
Undoing the Global
this suit, Leow performed as a personifcation
of the Chinese Chan Chu or prosperity charm,
the toad mascot of the aspiring everyman.
Hopping and leaping around while masticating
and spitting the dollar notes from his mouth,
Leow’s prosperous fgure, apparently subsisting
on and expelling wealth, was to call into ques-
tion the superstitions of both currency notes
and charm. Post-performance, Leow’s outft
has become a performance relic, Money Suit
(1992, fg. 23.10); its enshrinement paradoxi-
cally affrming the success of its critique and its
material appeal. Whereas Leow’s performance
took issue with capital in its symbol of curren-
cy, the subject of capital was brought into rela-
tion with nation, in the currency of a national
symbol, in Lim Tzay Chuen’s proposition for
the Venice Biennale of 2005.
Crafted as a bid to bring the 80-tonne
half-fsh, half-feline Merlion constructed in
1972—“its upper half […] metonym [of
founding myth] and its lower half metaphor
[of maritime history]”—from the Marina Bay
in Singapore to Venice, Italy, Lim’s proposal
pushed the subject of nation within the global
to its logical conclusion.30 That is, to assume
the truth of its currency as “circulatory global
resource,” which may be imported, exported
and traded upon, and in no less than an exhibi-
tion about nation as global entity, the Venice
Biennale.31 Furthermore, as a national com-
mission, MIKE (fg. 23.11) (as the Merlion was
nicknamed within Lim’s proposal) may be said
to have satisfed the nation’s central need to be
its own subject, putting to work the symbol of
the nation’s aspirations for international recog-
nition.32 However, unable to garner approvals
for MIKE to make the voyage, in place of the
nation signifed, Lim’s exhibition presented
other conventional elements of the tourist or
visitor’s experience: an “informational” room,
a bathroom as utilitarian rest-stop and site of
other watery needs, and a sign within the pavil-
ion’s courtyard marking the location where the
Merlion would have stood had it arrived as pro-
325
 posed. In absence it would appear that Lim’s
project failed, but the crux of the proposal may
be said to be in its “success” as documented in
a fctitious news article included in the exhibi-
tion catalogue. In the article, “Singapore Icon
Makes a Splash at Venice,” purportedly written
by Cindy/Carol Vogel—the frst name used in
the catalogue, the second in a poster provided
by the artist in 2015, though both signalling
the subject of the global centres of art in refer-
encing Carol Vogel, a veteran arts writer of The
New York Times—Lim is quoted via a “spokes-
person” as claiming that the proposal was about
the fctions of nation, and the opportunity to
add “more layers to the story.”33 It is without
doubt that Lim’s proposal has added just such
a layer. But the corollary of such an addition is
the question of what one might fnd if one were
to peel away these layers?
The fction of nation is the subject of
James C. Scott’s study of the peoples of the up-
land regions of Southeast Asia, circumscribed
as Zomia—a term he attributes to Willem van
Schendel, referring to the high-altitude areas
crossing Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand
and Burma, as well as the Yunnan, Guizhou,
Guangxi and Sichuan provinces of China.
Within Scott’s chronicle, these Zomia commu-
nities, which operate without the structure of
nation (or specifcally avoiding nation’s “enclo-
sure” of legible, taxable, assessable, confscat-
able and replaceable economic activity), may
be seen as the alternative to the nation-centric
regionalism of Southeast Asia. Marked by their
state-repelling strategies in settlement, agricul-
ture and social structure, Scott notes that the
eschewing of nation is also coded into their
cosmologies and oral traditions. Handed down
in “cautionary tales about hierarchy and state
formation” for the Akha in the southern Yun-
nan and adjacent areas in Laos, Burma and
Thailand, and in the rejection of history and
genealogy by the egalitarian Lisu of Northern
Thailand, nation and its representations has
little place for these communities. In fact, in
326 June Yap
the case of the Lisu, “Lisuness” as a category
exists only to outsiders.34 While Scott quali-
fes his study as a relational exposition between
lowland state and hill peoples, his work pre-
sents the truth of the ideological horizon of
the global and its constituent, nation. On the
one hand, the ways of the peoples of Zomia
may be considered an instance of heterodoxy or
alterity, but on the other hand, and particularly
from their perspective, such an outlook would
seem natural.
Undone
As marker of the contemporary, identifying the
global within aesthetic expression performs the
task of positioning the artwork and, in aggre-
gation, an aesthetic scene, as climacteric. Yet,
as observed from these artworks—the fragment
adrift, a rubble reconstituted, the reclaiming
of the unwanted, the presaging of the end of
culture in practice, the desire for a reconcilia-
tion that seems out of reach even as it is near,
the exploration of appearances, illusions and
constructed narratives—the artwork as con-
temporary response to the global condition ap-
pears less affrmative than chary, or, as earlier
noted, “circumspect.” Though it may also be
said that, in the appearance of hesitation, cau-
tion or, even, uncertainty, the artwork reveals
the global condition. After all, globalisation is
not just about geopolitics, it is also a discourse
of interests and a way of seeing. From the art-
ists’ perspective, it would appear that, as view,
it is rather limited.
Speaking on Simryn Gill’s practice on
the occasion of her exhibition at the 55th Ven-
ice Biennale for the Australian pavilion, Brian
Massumi, observing how Gill’s artworks refect
her lineage and history of traversal (descend-
ant of Sikh ex-patriots, born in Singapore
pre-Federation-of-Malaysia, and then living in
Australia and Malaysia), suggests that the act of
collecting—which may be read in the context
of this essay as a deterritorialisation and of the
33 Cindy Vogel, “Singapore Icon Makes a Splash at Venice
Biennale,” The News Times, 19 June 2005 in MIKE, 36.
34 James C. Scott, The Art of Not Being Governed: An An-
archist History of Upland Southeast Asia (Singapore:
NUS Press, 2010), xiv, 5, 176–8, 234–5, 244.
displaced, in aesthetic practice as well as Na-
tional Collection—is intrinsically related to
origins. Though, he also notes, “an origin is
by nature out of place,” and thus Gill’s assem-
bly of objects, forms and texts illustrates our
“ways of regaining our composure in the es-
sentially out-of-place” that is our reality. Faced
with the question of how and what to present
in her Venetian exhibition in 2013, Massumi
Undoing the Global
35 Brian Massumi, “Making to Place: In the Artist’s
Words, Refracted,” in Simryn Gill, Here Art Grows on
Trees, ed. Catherine de Zegher (Gent: MER. Paper
Kunsthalle, 2013), 188, 220.
described Gill’s answer as the attentive act of
“creative undoing,” allowing the space of the
pavilion to come into its own, revealing its true
nature.35 The same may be said of the aesthetic
response to the global condition as observed
in these artworks discussed: not in confronta-
tion, nor of variance, but of a loosening of lim-
its that, coincidentally, make these expressions
truly global.
327
 23.1

23.2

23.1 Conway Mordaunt Shipley

Chinese and Western Ships in Singapore
Harbour
1854
Watercolour on paper
17.4 x 26.2 cm
Collection of National Gallery Singapore

23.2 Simryn Gill

Washed Up
1993–1995
Glass
Dimensions variable
Collection of Singapore Art Museum

466 June Yap

0328-Charting Thoughts.indd 466 28/3/17 2:56 PM

 23.3 Tang Mun Kit
Bomb Sculpture #2
1991
Found plaster moulding, dye, acrylic,
23.3
enamel and varnish
84 x 45.5 x 6.5 cm
Gift of Ng Chee Sun
Collection of Singapore Art Museum

23.4 Tang Mun Kit

Bomb Sculpture #4
1991
Found plaster moulding, dye, acrylic,
enamel and varnish
79 x 43 x 6.5 cm
Gift of Ng Chee Sun
Collection of Singapore Art Museum

23.4

Undoing the Global 467

0328-Charting Thoughts.indd 467 28/3/17 2:56 PM

 23.5

23.6

468 June Yap

0328-Charting Thoughts.indd 468 28/3/17 2:56 PM

 23.7

23.5 M. Faizal Fadil

Study of Three Thermos Flasks
1991
Aluminium
35 x 13.5 x 10.5 cm (each)
Collection of Singapore Art Museum

23.6 Tang Da Wu & the participants

of A Sculpture Seminar
Tiger’s Whip
(also known as I Want My Penis Back)
1991
Mixed media
Dimensions variable
Collection of Singapore Art Museum

23.7 Amanda Heng

Another Woman
1996–1997
C-Print
75.4 x 100.9 cm
Collection of Singapore Art Museum

Undoing the Global 469

0328-Charting Thoughts.indd 469 28/3/17 2:56 PM

 23.8

470 June Yap

0328-Charting Thoughts.indd 470 28/3/17 2:56 PM

 23.8 Lee Wen
Journey of a Yellow Man No. 11:
Multi-Culturalism
1997
Digital giclee print
101.6 x 144.8 cm
Collection of National Gallery Singapore

23.9 S. Chandrasekaran
Deva Series I
1994
Bronze
25 x 15 x 20 cm
Collection of Singapore Art Museum

23.9

Undoing the Global 471

0328-Charting Thoughts.indd 471 28/3/17 2:56 PM

 23.10

23.10

472 June Yap

0328-Charting Thoughts.indd 472 28/3/17 2:56 PM

 23.11

Vincent Leow
23.10
Money Suit
1992
Paper collage and cotton
Dimensions variable
Collection of Singapore Art
Museum

23.11 Lim Tzay Chuen

MIKE
2005
Digital print
Dimensions variable
Artwork courtesy of the artist
Presentation by National
Gallery Singapore

Undoing the Global 473

0328-Charting Thoughts.indd 473 28/3/17 2:56 PM

 1 Dilip Parameshwar Gaonkar, “On Alternative Moder-
nities,” in Alternative Modernities (North Carolina:
Duke University Press, 2001), 1.
2 See John Clark, Modern Asian Art (Hawaii: University
of Hawaii Press, 1998); Apinan Poshyananda, et al.,
Contemporary Art in Asia: Traditions/Tensions, exh.
cat. (New York: Asia Society Galleries, 1996); Caro-
line Turner, Art and Social Change: Contemporary Art
in Asia and the Pacifc (Canberra: Pandanus Books,
2005).
3 See Nora A. Taylor, “The Southeast Asian Art Histo-
rian as Ethnographer?,” Third Text: Contemporaneity
and Art in Southeast Asia 25, no. 4 (2011): 475–88.
The journal dedicated a special issue which sought
to unlock this emerging feld.
4 Anthony Reid, History of South East Asia: Critical
Crossroads (West Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell, 2015).
5 Jennifer Lindsay, ed., Between Tongues: Transla-
tion and/of/in Performance in Asia (Singapore: NUS
Press, 2006).

(24)

Drafting History: Meditation on Location, Institutions and

Myth-Making in Visual Arts in Postcolonial Singapore

Venka Purushothaman

There is a new confdence to draft history into
the writing of art discourse in postcolonial
Singapore—a youthful city-state, with deep
fnancial pockets in a sea of tumultuous but
ancient cultures and economies. Culture drafts
(sketches) and drafts (enlists). Perhaps drafting
for a new generation of confdent museum go-
ers crisscrossing the axis of fnance and culture
in a prosperous city; or perhaps it is a new-
found opportunity for the creative economy
to generate discourse and enrich cultural value.
As newly minted museums and gallery systems
emerge—as signifers of both culture and com-
merce—one is left breathless at the rapid speed
of development in the visual arts sector.
At any given point in time, contemporary
art-making in Singapore resonates with the de-
velopment of the city state: imagined and engi-
neered in simulacra of identities borrowed and
emulated from established economies of 20th-
century Western society. It is no denying that
history of art in Singapore and Southeast Asia
(SEAsia) is a product of modernity “awakened
by contact; transported through commerce;
administered by empires, bearing colonial in-
scriptions; propelled by nationalism; and now
increasingly steered by global media, migra-
tion, and capital.”1 It is a key consideration
when seeking to tease out the place of art in
a fast globalising SEAsia. The narrative struc-
tures of art are inscribed both by heritage and
received knowledge of colonialism, and contin-
ue to imbibe an identitarian politics located in
both continental philosophy and modernity.2
Contemporary art in Singapore can be as-
cribed to a strange meeting of foreignness on a
deserted island seeking to present worldviews
that are located within highly developed and
classifed Western historical and aesthetical
systems. A foreignness determined by the en-

328 Charting Thoughts

thusiasm of colonisers to increase their wealth
by imbuing a wasteland into a trading pow-
erhouse in SEAsia, which brought about an
internationalism that remains critical to the suc-
cess of Singapore. The range of platforms, from
museums to heritage centres; from biennales to
museum-curated exhibitions; from commercial
galleries to art fairs; from academic centres to
not-for-proft sites; and from artist collectives
to art consultancies, enforce a critical perspec-
tive of internationalism in contemporary Sin-
gapore. A panoptical scan of Singapore’s fnely
regulated ecology of cultural systems reveals a
visual assault of imageries espousing the critical
place of art in the making of a global city: It
affords an opportunity to look deeply at the
production and circulation of meanings and
the making of culture. But the magic of cul-
tural transformation works wondrously fast
in Singapore while its neighbouring countries
continue to struggle to preserve cultural iden-
tities. This essay is a meditation on location,
institutions and myth-making, at how they
intersect and draft history into becoming a
conspirator in discourse-making.
Location
In recent times, the rush to historicise is emi-
nent. This is front-ended by the changing geo-
political scenario in SEAsia as fast developing
countries in the region, with rich and deep cul-
tural histories, carve out their territories in art.
I opine that much of 20th-century engagement
with SEAsia and its art had an ethnographic/
anthropological sense of discovery and contex-
tualisation rather than an inimitable point of
view about the world and its very own socius.3
Furthermore, the art market that constantly
seeks to add to its Asian portfolio of offerings,
as evidenced by auction house sales and the
proliferation of art galleries from Singapore to
Hong Kong representing SEAsian art, contin-
ues to reinforce this ethnographic/anthropo-
logical perspective.
Drafting History
The 21st century sees a new beginning as
these countries proposition a confdence that
directs their perspective on art. SEAsia, with an
approximate population of 625 million peo-
ple, a huge economic base and an extremely
large youth population across its ten countries,
remains a sleepy enterprise trapped within
geo-graphies and neocolonialist cultural for-
mulations when contrasted against the ener-
getic developments in East Asia (China, Japan
and South Korea). It is awakening. It is now a
fecund region of fast-emerging economies that
have deep and ancient histories, as well as a
long developed arts and culture scene that is
alive and vibrant. SEAsia is seeing a renaissance
in economic and cultural growth propelled
by industrialisation, globalisation and a rising
middle income.4 But the development of its
arts and culture continues to be plagued well
into the 21st century, with debates on preserva-
tion and promotion of traditional arts against
the growth and promotion of contemporary
arts that are demonstratively aligned with eco-
nomic progress and an emerging affuent and
mobile society.5 The twin agents of change,
globalisation and internationalisation, have
created opportunities that sustain and preserve
the production and circulation of traditional
arts and crafts. I defne globalisation as a man-
ner in which, through colonialism, foreign pol-
icy, commerce and popular culture, a veneer of
sameness emerges as nations become centrally
controlled by market economies. Aspiring na-
tions emulate and indulge in establishing glob-
al cities full of cultural vibrancy (e.g. art mar-
kets, biennales, etc.). Internationalism, on the
other hand, allows nations to articulate their
point of view. In doing so, they enable others
to understand, learn and engage with culturally
specifc endeavours. There are numerous exam-
ples of this, and both globalisation and interna-
tionalisation have been used as tools of cultural
policies in rising economies in Asia. Whilst
internationalisation has been useful (for exam-
ple, here I am reminded of the way Indonesian
329
 gamelan music found its way into the musical
compositions of many globally), globalisation,
on the other hand, has reduced Asian arts to
brands, embellishments and consumables (e.g.
Shaolin monks and their world performance
tour; Ai Weiwei and his brand of political acti-
vitism) where they play to highlight the fow of
cultures within cities and societies.
The opening of the National Gallery Sin-
gapore in 2015 marked a major infrastructural
investment in the visual arts. It seems to arrive
audaciously late at a waning global city party, as
cultural developments were evident as early as
the beginning of the millennium.6 Yet it started
with a provocation. Its 2015 opening exhibi-
tion on Singapore art is titled Siapa Nama
Kamu? (“What is your name?” in Bahasa Me-
layu). It is a question found embedded within
the 1959 social-realist painting by Chua Mia
Tee, National Language Class. While the work
foregrounds questions of identity in a new
country through the notion of learning the lan-
guage of place, it takes on mythic propositions
in 21st-century Singapore where issues of iden-
tity and future-proofng are critical for the lon-
gevity of this multicultural, multireligious and
multi-ethnic country and its purposiveness to
SEAsia. The guide accompanying the exhibition
states that “the most arresting fact about Singa-
pore is her location: set in a vast archipelago of
island neighbours, she raises questions of scale
and proportion whenever she is contemplated.
Seeming almost submerged in the immensity
of their surroundings, Singapore’s sea-locked
inhabitants are constantly compelled to look
outwards.”7 The exhibition, through its display
of works, prompts the visitor to contextualise
history through the lens of art.
Location for Singapore goes beyond a
mere structural relationship to geography: It
is manifestly embedded in history-making and
imagining a nation. For a city-state of approxi-
mately fve million compared to SEAsia’s scale,
history’s structured geography is crucial. I draw
on Arjun Appadurai’s seminal essay, “How
330 Venka Purushothaman
Histories Make Geographies: Circulation and
Context in Global Perspective,” in which he
asserts: “we need to recognise that histories pro-
duce geographies and not vice versa. We must
get away from the notion that there is some
kind of spatial landscape against which time
writes its story. Instead, it is historical agents,
institutions, actors, power that make the geo-
graphy.”8
The shaping of Singapore through po-
litical, economic and industrial instruments of
governmentality is well-documented. Singa-
pore is birthed by geopolitical history and this
is imagined through the city-state’s role in trade
and its lack of resources for self-sustainability.
As such, the arts play a critical function in the
shaping of culture: image-making through
artefacts and visual narratives; events and sys-
tems of community engagement; and buildings
as lifestyle destinations. These anchor and in-
tegrate themselves within the ecology and, at
appropriate times, signpost and perform the
nation and culture, respectively. They foster
a “circulation of forms” and “narrate the na-
tion” to the external world which crystallise
what a vibrant fnancial and business city can
do by linking art, business and enterprise.9 It
is systematically done through a bureaucracy of
beauty and aesthetics, to borrow from Dutta,
whereby instrumentalisation of making and
exhibiting predetermines the face of cultural
identity.10
The Singaporean environment is deeply
complex. While the nation is defned through
multicultural, multireligious and multi-ethnic
dimensions, art and its practice are largely de-
fned by contemporary aesthetics and investor–
collector interest. In actual fact, much of it is
considered in reference to aesthetics that are
imbibed through Western, though not exclu-
sively, discursive frameworks. Art historian
John Clark provides plausible rationale for the
reliance on Western discursive frameworks. He
says, “[i]n Southeast Asia, realistic European
oil painting was not connected with the strong
6 Late in that Singapore arts infrastructural devel-
opment to support the city-state’s global city aspi-
rations commenced in 1998 propelled by cultural
policies such as the Report of the Advisory Council of
Culture and the Arts (1998) and the Renaissance City
Plans in three parts (RCP I, 2000; RCP II, 2005, RCP
III, 2008). During this period, massive infrastructural
development, of the Esplanade–Theatres on the Bay,
Asian Civilisations Museum, Singapore Art Museum,
National Museum of Singapore and the Singapore
Tyler Print Institute framed the way national visual
identities were to be experienced.
7 Sara Siew, ed., Siapa Nama Kamu? Art in Singapore
since the 19 th Century: Selections from the Exhibition
(Singapore: National Gallery Singapore, 2015), 6.
pictorial discourse of China and Japan, each of
which had developed parallel art theoretical or
poetic criticism.”11 But any attempt at articu-
lating a collective aesthetic for SEAsia—prem-
ised on geography, language and history—is
challenging and, to say the least, a futile exer-
cise. The infuence of more than three centu-
ries of colonial presence could make allowance
for those who “surmise that Southeast Asian
artists are, in a sense, more thoroughly (clas-
sically) Westernised.”12 From the Philippines
to Singapore, one would fnd that the strong
language of Western realism is pervasive. But
with the regions’ transition to postcolonial-
ism, which ushered in a period of political
upheaval and industrialisation, this language
of realism underwent a phantasmatic trans-
formation to become an Asian stylistic form.
This provides an entry point to understand
public institutions deliberating over contem-
porary art practices. However, one could argue
that contemporary art practices resonate better
with the aspirations of a future-looking nation
than ideals of tradition and preservation. Yet,
as the Singaporean population ages, the ideals
of tradition and preservation seep into critical
Drafting History
8 Arjun Appadurai, “How Histories Make Geographies:
Circulation and Context in Global Perspective,”
Transcultural Studies 1 (2010): 4–13.
9 Ibid, 4; Homi K. Bhabha, ed., Nation and Narration
(London & New York: Routledge, 1990).
10 Arindam Dutta, The Bureaucracy of Beauty: Design in
the Age of its Global Reproducibility (New York: Rout-
ledge, 2006).
11 John Clark as quoted in David Chou-Shulin, “In-
troduction to the Aesthetics of Southeast Asia,” in
Asian Aesthetics, ed. Ken-ichi Sasaki (Singapore:
NUS Press, 2011), 248.
12 Ibid., 253.
13 Elizabeth Mansfeld, ed., Art History and its Institu-
tions: Foundations of a Discipline (New York: Rout-
ledge, 2002).
discourse as museums become emblems of the
past. While a young nation such as Singapore
and youthful SEAsia continue to historicise
from without, there is urgency to historicise, to
contextualise and to summarise from within so
as to articulate a cultural legacy, especially for
an aging population; at the same time concepts
of national identity need to be crystallised for
a youth population that is much more globally
connected yet locally distanced.
Art historians in Singapore have resisted
the act of historicising art in Singapore. This
is because the drafting of history requires the
historian to take a self-professed positioning
outside of the regime of the system—art, peo-
ple and exhibitions.13 In a rapidly developing
art environment in Singapore, the art historian
is also located within the regime of the system,
advising, co-curating and participating in in-
stitutional projects, dabbling in aesthetics and
advising and guiding artistic practice; the art
historian constantly arrives at a fork in the road:
museum or academia, disciplinary practice or
professional practice, and research or curation.
It is particularly useful to see art historians ne-
gotiate the dichotomy of at once being within
331
 14 Venka Purushothaman, “Cultural Policy, Creative
Economy and Arts Higher Education in Renais-
sance Singapore,” in Higher Education and Creative
Economy, eds. Roberta Comunian & Abigail Gilmore
(Abingdon: Routledge, 2016), 201–19.
15 Great exhibitions refer to blockbusters that show-
case the world and are popular with visitors. Major
museums, such as the Tate (United Kingdom) and
and without, and how it compromises or en-
hances their particular felds of study. The slip-
pages between their coterminous roles provide
for a rich interplay between history-making
and contemporary curation. The manner of
infuence and manifestation of their oversight
predetermine the outcome of a curatorial con-
cept before historicisation sets in.
This does not mean that art history or a
sustained engagement with it is not evident. Its
discourses are circulated in artist monographs,
exhibition catalogues, cultural policies, govern-
ment documents and cultural studies, revealing
often, though not always, a largely hagiograph-
ical approach to art. Commercial galleries,
auction houses, collectors and artists enlist art
writers and art historians to contextualise their
practices (perhaps to win a spot in the line-up
of history?) as art trade fairs organise deeply
thought-provoking seminars with brand-name
academics from the Western art world to edu-
cate the Asian consumer. A fascinating mélange
of activities cajole the marketplace of the im-
portance of art and investment.
Institutions
Art’s legacy is often left at the door of the mu-
seum. Here it is collected, polished, organised
and catalogued into a large canon. The museum
structure is relentlessly harsh and antithetical to
the artist’s studio where creativity fourishes in
a sacred, yet private, space. The solid walls of a
332 Venka Purushothaman
National Gallery of Victoria (Australia), often stage
defining exhibitions to enhance visitor engage-
ment. Such exhibitions could take the format of
presentation of masterpieces (e.g. National Gallery
Singapore’s presentation of works from the Centre
Pompidou, 2015) to surveys of individual artists such
as Andy Warhol and Ai Weiwei.
museum (unlike the walls of art galleries which
invite a transactional perspective) defne, cate-
gorise and guide the public through revelations
of the artists’ minds stripped bare of their deep
dark secrets. As a site of the curator’s acquisi-
tional pride, a museum is where art becomes
object; history becomes canon; and artists are
anointed. Access reigns as technology-infused
platforms, educational programmes and restau-
rants drive connectivity and fuel enthusiasm,
thereby increasing visitorship—the viewer is
transformed into a participant of the institu-
tion and destination. Here, there is no place for
the politics of aesthetic ideology; it is a place
of agreeability, of compromise, of spectacle:
a wunderkammer.
Singapore’s rich collection of public mu-
seums supported by a subsidiary commercial
and not-for-proft gallery system is a recent
evolution. This ecology emerged as part of the
grand plan for a cultural and creative centre in
the 1990s to make Singapore a vibrant global
city for the arts.14 Public museums, notably
the National Museum of Singapore, Singapore
Art Museum, Asian Civilisations Museum,
National Gallery Singapore are key cultural
destinations and must-sees in the cultural
and excursion/tourism sectors. As Singapore
museums and galleries signpost a 50-year-old
nation, they speak of a nation, a society, articu-
lating a sense of location, thereby contextualis-
ing its relationship to and within SEAsia.
Whilst located in SEAsia, Singapore does
not boast SEAsian art; it is an imagining of
colonialism, a mere trading port of Chinese
and Indian migrant communities. The Na-
tional Gallery Singapore revisits this. It is a
centripetal force drawing SEAsia into its legal
chambers-turned-galleries. It occupies Singa-
pore’s former Supreme Court and City Hall
buildings and as these are heritage buildings,
the National Gallery is required to maintain
a number of its chambers while other spaces,
including the prisoners holding areas, remain
intact. The gallery exhibits its own permanent
collection and co-presents SEAsian art. In pre-
senting the regional, the arbitration of art in
a former Supreme Court elevates it to a meta
order of myth-making. The gallery’s command-
ing presence, both in terms of architecture and
collection, allows it to fetishise art from SEAsia
and to steer scholars, art historians, curators
and art writers toward discourse-making. Bal-
ancing being a kunsthalle and a wunderkammer,
public museums such as the National Gallery,
in recent times, pack themselves with PhD-
clad curators and invest in discourse-making
through colloquia and publication; it begs the
question as to the type of historicising that will
emerge in an arts ecology that is bureacratised,
museifed, fnancialised and academicised.
Salleh Japar’s 1993 installation Mechanised
Learning is a critique of knowledge and in-
formation accumulation in an industrialising
Singapore that privileges acquisition over re-
fection, transaction over mediation and the
general over the particular. An installation of
books vice-clamped and mechanically propelled
to squeeze into the head of an individual, the
work comments on the over-emphasis of rote
learning in Singapore at the price of developing
the human mind. The work remains a sharp and
timeless reminder of the reality on the ground,
of cramming to acquire knowledge. The 21st-
century museum is in a similar conundrum as
the head that is mechanically cramming into a
process of study. But historically, institutions,
such as public museums, have functioned as
Drafting History
the mediatory site between art and the public,
and are the centralising force in the cultural and
creative ecology. They acquire, curate, exhibit,
educate as well as promote art and certain life-
styles, to create mythic and utopic experiences
rooted in the ideals of the nation. Their con-
dition is, deterministically, to play the role of
canon-maker and be the manifestation of state/
national power. It cannot be either/or hence
remaining a site to historicise art. The national
gets performed as art wears the building. Over
time it will wear down the buildings as the pat-
ina of familiarity envelopes the national. Over
time the engagement with that which is within
will be critical: the entry of the great exhibition
will be imminent.15
Myth-Making
Ho Tzu Nyen’s Utama—Every Name in History
is I (2003–2015), a series of video and portrait
paintings (later transcreated in 2005 into four
episodes of “docu-visuals” for television), appro-
priates the 14th-century mythic founder of an-
cient Singapura, Sang Nila Utama. Ho’s work is
the frst discursive platform to present a revised
imagining of the founding of Singapore, con-
ceptually locating it in SEAsia. In deconstruct-
ing the collective proposition of history and the
historiography that has accompanied Singapore
thus far, Ho judiciously brings myth and his-
tory together. The work boldly goes where po-
litical historians do not: that modern Singapore
is a myth created to be located into SEAsia. It
is structured on quantifables and binaries, and
its lack—of resources, of primal identities—is
its presence, existence and strength.
SEAsia itself, with its disparate, multilin-
gual cultures, beliefs and value systems, does not
lend itself well to quantifcation and binaries. It
is still understood through the gaze of foreign
policy and commerce even today, though the
transgressive nature of these is less effective than
that of colonialism. For example, in SEAsia, one
would fnd that the connection between land
333
 as “the known” and as “the unknown” is often
negotiated through the body as means to trans-
gress and transcend the grounded realities of the
spiritual, imaginary and virtual world.16 This
negotiation is done through the trope of myth,
which allows Asians their ontology of place,
geography and self to navigate contradictions
inherent in society.
I am interested in visiting myth-making,
which when contextualised in SEAsia has links
to the spheres of ritual, spiritual, darkness,
magic, illusion and play. In art, it manifestly
stands out in social realist art that serves to eth-
nographically document the everyday. Social
realism’s closest ally, I would deem, would be
magic realism: a device of creating a transcen-
dental quality to fctional imagining, conjur-
ing the funny and fearful, melodramatic and
real, and the productive and counterproductive
revealing that which is there yet unknown, un-
spoken. It is at once a play (lila), an illusory
moment (maya) and a discovery giving voice to
that which is not represented. I have argued in
my earlier writings that magic realism, which
was popularised by postcolonial novelists such
as Salman Rushdie, has been a useful device for
re-claiming cultural representation from colo-
nial representation worldwide.17 Its potency
is in its ability to unravel the weaves of social,
political and cultural structures and knowledge
that are often taken for granted and assumed
as appropriate. Postcolonial theorist Stephen
Slemon writes that “in the language of narra-
tion in a magic realist text, a battle between two
oppositional systems takes place, each working
toward the creation of a fctional world from
the other” and the “real social relations of post-
colonial cultures appear, through the media-
tion of the text’s language of narration, in the
post-colonial magic realist work.”18 But more
importantly the play with binary logic and the
triptych logic of physical–metaphysical–self is
constantly at hand but never quite the same.
Thereby magic realist texts “tend to display
a preoccupation with images of borders and
334 Venka Purushothaman
centres, and to work towards destabilizing their
fxity.”19 Magic realism in art conjures paradox-
es that allow for the conception of alternative
planes of existence. It propels a discursive oth-
erness through illusion, facilitating the emer-
gence of hybrid identities, fexible hierarchies
and plural exchanges in a transnational space
where power structures are deterritorialised. To
contextualise these as being of SEAsia is an op-
portunity for the museum sector to build upon.
Perhaps it is irrelevant to prove if Singa-
pore is of SEAsia and how institutions frame
this through art. Rather, it is the construction
of the mythic possibility, that is to prove the
centrality of Singapore for art in SEAsia, by
exhibiting, acquiring and historicising, that
such an enterprise can even be taken seriously.
Conclusion
This essay is concerned about the rapidity of
history-making. I am informed by Nietzsche’s
epic lament on history in Untimely Medita-
tion (1873) that humans do not defne history
but are defned by it. Charging particularly at
Europe for its “excessive concern for the
past” in the 19th century, he foregrounds that
modernity’s excess had led to the construct of
history being defned by symbols of power,
namely individuals, and less so by lived lives
or philosophical renderings.20 Museums can
be entrapped for monumentalising artists, cel-
ebrating the historic successes of the past and/
or simply moving away from it. But public
museums should be based on a site of inspira-
tion, not merely a site of remembrance. This
would be being true to the etymology of the
word “museum” which is of muses and a place
of inspiration. Hence, a balance between the
historicising of art and a forgetting of the insti-
tution is necessary to move forward.
I thank the editors and reviewers for their
valuable feedback on earlier drafts of this essay.
16 Barbara Watson Andaya, The Flaming Womb: Re-
positioning Women in Early Modern Southeast Asia 18
(Hawaii: University of Hawaii Press, 2006); Fred B.
Eisenman, Jr, Bali: Sekala and Niskala (Hong Kong:
Tuttle Press, 1990). 19
17 Venka Purushothaman, ed., The Art of Sukumar Bose: 20
Refections of South and Southeast Asia (Singapore:
Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2013).
Stephen Slemon, “Magic Realism as Post-Colonial
Discourse,” Canadian Literature 116 Spring (1988):
9–24.
Ibid, 11.
Mark Sinclair, “Nietzsche and the Problem of History,”
Richmond Journal of Philosophy 8, Winter (2004): 1–6.

Drafting History 335

 1 The scene of the two retired professors comes from
my essay, “A Country of Last Whales—Contemplat-
ing the Horizon of Global Art History; Or, Can We Ever
Really Understand How Big the World is?,” Third Text
25, no. 4 (2011): 447–57.
2 The fve editors commissioned for Comparative Con-
temporaries were: Sue Acret, Patrick D. Flores, Ho
Tzu Nyen, Ly Daravuth and Keiko Sei. For various rea-
sons, the project has stalled. Some portions of this
section are derived from my texts from the website;
see Comparative Contemporaries: A Web Anthology
Project, http://comparative.aaa.org.hk (accessed 28
March 2015).
3 My debts to Benjamin’s ideas on history should
be clear here. See, for instance, Walter Benjamin,
“Theses on the philosophy of history,” in Illumina-
tions, ed. Hannah Arendt, trans. Harry Zohn (Berlin:
Schocken Books, 1969), 253–64. Much as I would
like, I do not have the space here to engage with
someone like Peter Osborne and his analysis of the
genealogy of the concept of the contemporary in art.
The proverbial phrase “the past is a foreign country”
is from the opening sentence of L.P. Hartley’s novel,
The Go-Between (1953).
4 The reader might notice that my thinking on South-
east Asia excludes perspectives from the sea. At
this point, I can only acknowledge this blind spot,
but I am not yet prepared to properly address it.

(25)

Metonym and Metaphor, Islands and Continents:

Refections on Curating Contemporary Art from Southeast Asia

Lee Weng Choy

1 United States, and her dream harks back to

Could we return to a fctional scene? A few
years back, writing about “global art history,” I
evoked a hypothetical elderly couple. Both are
retired professors; the man studied literature
and the woman, flm. One day she had a dream
which recalled a moment from when they start-
ed dating. Back then, she was doing her PhD
at the university where he taught, and, once in
a while, she would go to his lectures. In her
dream, the man, in his mid-30s, is waving his
arms, pontifcating in front of a class of sopho-
mores. “The purpose, the true purpose of lit-
erature, of reading novels when you are young,
is this: so that they can provide certain images
of the world, of life, that will come back and
haunt you, if you are so lucky to grow old.”1
As I imagine them, the elderly couple still
live in a university town in the Northeastern
the late 1970s. The where and when of that
scene are very different from those of this essay.
Here, I am concerned with contemporary art
from Southeast Asia or, more specifcally, the
regional assumptions underlying its curation.
But perhaps the whys and hows are not unre-
lated. If not “the true purpose,” then is it not
at least one of art’s many functions to suggest
images, visual or conceptual, that will trouble
and delight us for years to come? Although
maybe the more pertinent comparison is this:
with the storyteller, the poet, they address the
world as something daunting—it is diffcult
to live in and make sense of; it is too big, too
complicated, too messy. I do not believe good
novelists ever presume to fully apprehend the
worlds they create; their reach always exceeds
their grasp, and their perspectives are admit-
tedly partial and personal. It is in this context

336 Charting Thoughts

that they struggle to fnd something to say. Is it
not the same with artists? And what about for
those who write about art?
2 it argued for perspectives articulated from the
Years ago, I initiated a web anthology project
called Comparative Contemporaries. The pro-
ject aimed to bring together art writing from
across Asia and began with fve editors, each of
whom selected what they believed are key texts
of writing from or for Southeast Asia.2 Over
time, the plan was for new editors and their
“proto-anthologies” to be added to the website.
Far from attempting to establish a canon of au-
thors, the intent was to generate a community
of researchers and readers engaged in discus-
sion. The project alluded to the discipline of
comparative literature, which considers not
only different national traditions but also dif-
ferent historical periods, often with the aim of
questioning the very concepts of “literature,”
“tradition,” “canon,” “nation” and “history.”
Likewise, Comparative Contemporaries called
for an investigation of the art of different so-
cieties and traditions, and, at the same time,
a questioning of those categories usually em-
ployed in constructing anthologies. In what
ways is art across Asian countries “contempo-
rary” with each other, or contemporary with art
from anywhere else on the planet? How does
one compare these varied practices and places?
While Comparative Contemporaries fo-
cused on art writing, it had implications for
curating the region. The project eschewed the
goal of a survey or mapping; instead, its aims
were deliberately provisional, refecting both its
exploratory attitude and the fact that “we” in
Asia (at the time the project was initiated) were
then at the early stages of forming discourses
about “our” contemporary art. Aristotle once
proclaimed the whole is greater than the sum
of its parts. Comparative Contemporaries argued
for the inverse: that it is better to understand
“Asia” not as some unifed entity, but as a loose
Metonym and Metaphor, Islands and Continents
and messy assembly of parts comprised of lat-
eral and contingent associations. Comparative
Contemporaries was not interested in the view
from above or any totalising theme. Rather,
ground, always in process, always in negotia-
tion.
The question of who are our contemporar-
ies is not just about geographical and temporal
adjacencies. Proximity is formed in the imagi-
nation. We construct constellations of contem-
poraries, not unlike how we order groups of
stars in the night sky. The celestial bodies that
comprise Orion are not actually next to each
other in the galaxy; only as a consequence of
our vantage point on earth can we draw them
into an outline of the mythic hunter. Another
thing about the contemporary: as an art critic,
I may write about recent work, but I am less in-
terested in the “new” than the “now.” Consider
these two approaches to teaching history: in
one, the lecturer prepares the students to go on
a trip to the past, as if it were a foreign country;
in the other, she guides the students through
the present, showing them signs of how history
is still everywhere. I am less interested in art-
works that are new for the sake of being new,
and prefer art that has a deeper sense of time.
Thinking about the contemporary involves a
detour into the historical fullness of our “now.”
The proper tense of history is not the “past”
but the “present.”3
By evoking the constellation, I have used
a spatial metaphor for time. It is good to be
vigilant about one’s use of metaphors. In my
own case, I wonder if I tend to privilege “space”
over “time,” seeing the latter through the lens
of the former. Some other spatial metaphors I
have enlisted here are the two geographic terms
“islands” and “continents.” So is it a continen-
tal or an island/archipelagic perspective that
shapes my own thinking of Southeast Asia? 4
Should we insist upon and prioritise the dis-
contiguity of disparate parts? Is the island the
right metonym for this part of the world? Or
337
 is there something that a continental Southeast
Asia implies—that there is indeed, throughout
the area, a collective desire for a larger, inter-
connected identity?
3 the region.6 A good example of interregional-
In January 2015, in advance of its opening
in November that year, National Gallery Sin-
gapore held its frst forum, “Is Singapore the
Place for Southeast Asia?”5 (I want to high-
light a sampling of forums, symposia and the
like organised by museums and other art in-
stitutions in Asia to acknowledge their role in
developing art discourses in this part of the
world; these gatherings are arguably more ac-
cessible to curators, artists and art audiences
than academic conferences in the region. My
itinerary includes events involving the Gallery;
the Institute of Technology, Bandung (Insti-
tut Teknologi Bandung); the Asia Art Archive
(AAA) in Hong Kong and the Asia Culture
Centre (ACC) in Gwangju. The AAA has been
a vital resource centre for practitioners as well as
scholars, and the ACC, much like the Gallery,
is a major new Asian museum complex that
aims to position itself also as a research centre.)
One of the speakers at the Gallery forum
was Nora Taylor, who teaches art history at the
School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Taylor
spoke about the evolution of Southeast Asian
art history, and the role that curating has played
in the writing of these histories. When she
started in the feld, Area Studies was the pre-
dominant frame for understanding the region,
and few in Europe and North America stud-
ied its modern art in art history departments.
Over 25 years later, the situation has naturally
changed but even so, it was not long ago when
research focused on individual countries and
considerations of the region as a whole were
rare. The discourse has shifted from criticis-
ing hegemonic notions of modernity and rec-
ognising “other modernities” to going beyond
East versus West dichotomies and establishing
338 Lee Weng Choy
interregional conversations. Taylor emphasised
how the curation of exhibitions and festivals,
as well as the networking among artists and
organisations have often provided the creative
conditions where research has fourished in
ity, art history and exhibition-making com-
ing together is Patrick D. Flores’s book Past
Peripheral: Curation in Southeast Asia, which the
author developed in parallel with his curatorial
contribution for the 2008 Gwangju Biennale
(helmed by artistic director Okwui Enwezor).
For Gwangju, Flores looked at the practices of
four seminal artist-curators: Raymundo Alba-
no from the Philippines, Redza Piyadasa from
Malaysia, Apinan Poshyananda from Thailand
and Jim Supangkat from Indonesia.7
At the forum, Taylor also made the provo-
cation that in Singapore, while the art museum
may have had power, it lacked intellectual au-
thority. When it launched in 1996, the Singa-
pore Art Museum (SAM) boasted the largest
collection of modern and contemporary art-
works from Southeast Asia in a Southeast Asian
museum, and was also the richest of the re-
gion’s national museums (the collection, which
has since grown, is now shared with National
Gallery Singapore). In my own review of the
inaugural exhibition Modernity and Beyond
(1996), I argued a similar point. Modernity was
a demonstration of SAM’s aspirations, from the
start, to become a leading museum for South-
east Asia. It had two components: Themes in
Southeast Asian Art focused on the region with
the exclusion of the host nation, and A Century
of Art in Singapore was hitherto the most am-
bitious survey of the country’s art. A notable
theme in Century was the journey; for exam-
ple, the 1952 feld trip to Bali by the pioneer
Nanyang-style artists. Artists may go overseas,
they may even study abroad, but as far as Cen-
tury was concerned, the most important part of
their itinerary is the return. To travel may be to
detour, but to return is to belong. The themes
in Century were assimilated into a national-
5 The full title of the Gallery forum included the sub-
title, “Art, Agencies, Agendas.” The speakers were:
Eugene Tan, Director of National Gallery Singa-
pore; Nora A. Taylor, Alsdorf Professor of South and
Southeast Asian Art History, School of the Art Insti-
tute of Chicago; Joselina Cruz, Director and Curator
for Museum of Contemporary Art and Design of De
La Salle-College of Saint Benilde, Manila; Farish
A. Noor, Associate Professor and Head of Doctoral
Programme, S. Rajaratnam School of International
Studies, Nanyang Technological University, Singa-
pore; and Pauline J. Yao, Curator, Visual Arts, M+,
Hong Kong.
6 See Nora A. Taylor, “Art without History? Southeast
Asian Artists and their Communities in the Face of
Geography,” Art Journal 70, no. 2, Summer (2011):
6–23. Some of the points made in her presentation
ist chronological development. Yet for many
contemporary artists in Singapore, their work
has been less about reacting or responding to
predecessors within a national tradition, than
engaging with larger regional or global cultural
currents. The genealogy of the contemporary
put forth by Century was unconvincing. (It
should be emphasised that SAM’s perspectives
and priorities have since changed.)8
As with the inauguration of SAM, Nation-
al Gallery Singapore launched with two major
shows, one on Southeast Asia and another on
Singapore, but these are permanent exhibitions,
and instead of cleaving the host country from
its regional context as in Modernity and Beyond,
these two overlap. While my purpose here is
not to review the newer shows in comparison
with the older ones, let me say this: I met with
curators at the Gallery before the opening as
they were preparing the Singapore exhibition,
and found a marked difference in their ap-
proach from the presumptions of chronology
and nationalism in SAM’s Century. From what
I gathered, their aim was for their show to be
assembled with multiple narrative points of
entry and departure; it was meant to be a test-
ing ground for ideas, rather than, by virtue of
Metonym and Metaphor, Islands and Continents
at the Gallery forum are elaborated in that essay.
7 Although I cannot recall if Taylor mentioned Flores
in her presentation at the Gallery forum, she would
certainly concur with me that his work is a good ex-
ample of the research she was referring to; Flores
is Professor of Art Studies at the Department of Art
Studies, University of the Philippines and was also
an Adjunct Curator at National Gallery Singapore.
See Patrick D. Flores, Past Peripheral: Curation in
Southeast Asia (Singapore: NUS Museum, 2008).
8 See Lee Weng Choy, “Jump Start Art,” ArtAsiaPacifc
3, no. 4 (1996): 29–30. Kwok Kian Chow was SAM’s
frst director; he was the principal curator of A Cen-
tury of Art in Singapore, as well as the author of the
exhibition monograph. The recent director of SAM,
Susie Lingham, stepped down in March 2016, and no
replacement was announced at the time of writing.
the museum’s name and status, the defnitive
story of the nation’s art. Of course, curatorial
intentions are no guarantee of what a hang f-
nally produces. And it will be interesting to see
how this “permanent” exhibition evolves over
time.
4
If I dwell on how the art museum in the is-
land city-state of Singapore has dealt with
nationalism, it is also because it can serve as
a test case. Moreover, expressions of Southeast
Asian regionalism have often been extensions
of nationalism writ large onto the region. Ap-
proaches to curating Southeast Asia range from
those that are self-refexive about the diffcult
and complicated process of making sense of
a certain area, to those that are emphatic in
packaging it as a singular identity—whether in
terms of the aforementioned regional national-
ism, or in order to market the area for global
consumption. Let me elaborate by referring to
the symposium, Sites of Construction: Exhibi-
tions and the Making of Recent Art History in
Asia, organised by the AAA in Hong Kong in
October 2013.
339
 9 Realism in Asian Art was jointly presented in 2010 by
National Gallery Singapore and National Museum of
Contemporary Art, Korea, and was curated by Joyce
Fan from Singapore and Kim In-hiye from South Ko-
rea. Strategies towards the Real: S. Sudjojono and
Contemporary Indonesian Art was presented in 2008
by NUS Museum and was curated by Wang Zineng.
10 Maria Lind, “The Curatorial,” in Selected Maria Lind
Writing, ed. Brian Kuan Wood (Berlin: Sternberg
Press, 2011), 57–66.
11 Kevin Chua, “Exhibiting Modern Asian Art in South-
east Asia,” Yishu: Journal of Contemporary Chinese
Art 13, no. 2, March/April (2014): 111. For the full list
Kevin Chua, who teaches art history at
Texas Tech University, spoke about the concept
of the “curatorial” in relation to two exhibi-
tions of modern art in Southeast Asia: Realism
in Asian Art (2010) and Strategies towards the
Real: S. Sudjojono and Contemporary Indone-
sian Art (2008).9 Chua cited Maria Lind, who
explains that the “curatorial” is, in her view,
an approach towards exhibition-making that
produces “not a survey but a situation,” and
“involves not just representing but presenting
and testing; it performs something here and
now instead of merely mapping something
from there and then.”10 For Chua, Strategies
was an example of the “curatorial” at work:
“Instead of an exhibition space that served as
a container for objects, one had the sense that
Strategies was structured like a loose network of
object-idea constellations, and that each con-
stellation was structured by a non-linear sense
of time.”11
While Realism was a rare occasion to view
a breadth of paintings from the region, as well
as to think about “an important artistic move-
ment in the light of social history,” Chua found
some curatorial decisions to be “puzzling,”
notably, the “exhibition cleaved form from
content.”12 Realism seemed to assume that
modernism—and realism as one of its formal
tropes—was imported from the West, even as
340 Lee Weng Choy
of speakers at the symposium, see “Symposium,”
Asian Art Archive, http://www.aaa.org.hk/sitesofcon-
struction (accessed 28 March 2015). Research on
exhibitions in Southeast Asia is a growing feld, and
those who have done important work include Mi-
chelle Antoinette, John Clark, Patrick D. Flores, Seng
Yu Jin, Simon Soon and Caroline Turner.
12 Ibid., 106–7.
13 Ibid., 107–8.
14 Ibid., 108.
15 Pamela N. Corey, “Metaphor as Method: Curating
Regionalism in Mainland Southeast Asia,” Yishu
72–84.
the exhibition argued that Asian artists made
realism their own. For Chua, downplaying the
relationship between form and content was a
way to address the anxiety of Asia being de-
rivative of the West by wishing it away, but it
kept coming back, like the repressed. Even as
“the exhibition tried not to be linear and fall
into traps of teleology and progress, it fell into
another one—that of a barely disguised essen-
tialism.”13 Realism pivoted on the question
of what is distinctively “Asian” about Asian
realism, yet it failed to give an answer. Chua
argued that, alternatively, the curators could
have more rigorously tested the relations be-
tween form and content: “How do we under-
stand the gap or distance in realism—between
artifce and truthfulness, calculation and con-
tingency—as it occurred in Asia?” Encounters
with European modernism took place in Asia
at different moments and speeds. So perhaps
rather than trying to identify what looks Asian,
Chua suggests that it might have been more
productive to ask when did “Asia” in Asian art
happen, “when did certain cultural confgura-
tions and formations come into being?”14
Also speaking at the AAA was Pamela Co-
rey, who teaches at the School of Oriental and
African Studies, University of London. She
analysed how metaphor has been used in curat-
ing mainland Southeast Asia to both draw and
16 The Mekong platform at the 6 th Asia Pacifc Trien-
nial was presented in 2009 by the Queensland Art
Gallery/Gallery of Modern Art (QAGOMA), and was
curated by Ho Chi Minh-based independent artist-
curator Richard Streitmatter-Tran and Russell Storer
(who has since left QAGOMA and is now with National
Gallery Singapore). Long March Project: Ho Chi Minh
Trail was presented in 2010, organised by the Long
March Project, Beijing.
17 Ambitious Alignments is funded by the Getty Foun-
dation and developed by The Power Institute at the
maintain geographic boundaries. Her aim was
to “expand on the question of how—and for
whom—a geographical metaphor endures.”15
Metaphors are effective as they can elide what
is messy and incoherent, and represent com-
plexity with a single compelling image. Corey
recounted some of the criticisms of The Mekong
platform at the 6th Asia Pacifc Triennial (2009)
and the Long March Project: Ho Chi Minh
Trail (2010).16 For instance, with the Ho Chi
Minh Trail project, it seemed as if the Chinese
Long March artists, in the name of network-
ing and cultural exchange, were on “a mission
of knowledge-gathering rather than sharing.”
Corey ended her presentation on a note of how
metaphor can indeed be provocative and pro-
ductive, when she spoke of the naming of the
Reyum Institute of Arts and Culture in Phnom
Penh: reyum translates as “cicada crying.”
5 region”; the problem is that “we lack a concep-
From a forum in Singapore and a symposium in
Hong Kong, let us now turn to a workshop in
Bandung, Indonesia. “Ambitious Alignments:
New Histories of Southeast Asian Art” is a re-
search programme that aims to bring together
early career scholars and foster their work on
the art histories of Southeast Asia from after
World War II to the 1990s.17 Its frst meet-
Metonym and Metaphor, Islands and Continents
University of Sydney in cooperation with National
Gallery Singapore and the Institute of Technology,
Bandung. See Ambitious Alignments: New Histories
of Southeast Asian Art, http://ambitiousalignments.
com (accessed 22 October 2015).
18 Ananda Rajah, “Southeast Asia: Comparatist Errors
and the Construction of a Region,” Southeast Asian
Journal of Social Science 27, no. 1 (1999): 41–53.
19 Ibid., 49.
20 Ibid., 44.
21 Ibid., 50.
ing was at the University of Sydney in March
2015, its second gathering was at the Institute
of Technology, Bandung in August, and the
third and fnal meeting was at National Gallery
Singapore in January 2016. During one of the
Bandung sessions, eminent Singapore art histo-
rian T.K. Sabapathy led a seminar titled “Yield-
ing a Region. Writing Art in Southeast Asia.”
For my purposes here, I am interested in how
Sabapathy created a subtext for his interven-
tions by handing out a set of readings. Among
them was “Southeast Asia: Comparatist Errors
and the Construction of a Region” by Ananda
Rajah.18 The “errors” of the title have to do
with how “comparative methods imply systems
of classifcation”—to think of Southeast Asia as
a region is necessarily to think of other regions
with which to compare it.19 But for Rajah,
writing in 1999, the problem is “not whether
we can or cannot identify Southeast Asia as a
tual framework, if not a theory, of regions as
human constructs.”20 We are misled if we focus
on the question of a Southeast Asian regional
identity in comparison with other identities.
Rather, we should be looking at interactions of
“inter-subjectivity over geographical space and
time,” and, as Rajah reminds us, such interac-
tions were not and are not self-contained—re-
gions are “interpenetrated systems.”21
341
 22 The journal was founded in 2000 by Chua Beng Huat
and Chen Kuan-Hsing. See “Inter-Asia Cultural Stud-
ies,” Taylor & Francis Online, http://www.tandfonline.
com/loi/riac20 (accessed 22 October 2015).
23 Gwangju’s Asia Culture Centre (ACC) is situated on a
historic site of the May 1980 Democratic Uprising. It
features fve institutions that operate interdepend-
ently of each other: ACC Culture Exchange, ACC Ar-
chive & Research, ACC Creation and ACC Theater. See
Asia Culture Centre, http://www.acc.go.kr/acc.go.kr/
en (accessed 22 October 2015).
The name of the journal Inter-Asia Cul-
tural Studies pivots precisely on this shift: the
founding editors, Singapore sociologist Chua
Beng Huat and Taiwan cultural studies scholar
Chen Kuan-Hsing, deliberately used the term
“inter-Asia” rather than “intra-Asian.”22 The
latter might require articulating what an Asian
regional identity might be, whereas “inter-Asia”
directs our attentions to the interactions of an
interpenetrated system. Which brings me to
our fnal stop on our tour of talking about art:
Gwangju, Korea, where the ACC held its “Vi-
sion Forum” in April 2015, the new centre’s frst
public event in advance of its opening in the
autumn that year.23 The forum included such
speakers as University of Sydney gender and
cultural studies scholar Meaghan Morris. Mor-
ris referred to both Inter-Asia founding editors
in her presentation “Liminality and Everyday
Life in Hong Kong.” She discussed Chen’s book
Asia as Method (2010), which takes its title from
a 1960 lecture by Japanese sinologist Takeuchi
Yoshimi; she also cited a separate essay by Chen
that examined the Takeuchi lecture.24 Morris’
presentation about Hong Kong involved think-
ing through Chen thinking through Takeuchi,
who, on his part, was thinking through Ameri-
can philosopher John Dewey, performing the
very intertextuality and interregionality at the
crux of Chen’s arguments.
Takeuchi’s “Asia as Method” takes up the
proposition that the West cannot be the model
342 Lee Weng Choy
24 Chen Kuan-Hsing, Asia as Method—Toward Deim-
perialization (Durham: Duke University Press, 2010).
See also Chen Kuan-Hsing, “Takeuchi Yoshimi’s 1960
‘Asia as Method’ lecture,” Inter-Asia Cultural Studies
13, no. 2 (2012): 317–24.
25 Chen, “Takeuchi Yoshimi’s 1960 ‘Asia as Method’ lec-
ture,” 322.
26 Patrick D. Flores et al., Contemporary Asian Art and
Exhibitions: Connectivities and World-Making, eds.
Michelle Antoinette & Caroline Turner (Canberra: Aus-
tralian National University Press, 2014); Pheng Cheah,
for the intellectual and cultural development of
Asia. The problem, for Takeuchi, is less the West
itself than the binary and hierarchical structure
of the idealisation. The solution is to seek mul-
tiple and lateral frames of references instead. He
argued that for Japan to advance, rather than
emulate a West deemed as superior it should
look to China, India and other Asian countries,
which should be viewed as equals, not inferiors.
Yet as Chen observes, 50 years later, “[e]ven until
today, comparative studies of China, India and
Japan (with reference to each other) still do not
really exist in the Chinese speaking world or in
Japan, not to mention mobilising other regions
in Asia or other parts of the third world.”25
Chen’s project is part of a larger interdisciplinary
discursive turn towards rethinking notions of
the world. Examples in art history include the
recent collection edited by Marie Antoinette and
Caroline Turner, Contemporary Asian Art and
Exhibitions: Connectivities and World-Making,
while in comparative literature, there is Pheng
Cheah’s new book, What is a World?: On Post-
Colonial Literature as World Literature.26
6
Today, it might seem the simplest thing for a
Southeast Asian curator to declare that “we”
should keep the focus within the region to
make sense of “our own” place in the wider
world. However, the increasing visibility of art
 What is a World?: On Post-Colonial Literature as World
Literature (Durham: Duke University Press, 2016).
27 See Lee Weng Choy, “On Being Curated,” in Terms
of Exhibiting (from A to Z), ed. Petra Reichensper-
ger (Berlin: Sternberg Press, 2013), 61–5. See also
Larissa Hjorth & Lee Weng Choy, “PlayStations: On
Being Curated and Other Geo-Ethnographies,” in
Art & Intimate Publics: Art in the Asia-Pacifc, eds.
Larissa Hjorth, Natalie King & Mami Kataoka (New
York: Routledge, 2014), 146–58.
28 The formulation comes from Kevin Chua, from a
from Asia in international exhibitions like bi-
ennales hardly evinces a widespread practice of
“Asia-as-Method.” Instead, what one fnds are
lapses into comparatist errors, essentialism, or
even orientalism. Chua mentioned the second
issue in his analysis of the Realism in Asian Art
exhibition. And while I did not use those terms
in discussing SAM’s A Century of Singapore Art,
nor did I speak about Corey’s considerations of
the Asia Pacifc Triennial and the Long March
Project with such language, it is arguable that
those problems do appear, in some combination
and to some degree. It would not be diffcult
to cite more exhibitions that critics have faulted
along these lines, but with this essay I want to
refect on broader conceptual concerns. As I see
it, structural problems underpin many asser-
tions of Asia for Asia or, the corollary, Southeast
Asia by Southeast Asia.
“Ethno-geography” is a neologism I have
employed a few times, for instance, in the es-
say, “On Being Curated.”27 There, I reiterated
that the geography of ethnicity has been privi-
leged in many biennales and international ex-
hibitions, so much so that one could describe a
predominant mode of knowledge produced by
those projects as “ethno-geographic.” Consider
a hypothetical biennale, where a Capetown-
born artist based in Mumbai is displayed next to
a Beijing-born artist based in Paris (I leave out
whether the artists are male, female, transgender,
black, Chinese, or mixed, but one could readily
Metonym and Metaphor, Islands and Continents
private conversation, circa 2015.
29 See, for instance, Lee Weng Choy, “Just What is it that
Makes the Term Global–Local So Widely Cited, Yet
So Annoying?,” in Over Here: International Perspec-
tives on Art and Culture, eds. Jean Fisher & Gerardo
Mosquera (New York: New Museum of Contemporary
Art; Cambridge: MIT Press, 2004), 12–25. Also see
C.J.W.-L. Wee and his discussion of Singapore vis-à-
vis the “Global West” in Wee, The Asian Modern: Cul-
ture, Capitalist Development, Singapore (Singapore:
NUS Press, 2007).
fll in those blanks). In these situations, a good
part of what it means “to be curated” is to be
surveyed and mapped. As if a juxtaposition or a
set of coordinates were suffcient to accomplish
a translation, enabling distinct perspectives to
speak to each other. The ethno-geographic im-
pulse, one could say, is symptomatic of curating
in the age of globalisation (surely a phrase that
has found its way into a title of an art essay or
two). It belies “covert meta positions that are
uncommitted rehearsals to totality,” because it
presumes the “global” without adequate refec-
tion.28 This graphing of art and artists is over-
determined by many underlying assumptions,
but central among them is a privileged “glob-
al” view from above, which wields a panoptic
power that renders distance and difference ab-
stract, and which contains and controls culture
into categories. At the same time, the distances
that curators and the curated travel, as well as
the distances between the places of art-making
and the spaces of exhibitions, are often elided
in biennales—and sometimes less as a deliberate
strategy than an unconscious refex. Globalisa-
tion’s appetite for consuming cultural difference
is not only a desire for the other, but a desire for
the other as readily available, a desire to com-
press the separations of distant places and cul-
tures, even as categories and sub-categories of
identity proliferate and get rearticulated.29
Sanjay Krishnan observes in his book,
Reading the Global, that globalisation is typi-
343
 30 See Sanjay Krishnan, Reading the Global: Troubling
Perspectives on Britain’s Empire in Asia (New York:
Columbia University Press, 2007), 1.
31 Ibid., 1, 165.
32 Ibid., 14.
33 For more on an archipelagic perspective on interrup-
tively embracing the global, see for instance, Patrick
cally discussed in terms of the increasing in-
tegration of international markets, fnancial
systems and economies, the intensifcation of
digital media dissemination, or the alarming
destruction of the environment; however, he
contends that it would be more productive to
analyse it as an “instituted perspective, not an
empirical process.”30 For Krishnan, “the term
‘global’ describes a way of bringing into view
the world as a single, unifed entity, articulated
in space and developing over (common) time”;
it is a constructed viewpoint, which invents
and legitimises itself, as it “defnes the terms in
which historical narrative and political agency
are shaped.”31 In the age of globalisation, what
a curator might do, rather than presume the
global, is follow Krishnan’s suggestion to “cul-
tivate critical refexes that actively interrupt
the global perspective. Such ‘resistance’ aims
to enrich the global through the repeated in-
terruption of its frame. […] Far from being a
rejection of the global, this approach must be
thought of as its interruptive embrace.”32
7 you consistently see a pattern across a continent,
To return to islands and continents: of the
world’s regions, Southeast Asia is perhaps the
most evenly divided in terms of archipelagic and
continental land areas. It thus offers two con-
trasting geographic tropes to think about region-
ality and how the regional relates to the global.
Discourses on regions can provide not so much
a “counter narrative” to the prevailing discourses
of the global, but a way of thinking through
344 Lee Weng Choy
D. Flores, “Polytropic Philippine: Intimating the World
in Pieces,” in Antoinette & Turner, op. cit., 47–65.
34 For more on Wittgenstein’s discussions on “fam-
ily resemblances” and “language games,” see Lud-
wig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, eds.
G.E.M. Anscombe & R. Rhees, trans. G.E.M. Ans-
combe (Oxford: Blackwell, 1953).
Krishnan’s “interruptive embrace.”33 Islands
have famously functioned as metaphors for iso-
lation as well as individuality but, of course, in
real life, they are also always part of some larger
ecosystem. Continents too, due to their breadth,
can impart a sense of an entirety unto itself. No-
tions of self-containment are something that can
apply to both, albeit coming from different di-
rections. If we could play with fgurative speech
here, let us characterise the pedestrian view from
the ground as an anecdotal one, and the airborne
view from above as thematic; let us further sup-
pose that an island perspective is akin to an an-
ecdotal one, while the continental’s is thematic.
When you are on an island, you need only walk
around to be reminded that you are indeed on
one—signs of the sea are never far from sight—
but for a proper sense of a continent, you have to
imagine looking from up high to appreciate its
extent. What obtains in one island may not ap-
ply to the next nearest one: an anecdote does not
offer enough evidence for a general tendency; on
the contrary, sometimes what it does is make a
claim for an exceptional specifcity. But when
then you may have a persuasive argument for a
theme.
Anecdote and theme can be important
devices for the writer. But care must be taken
when using an anecdote to make a point. A
highly selective example may be recruited mere-
ly to illustrate an already constructed argument.
And when an anecdotal outlook expands into
the role of a larger theme, this can produce
problems such as essentialism, like when a set
of observations on Southeast Asian art becomes
overgeneralised and a certain feature is then as-
serted as the defning characteristic of practices
in the region. An exhibition is comparable to
an essay in that individual artworks can func-
tion like anecdotes and a larger theme can be
assembled through a series of them. Although in
composing an essay or curating an exhibition,
each and every anecdote need not always add
up, there can be those examples which trouble
rather than reinforce the overarching theme. I
would hope that my own penchant for anec-
dotes is not for drawing conclusions; a more
productive use for them is to interrupt the ten-
dency to generalise through a close reading of
specifc cases—to prompt debate and discussion
by challenging assumptions, rather than prop-
ping up stock positions.
When I write about art I would hope to en-
gage the works, not to illustrate my arguments
but to test them against the art, and likewise test
the art against the arguments. Surely this is an
attitude that some curators share when it comes
to exhibition-making. Though to be honest, it
is an aspiration I cannot say I have always lived
up to, and I think my curator friends would ad-
mit the same. How many times have you seen
a show where the artworks were used mainly to
demonstrate the curatorial theme? In such cases,
the theme speaks at the art. But the job of the
critic and the curator is to speak not at but to art.
The preposition matters: the “to” invites a con-
versation, as opposed to the one-sided broadcast
the “at” insinuates. What makes a conversation
is not the talking; what is most important is the
listening. Crucially, this “speaking to” should
not assume that we all speak the same art world
language. Concepts like modernism, realism or
conceptualism become even more contentious
when applied across cultures and geographies.
When unpacking the assumptions of a common
language, one should think about commensu-
rability as well as translation. In the latter, you
can have as simple a situation as the one-way
translation of a Malay text into English. With
Metonym and Metaphor, Islands and Continents
the former you must have at least two, and typi-
cally many more units, that are measurable by
the same standard. If we apply this to islands
and continents, we can imagine an archipelago
where every island has its own vernacular and
the inhabitants of each have learnt to translate
their neighbours—one vernacular into another.
Compare this with a continent where there
are several provinces with their distinguishable
dialects but there is also a lingua franca. Here,
translation is from each provincial dialect into
the common language, not one dialect into an-
other. But does the establishment of a standard
across the continent really make all languages
and dialects commensurable?
There is a possible metonymic slippage
here that is problematic, where commensura-
bility stands in for totality, and becomes either
the global view from above or that single thread
that connects together all the anecdotes. There
are other ways to understand how separate sto-
ries relate thematically to each other. For exam-
ple, story A may be related to B, and B to C,
but the relationship between A and C could be
tenuous at best. What we have in this case is
a “family of resemblances” amongst A, B and
C, even if we do not have a single idea that
explains or contains them all. This is a crucial
point of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s philosophy of
language: we do not have, let alone need, de-
fnitive defnitions for our words in order for us
to use them and know what they mean.34 Lan-
guage is possible only because of its looseness;
we can understand each other because we can
also misunderstand each other. If an island/an-
ecdotal view might be too limiting because it is
too particular, then a thematic/continental per-
spective can offer a bigger picture that allows us
to create associations between different parts.
But this “bigger” does not mean complete, and
anecdote can be very helpful at pointing out
the elisions that an overall frame overlooks.
Thematic associativity may give us a glimpse
of a horizon of commensurability, however, it
does not deliver the global view.
345
 8 National Gallery Singapore’s permanent exhibi-
My thoughts here have the purpose, as it were,
of fnally putting the reader in front of a work
of art. Let me bring these refections to a close.
I want to culminate with a mention of a project
by Navin Rawanchaikul, not to illustrate or test
any arguments (contrary to what I just said),
but to invite the reader to look and listen to
this artwork, as well as to think further on one
theme in particular: transportation. My sugges-
tion is that “transportation” can offer an alter-
native approach to the surveying and mapping
of the ethno-geographic impulse. Curators go
far and wide to meet artists. It is not always
easy to translate these encounters into forms
of display, and sometimes exhibitions neglect
to engage their viewers with the journeys that
curators and the curated make. Yet, every so of-
ten, curators and artists present audiences with
the experience of how art traverses distance. We
are taken from the place of art to the space of
exhibition, and we become transported. Or as
Maria Lind would say: the curatorial gives us a
situation, not a survey; it does not map a “there
and then,” but performs a “here and now.”35
Navin was born in 1971 in Chiang Mai, a
child of the South Asian diaspora.36 His Hin-
du-Punjabi ancestors were from Gujranwala,
now part of Pakistan. His father descended
from the frst wave of Indian merchants who
settled in northern Thailand while his moth-
er, when she was about seven, migrated there
with her family because of Partition. In 1993,
Navin graduated from Chiang Mai Univer-
sity with a BFA and in 1994 founded Navin
Production Co. Ltd in his hometown. Much
of his multi-disciplinary work which features
sculpture, installation, performance, painting,
photography, flm, comics and other media is
produced through this company, which also
functions as a diverse collective of artists and
cultural workers.
Cities on the Move 6, Bangkok (1999, fg.
25.1) by Navin and Rirkrit Tiravanija is part of
346 Lee Weng Choy
tion of Southeast Asian art. The work is named
after the well-known touring exhibition co-cu-
rated by Hou Hanru and Hans-Ulrich Obrist.
Subtitled Contemporary Asian Art on the Turn of
the 21st Century, Cities on the Move frst opened
at the Secession in Vienna in 1997, and subse-
quent editions included shows at the Louisiana
Museum in Copenhagen, the Hayward Gallery
in London and multiple venues in Bangkok.37
But I wish the Gallery would display another
Navin piece from their collection, Fly with Me
to Another World (2008). It is this project that I
would like to touch upon.
Navin has often used vehicles in his art,
from taxis to tuk-tuks, bicycles and scooters.
These have served as mobile galleries, interven-
tions into everyday situations, or imagery for
his paintings. In 1999 he started the Fly with
Me to Another World project, which in Thai, Sud
Khob Faa, translates as “magnifcent horizon.”
Versions have been presented in Italy, France,
Belgium, Japan and elsewhere. The inspiration
for Fly with Me is the life and work of pioneer
Thai artist, Inson Wongsam, who was born in
1934 in Pasang, a small town in the northern
province of Lamphun. Inson’s is an archetypal
story of the artist as a young man trying to fnd
a way of being in the world, but also fnding his
way back home. In 1961, he received a schol-
arship after completing a course in printmak-
ing and sculpture at Silpakorn University in
Bangkok; however, instead of continuing with
school, he used it to explore Thailand for a year.
Inson, moreover, wanted to travel the world, es-
pecially to Italy, the native country of his men-
tor and professor Silpa Bhirasri (also known as
Corrado Feroci), the eponymous founder of the
frst art university in the country. Inson raised
funds through an auction of his works; he also
received in-kind sponsorships, notably an Ital-
ian Lambretta scooter. In May 1962, he left
Thailand with the scooter and, riding through
India, Pakistan, Iran, Turkey and Greece, fnally
arrived in Italy in August 1963. He continued
35 Lind, op. cit.
36 I am following the Thai custom of referring to individ-
uals by their given names rather than family names.
37 See “Cities on the Move,” Asia Art Archive, http://
www.aaa.org.hk/Collection/Details/3082 (accessed
14 May 2016); Hou Hanru & Hans Ulrich Obrist, “In-
troduction—Cities on the Move 1997,” Iniva–Institute
of International Visual Arts, http://www.iniva.org/
exhibitions_projects/1999/cities_on_the_move/cit
ies_on_the_move/introduction_cities_on_the_move
(accessed 14 May 2016).
38 See Thanom Chapakdee et al., Public Art In(ter)
to travel (albeit without the scooter as it had
broken down), frst across Europe, settling and
studying in Paris for a while, before moving on
to New York in 1966. In 1974, Inson returned
home to Lamphun and built a studio in the for-
est. He was honoured as a National Artist of
Thailand in 1999, and today still lives in Lam-
phun and works in his forest studio. Navin, af-
ter a few years of his own travelling art project,
brought Fly with Me back to Lamphun in 2004
for a year-long series of activities: these experi-
ments with alternative public spaces for art in-
volved collaborations with partners that ranged
from government offces to NGOs to temples,
from Thai and international artists, curators,
writers and activists to inter-generational mem-
bers of the local community. Navin concluded
the Lamphun project with the symposium,
“Public Art In(ter)vention” in 2005, which in
turn generated material for a book of the same
name that was published the following year.38
Navin has produced many works with the
name Fly with Me to Another World. What the
Gallery has in its collection are three items: two
sculptural pieces, each with a Lambretta scoot-
er: one, replete with travel bags, has a fbreglass
fgure of a young Inson riding it (fg. 25.2); the
other, painted all over with a montage of Inson’s
adventures, has Navin himself as the rider (fg.
25.3). And then there is the painting: Navin has
Metonym and Metaphor, Islands and Continents
vention: Fly with Me to Another World Project, ed.
Navin Rawanchaikul (Chiang Mai: Fly with Me to An-
other World Project, 2006). Within this book, see in
particular Thanom Chapakdee, “Public Art and Col-
laboration: The Role of Integration,” 25–6; Navin
Rawanchaikul & Thanavi Chotpradit, “Preface,” 11–7;
and Thanavi Chotpradit, “Anything is Art… But Can
Art Be Everything?,” 29–43. See also Navin’s Sala:
Navin Production’s International Art & Life Magazine,
ed. Navin Rawanchaikul (Chiang Mai: Navin Produc-
tion Co. Ltd. in collaboration with Galerie Enrico Na-
varra, 2008), 49.
done several such canvases in a style that is an
amalgam of the outdoor movie posters found
in India and Thailand. Here, the subject of the
supposed flm is the life of Inson Wongsam
(fg. 25.4). While Navin’s mimicry of the poster
form is adept, after having seen a few of these
paintings, I feel that what is at stake is not so
much the appropriation of popular culture, or
nostalgia. I would contend that Navin does not
survey Inson’s journeys; instead, he gives us a
situational view of them. How might I sup-
port this impression? On the cover of Public Art
In(ter)vention is an old photo of Inson and his
scooter in India in 1962, while on the back is
a picture of him in 2005 with a similar vehi-
cle in Lamphun (fg. 25.5). For me, his painting
shows how much Navin has inhabited, not lit-
erally but empathetically, the space and time of
these and other photographs like them, which
were likely the source material for the artwork.
Navin reveals to us the presentness of the past
conjoined with the distant as contemporane-
ous—the “here and then” and the “there and
now.”
Part of this essay was frst published as
“Anecdote and Theme: Refections on Curating
Contemporary Art from Southeast Asia,” Art
Monthly Australia no. 279, May (2015): 32–41.
347
 25.1 Navin Rawanchaikul and
Rirkrit Tiravanija
Cities on the Move 6, Bangkok
1999
Acrylic on canvas
170 x 120 cm
Collection of National Gallery
Singapore
© Navin Rawanchaikul and
Rirkrit Tiravanija

25.1

474 Lee Weng Choy

0328-Charting Thoughts.indd 474 28/3/17 2:56 PM

 25.2

25.3

25.2 Navin Rawanchaikul

Fly with Me to Another World
2000, edition 5
Painted fbreglass scooter, bag and found objects
215 x 78 x 176 cm
Collection of National Gallery Singapore

25.3 Navin Rawanchaikul

Fly with Me to Another World (to be continued…)
2008, edition 3
Painted fbreglass, scooter and found objects
210 x 84 x 170 cm
Collection of National Gallery Singapore

Metonym and Metaphor, Islands and Continents 475

0328-Charting Thoughts.indd 475 28/3/17 2:56 PM

 25.4

25.5

25.4 Navin Rawanchaikul

Fly with Me to Another World
2008
Acrylic on canvas
120 x 229 cm
Collection of National Gallery Singapore

25.5 Front and back covers of Thanom

Chapakdee et al., Public Art In(ter)vention:
Fly with Me to Another World Project,
ed. Navin Rawanchaikul (Chiangmai: Fly
with Me to Another World Project, 2006).

476 Lee Weng Choy

0328-Charting Thoughts.indd 476 28/3/17 2:57 PM

 Notes on the Contributors
Kevin Chua
is Associate Professor of Art History at Texas
Tech University, USA, where he writes and
teaches on 18th- to 21st-century European and
Southeast Asian art. He obtained his PhD
in the History of Art from the University of
California at Berkeley. Dr Chua has published
widely on the art and visual culture of Singa-
pore, from Nanyang painting of the 1950s, to
essays on Simryn Gill, Donna Ong, Ho Tzu
Nyen, Charles Lim, Jeremy Sharma and the
Migrant Ecologies Project. His essays can be
found in Representations, Art Journal, Artforum,
Third Text, Yishu and FOCAS.
John Clark
is Professor Emeritus in Art History at the Uni-
versity of Sydney, the author of fve books and
editor or co-editor of another fve. His book
Asian Modernities: Chinese and Thai Art of the
1980s and 1990s (2010) is a pioneering work
in cross-disciplinary inter-Asian comparison of
modern art and art worlds. After his book Mo-
dernities of Chinese Art (2010), his most recent
book is Modernities of Japanese Art (2013). He
has also completed the draft of a two-volume
study, The Asian Modern, 1850s–1990s which
includes detailed comparative studies of more
than 25 Asian artists between the 1850s and
1990s.
Patrick D. Flores
is a Professor at the Department of Art Studies
at the University of the Philippines and Curator
of the Jorge B. Vargas Museum and Filipiniana
Research Center in Manila. He was the curator
of the Philippine Pavilion at the Venice Bien-
nale in 2015 and was previously an Adjunct
Curator at the National Gallery Singapore. He
was a Visiting Fellow at the National Gallery of
Art in Washington, D.C. in 1999 and an Asian
Public Intellectuals Fellow in 2004. Among
his publications are Painting History: Revisions
Notes on the Contributors
in Philippine Colonial Art (1999); Remarkable
Collection: Art, History, and the National Mu-
seum (2006); and Past Peripheral: Curation in
Southeast Asia (2008). He was a grantee of the
Asian Cultural Council (2010) and a member
of the Guggenheim Museum’s Asian Art Coun-
cil (2011). He convened in 2013 on behalf of
the Clark Institute and the Department of Art
Studies of the University of the Philippines, the
conference “Histories of Art History in South-
east Asia” in Manila. He was a Guest Scholar
of the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles
in 2014.
Yin Ker
researches on “art” and “art history” as vari-
able constructs, the intersections of ancient
and modern methods of knowledge- and im-
age-making, and ways of telling (hi)stories of
art. In parallel with theoretical research within
and beyond the discipline of art history, she
explores image-making through drawing and
painting. Previous projects as independent re-
searcher, writer, curator and translator include
Video, an Art, a History 1965–2010, A Selection
from the Centre Pompidou and Singapore Art
Museum Collections (2010) and plAy: Art From
Myanmar Today (2010). Her long-term project
is aungsoeillustrations.org, an open-access on-
line database of Bagyi Aung Soe’s illustrations
and writings. She currently teaches art history
at the Nanyang Technological University.
Kwa Chong Guan
is the former Director of the old National Mu-
seum in Singapore which he led through a stra-
tegic planning process to transform it into three
museums under the National Heritage Board in
1994. He continues to engage with the Herit-
age Board and its museums in various advisory
capacities. He was previously involved in estab-
lishing the Singapore Philatelic Museum—of
which he was the founding Chairman—and
the planning of the Singapore Discovery Centre
and the Army Museum. He was also assigned
479
 to reorganise the Oral History Department,
and more recently, as Chairman of the National
Archives Advisory Committee, he advised on
the integration of the Archives into the Nation-
al Library. He is currently on the staff of the
S Rajaratnam School of International Studies
at the Nanyang Technological University and
an adjunct staff of the History Department at
the National University of Singapore. Among
his publications is Singapore, A 700-Year His-
tory: From Early Emporium to World City, co-
authored with Derek Heng and Tan Tai Yong.
Lee Weng Choy
is president of the Singapore Section of the In-
ternational Association of Art Critics (AICA
SG). His writing, which discusses contempo-
rary art and culture, Southeast Asia and Sin-
gapore, has appeared in publications such
as Modern and Contemporary Southeast Asian
Art, Over Here: International Perspectives on
Art and Culture and Theory in Contemporary
Art since 1985. He is currently working on a
collection of essays on artists, to be titled, The
Address of Art and the Scale of Other Places. He
was Artistic Co-Director of The Substation arts
centre, and has taught at the School of the Art
Institute of Chicago, the Chinese University of
Hong Kong and the Sotheby’s Institute of Art,
Singapore.
Low Sze Wee
is presently Director of Curatorial, Collections
and Education at National Gallery Singapore.
Initially trained as a lawyer, Low later gradu-
ated with a Masters in History of Art from the
School of Oriental and African Studies, Uni-
versity of London. In 2007, he was awarded
the National Heritage Board (NHB) Research
Award for his contribution to scholarship on
Singapore and Southeast Asian art history.
Three of his exhibitions have garnered NHB
Exhibition Awards: Convergences—Chen Wen
Hsi Centennial Exhibition (2007), The Big Pic-
ture Show (2008, co-curated with Ong Zhen
480 Charting Thoughts
Min) and Xu Beihong in Nanyang (2009, co-
curated with Chow Yian Ping). In 2013, Low
was the frst Singaporean to be named a fellow
of the prestigious Clore Leadership Programme.
Yvonne Low
specialises in the modern and contemporary
arts of Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia. Her
research interests include the cultural politics
of art development, women artists and feminist
art history, and the colonial histories of Brit-
ish Malaya and the Dutch East Indies. Low has
published in books, peer-reviewed journals and
exhibition catalogues, and is on the editorial
committee of Southeast of Now: Directions in
Contemporary and Modern Art in Asia and Am-
bitious Alignments: New Histories of Southeast
Asian Art. She holds a PhD from the University
of Sydney, and is currently a Lecturer in Asian
Art at the University’s Power Institute and at
the National Art School.
Gael Newton
is an independent curatorial consultant and
researcher across several felds of interest, in-
cluding photography, arts and the humanities.
She researches Australian and Southeast Asian
photography; and advises clients and galleries,
archives and libraries on philanthropic initia-
tives and on the placement of artists and pho-
tographers’ collections and archives. She was a
Senior Curator of Australian and International
Photography at the National Gallery of Aus-
tralia (NGA) in Canberra.
Susie Protschky
is Senior Lecturer in Modern History at
Monash University. She researches colonial-
ism, cultural history and visual culture, with
a special focus on photography. The Dutch
empire in the modern era is her feld, partic-
ularly the Netherlands East Indies (colonial
Indonesia). She is the author of Images of the
Tropics: Environment and Visual Culture in Co-
lonial Indonesia (KITLV Press/Brill 2011), and
Photographic Subjects: Monarchy, Photography
and the Dutch East Indies (contracted to Man-
chester University Press). Her current project
examines the human impact of natural and
regime-made disasters in a contiguous feld,
through photographic representations of pain
and suffering.
Venka Purushothaman
is an art writer, academic and arts manager. Be-
sides being deeply involved in the development
of the arts and education of artists, he has re-
searched and authored numerous art essays and
monographs on artists. His 2013 book, The
Art of Sukumar Bose: Refections on South and
Southeast Asia, won the 2015 International
Convention of Asian Scholars’ Best Art Book
Prize. Purushothaman is a member of the In-
ternational Association of Art Critics, France
(AICA), and a Fellow of the Royal Society of
the Arts, UK (RSA). He is currently Provost at
LASALLE College of the Arts, Singapore.
Somporn Rodboon
is an internationally respected art historian,
academic, author and curator. In 1995, she co-
curated Asian Modernism: Diverse Developments
in Indonesia, the Philippines, and Thailand. She
was also one of the curators for the frst and
second Fukuoka Asian Art Triennale as well as
the Asia Pacifc Triennial of Contemporary Art
and a number of signifcant exhibitions that
brought Thai artists to the international arena.
She presently lectures at different universities
in Thailand, including Chiang Mai Univer-
sity, Silpakorn University and Mahasarakham
University.
T.K. Sabapathy
An art historian, T.K. Sabapathy has published
extensively on modern art and artists in South-
east Asia, and especially from Singapore and
Malaysia. His articles, books, conference pa-
pers and exhibition catalogue texts are invalu-
able for the study of art in Southeast Asia and
Notes on the Contributors
are esteemed in the scholarship in the feld of
art history in the region. He is currently an Ad-
junct Associate Professor in the Department of
Architecture, National University of Singapore,
where he teaches the history of art.
Marie-Odette Scalliet
is a French art historian and Indonesianist
based in the Netherlands. Ever since she took
her doctoral degree on the landscape painter
and architect Antoine Payen, Raden Saleh’s frst
teacher in Java, Scalliet has become a leading
authority on 19th-century European artists ac-
tive in the Dutch East Indies and Raden Saleh.
She has published several extensive studies on
the painter since 1999. She was previously a
lecturer at Leiden University and a curator of
South and Southeast Asian Manuscripts and
Rare Books at its Library. Although she has
retired, she continues to develop her career in
academia as an independent researcher.
Seng Yu Jin
is Senior Curator at National Gallery Singa-
pore. His curatorial research extends to rela-
tionality, inter-discursivity, and exhibitions as
productive felds of enquiry. Exhibitions he has
curated and co-curated include From Words to
Pictures: Art During the Emergency (2006), The
Artists Village: 20 Years On (2008), FX Harsono:
Testimonies (2009) and S. Sudjojono: Lives of
Pictures (2014). A PhD candidate at the Asia
Institute, University of Melbourne, he cur-
rently makes comparative studies of art histo-
ries in Southeast Asia, focusing on the region’s
exhibition histories and collectivism. He was
previously a lecturer at LASALLE College of
the Arts, Singapore.
Aminudin TH Siregar
is presently a PhD candidate at Leiden Univer-
sity. A curator and critic, his frst book Blup
Art! was published in 1999; subsequent books
include New Art: After Non-Representational
Painting in Bandung (2004) and Sang Ahli
481
 Gambar: Sketsa, Gambar dan Pemikiran S. Sud-
jojono (The drawing specialist: Sketches, draw-
ings and thoughts of S. Sudjojono, 2010). He
edited Modern Oblique: Mysticism, Shamanism
in Indonesian Contemporary Art (2005) and
Indonesian Modern Art: An Essay Compilation
(2006). In 2008, he researched the subject of
Indonesian Art in Japanese Occupation: Keimin
Bunka Shidosho at the Fukuoka Asian Art Mu-
seum, Japan. He has lectured on Indonesian
art history, art criticism, art and the market;
and supervised undergraduate and postgradu-
ate students at the Faculty of Art and Design,
Institut Teknologi Bandung (ITB), Indonesia.
Simon Soon
focuses on 20th-century art in Southeast Asia
in his research which spans comparative mo-
dernities and art historiography. His PhD
thesis “What is Left of Art?” investigates the
intersection between left-leaning political
art movements and modern urban forma-
tions in Indonesia, Singapore, Thailand and
the Philippines from the 1950s to the 1970s.
It was completed at the University of Sydney.
He is a co-editor of the Narratives of Malay-
sian Art, Vol. 4, and is also a member of the
editorial collective of Southeast of Now: Direc-
tions in Contemporary and Modern Art in Asia,
a new peer-reviewed journal. He is currently
Senior Lecturer at the University of Malaya.
Adele Tan
is Curator at National Gallery Singapore.
Her research focuses on contemporary art in
Southeast Asia and China, with a special inter-
est in performative practices, photography and
new media. She was formerly Assistant Editor
at the British art journal Third Text and her
articles have appeared in numerous scholarly
publications and journals such as PAJ, Broad-
sheet, Yishu, Eyeline and Third Text, among
others. She received her PhD in art history
from The Courtauld Institute of Art, Univer-
sity of London.
482 Charting Thoughts
Nora A. Taylor
is Alsdorf Professor of South and Southeast
Asian Art at the School of the Art Institute of
Chicago (SAIC). She is the author of Paint-
ers in Hanoi: An Ethnography of Vietnamese
Art (2004, 2009) and co-editor, with Boreth Ly,
of Modern and Contemporary Southeast Asian
Art: An Anthology (2012) and editor of Studies
in Southeast Asian Art: Essays in Honor of Stanley
J. O’Connor; she is the author of numerous arti-
cles on modern and contemporary Vietnamese
art. Her exhibition projects include Changing
Identity: Recent Work by Women Artists from
Vietnam for the International Arts and Artists
Organization (2007–2009) and, with Heather
Lineberry, Breathing Is Free: 12,756.3; New
Work by Jun Nguyen-Hatsushiba, for the Ari-
zona State University (ASU) Art Museum and
Betty Rymer Gallery at the SAIC (2009).
Ashley Thompson
is a specialist in Southeast Asian Hindu-Buddhist
arts, with particular expertise on Cambodian art
and literature. She is the co-founder and editor
(alongside Ang Choulean) of Udaya, a trilingual
journal of Khmer Studies. Her publications in-
clude Calling the Souls: A Cambodian Ritual Text
(2005), Angkor: A Manual for the Past, Present
and Future (2006, with Eric Prenowitz and Ang
Choulean) and Engendering the Buddhist State:
Territory, Sovereignty and Sexual Difference in the
Inventions of Angkor (2016). Thompson holds
the Hiram W. Woodward Chair in Southeast
Asian Art at the School of Oriental and African
Studies, University of London, and is Senior
Lecturer at the School of Fine Art, History of
Art and Cultural Studies, University of Leeds.
Ushiroshoji Masahiro
is a Professor of art history at the Faculty of Hu-
manities, Kyushu University, a position he has
held since 2002. Prior to this, he was Curator at
the Fukuoka Art Museum and Chief-Curator
at the Fukuoka Asian Art Museum, heading
many exhibition projects by these institutions,
such as The Asian Art Shows (1980–1994),
New Art from Southeast Asia (1992), The Birth
of Modern Art in Southeast Asia—Artists and
Movements (1997) and The 1st Fukuoka Asian
Art Triennale (1999). Other curatorial projects
by him include Cubism in Asia: Unbounded
Dialogues (2005) and 50 Years of Modern Viet-
namese Paintings: 1925–1975 (2005). He has
authored numerous publications in this feld.
Some of his recent published papers are “The
Lost Innocent Self: Gauguinism in Southeast
Asian Art” (2010) and “Japanese Military Rule
and the Art of Southeast Asia” (2013).
Adrian Vickers
is Professor of Southeast Asian Studies at the
University of Sydney. He has written exten-
sively on Indonesian cultural history, especially
on Bali. His frst and best-known book is Bali:
A Paradise Created (2012), which has been
translated into a number of languages. An-
other of his books, Balinese Art: Paintings and
Drawings of Bali (2012) was the frst complete
study on the subject. He is currently carrying
out research on modern and contemporary In-
donesian art with funding from the Australian
Research Council and the Getty Foundation.
C.J.W.-L. Wee
is Professor of English at the Nanyang Tech-
nological University, Singapore. His present
research interest lies in the formation of and
the relationship between contemporary visual
art, theatre, popular culture and literature in
Singapore and in East Asia. Wee is the author
of Culture, Empire, and the Question of Being
Modern (2003) and The Asian Modern: Culture,
Capitalist Development, Singapore (2007), and
the editor of The Complete Works of Kuo Pao
Kun, vol. 4: Plays in English (2012). He has
Notes on the Contributors
held Visiting Fellowships at a number of insti-
tutions, including the Society for the Humani-
ties, Cornell University, and the Centre for the
Study of Developing Societies, Delhi, India.
June Yap
is a curator and art historian based in Singa-
pore. Her curatorial projects include No Coun-
try: Contemporary Art for South and Southeast
Asia for the Guggenheim UBS MAP Global
Art Initiative (New York, Hong Kong, Sin-
gapore), The Cloud of Unknowing at the 54th
Venice Biennale (Italy), Das Paradies ist An-
derswo / Paradise is Elsewhere at Institut für
Auslandsbeziehungen (ifa) (Germany), and
Bound for Glory at the National University of
Singapore (NUS) Museum. She is the author
of Retrospective: A Historiographical Aesthetic
in Contemporary Singapore and Malaysia. She
was previously the Deputy Director and Cu-
rator of the Institute of Contemporary Arts
Singapore, and a curator at the Singapore Art
Museum.
Yeo Mang Thong
is a Singaporean scholar and senior educa-
tor. His 1992 publication Xinjiapo zhanqian
huaren meishushi lunji (Essays on the History
of Pre-War Chinese Painting in Singapore) is
one of the most well-cited and important refer-
ence for scholars in the feld. A second publica-
tion, Liudong qianyi zai di jingli: Xinjiapo shijue
yishu xianxiang 1886 –1945 (Migration, Trans-
mission, Localisation: Visual Art in Singapore,
1866–1945) builds on his earlier book on pre-
war Chinese art history and is being published
in Chinese and English. He holds a Master
of Arts in Chinese Studies from the National
University of Singapore, and was awarded a
National Day Commendation Medal in 1996.
483
© 2017 National Gallery Singapore

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Published in 2017
Digital version issued in 2020 with revisions

Please direct all enquiries to the publisher at:

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Editors: Low Sze Wee & Patrick D. Flores

Editorial Advisor: Eugene Tan
Managing Editor: Elaine Ee
Project Editor: Charmaine Oon
Copyeditors: Sarah Lee, Genevieve Ng, Charmaine Oon,
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Acknowledgements
Our thanks to the contributors and translators, as well as the
artists, lenders, photographers and other rights holders who
have generously granted permission to reproduce the images
in the book. Unless otherwise stated, images of artworks
in the collection of National Gallery Singapore are provided
courtesy of National Heritage Board.
For their advice and support in developing the publication,
we are grateful to the curatorial team at National Gallery
Singapore, especially Horikawa Lisa, Seng Yu Jin, Shabbir
Hussain Mustafa, Cai Heng, Clarissa Chikiamco, Phoebe
Scott and Adele Tan.

National Library Board,

Singapore Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
Name(s): Low, Sze Wee, 1970-, editor. | Flores, Patrick D.,
editor. | National Gallery Singapore, publisher.
Title: Charting thoughts : essays on art in Southeast Asia /
editors, Low Sze Wee, Patrick D. Flores.
Description: Singapore : National Gallery Singapore, 2017.
Identifer(s): OCN 973987775 | ISBN 978-981-11-2865-3
(paperback) | ISBN 978-981-14-1962-1 (e-book)
Subject(s): LCSH: Art, Southeast Asian – 19 th century.
Art, Southeast Asian – 20 th century.
Art, Southeast Asian – 21st century.
Classifcation: DDC 709.59 – dc23

Printed in Singapore
Errata
Pages 208, 428
Fig. 15.4 should be titled A Dark Alley
instead of A Dark Hell.
Pages 270, 439
Fig. 19.2 has been substituted due to
ongoing research into its attribution.
Pages 122, 393
Fig. 8.2 should be attributed to “D.G.
Soberat” according to the artist’s
signature on the work. Existing
evidence indicates that Anak Agung
Gede Soberat and D.G. Soberat (or I
Dewa Gede Soberat) are most likely
the same person, but confrmation
will require further research. The
work is undated, instead of “c. 1930s.”
Page 341 (note 16)
Zoe Butt was erroneously attributed
as the curator of Long March Project:
Ho Chi Minh Trail.

Addenda
Pages 434–5 (fg. 17.1), 473 (fg. 23.11)
For the 51st Venice Biennale in 2005,
Lim proposed to uproot and ship the
70-ton statue of the Merlion to the
courtyard of the Singapore Pavilion.
The half-lion/half-fsh mythical
creature is one of the country’s major
tourist icons. When the Singapore
Tourism Board, the custodians of
the Merlion, rejected his proposal,
Lim then commissioned two Italian
designers to transform the pavilion
into two grand public lavatories.
Page 466 (fg. 23.2)
The artwork comprises engraved
seawashed glass pieces collected
from beaches in Port Dickson,
Malaysia, and the Southern islands
off Singapore.