What goes up.......or Bubbles

Latest article in The Edge

Here is the original...........

Bubbles

Where, once, thoughts of ‘art bubbles’ may have conjured visions of artist Sir John Everett Millais’ famous painting “A Child’s World” (used in 1890 for advertising Pears soap), or singer Michael Jackson’s chimpanzee companion, now the art world remains in ever tense alert at the mere mention of the term.

Bubbles appertaining to any form of finance are serious matters. Bubbles speak of, what used to be referred to as economic ‘boom and bust’; defined as “a situation in which a period of great prosperity or rapid economic growth is abruptly followed by one of economic decline”. 

In November 2013, Forbes was questioning “Contemporary Art: End Of A Bubble Or Already Bust?”. After speculating that the art market was slowing down, citing poor showings in both Christie’s and Sotheby’s in London that year, the conclusion was that people had left it too late. Perhaps Forbes had jumped the proverbial gun as American POP artist Jeff Koons, in November 2013, went on to break all records for art sales (by a living artist) for his "Balloon Dog(orange)“, which went for a record $58.4 million USD (approximately RM 202.764 m).

Yet, despite the obvious successes of art sales, early in 2014 there was still grave concern of an art bubble ripe for bursting. In February, Bloomberg Business Week was concerned with the practise of ‘art flipping’, the buying and selling of up-and-coming artists’ works for an obvious quick profit. Bloomberg considered this a “a sign there may be a bubble in the contemporary art market “. In May this year, The Guardian ran the headline “Christie's racks up $745m in one night – and the bubble keeps inflating”. The numbers were huge - $84.2m for a rare Barnett Newman abstraction, and $80.8m for a Francis Bacon triptych (at current exchange rates that’s approximately RM290m and RM276m respectively). Despite that initial slowdown in 2013, 2014 had proven to be a bumper year for art sales and the bubble, if there is one, continues to inflate yet.

While the art sales figures, in Malaysia, are nowhere near as astronomical as those in other countries, there are poignant signs here too of a rapid growth in the art economy. Abdul Latiff Mohidin, artist and poet, saw his “Seascape” (2013) realise RM572,000 at The Edge Auction 2014, of Southeast Asian Art. In November this year, Henry Butcher Art Auctioneers cited an accumulation of RM 2.98 million in its 9th November sale. Chong Siew Ying with “L’été” reached RM89,600, while it was estimated to reach only RM28,000 – RM40,000, and a record price (RM50,400) was set for Datuk Ibrahim Hussein’s “Somewhere Last Spring” (1965), for a work on paper.

The Wall Street Journal (in Malaysia’s Art Scene Is Changing With New Auction Houses, October 16 2014) reminds us that Malaysia now has four art auction houses; The Edge Auction, KLLifestyle Art Space Auction, Masterpiece Auctions and the Henry Butcher Art Auctions. The number of art galleries have grown exponentially, and continue to jostle for position amidst the stratification of Malaysia’s art world. Stories abound of unscrupulous art galleries marking up prices of Malaysian artists’ work, and of price hiking of popular Malaysian Abstract Expressionist works, while Malaysia rides high in the wake of a tsunami of Asian art buying, lead by China.

As well as a proliferation of art galleries and art auction house, Malaysia is host to a variety of art brokers. They come in all shapes and sizes. Some private galleryists double as art brokers, brokering high-end artists’ work, such as Andy Warhol’s “Unknown Woman” (1984) retailing at $1.7M USD, and Warhol’s “Liza Minelli“ retailing at $ 5.000 000 USD. Others, concentrating on Modern and Contemporary, are encouraging Malaysians to invest, not in Malaysian art, but in art from China. One art brokerage company will escort potential investors into their small office, then flood the unwary with ‘Art Market Reports’, ’Art and Finance Reports’ and the ‘Deloitte ArtTactic Art & Finance Report (2013)’. They will wave mid-career Chinese artist portfolios, such as the works of Niu An (Ann), before their faces until visitors start to waver. At that point the CEO is brought in to clinch the deal, quoting an 86% increase in the art market over 12 years and a 120% increase in the Asian art market over the previous 5 years, and how the artists they are promoting, at that moment, will not be available tomorrow. Better get in quick before the opportunity is lost!

The potential art bubble, if there is one, shows little sign of bursting during the year end of 2014. Art prices across the world increase at an astronomical rate, seemingly little effected by similar bubbles in housing, which have already burst. While China proves to be a strong market, the Malaysian art market continues its slow climb into respectability. 

Ivan Lam - communication lacuna

I was unsure if the orange ‘long A4’ piece of paper, printed with black and stuck haphazardly on the partially covered walkway door was, perhaps, a temporary traffic control sign - “warning trouble ahead”, “caution attention” or even “road closed ahead” maybe. It was none of them, as it turns out. It was the only indication that the Wei Ling Contemporary (art) gallery had moved to its new premises.

I pushed the door open. It was raining. Malaysia has decided to have a winter. With no other signs to follow, I trudged along the damp, leaf strewn, path past a three dimensional sign which read “ravity” (the “G” was missing) and scanned to see where the newly re-nascent contemporary arts gallery was hiding. It was all so very soto voce, minimalist, down played. I dashed through a door to avoid undue exposure to the chemical laced rain that now falls in some parts of South East Asia.

Wei Ling has gone for the gallery as “temple of art” approach. A large, and a largely unencumbered, space with white painted walls hushes the voice, encouraging reverence. You could almost hear the church organ playing somewhere off in the pew lined distance, only there were no pews, just space, and no audible organ only the melody of the rain.

I was prepared. I had come to see an array of works by Malaysian artist, and former student of Lim Kok Wing, Ivan Lam. The exhibition, extending from December 1st to March 1st at the Wei-Ling Contemporary (a brand new space) is titled “Twenty”, it is a retrospective of sorts. This faux winter does seem to be the season of artist retrospectives. A gigantic billboard had hailed the exhibition, literally from the rooftops but, inside, signage was distinctly lacking. It did seem that you needed to be among the cognoscenti to know of the exhibition’s existence, even upon entering its doors.

Many exhibitions now have a panel of some sorts, albeit on ridged plastic or exhibition ‘mounting board’, proclaiming what the exhibition is and who is the creator, and maybe curators are. In the brand new Wei-Ling gallery there was no such sign. Now you can take this many ways. Either the minimalism was to now include a lack of communication too, or that Ivan Lam is so ‘famous’ in his Warholian 15 minutes that he needs no introduction or, finally, the whole ensemble was all done in a bit of a rush - the move, the party and oops we are open to a public who need not necessarily know of our existence, need they?

Lack of visual communication is endemic in Malaysia but, on the whole, art galleries have been getting better, though there are still problems with badly cut, or badly positioned art object labels. But, at least, there are labels now. In the past, in Malaysia’s prime gallery, labels would fall to the floor, or be completely non-existent. The-times-they-are-a-changing however, some galleries still fail to recognise that poor display does effect audience’s perceptions. If art is communication, then what are art galleries? Are they simply a (in)convenient wall space, there simply to hang, or screw the works onto? If art is ‘language’ how are the translations made? Or is there an assumption that we all have Douglas Adams’ “Babel Fish” in our ears, and those who haven’t are not worth inviting anyway? 

To not have the name of the artist, Ivan Lam, at all prominent within, or without, the Wei-Ling gallery, was either an absurd arrogance on behalf of those hosting the ‘show’, or a complete failure in communication. One which, I for one, hope is rectified sooner rather than later. As a frequent visitor to the gallery when it was downstairs at the Gardens Mall, in its new incarnation I was made acutely aware that this gallery was now demonstrating all those overt signs of eliteness, and residence of the cognoscenti that ‘Contemporary’ art exudes in buckets.

We cannot continue to decry the lack of interest in art, not just in Malaysia, but in the world at large, when we make no attempt to even adequately communicate to the public what we have, who it is that is making it, the when and the why. The lack of adequate signage is a problem, at this moment, for the Wei-Ling Contemporary gallery. While I might be able to comprehend the haste in which everything has been done, that haste should not have communicated itself to the gallery’s visitors.

Finally, it is an irony, is it not, that the one artist who has concerned himself with communicating, in an Esquire magazine (Malaysia) interview with Rachel Jena said - “You take that [the commercial side of things] out, and you’re an idiot.”

Imagination's Catalyst

Umbaizurah Mahir @ Ismail’s ‘Toys’ (Gerabak)

It wasn't Jim Morrison’s Love Street, but Jalan Duta Kiara, and “this store where the creatures meet” was The Edge Galerie and an exhibition of fascinating sculptures from the Pakhruddin and Fatimah Sulaiman Collection. But creatures there were. In that intriguing show contemporaneousness rubbed shoulders with surreality, three, or was that four, dimensional expressions and a monstrously darkened cubicle, enlightened only by torchlight.

If you were to ever spare a thought for Malaysian sculpture, and there is every reason why you should, the tortured metal ‘warriors’ of Raja Shariman might spring quickly to mind, but little else. A casual observer of the Malaysian art scene might be forgiven for thinking sculpture just did not fit in with the proliferation of Abstract Expressionist canvases, twee kampong scenes and seemingly endless paintings of fishing boats. But they would be wrong.

Certainly since Independence, sculpture has been an emerging part of Malaysian art making. Anthony Lau’s Spirit of Fire (1960) and Syed Amad Jamal’s The link (1963) being but two fine examples. The beauty of “For the Imaginary Space; selected sculptures & installations from the Pakhruddin & Fatimah Sulaiman Collection” is not just in the works put on show, but for the idea of demonstrating that Malaysian artists, inclusive of Raja Shariman (Raja Shahriman Bin Raja Aziddin), do produce meaningful dialogues in more than two static dimensions.

The first impression of the Edge Galerie, having sauntered through those magnificent doors, is of some radiantly white Jentayu (mythic bird), with its wings spread in perpetual welcome. Enmeshed in those outspread wings are the Sulaiman sculptures. In the Edge Galerie’s central space, its red brick walls is the Calder-like ‘mobile’ Centrifugal (by Abdul Multhalib Musa), hanging by five early steel sculptures from Zulkifli Yusoff (Yang Arif, Pemerhati, Sherif Masuk Penjara, Milang and Kebodohan). Perhaps those sculptures are a prelude to those by Raja Shariman. The scene becomes stage-set for our imagination, and the sculptures its catalyst.

Initially I had to fight some Pavlovian, or was that foraging, inclination to turn into the righthand gallery, and nudged myself into the equally valid lefthand gallery space. The left gallery is the slightly smaller of the two and, like its twin wing, painted a white which enables visitors to reflect upon its many presented objects.

Azman Ismail’s, primarily brilliant red, Ku Genggam Merdeka (Hold me Independence), nestled on the white tiled floor of that left hand gallery as an introduction, perhaps, to the various dialogues and narratives explicit or implicit in the works there. In my line of sight was Ramlan Abdullah’s Monument of Freedom, spiking up towards the gallery ceiling. Like many of the sculptures in those two galleries there was an abruptness of steel/iron, which, like the aforementioned Monument of Freedom, made me check my sensitivities. I experienced an uncanny viciousness from the metal sculptures, an unease akin to an extreme Dadaist experience, an unsettling power relationship in which I was the subjugated. Didn’t Matisse say “The essential thing is to spring forth, to express the bolt of lightning one senses upon contact with a thing. The function of the artist is not to translate an observation but to express the shock of the object on his nature; the shock, with the original reaction.” (Jack Flam; Matisse on Art)

From unnervingly spiky steel (and glass) to Ahmad Shukri Mohamed’s glass-fibre eggs (Incubator Series: Muse) and back to Umibaizurah Mahir @ Ismail’s The Sky House, ceramic and mixed media (very reminiscent of the American surreal artist Joseph Cornell’s assemblage boxes), there was a healthy variety in that left hand gallery collection. But even more so in the next.

For me, the most striking exhibit was the wooden display shelves, rooted by blocks of concrete, which formed the ‘case’ for Umbaizurah Mahir @ Ismail’s ‘Toys’ (Gerabak). Why intriguing, because of the incipient humour of those pieces. I was reminded both of the Spanish Surrealist Miro, and the English Surrealist Desmond Morris in their playfulness, only made tangible, ceramic with wheels and metal flowers. And so to the creatures….

Throughout the exhibition there was an undercurrent of risqué politics, but none more so than in the installation created to house Sharon Chin’s ‘Monsters’. Entering into a cubicle draped with black fabric makes you reach for the variety of torchlights, to hand, just outside. Seemingly, the ‘Monsters’ are a ghoul, a headless ghost, a gargoyle, a unicorn and a manticore. Or that is what we are encouraged to believe until, that is, we read the list of Malaysia’s banned books printed behind silhouette figures in what appear to be open books, and realise just who the real monsters are.

The whole exhibition of sculptures from the Pakhruddin and Fatimah Sulaiman Collection, is both visually intriguing and encouragingly thought provoking. In fact, it is just what any good exhibition should be.

Whither Nanyang Style

The Edge, Malaysia, this week

While the “Nanyang Style” in fine art seems anachronistic in Malaysia today, the Singaporeans still embrace the spirit of it as part of their national identity.

The concept “Nanyang Style” sends art galleries all aquiver, and auction houses aflutter, therein is quality, recognition and ownership. Art historians nod in sagely awe, auction house operators rub gleeful hands and art gallerists smile all the way to the bank.

‘Nanyang Style’ is traced to 1979, to a catalogue documenting a retrospective show of the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts in Singapore (NAFA). The late Malaysian artist and writer Redza Piyadasa and Singaporean art historian T.K. Sabapathy jointly concluded that a trip by four Chinese immigrant artists, in 1952, was the catalyst for a new style of art, namely, the “Nanyang Style”.

Three of the four Chinese artists, Cheong Soo Pieng, Chen Chong Swee and Chen Wen Hsi lectured in NAFA, founded by Chinese educationist Lim Hak Tai, while the fourth, Liu Kang, was a fellow Chinese artist, living in Singapore, a friend and compatriot of Cheong Soo Pieng, Chen Chong Swee and Chen Wen Hsi, Liu Kang and Lim Hak Tai from the Xin Hua Academy of Fine Arts in Shanghai. That trip was to Bali.

According to Piyadasa and Sabapathy, the alluring haven of Bali so invigorated those four Chinese artists that it unwittingly empowered them to fuse Chinese and Parisian art styles with nuances gained from the indigenous Southeast Asian environment, creating a new style of art - the “Nanyang Style”. 

It is a fitting tale, a monomyth hero story worthy of Odysseus/Ulysses or Jason and the Argonauts who, having travelled far and wide, returned with a much needed golden fleece, to bolster a fledgling nation’s fine art.

According to Piyadasa and Sabapathy, the “Nanyang Style” had revealed itself through six art contemporaries working in Singapore. Included in this number were the four from the Bali trip, plus Lim and Georgette Chen. Yet, the reality is, that the essence of a “Nanyang Style” was long in place before the famed Bali trip. From the outset NAFA, founded in 1938, had upheld a credo of incorporating Chinese art styles (ink and brush) plus Parisian art styles (oils) plus influence from the Southeast Asian region itself (Nan Yang, or “South Seas” in Mandarin). The intent was to bolster a new style of art, influenced by locale, as set out by Lim, an art educationist from the Xiamen School of Art in Fujian Province, China, at the very beginning of the academy he was instrumental in founding.

In an academy celebratory catalogue of 1955, Lim had written that a new art should include the fusion of the culture of the different races. Namely, the communication of Oriental and Western art; the diffusion of the scientific spirit and social thinking of the 20th century; the reflection of the needs of the local people; the expression of local tropical flavour and the educational and social functions of fine art.

“Nanyang Style” has been bandied about ever since its establishment. In time, like Roger Fry’s “Post-Impressionist” (1910), Guillaume Apollinaire’s “Surrealism” (1917) and Richard Hamilton’s “Pop Art” (1956), “Nanyang Style” has become a catchall, a convenient brand to indicate standard. One auctioneer even hinted at “guilt by association”. If an artist had once studied at NAFA, or was taught by an artist who had, there was an assumption of quality, a benchmark as it were. “Nanyang Style”, as a brand, resembles the popular American drink Coca Cola in which, originally, were both cocaine and kola nuts, but as society changed both essential ingredients became non-essential, and were excluded. The use of “Nanyang Style” becomes debatable.

In reality, there was no one “Nanyang Style”. It always was ‘styles’, plural. Teachers at NAFA, and their graduates, painted in various styles, some preferring oil on canvas, others pastels, ink and brush or watercolour, some were proficient in all. Chinese Literati painting was practised, as were neo-Impressionist, Expressionist and Cubist styles either fused or “unfused” and incorporating local elements. Without the vague umbrella term, “Nanyang Style”, would it now be difficult to ground disparate Malaysian and Singaporean approaches to the art of modernity?

While “Nanyang Style” continues to reverberate through Malaysian and Singaporean auction houses, and exhibitions like Nanyang Touch (Kuala Lumpur, 2014) and Nanyang Visionaries (Singapore, 2014) there comes a stray thought that, once again (as with Impressionism, Expressionism and Surrealism) we are really looking keenly to the past, and not to other, possible, futures.

Further, can “Nanyang Style” now ever be used authentically? May it be applied to up-and-coming professional artists, or is that label to be assigned solely to works of a certain era and, if it is, what is there to replace it? My feeling is that “Nanyang Style” has served Malaysian and Singaporean fine art well, but like the other “isms” I have mentioned, are resigned to the past. Art history will sort the rest out.

Dusun Quarterly No. 3

No Photography

It was Sunday, in some countries a traditional day for visiting art galleries and museums. We drove the half hour from our home to Malaysia's National Art Gallery, now cleverly renamed the National Visual Arts Gallery, to see a retrospective exhibition by one Malaysia's elder arts statesmen - Choong Kam Kow. We arrived at lunchtime. We hadn't eaten.

The National Visual Arts Gallery's eternally leaky roof had been replaced, but the cafe had vanished. In its stead was a miniature National Portrait Gallery. We enquired, in the diminutively sparse bookshop outside the main building, but were told that the gallery had no cafe, nor restaurant, anymore. We were advised to drive out from the Gallery's grounds, eat or drink our fill, and drive back. It just didn't seem right somehow. 

There was obviously no chance of a sudden meeting of the like minds of art lovers in the gallery cafe then. No arts bantering, no half serious discussions about art, literature and the current state of philosophy ala Parisian cafe life. The social side of arts was quite obviously not being catered for, in Malaysia's National Visual Arts Gallery.

Before leaving, and despite vigorously rumbling tums, we decided to seek an art book. One of my friends from China had held an exhibition at the gallery, and a book had been produced. I am helping him with some research and sought to purchase his book. The place laughingly referred to as a book shop had fewer art books than most Malaysian book shops, and they have a bear minimum. Many of the books published by the gallery rubbed shoulders with a meagre amount of tubes of paint, other gear more suited to a craft shop and a naked postcard stand. Behind a counter more resembling a miniature fortress stood a bemused sales clerk, who was quite obviously unused to visitors. The majority of the minuscule selection of books were poorly printed (digital printing), while others were 'perfect bound' which is notorious for books falling apart without to much effort. The book we sought, published by the Gallery itself was, of course, out of stock.

Sitting in a dour looking Secret Recipe franchise, some ten minutes from the Gallery, forking a nondescript Malaysian Cornish Pasty into ravenous mouths, we seriously thought about forgoing the pleasure of the eminent artist, and not going back to the National Visual Arts Gallery, but we had left our car there, and were driven by one of our Chinese business friends to seek sustenance.

Pakhruddin and Fatimah Sulaiman (of Malaysian sculpture collection fame) were in the National Visual Arts Gallery foyer when we arrived back after lunch. I didn't get the opportunity to greet them as they were obviously engaged in conversation. So, it was onward to the show…..

And it was about here in my writing, that had I intended to write my review of Choong Kam Kow’s retrospective exhibition. It is absent, due to one zealous gallery guard who prevented me from taking non-flash photographs.

There is no review.

I can never quite understand why some galleries in Malaysia prohibit the taking of photographs. I could understand if they had postcards of the displayed works, and wanted to protect their sales or, like some, sold slides (transparencies) of said artworks for the same reason. Or, and big or, if the gallery sold posters, and again wanted to protect their merchandising, but no. The National Visual Arts Gallery sells very few merchandising items. There were no postcards, transparencies or posters available for Choong Kam Kow exhibition, not even a catalogue or book. I could even understand if signs said no ‘flash’ photography, though there is compelling evidence from 2013, by Dr Martin H Evans (http://people.ds.cam.ac.uk/mhe1000/musphoto/flashphoto2.htm)
that flash photography does no harm to objects in galleries.

Galleries that do not allow photography do themselves a great disservice. In our Social Media crazy age, selfies with an artwork backdrop do more good, via free advertising, than all the paid advertising put together. Casual shots of artwork shoot off across cyberspace within seconds, drawing great interest from recipients, potential visitors to an exhibit. No selfies, no causal shots, no free advertising and the huge gallery opens for no one or, like the Sunday we visited, to a bear handful of people who dropped off the tour bus.

Luo Qi China's Quest Come of Age

International, but Chinese born, artist Luo Qi, from the renown art city of Hangzhou, the largest city of Zhejiang Province in Eastern China, has already established himself on the world’s stage as an academic, poet, writer and avant garde artist. In his artistic endeavours, Luo Qi investigates Chinese calligraphy with his dynamic artistic movement Calligraphyism (aka Characterism). Luo Qi was taught at, and has lectured in, the well established China Academy of Art (est. 1928), Hangzhou, beside the stunning phenomenon of the city’s West Lake. Over many years Luo Qi has developed a fresh way of inquiry into pictorial pictogram representations, which bind the inquisitive viewer to the object, and yet which also remain referential to historic Chinese pictograms and, in particular, those carved into ancient oracle bones (for divination, used 1500 to 1000 BCE).

   In Derridean terms, artist Luo Qi deconstructs the familiar concept of Chinese pictograms, where each pictogram reveals a single thought rather than a collection of letters from an alphabet, and reconstructs them as abstracts, into fresh forms, which undoubtedly echo back to their Chinese antiquity.  

   In China, Luo Qi’s Calligraphyism has grown alongside a revival in Chinese Literati painting, deemed the New Literati movement. It is a renaissance, a signifying evocation of the breakaway moment in antiquarian Chinese artistry and literature - Literati. Back in 1998, Zhang Yiguo had written (in Brushed Voices:Calligraphy in Contemporary China) that “Luo Qi, defies accepted conventions in a more controversial manner. In some of his works he denies traditional calligraphic strokes and characters entirely, adopting instead a “universal line” that forms abstract images”.

   With these excitingly modern works of artist Luo Qi, it is the fusion of Western ideas, and methods, with those of China that Chinese art has so been longing for. Ever since the early part of the last (20th) century, China has maintained a profuse interest in Western Modern Art, its ideas and techniques. In Luo Qi, a questing Chinese art has finally come of age. It has blossomed into a fine peony, showing the world that a Chinese Spring has well and truly arrived, beautiful and exceedingly bountiful.  

  Viewers of Luo Qi’s work might be forgiven for recalling ancient Sumerian texts (26th century BCE), and the world’s first known writing system. There are similarities, particularly in Luo Qi’s ‘Love Writing’ series. It is the simplicity and beauty of both the Mesopotamian cuneiform and Luo Qi’s creations which lead to visual delights and a soupçon of intrigue. Yet,  within Luo Qi’s works there is also reference to modernity. Echoes of the late Keith Haring, with his iconic quasi-primative graphic imagery seem to haunt Luo Qi’s imagery. But where Hering’s icons are drawn (literally) from simplistic figures, ala underground comix, Luo Qi reinvents Chinese calligraphic pictograms with a complex, wonderfully pictorial ’language’ of their own.

   Luo Qi’s latter works zing with colour. Using contrasting colour, like red against green or green against red, he makes his canvases resonate with colour, forcing a visual engagement. Luo Qi manipulates shades of orange, contrasted in early icons marked with mid green, or orange upon yellow, speaking in terms of colour, formulating a fresh visual language. 

   The use of rounded shapes, and lines ending in curves, lends a degree of humour to some of the works, which echoes the playfulness of the Surrealist Joan Miro and, perhaps, shades of some of the more playful 1960s Pop Art. There are also reminiscences of imagery found on China’s own celadon glazed archaistic vases, hidden within Luo Qi’s profound referential system. Luo Qi’s oeuvre blends with a keen Post-Modernist agenda, with astutely observed historical reference, within his decorated canvases. Luo Qi’s Chinese pictograms are defined so broadly as to encompass not just traditionally brush-stoked ideas, but an entirely new spectrum of symbols and phenomena ripe for any phenomenologist to decipher.

The Chinese artist Luo Qi

Powerhouse of Art in The Edge (business weekly) this week

Hangzhou Hanging Malaysian Artists

by Martin Bradley

A finely selected coterie of Malaysian creatives, including Nanyang trained ink brush master Dr Cheah Thien Soong, USM’s Associate Professor A Rahman Mohamed (from the School of Arts) and printmaker Chong Hip Seng had been invited to show their works in a truly international art exhibition by Luo Qi, Associate Professor of the China Academy of Art, and also a renowned Chinese Modern Artist and art entrepreneur. The 11th Annual Asian, African and Mediterranean International Modern Art Exhibition, was held over five days in the South Eastern Chinese City of Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, famed for its historical connections to Kublai Khan, Marco Polo and Mao Zedong.

This year’s event, hosting artworks from 22 artists, was housed in the new Shang Kun Luo Qi International Museum of Modern Art, which had been purpose built and recently completed by the Shang Kun Construction Co. Ltd, to house displays and exhibitions for the artist/entrepreneur Luo Qi. That private gallery not only forms part of a growing interest in Chinese art investment, but is scheduled to introduce further international art interconnections to the region in the near future. In time, the whole first floor of the privately funded six-storey building, is to be dedicated to the promotion of arts

The prosperous and architecturally advanced city of Hangzhou, its entrepreneurs, the new gallery, and Annual China (Hangzhou) International Micro-Films Festival, had all been backed by some of the city's most illustrious businessmen, including Liu Bin, Board Chairman of Hongmao Holdings, Li Zheng We of Shang Kun Construction Co. Ltd and other significant Hangzhou businessmen, with a very supportive local government and, of course, entrepreneur Luo Qi himself. 

As part of a consciously ongoing art initiative, redeveloping the arts in China, the city of Hangzhou welcomed the "International Exhibition", which featured painting and sculpture from countries as diverse as Australia, Reunion Island (in the Indian Ocean), Italy, Mauritius, Thailand, Russia and our very own Malaysia. In a separate meeting within the aforementioned gallery, support was pledged for further annual exhibitions, an expansion of art initiatives, greater international exchanges of artworks within Hangzhou as well as art residencies, with the fortunate artist housed for a month in a freshly constructed six star hotel, due to be opened shortly.

Paintings by A Rahman Mohamed and prints by Chong Hip Seng, from previous international art exhibitions, accompanied those by Reunion Island artist Charly Lesquelin, Italian Marco Cascella and Hangzhou’s Luo Qi, to grace the walls of the N8 Club and continue to form part of a permanent collection within the city of Hangzhou. These excellent examples of modern international artworks were on display at Hangzhou's most exclusive, private, N8 Club where the city's elite revel, drink fine French wines and rest from the pressures of business and entrepreneurship. 

NB. The club (N8) is located at the former Nan Ping Club at the lakeside of the West Lake in Hangzhou, and was founded by the Octvillas consortium, hence N8. The club was originally an exclusive swimming club for China’s former premiere, Mao Zedong, but now is a leisure club for the well appointed and their guests. N8 Club is situated close to the scenic views of Leifeng Pagoda and Jingci Temple, while "Ten Views of the West Lake”, "Su Causeway in Spring Dawn", "Leifeng Pagoda in Evening Glow", and "Evening Bell Ringing at Nanping Hill" are close by.

There is little doubt that China, and in this instance Hangzhou in the province of Zhejiang, is heavily invested in arts, including fresh perspectives in modern architecture. China is on the move with art investment. An article in The Guardian, this year, reflected that at least seven world class art auction houses are presently in China, including Poly International, Guardian Auctions, Christies and Sotherby’s, though the two latter operate from Hong Kong as they are not permitted in mainland China. The interest in art, foreign and local, certainly at a fiscal level, is phenomenal in China with art profits reported as doubling annually. The reason; Chinese middle classes are becoming more affluent, with some of that good fortune filtering into the arts. Luo Qi’s university, the China Academy of Art, Hangzhou, will soon be housing a permanent collection of Bauhaus objects and drawings, bought for $72 million in Germany in 2013.

The China Academy of Art, the Shang Kun Luo Qi International Museum of Modern Art, the N8 Club and the continuing Annual Asian, African and Mediterranean International Modern Art Exhibition is good for Hangzhou, good for China, but equally good for Malaysia and its artists. Chinese interest in art from Asia can only serve to prosper Malaysian art within the region, with China rapidly becoming one of the most important players in a global art scene, equal to America and Europe.

(original text)

Nanyang Style?

An illustrated 'essay' charting the founding and growth of what has become known as the 'Nanyang Style' of Art in Malaysian and Singapore.

A Nanyang Sharing

31st August 2014
Streetview Hotel
Muar, Johor
Malaysia

A Nanyang Sharing.

After a day sketching the visual delights of Muar, in the State of Johor, Malaysia, a host of kind people took time out to listen to me share what little knowledge I have accrued in regards to Nanyang, the (Singapore) Nanyang style of painting, its forebears and those who continued the style.

I was counterpointed by Dr Cheah Thien Soong, a son of Nanyang and renowned modernist ink brush painter and teacher, and Si Jie Loo. We thank all who were involved with the sharing, especially Lau Moa Seng (another son of Nanyang) and his hard working family, Yeo Eng Hin (together with his wife, both former students of Nanyang) and members of the audience who also had connections to Nanyang, for helping co-ordinate the event and MC Teo Peng Heng James, plus all who ensured this event was a great success.

It was an off-the-cuff sharing which had begun with the idea of just a few friends talking and drinking together. The idea grew and before I knew it, and as unprepared as I was, I was 'lecturing' to a hall of interested parties at the Streetview Hotel in Muar. There were no slides, only a whiteboard, but thank whatever power that may be for that whiteboard and its pens, as I slipped into 'teacher' mode, not for the first time, and dragged up what little knowledge I had. But it was all good, and we have been booked to do a second and third round, but a little bit more prepared perhaps. Below are some of the images.

Teo Peng Heng James

A view to the audience

Me

Dr Cheah Thien Soong

The obligatory group photo

Road trip to Nanyang

The name Nanyang simply means South Seas, or South East Asia (in Mandarin). The term refers to those lands reached from China via the South China Sea, but in art terminology Nanyang has also come to mean a fusion of Western and Eastern artistic styles (especially in Singapore) into a new style - the Nanyang style of art.

Our idea (such as it was), was to travel down to Singapore, meet some nice people and collect some information about the Nanyang Academy of Arts. And that we did, in a roundabout way, for life has a strange way of changing your plans. To quote Robert Burns……

But, Mousie, thou art no thy lane [you aren't alone]
In proving foresight may be vain:
The best laid schemes o' mice an' men
Gang aft a-gley, [often go awry]
An' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain,
For promised joy.

Or, in English, the best laid plans of mice and men, often go astray.

We had thought of going directly to Singapore, by bus, feet up watching copious films. We  changed to driving down, and staying with our friend in Johor Bahru and chatting endless chats. Eventually, with a little nudging from friends, we added a diversion to see an exhibition in Malacca to the itinerary, stayed over for two nights, and the road trip was never the same thereafter.

With the niggling thought of beginning to write about the Nanyang (Southern Seas) style of Singaporean art we (the intrepid Dusun team), climbed into our brilliant red motor vehicle - comparable to the Bat car, or Green Hornet’s ‘Black Beauty and, on Sunday, 27th July, as the Selangor sun was customarily blazing, we launched out from Kuala Lumpur towards the ancient port of Malacca. Malacca, if you recall, is famed for its mix of Chinese and Malay peoples, architecture, dress style and foods in a unique style called Baba/Nonya, also called Peranakan (descendent). 

That sensually intriguing port (of Malacca) had been variously a Malay fishing village, a Singaporean sultanate refuge, a Portuguese, then Dutch and finally a British colony, and now a prized possession of the Federation of Malaysia. Intrepid Chinese seafarers, adventurous Chinese settlers and brave Chinese sea commanders all thought highly of Malacca. In modern times, Malacca preserves lashings of authentic Chinese heritage, amidst remnants of Portuguese and Dutch styles, as well as the general tat of tourist paraphernalia.

Malacca’s Li Chi Mao Art Museum is a repository of the works of Prof. Li Chi Mao, born in Woyang County, Anhuei Province, China, in 1925, and is considered a national treasure in Taiwan. The museum (art gallery) honouring him is situated on Lorong Hang Jebat, Malacca, and was hosting an exhibition of art relating to that city by five exceptional Chinese Malaysian artists - Yip Sek Quai, Chua Chay Hwa, Tan Puey Tee, Lau Mao Seng and Yeo Eng Hin. The exhibition was called Malacca’s Decade of Changes. It was a ‘joint painting’ exhibition.

And what, other than being Chinese Malaysians, you might wonder, was the significance of this exhibition in relation to the afore mentioned Nanyang style from Singapore. Well, as it turns out, three out of five artists exhibiting at Li Chi Mao were former direct students of the Nanyang Academy. Husband and wife team Chua Chay Hwa and Yeo Eng Hin graduated from Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts, in Singapore, 1978 and 1977 respectively, and went on to follow the links created with France, by Nanyang teacher Georgette Chen, by attending the Ecole Des Beaux Arts in Paris. Lau Mao Seng graduated from Nanyang somewhat earlier - in 1967. Tan Puey Tee is a retired school headmaster and self taught painter, while Yip Sek Quai graduated from the Kuala Lumpur Collage of Art, itself having connections to Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts, as the founder of Kuala Lumpur College of Art (Cheah Yew Saik) was, himself, a graduate from Nanyang.

As you might expect, from such a dynamic five person exhibition, there was a profusion of styles and images at Malacca’s Decade of Changes. A proliferation of fused Western and Eastern styles from Impressionism (Chua Chay Hwa) Expressionism (Lau Mao Seng - slated to feature in Dusun Quarterly soon) Cubism (Yip Sek Quai), as well as a blend of watercolour and Chinese ink painting from Tan Puey Tee. Yeo Eng Hin (featured in Dusun Quarterly 1 2013) rendered remarkable cityscapes in his own inimitable style, playing with texture and spectator/artist interaction. There is little doubt that the exhibition was a resounding success. How could it be otherwise with such experienced artists presenting their works for an eager public. Surrounded by intriguing artworks, we debated origins of Nanyang, its style and its forebears deferentially, and just a tad intensely as the audience was represented by many factions of the Malaysian art world - auction houses, galleries, artists and art critics (well, me). For me, the stars of the show were the ebullient, vibrantly energetic neo-Expressionist canvas-board oil pastels, vigorously created by Muar artist Lau Mao Seng.

Yet the surprises were only just beginning.

Opposite our, far from salubrious, hotel in Jalan Tun Tan Cheng Lock, Malacca, rested a small, yet fascinating, gallery of modern art - the Shih Wen Naphaporn Artist Studio. Owner, painter and all round good fellow Chiang Shih Wen (graduate of the already mentioned Kuala Lumpur College of Art) and his stunning artist wife Naphaporn Phanwiset, guided us around their artworks and what made the gallery tick, metaphorically that is. 

Chiang Shih Wen’s artworks are heavily reminiscent of Dali’s Cubist Self Portrait (1923) and the Russian painter Lyubov Popova’s ‘Painterly Architectonics’ (1915 to 1919). Brightly coloured strips of Malacca’s Chinese, Dutch and Portuguese architectures tend to excite the visitor’s eyes, giving a remarkable visual flavour of Chiang Shih Wen’s Malacca. Taking trouble to execute detail, Chiang Shih Wen meticulously adds the text of Malacca sign boards to his imagery in multicoloured, scintillating, street scenes. As well as the obvious likenesses to various approaches to Cubism, there is something of the Fauve about that painter, forging his own painterly style in his fascinating home town. 

In the studio, wooden trays of ‘Rembrandt’ oil colours and pots of workmanlike brushes shared space with Taoist/Buddhist figures, Yves Saint Laurent Belle D’Opium and L’Oreal Studio, as you might expect from an area shared by male and female artists. 

Naphaporn Phanwiset (Chiang Shih Wen’s wife), had recently been painting images of luscious, exotic and maybe even erotic fruit, reminiscent of Lim Kim Hai (more of him down the page). Not long ago, Naphaporn Phanwiset had produced a peach painting. It bore all the well rounded and sensual hallmarks of a budding Georgia O’Keeffe. A table cloth with all the sexual suggestiveness of an 0’Keeffe, was mounted by very feminine peaches and masculine standing bottles. The painting seemed to revel in its potential lewdness. It was a triumph of feminism and female boldness. The question became rhetorical as the viewer might consider ‘how could she not paint fruit when her husband had, and their very good friend Lim Kim Hai (aka The Apple Man) does’, but Naphaporn Phanwiset, with O’Keeffe potential, has stripped away Lim Kim Hai's classicism, replacing it with a budding sensuality which one hopes will only grow and bare even more mouthwatering fruit, actual and metaphorical.

Master painter Lim Kim Hai was with us on that day, in Chiang Shih Wen’s gallery. Having taken our farewells of the gallery, we stepped back into the Malacca humidity and squeezed along the minuscule, ramshackle, pathways to Lim Kim Hai's studio gallery, also doubling as a repository for his collection of fine antiques, further along Jalan Tun Tan Cheng Lock. 

Like Chua Chay Hwa and Yeo Eng Hin, Lim Kim Hai is a graduate of that famous Nanyang Academy of Fine Art. Also like them, he headed to Paris after graduation but stayed on until 2002, when he finally settled in Malacca to resume his painting. Lim Kim Hai is somewhat unfairly known as ‘The Apple Man’, due to the many canvases he has painted of that very European fruit. I say unfairly, because he has only been painting apple ‘portraits’ since the 1980s, and exclusively since 1990. Before his concentration on the one subject (apples), Lim Kim Hai had learned to paint, exquisitely, in a classical European (detailed) style.

Lim Kim Hai’s studio/gallery is at the rear of his huge collection of Malaysian antiques. Number 42 Jalan Tun Tan Cheng Lock (named after the founder of Malacca’s Chinese Association) was formerly the Dutch Heeren Street and is at the very core of the Unesco World Heritage Site of Malacca. Coming off the street, the first ‘room’ presented a wealth (literally) of antique furniture and silk carpets. The carpets reminded me of those I had witnessed in carpet showrooms in Northern India. Beautiful silk carpets with a unique silk sheen and delicate coloration. Gaps amidst the wall clad fruit cornucopia, indicated the spaces where paintings had been recently sent to Singapore, for a group exhibition. Wooden, antique, furniture brought the Chinese feel closer. Chairs for house and clan leaders differed from those of the lesser members of the family, but we were not there to ogle Lim Kim Hai’s antiques, as beautiful as they were, but to see his studio.

At the very rear of the antique gallery, Lim Kim Hai’s spacious studio piqued our curiosity. We were lucky to witness three canvases, in three different stages of completion, one standing on a terracotta tiled floor and the other two on wooden easels, one larger, one smaller. The artist explained his process, from initial background colour (in this case colours, brushed together to represent a golden hue), to the first tentative drawings of apples, through to his first colours and a near-finished work, replete with apple ‘portraits’. To my wife (she being a painter) he explained his painterly techniques and the lack of linseed oil, the use of varnish and turpentine (not white spirit). To me he explained that he kept his ‘subjects’ in the fridge. A moment of unease came over me until I realised that he didn’t mean dead bodies, but apples. With that he produced a bag of ’pommes’ (French), being kept fresh in his fridge, and laid them out for us to see the subjects of his current paintings.

The following morning, after July rain and tears in our eyes, we reluctantly left Malacca and dropped in on Muar, in the neighbouring state of Johor. Muar is an ancient city, believed to be older even than Malacca and, like Malacca, had been variously visited by the British, Dutch and Portuguese over the years. We were there to follow up on the brief meeting we had with veteran Nanyang artist Lau Moa Seng, in that Malacca exhibition. 

The Malacca rain had followed us into Johor state, and its northern capital Muar. Through the rain we weaved with that infamous Butch Cassidy and the Sun Dance Kid song making the dampness a little more romantic than it really was. We found Eng Bee Book Co, amidst gardens that would put most Malaysian plant nurseries to shame, and were warmly welcomed by Lau Moa Seng and his enthusiastic family.

Picking our way through what was, in reality, not a book store but a wonderland art store, ducking under suspended flying frogs (more resembling Garuda than any frogs I had yet to encounter) and further marvelling at curious examples of colourful rocks on wooden plinths, we eventually came to the store at the rear of the building. And what a store it was, more like Warehouse 13 than a shop store, and in that virtual Chinese Aladdin’s Cave were life-sized wooden artist’s mannikins. imported from China. Unnerving male, female and child mannikins stood on huge shelving units, sternly, woodenly regarding us with eerily blank expressions.

In the main section was a corridor. To the left of that corridor, about four foot from the ground, was a long segmented rack, from which Lau Moa Seng began to pull canvas boards of his stunning paintings. It was estimated that there were well over two hundred oil pastel ‘painted’ canvases on those racks, all with a sombre black background from which sparkling colours would catch the viewer’s eye.

Muar life was represented, vividly, on those energetic canvas boards. They were the byproduct of many years of vigorous, vivacious Expressionistic fervour, as Lau Moa Seng sought to capture his neighbours and his neighbourhood in his hometown of Muar. Each canvas board was a lightning ‘sketch’, capturing the moment and, in many ways reminiscent of Georgette Chen’s works. Georgette Li Ying Chen was Lau Moa Seng’s teacher at the Nanyang Academy, in Singapore, she taught there from 1954 to 1980 and was using pastels exclusively during the 1960s. Lau Moa Seng graduated from the Nanyang Academy in 1967.

Lau Moa Seng explained that canvas board, alone, was suitable for his zealous way of working. Framed canvas was too flexible, unable to resist his animated way of working. He needed a surface resistant to his robust strokes of oil pastel, and small enough to be completed at one sitting en plein air.

Loaded with art books, art materials and a mind full of superb oil canvas board ‘paintings’, we bade farewell to those amazing people at the Eng Bee Book Co, and travelled south, to Johor Bahru. It was there that we reconnected with our dear interior design friend from the MIA (Malaysian Institute of Arts - founded by Chung Chen Sun, a Nanyang Academy graduate, in 1967), left our car and travelled on by bus, across the causeway, on to Merlion Island (Singapore), for research about the Nanyang Academy.

Foo Kwee Horng, a former assistant to Professor T. K. Sabapathy (along with Redza Piyadasa, a writer on all things Nanyang, and an inspiration to all art historians in Malaysia and Singapore) met with us and, through a couple of meetings, gave me information re the Nanyang Academy. It was a positive time in Singapore, the SAM (Singapore Art Museum), the Singapore National Library and the meetings that we had. 

It was exciting to be in ‘Nanyang City’, the birthplace of a style, ideas, concepts of Western and Eastern art that began a fusion with the founding of the Nanyang Academy in 1938, and that historical trip to Bali in 1952. Nanyang resonates in Singapore and Malaysia to the present day. Our trip was a ‘look see’, in preparation for a much longer exposition. I pondered on that while Pei Yeou, my artist wife and graduate from MIA, drove us via Port Dickson, back to Selangor.

That Nanyang Touch

I was at the Nanyang Touch exhibition, housed in the Chinese Assembly Hall, Kuala Lumpur. Amidst swaying crimson Chinese drapes, Dr Cheah Thien Soong, president of Cao Tang Men Eastern Arts Society and master Nanyang Chinese ink painter, was waxing lyrically eloquent in Mandarin. His dignified white pony tail nodded as he talked. It was a testimony to his comfortable earnestness, in that hall, in this year of the horse (Ma), now galloping past it's 2014 zenith. It was Nanyang Touch, the Cao Tang Men Eastern Arts Society exhibition, and the hall was bedecked with Chinese dignitaries, Chinese ink painting artists and their brush-stroked, absorbent paper works hung as testimonies to diligence.

The red lanterns were raised, but without Yimou Zhang filming were restricted to stills. The insistent flash of digital photography, illuminating earnest speakers and idle gawkers alike, caught us all like rabbits in the glare, but we all became enlightened, in many other ways, during those hours of the exhibition.

The Chinese Assembly Hall, tucked away at Kuala Lumpur’s No.1, Jalan Maharajalela, was acutely reminiscent of a bygone era. There were shades and echoes of 1930s Art Deco amidst its Neo—Classical structure, but now anachronistic, ageing, worn by so many operas, rumbustious speechifying and the annual Gong Xi Fa Choi bon homie. In another age, and in another ‘motherland’, red cheeked, moon faced young maidens might have peered from the balconies, at spring or moon festivals, proud of their heritage, culture, their simple good fortune at being born into a race of such exceptionally talented people.

It was to honour both Dr Cheah Thien Soong and his hard working, persistently artistic students, that the illustrious and the talented were gathered, seated, intent on Mandarin speakers on the crimson stage. Dr Cheah Thien Soong, in this the year of the horse, was represented in Chinese ink, painted, sitting proud on his black stallion mount, like Sun Wu, smiling broadly for his audience. Dr Cheah Thien Soong is chief, a general of the arts, he is a Nanyang innovator, inspiring yet another generation of creative beings.

Dr Cheah is a former Nanyang (South Seas) Academy of Fine Arts (Singapore) student. Nanyang, if you will remember, led the way from the 1930s, to somewhere in the 1980s/90s, as a most original and perhaps even profound school of art. Taking its name from the region it was in, Nanyang had been one of many such, predominately Chinese, art schools springing up as Chinese immigrant artists fled their homeland, and settled in Singapore during the 1930s. Nanyang, founded by artist and teacher Lim Hak Tai, was the only one to survive the Japanese invasion, and gradually became a haven for visiting Chinese artists, giving lectures. After secession from Malaysia (1965), both Singapore and Nanyang grew exponentially.

Other than being the premier art school in the region, the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts was responsible for developing a unique fusion of Western (Paris) and Eastern (China) styles of art, emerging from out of what was loosely called the Shanghai School. Singapore in those years between 1920s and the 1950s was a melting-pot of cultures, with Western artists and Chinese artists visiting and exhibiting. Oil on canvas, and ink on paper, were equally valid and valued in the Nanyang Academy. It is rumoured that it was a trip to Bali (1952), by Cheong Soo Pieng, Chen Chong Swee, Chen Wen Hsi and Liu Kang, that hastened the metamorphosis of styles, bringing a greater awareness of the region to those Chinese artists, who were so impressed with the brightness of colours, and the general ambiance of that Hindu island.

Nanyang broke with Chinese tradition for the ink painting artists, and stirred up a renewed vigour for the oil painters who, perhaps, were subconsciously working through echoes of Western Post-Impressionism, and in particular those semi-erotic images delivered to a Victorian world by Paul Gauguin, imaging his South Seas. Elements of local (Indonesian, Singaporean and Malaysian) flora and fauna began to insinuate themselves onto absorbent ink papers, deviating from the strict signs, symbols and metaphors associated with traditional Chinese ink painting. Georgette Chen, educated in Paris, New York and Shanghai, brought her own fusion of Eastern and Western styles to Nanyang when she moved to Singapore (from Penang) in 1954.

The Malaysian Institute of Art (MIA), Malaysia’s first school of art, from which my own dear wife graduated, was founded in Kuala Lumpur (1966) by  Chung Chen Sun, who himself was a graduate of the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts. Dr Cheah Thien Soong, one of my wife’s teachers, graduated also from the Nanyang, in 1962, and in 1990 began teaching at the Malaysian Institute of Art to continue the innovations began in Singapore so many years previously.

In that Kuala Lumpur Assembly Hall, the fusion of local imagery and authentic Chinese brushwork was nowhere more evident than in those magnificent images of red-headed hornbills, bustling marketing women, bedazzling bright blue and green peacocks and the majestic jackfruit, plump, hanging, barely able to contain the gravity begging the pair to spread their seeds in the waiting, fecund, earth.

In the Nanyang Touch exhibition, Malaysia was seen with fresh, excited eyes, rendered with practised dexterity and presented to an anxiously waiting public with aplomb. Ink brush painting was revealed as more adroit, more adventurous than ever could have been imagined in Shanghai. That tentative grafting, began in the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts in Singapore, had quite literally borne fruit in those two hanging Artocarpus heterophylli (Nangka) which served as symbols of a bright new future for that Nanyang Touch, which Dr Cheah Thien Soong strives each year to preserve and prosper.

To say that the exhibition was a success was to underestimate the whole enterprise. It was a superb undertaking by a skilled team, lead by an enthused leader committed to his art and to the crafts of his culture and heritage. In its links to the forerunners of Malaysia’s art eduction system, Nanyang Touch reminds us all of the debt that Malaysia owes to both the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts and to the Malaysian Institute of Art, their teachers and their graduates.