Thursday 30 November 2017
Saturday 11 November 2017
On Visiting the KL Biennale 2017
The main exhibition acts as a treatise on contemporary art, and is at the Malaysian National Art Gallery which, for some time, has had a below par reputation. Blame for this might be found in many quarters, not least in the paltry sum the Malaysian government extends to art, its conservation and its preservation.
In this respect, Malaysia is unlike its neighbour, Singapore, which has all the veneer of understanding the necessity of the spiritual, as well as the fiscal value of art. Singapore has rallied around contemporary art, with copious initiatives, galleries and museums and has taken the local initiative with recourse to the vagaries of contemporary Art, love it or hate it. The Singapore Art Museum (SAM) has been at the forefront of contemporary art in the region since 1996. Now it is Kuala Lumpur’s turn to shine.
Sheltering under the umbra of a Biennale, Kuala Lumpur has collected many works by 120 international artists, from countries as diverse as The Philippines, China, Cambodia, Sweden, Palestine, Singapore, Indonesia, India, Thailand, Bangladesh, Japan and, of course, Malaysia, to be seen by visitors until March 2018. This is not to be confused with Malaysia’s other biennale, the northern ‘Langkawi Art Biennale’ which began in 2014, and continued last year (2016).
Terms like ‘biennale’ and ‘contemporary art’ can appear somewhat confusing, and elitist. Biennale has come to mean an exhibition of ‘contemporary’ art, every two years and is, of course, Italian, hailing back to 1895, with origins in La Biennale di Venezia (Venice Biennale) Venice, Italy.
That original series of Venetian exhibitions is now 122 years old. By 1910, La Biennale di Venezia was exhibiting works by the Futurist Marinetti, the ‘secessionist’ Gustav Klimt, Renoir, Courbet, but not Picasso. His work was deemed too novel for the delicate Venetian taste. According to the Venice Biennale’s history, 1920 was the time of the avant-garde with Impressionists, Post-Impressionists and Die Brücke being exhibited.
Between1948 and1954, and here is the confusing part, ‘ the Art Exhibitions became an observatory on contemporary art and avant-garde work. Awards were given to Braque (1948), Matisse (1950), Dufy (1952), Ernst and Arp (1954). In 1950, the US pavilion presented works by Pollock, Gorky and, for the first time, De Kooning (in 1954 he returned with 27 paintings). Alexander Calder, in 1952, was the first major American artist to win the Gran Premio di Scultura.’ Or so we are told by the Venice Biennale website. Confusing? Yes, confusing, because the history of the term ‘contemporary art’ varies enormously.
According to the New Museum of Contemporary Art, in New York, ‘contemporary art’ begins in 1977, others are less precise and select somewhere within the 1970s as the beginning. The Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA), in London, was founded in 1947 and, as we saw above, the Venice Biennale was already engaging with ‘ contemporary art’ back in 1948. Britain’s Tate suggests ‘In relation to contemporary art museums, the date of origin for the term ‘contemporary art’ varies.’
If the new Kuala Lumpur Biennale 2017 is about contemporary art, which seems suggested in the Biennale handout - ‘Among the objectives of the KL Biennale are: to expand NAG’s networking and collaboration opportunities; to drive the development at international level of the country’s contemporary art industry…’ then what is this thing called ‘contemporary art’?
Where ‘modern art’ seemed to be mostly concerned with painting and sculpture, ‘contemporary art’ is so widely based as to gather to itself performance, installation art, video or other types of lens-based art and, in other words, art which is seen as contemporary may, and is, made from anything. It is no longer static, and frequently embroils itself in controversy.
In one contemporary art museum in Milan (MA*GA, opened 1966), exhibits to the ‘Urban Mining’ display included a variety of materials including Cesare Pietroiusti’s aged paper with type-written text, Christiane Löhr’s grass sculptures as well as experimental video. In the recent (21st October to 5th November 2017) Karachi Biennale, Huma Mulji's broken and twisted street lamp installation ('An Ode to a Lamppost That Got Accidentally Destroyed in the Enthusiastic Widening of Canal Bank Road,’) inside an old law bookshop (Pioneer Book Store), caused a ruckus in and out of the art world. Conservationists, book store owner and bookshop conservationist were appalled at the insensitive installation of such a large, flickering, fractured, lamp post within such a small space. It threw up questions of artists’ privilege, sensitivity to natural environment and, most of all, was controversial and a constant talking point.
When we peak of ‘contemporary art’, there are, of course, tie-ins to what we have called avant-garde art, to Dada and Surrealism and practitioners like Marcel Duchamp (readymades), Max Ernst (frontage, collage and montage), and the American Joseph Cornell (surreal boxes) and, certainly surrealism and cinema (Robert Wiene’s ‘The Cabinet of Dr Caligari’ (1920), Rene Clair’s ‘Entr’Acte' (1924) and Salvador Dalí and Luis Buñuel’s ‘Un Chien Andalou’ (1929)). Which begs the question as to the originality of ‘contemporary art’ or, alternately, if we are now in a state of anything goes, perhaps originality no longer matters and we are all free to loan from past decades, be inspired by other media just as Pop art (Roy Lichtenstein) loaned from comic books, or Picasso and Brancusi were inspired by African art.
Biennale’s have began sprouting up like art mushrooms around the globe. In his book ‘Playing to the Gallery’ (2014) British artist Grayson Perry counted as many as 220 biennales around the world. As well as Malaysia’s two biennales, KL and Langkawi), its neighbour, Singapore, held its latest biennale in 2016. Across the globe, Ecuador, Turkey, Russia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sweden, USA, Italy, Lithuania, Brazil, Republic of Korea, Indonesia, Nigeria, France, Taiwan, China, Pakistan, Germany and others held at least one biennale in 2017.
The KL Biennale 2017 presents Alami Belas (translated by the National Art Gallery as …Be Loved). In the handout, ‘Alami Belas’ is referred to as being….
‘Quite close to the meaning of the phrase 'be loved'. ‘Belas’ refers to the sense of love
that comes from the depth of the soul, and relates also to compassion, sincerity, happiness, honesty, hope and sustainability. Belas is an important aspect of living together in a shared space. This biennale’s theme of "Alami Belas / Be Loved" highlights a plethora of social issues related to human reactions to and interactions with nature. The aim is to provide moments of contemplation to reassess various human actions and behaviours as reflected in the works by invited artists featured in the "Petals of Love" segment'.
There are five segments to the Biennale, which include;
1.Love For Humanity.
The love for humanity focuses on disaster victims, the disabled, indigenous people, the poor in urban and rural areas, the elderly, orphans, homeless children, single mothers and the victims of abuse.
2.Love For Nature.
The love for nature focuses on the nature, endangered habitat, natural environment, flora and fauna to ensure a balance between sociology development and nature preservation.
3.Love For Animals.
Love For Animals is a special dedication for abused animals and animals going to extinct. The focus is on the endangered species due to habitat destruction caused by human.
4.Love For Heritage .
Love for heritage can be divided into tangible heritage such as architecture and nature such as flora and fauna as well as intangible heritage such as performance arts, visual arts, religious ritual, music and songs that are an added value for the tourists.
5.Love For Our Legendary Icons / Spiritual Love .
The Love for our legendary icons is evaluated through the legacy of culture and arts. This activity will be focusing on the contributions toward societal development, animal, heritage and environmental conservation. The spiritual theme will showcase artworks that are spiritual.
I had visited the main exhibition, at the Malaysian National Art Gallery, on its seventh day of being open to the public. It was impressive. Possibly the very best that the National Art Gallery has yet to present, however, there were still a few flaws.
While many of the galleries were (mostly) up an running, by no means all were. Essentially, one week into public viewing, object labels were missing, as were textural wall panels. Here I give the National Art Gallery the benefit of the doubt, and assume that those exhibits now with only Malay text panels will, at some point, also have English for those many foreign visitors who would not understand Malay.
Several galleries on the first floor, and one on the top floor, had workmen busying themselves amidst dust and rolls of bubble wrap. Step ladders were strewn everywhere, as were cables, tins of paint and an assortment of tools and implements. While I understand that the ‘opening’ of the Biennale is on the 23rd of November, perhaps the National Art Gallery should have delayed its opening to the public from the 1st of November until the 24th, as the galleries are not yet ready.
Monday 6 November 2017
Meditative Movement; Chin Wan Kee 'Sculpturing is Meditative'
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| Pregnantly 1991 |
The exhibition ‘Sculpturing is Meditative’, by Chin Wan Kee, at the National Art Gallery in Kuala Lumpur, at first glance seems the very opposite of traditional concepts of meditation. In meditation, one might presume an act of stillness, serene calmness, not the effervescent dynamism and vibrance of Chin’s figurines which erupt into graceful dances of shadow and light. Everywhere in that gallery the stuff of myth and dreams are narrated. Stories are whispered between the darkness of shadow and the traditional whiteness of the cube gallery.
The intrinsically meditative nature of Chin’s approach to his art seems embedded within art’s therapeutic embrace. It is not therapy, as such, but, perhaps, a mindful and spiritual ‘Focussing’ of the inner man upon the task he has set himself (as set out by American psychologist and philosopher Eugene Gendlin, in 1978). It is somewhat Buddhist in approach. Creating works of art, e.g. sculpturing, is an immersive process from beginning to completion. The mind must be focussed not just on concept, idea, structure and process but on the bringing together of the disparate elements within that act of creation, its completion, and the happy accidents along the path to the work’s fruition. The British artist Francis Bacon had this to say about happy accidents…
‘In my case all painting... is an accident. I foresee it and yet I hardly ever carry it out as I foresee it. It transforms itself by the actual paint. I don't in fact know very often what the paint will do, and it does many things which are very much better than I could make it do.’
However, Chin’s sculptures, in their own acts of being, become objects for meditation, as well as by-products of meditation. Chin’s figurine ‘Pregnantly’ (his small bronze from 1991), is holding our, the visitors’s, anticipations as we enter the gallery, expectant, full of our own subjective imaginings. These imaginings become reconfigured upon espying Chin’s wonders of solidified Chagallian dreams, his hints of Picasso’s Minotaurs and that torn, earth-bound, motif of a doomed Icarus. To this aged critic, Chin’s works seem to re-imagine European artists like Salvador Dalí, Pablo Picasso, Marc Chagall and the British artist Michael Ayrton. It is with the memory of Aryton’s acute renderings of the Greek mythos, of the doomed Icarus and his father Daedalus, that brings with it the insights into Chin’s intimations of ancient Greece, but resurrected here, within Ptolemy’s Golden Chersonese.
Chin, in his objects for meditation, be they derived from Cartesian (deus ex machina or cogito ergo sum) or Aurelian discourses, has make solid a plethora of man’s philosophical and psychoanalytical representations. Symbols, from birds and crescent moons to Dalíesque spindly-legged horses, grab our attention and lead us to smaller human figures which portray both the dance and the stillness of everyday life. This ‘glance’ is given through Chin’s metaphysical frames, and actual (bronze) frames, in works like ‘The Perplexed Soul’, 2014.
It is, perhaps, an ambiguity to talk about stillness and dynamism together, and yet good sculpture does just that. In the perpetual ‘frozenness’ of Chin’s meditative moments, caught forever in a Heideggerian ‘augenblick’ (or brief moment in time), the artist simultaneously presents the beauty of movement within the context of serenity, of a calm quietude . Action becomes stilled. Yet our eyes and minds are also pregnant with anticipation of the next moment, and the next in perpetuity. The be-winged ‘Icarus’ bronze (Dreamer, 2016) sets off to follow his dreams but, as his father Daedalus has warned, he mustn’t fly too close to the sun of his imaginings, lest he fall.
In the quieter moments of Chin’s ‘Beyond mind and the words series’, we see a laying bronze figure (A Book with ‘TRUTH’, 2007), holding a book. Inside, the book is inscribed with ‘TRUTH’. A bird sits on the reader’s right knee. Chin appears to use birds as symbols of freedom (with knowledge comes freedom) within his figurines. It is natural to assume that the figure laying down may be reading about the concept of freedom, or escaping through the act of reading, hence achieving a form of freedom of his mind or, alternatively, looks not at the book, but beyond to his unseen cage, and aches for his freedom, provoked by the book.
In Chin’s catalogue, which accompanies the exhibition, the aforementioned Dalíesque spindly-legged horse (Wisdom, 2015, page 59), comes with the note ‘Wisdom is not dependent on the depth of your knowledge’. It is a common expression, perhaps rooted in Marcus Aurelius talking about the arrogance of supposed knowledge. In this bronze, Chin has a small man atop a golden horse with elongated legs. The seated man is, quite literally, looking backward instead of forward. Another man, below, seems perplexed with the action as he spread his hands, maybe shrugs. A bird flies from between the horses legs. The man is on his ‘high horse’, which in common parlance (derived from England circa 1380) means being in a position of power, remote and proud. In modern English being on a ‘high horse’ is now a term of derision. Chin’s seated figure is bent headed, thoughtful, if not woeful, perhaps in debate with the man standing. Freedom seems to be escaping the seated man, even though his haughtiness has seen to have dissipated. He has knowledge, but has been unable to use it wisely.
Much of Chin’s work is allegorical or metaphorical. It is steeped in mythos and ancient wisdoms. Chin’s narrative structures speak loud and clear from thoughtful bronzes, which are both by-products of his meditative approach to his art, and objects of mindfulness and are meditations in themselves. There is motion is Chin’s dialogues/narratives inherent in those enrapturing works, physical motion, frozen motion, caught within a series of Heideggerian ‘augenblicks’ as frozen moments.
In many respects, the show at Kuala Lumpur’s National Art Gallery is a retrospective, spanning twenty years (1997 - 2017) of the artist’s working life. They are, naturally, selected works, chosen to reveal the creativity of this master craftsman and to suit the gallery they are in. One benefit of a smaller, more intimate, gallery, is that light may be manipulated sufficiently to add the dimension of shadow play upon the walls, as it is for Chin’s works in this gallery, which is splendidly effect in revealing Chin’s meditative movement(s).
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| Wisdom, 2015 |
Kartika's Garden
In Kartika’s garden,
verdigris spreads amidst secreted mortars,
tender leaves graced by sundering sun,
shadows deep, mysterious,
Jasmine perfumes,
dried fronds of woven attap
meld intentions of man/nature.
Indonesia's premiere artist, Kartika Affandi-Koberl (1934 - ), is the daughter of South East Asia’s foremost Expressionist painter, the late Affandi Koesoema (1907-1990). Her artistic career developed from 1957, when she first took up a paint brush, but later abandoned in favour of a more direct approach of putting colour on canvas - straight from the tube using her fingers. Since her father’s departure in 1990, Kartika has taken up the reigns of her father’s museum - The Affandi Museum which resides at Jalan Laksda Adisucipto, Yogyakarta, on the island of Java, Indonesia, caressing the Gajah Wong River by its western bank. Kartika remains the Chairperson of the Affandi Foundation.
In March this year (2017), Java, once called The Garden of the East (by Eliza Ruhamah Scidmore, 1897), had a propensity to rain. On one typically sultry day in Yogyakarta (the cultural capital of Indonesia), I, quite unexpectedly, met Kartika Affandi-Koberl (aka Kartika, or Kartika Affandi).
I had wearied of that strip of consumerism called Jalan Malioboro, its dubiously helpful males soliciting us to see their batiks, the over enthusiastic (again) males requesting us to use their becak (cycle rickshaws), or their definitely unspeedy, but perhaps a shade romantic, andongs (horse drawn carriages), pulled by less than romantic emaciated horses. True to our proposed schedule (which had been hastily drafted in Malaysia), we grabbed a GrabCar and tootled off to the Affandi Museum. It was, ostensively, to talk with Susan (secretary) about arrangements to visit with Kartika Affandi, later in the week.
Having marvelled at the first gallery and, when approaching the second gallery, I saw in the distance an explosion of sartorial colour which could only have meant one thing, or rather one person - Kartika Affandi, beloved Indonesian colourist. The closer I got, the more it appeared that she was in a meeting at the open air Cafe Loteng. That oasis was blessed by a scattering of frangipani flowers and, more importantly, shaded. By the time I had sauntered over to that cafe, our eyes had locked. I had an internal dilemma. While I deemed it rude not to, briefly, introduced myself, I also worried about intervening upon her meeting. Grabbing the metaphorical bull by the non-existent horns, I introduced myself then quickly exited after confirming our Friday meet. I resumed my wandering around Kartika’s father’s museum, safe in the knowledge that I would see Kartika later in that week.
Then, as is the way when you are busy, suddenly it was Friday. My stay on Java was nearly over.
I called, yet again, for a GrabCar. It arrived within minutes. Starting off, there appeared to be a dispute regarding Kartika’s address. I wrangled with the driver. It eventuated with some warming debate, about price, and with me leaving the GrabCar in favour of a local taxi driver who did seem to know where he was going. The broken journey resumed.
I was led through the Javanese countryside heading towards the foothills of Gunung Merapi (Merapi Mountain), easing past verdant rice padi, cool in our urban taxi. In watery fields I witnessed smiling women, their ‘caping’ (bamboo conical hats) shading them from the undoubtedly punishing heat, their feet firmly planted in fecund, pastoral, soil.
Discovering Kartika Affandi’s Indonesian residence had not been easy. The Yogyakarta inner-city taxi driver, had stopped frequently to enquire directions of puzzled local men standing, scratching their heads. Eventually we resorted to calling Kartika's secretary at the Affandi Museum, then apprising said driver of Kartika's house's location. I carefully crossed my sun-dried fingers as I did so.
And yet, despite minor setbacks, journeying the Javanese countryside had been a sheer delight. The pastoral greenery was luxuriant, plentiful and reminiscent of Kedah, which according to TripAdvisor was the rice bowl of Malaysia. The Indonesian sky was blue, with just a mere hint of the rain to come. I had become gently lulled by miles of rural splendour, and the small enterprises called warung kopi (coffee lean-toos) where local (mostly) men drank provincial unfiltered coffee, smoked sigaret kretek (clove cigarettes) and perhaps dreamed garuda dreams.
Brakes squealed suddenly. We slowed almost to a stop. There, down a small lane, a sign caught the driver’s eye. He quickly swung the car through a gateway I had not realised was there. Birds, aware of difference in their milieu, loudly twittered in leaf-girded trees. The taxi driver, sensing journey’s end, mentally rubbed gleeful hands at the fee he was to collect. My wallet thinned as we stepped into what appeared to be a lush park. It was the residence of Javanese artist Kartika Affandi.
A quick glance from my overawed, heat-dry, eyes had told me that, within Kartika’s lavish landscaped gardens, lay numerous traditional Central Javanese buildings. Those examples of Java’s architectural heritage peeped between trees and luscious bushes. The buildings had been translocated to Kartika’s site, and were in the process of preservation and conservation. They formed part of an open air museum, which had been designed by Kartika and displayed for the delectation of Kartika’s house guests, and other visitors.
Kartika had recently built her Museum Perempuan Indonesia “Kartika” (Kartika’s Indonesian Women’s Museum) galleries, adjacent to the conserved buildings. Those galleries shone with art, not just from Kartika herself, but from other Indonesian female artists too.
Kartika's son-in-law, slim, tall, Mommi (aka Budi Utomo), dressed in green shirt with Keith Herring type pattern in white, met us as the taxi reversed and exited. Kartika turned from where she was painting a lotus, near vases of freshly cut torch ginger, heliconia and hanging Balinese masks, raised her eyes from her vocation and raised her voice in greeting, giving an expansive, welcoming, smile as she did so. Her eyes sparkled with radiant bon homme. It truly felt like a homecoming, Kartika mother, or grand mother, for she was both in her family.
Kartika’s house had a very shady veranda under which she likes to paint. It is constructed from local wood, thatched in places with attap. All around we witnessed carvings, intricate filigree wood patterns practically hidden behind black wooden totemic figures stretching from floor to ceiling. Heavy chairs, similarly of hard wood, shared space with dark wood-constructed benches, lengthy enough to accommodate a recumbent westerner, or so I discovered. In the evening, all was delicately lit by bulbs shaded by rattan lampshades. The whole was an elegant mix of ageless rural idyll, melded with contemporary convenience.
Kartika’s lush habitat was undoubtedly welcoming. Purple orchid, white jasmine and lilac wisteria hung or flounced as we approached Kartika’s wheelchair ramp - a Gaudiesque mosaic, guarded by a terracotta orang-utan statue. That ramp, as curvaceously serpentine as its sister in Barcelona’s Parc Guell, guided us through the morning heat to where Ibu (mother) Kartika was painting that sublime lotus.
Mommi, himself a painter and de facto curator of Kartika’s museum, had been charged with the task of guiding me around those extensive tropical grounds. Along a grey (rather than yellow) brick path, which was at times tinged with verdigris, a whole host of equatorial flora surrounded me. Taking my cue from W. H. Davies (poem Leisure) it became all too easy to meander, dawdle, take my delight along that intriguing path to Kartika's recently built museum. Doing so, I witnessed large wooden cartwheels propped beside large discarded granite mortars, perhaps intended to grind rice. They nestled adjacent to serene seeming ponds, housing golden carp, which occasionally flashed breaking the stillness. Silent statuary, exotic and erotic, warily peeked from under copious green bushes. Carved totems weathered sundering heat, observing as we strolled towards galleries housing our host’s art collection.
In those grounds one open-sided building was dominated by a large, dried, natural wood sculpture, rocks piled at its base. It was an installation of painted, Balinese, volcanic river rocks, representing ancestral gods.
Mommi explained that, in 2006, Kartika had come across the work of Balinese artist Ni Nyoman Tanjung, on a visit to Bali, and insisted that some of her work be container transported back from Bali, and form a future installation as part of the Indonesian Women’s Museum Kartika. Ni Nyoman Tanjung’s work is reminiscent of, but distinct from, the late Indian Art Brut creator Nik Chand, with his rock garden in Chandigarth, India, and many intriguing images of Loa (Haitian gods and saints) discovered by DeWitt Peters in Haiti, during the 1940s. In 2012 Ni Nyoman Tanjung received a Heralds Culture award and her work seen in a permanent display in Kartika’s gardens.
Having walked those gardens, I am reminded of ancient Javanese royals having Pleasure Gardens, spoken of in epic narrative poems such as the Sumanasāntaka, where pleasure gardens were situated in the capitals of kingdoms. There is also mention of one such garden within the kingdom of the gods, in Indra’s capital. A chorus of birds, signing in the pleasure garden, awake lovers who perform their ablutions, and pray in the taman (garden). Flowers blossom in delights of feminine grace and charm, arousing hearts of lovers and of poets in those ancient gardens. Is it any wonder that Indonesia’s foremost woman artist should choose to set aside land for harbouring arbors, ponds and a lusciousness of blooms, to paint en plein air as a breeze stirs the scents and squinting eyes linger upon a blue cart, where golden symbols of fish mingle with white flowers and green leaves set against a sun yellow background.
I leveled my hand phone to capture a flight of fancy, the insect buzz momentarily silent but fish still peeping from lotus leaves in a murky lotus filled pond. Forest tree ferns exploded from containers half a man’s height, pandanas leaves shatter graceful foliage in tropical aroma. It is all balm to the senses, ointment for the eyes, lotion in scent, soothing to urban ears. Kartika’s garden is haven, not just for art, but that too. It is a veritable oasis crafted from nature to soothe weary souls, such as ours.
Inside the museum I am taken aback by the terracotta colour of the first gallery’s brick walls. No white cubes there. Kartika’s paintings seem to belly laugh or scream from the walls. Her impasto style, adding paint straight from the tube, rubbing it with her fingers, produces vibrantly expressive imagery, leaping from the walls at us, engulfing me. It becomes impossible to look at the frames, I am drawn into the images, beguiled by colour and style.
I see hosts of images of Kartika, Kartika’s family, all spread bare (literally). Some thoughtful hand, and it may have been Mommi’s, has given each painting space enough for it to be appreciated without being crowded by its neighbour. The richness of the gallery’s hard wood pillars looms above us, beside me, nature is everywhere there, windows open, doors open to stream in the light and sounds of nature, as I become immersed into Kartika’s symbolic worlds.
As I walk, approach paintings, marvel at Kartika’s abilities, I am watched. From time to time I am able to catch a Kartika effigy observing me. From the far side of the first gallery, parallel to the entrance is a wooden boat. In the boat a pink bust of Kartika, her head half skull, watches, hands clasped to her throat. She beseeches, but she also stares. She appears ever there, as we wander. Further along, another effigy, a life-size mannikin of Kartika sits in a wheel chair. At first glance you believe it to be real, thinking Kartika has come to join us, but no, it is inanimate, posed, red hat on her head, another, white hat, in her lap. It is a small installation, representing a work space replete with large wooden desk, shelves full of writing, auction catalogues, books covering everything from Chinese wisdom to Doris Lessing’s The Golden Notebook, her novel of fragmentation and mental breakdown.
Fibreglass sculptures abound within the galleries of Kartika’s museum. Large, brightly coloured, phalluses un-erotically cavort. A four-headed sculpture of Kartika, hands over her mouth, censors herself, unable to speak of the huge penile dogs intertwined, or of the multiples of lizard heads constructed for a showing elsewhere. But my eyes are always drawn back to the power of Kartika’s paintings, her landscapes and her figure works. I feel her energy and, like Van Gogh, her lust for life. I walk off silently humming Iggy Pop, back into the garden.
Pinky Kumari Madawela; Painter of Spirit
The remarkable Indian artist, Pinky Kumari Madawela, was born in Bihar, India. Bihar is famous for the ancient pilgrimage site of Buddha’s Bodhi tree, growing in the serene Bodhgaya’s Mahabodhi Temple.
Madawela was fortunate to have studied at the great Indian ‘renaissance’ master, Rabindranath Tagore 's university, BharatiVisva-Bharati University (Kala-Bhabana) in Santiniketan, West Bengal. She completed her MFA in sculpture, then moved to Karnakata.
Her intense love for painting, and her immense joy for colour, shines through all her very expressive art works. In interviews Madawela has expressed that her interest in colour bursts forth like the Indian Spring festival of Holi, in which the four main colours - red, blue, yellow and green all have deeply symbolic meanings. Within a web of complex significations red becomes concepts of love and fertility, but also fire and purity; blue is the eternal colour of Krishna and his all-inclusiveness; yellow is the colour of harvest, and turmeric, while green is spring, new beginnings and happiness.
Madawela’s vivid paintings swirl, and at times erupt with spiritual or metaphysical energy. In vibrant paintings such as ‘I Found my Orange Dress’ (mixed media on paper), wisps of line skate along intriguing surfaces. A mixture of female figures are revealed, emerging from roots of colour, orange, pink, and a surprise of blue (top right). There are hints of Medieval paintings. Courtiers huddle together gossiping, perhaps of forbidden loves, while gaiety takes centre stage and the splendour of the favourite dress is revealed.
Through her titles and the artworks they describe, Madawela’s fascination with spirituality prevails. In ‘State of the Heart’ and ‘Novices’ the onlooker becomes a voyeur, beguiled by Sufic choreography, transposed with Rumi’s poetry into the mystic realms of Dervish dances. The paintings become poetry. The resultant paintings, the line, the colour all speak to the heart as the artist takes the onlooker’s hand into the swing and sway, is turned around and around into a transcendental ascent, a romance of movement and of the spirit. We are surrendered to a god, receiving their esoteric, divine love. Heavenly blue reveals a meditation of movement and transcendence which Madawela is intent upon drawing us into, coaxing us to join the Dervish dancers, and her, in the dances of love, turning towards the truth, abandoning egos, twisting towards the ultimate lover’s perfection. The whirling Sufic dance is the ‘Sema’, originating in 13th century Turkey. Sufis are known for their wooden (sufa) cloaks. The Mevlevis order, those who perform the dance, was founded by the poet and mystic Mevlana Jalaluddin Rumi, mostly just known as Rumi.
Yet, even in height of passionate movement there is stillness. Amidst paintings with the forcefulness of ‘Durga’, its sombre tones and its Chagal black, there are images that simply reach out to your soul, capture your consciousness. A youthful Buddha (Young Buddha) comes draped in the orange red of his philosophy. There are a multitude of conjectures clouding the background of Madawela’s painting, but Siddhartha Gautama shines, radiant, his eyes full of hope and his destiny. It is still an impassioned piece, full of energy and vitalism, which ultimately draws the onlooker’s eye to the soft, loving, eyes of the man who will become Buddha. The painting is haunting, not in any negative sense but in the sense that the Mona Lisa is haunting and, once seen, is hard to forget.
Pinky Kumari Madawela is a painter of the spirit.
Shehan Madawela; Rice
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| Part of the artist's 'Rice Series' |
In these works, Madawela ‘talks’ of the overcoming of desire (kāma) born of nutrition or of reproduction. Rice, symbol of Lakshmi, a staple food, the colour and symbol of eternity and continuance, a seed of modified grass, symbolic both of the progenitor of seed (the phallus or lingam) and of man’s seed, vital for the growth of species.
The blue rice bowl is indicative of Rama/Krishna, of protection and the universe, but also becomes seen as the symbol of the receptacle of man’s seed (sperm), as woman, necessary for rebirth. The reverse highlights the need for material, as well as metaphorical, sustenance, the physical need for food. The symbol for which becomes rice, of which India once had over 400,000 varieties in the Vedic period.
As if we were in doubt of the significance of the imagery, Madawela litters his works with human figures, women with transparent, revealing, tops, showing their femininity. Occasionally, strategically placed green leaves are present to shelter a post-Eden modesty. The metaphors are mixed, as is the Indian religious persona. In a country where all the major religions abound, families frequently have mixed religious backgrounds, Buddhist, Christian, Hindu, Muslim and others. This religious fusion shines through in Madawela’s works.
Paintings such as Maha Shiva Ratri (mixed media on canvas), present the more overt Indian religious nature of the Lingam/Yoni duality. In this painting, there is no room for doubt of the Shaivite connection, A prominent lingam protrudes from the folds of a yoni. A (rice) seed rises to an ovum/moon. The background coloured red/brown, deep terracotta, talks not just of the earth but of that passion of procreation, the vital energy necessary for the process.
Madawela explains that 'the rice series started as a result of seeing development take over farmland at an amazing pace in india, and where staples like the precious rice grain (which feeds most of the world), and is a farmers way of life, were exchanged readily for money where real estate giants made a killing and where a way of life that has been around for centuries, came to an abrupt end....This is a precious grain which needs to be glorified and given its due respect for what it has given to mankind for its sustenance in the past, at the present and in the future.......'
Sunday 5 November 2017
Pipe Dreams: Intimations of Chia Yu Chian
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| Chia by Cheong Soo Pieng |
In this pipe dream I enter stage right. The Malaysian evening has grown unusually temperate. The coalescence of heat and humidity has precipitated curiously aesthetic banks of white clouds. They are partially shaded with roseate gold and cerulean, emerging prominent from a still bright, cobalt, sky. Those clouds are formed as if stacks of smoke from a well-worn pipe had suddenly, momentarily, appeared outside the house where Malaysian artist Chia Yu Chian had lived (in Bandar Sri Petaling, Kuala Lumpur). Those clouds become frozen. Briefly static. Anticipating the hand of the artist to commit that act of mimesis which Plato (in the Republic) had been so concerned over, for Chia liked huge skies, as we can see in his ‘View of Jinjang, Selangor (1969-1972).
I had travelled to converse with Leong Siew Hong (Chia Yu Chian’s wife), Chia Chee Ping (his younger son) and Chia Meow Lin (his daughter), who are among those who had known the artist Chia Yu Chian best. I had the honour of being able to dine with them, not in the Western concept of style but in the alternate Cantonese way of having deliciously fresh food, freshly cooked in an environment paying homage to that and nothing else. In the rambunctious Chinese ambience of that local restaurant, meaningful conversation, unless about the meal itself, became subservient to the sumptuousness of the feast. Wisps of real conversation, about Chia Yu Chian, became a delicacy to be savoured later.
That repast was a precursor to the main ‘meal’. It was the concrete appetiser to a contextual meal of conviviality, reminiscence and remembering, bound over for the quieter environment of the family home. Over slim glasses of red wine, in a downstairs room provoking memories of the artist, conversations arose in Mandarin and English. It was to become but a taster, concerned with the family’s recollections of Chia and of conversations regretfully never began with the artist. The more I learned, the more I wanted to know.
I had climbed down a small staircase to that dinning area, noticing shelves of art books. Herbert Read’s ‘Art Now’, Thames & Hudson’s ‘Picasso’ and ‘Maitres de L’Art Moderne’ struck me in their significance, before I descended to listen. Taking one step at a time, I simultaneously looked at each photograph as I passed, down and through that passageway. Without knowing I was, unwittingly, following in the footsteps of Singaporean Dr. Bridget Tracy Tan, who had visited Chia’s home when she had been the Director (Art & Corporate Knowledge) of the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts (NAFA). She had been there to write about Chia for the catalogue ‘Chia Yu Chian in Nanyang’, for the 2009 exhibition of his works. In the catalogue she had given very vivid descriptions of the interior of Chia’s house, the same house I had come to these years later.
Nine years after the Nanyang Academy’s resurrection, in 1946, from its closure due to Second World War (1941 to 1945), Lim Hak Tai, in 1955, and as Founding Principle for the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts, included within the academy’s philosophical concepts a fusion of cultures of different races, a bridging of Eastern and Western art, and an expression of local, tropical flavour. A ‘style’ gradually became noticeable, springing from these essential notions. The founding ideas of a new style (Nanyang Style) was intimated to be a fusion of Chinese art, art considered to be School of Paris, and depictions of life, flora and fauna from the Nanyang, or lands bordering the South China Sea. These axioms are essential to the understanding of the essence of Chia Yu Chian’s early works, and the overall spirit of his subsequent paintings.
From looking at those early works, created in an embryonic Singapore before Chia’s Parisian sojourn, there is no doubt that the artist could, should and would create a niche for his oeuvre within the annals of Nanyang, perhaps even of South East Asian painting.
The dream was beginning to come true. That dream was aided and abetted by Chia being tutored in Singapore, by two notable ‘Nanyang’ painters, Chen Wen Hsi (Singapore Chinese High School) and Cheong Soo Pieng (Nanyang Academy of Fine Art). Though, as an interview (1973) with the late art historian and artist Redza Piyadasa explained, Chia was never officially at the Nanyang Academy of Fine art, but was able to exhibit with those artists, and evidently drew a great deal of influence from his proximity to them.
Chia’s daughter, Chia Meow Lin, explained that during those Malayan years, before Merdeka (independence), there was a longing, an urging amongst the younger people to leave for the West. Chia (her father) had taken a few months at the British Council, Singapore, learning English, and later at Alliance Française learning French. No doubt with the idea of gleaning fresh ideas for his art, from a stay abroad. Chia was a very outgoing person who made friends easily.
It was fortuitous that Chia received a French Government Scholarship to study art, in Paris. Jean Aurillac, the French Consular General to Singapore at that time, had authenticated a certificate written by the Director of the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts (NAFA) to allow Chia to study at the Ecole Nationale Superieure des Beaux Arts de Paris, from 1959 to 1962, under the guidance of Professor Roger Chapelain-Midy.
A ‘Straits Times’ article (28th June, 1959, page 5) explains that in the February of 1959, Chia Yu Chian had entered France. He lost no time in making his mark there, for from the 4th of July until the 27th of that year, Chia held a one-man exhibition of his Malayan and Parisian artworks, at the Galerie de Villiers, in Paris.
Before Chia had travelled to France, he held an exhibition in Kuala Lumpur. It was there that he was to meet his future wife, Leong Siew Hong, who already had an interest in art. The story goes that she arrived late for the exhibition opening and, being a gentleman, Chia escorted the lady back home in the dark. A relationship was sparked. They communicated through letters while Chia was away and, on his return, he took a taxi all the way to Banting, where Leong Siew Hong was teaching. The rest, as they say, is history and one reason why that artist had hastened back to Malaya, after his studies.
In 1961, a year before Chia left to return to Malaya (1962), Singaporean Nanyang Master artist, close friend and mentor to Chia, Cheong Soo Pieng, had made a very simple sketch of his friend. That energetically vibrant sketch features a very suave, debonaire, Chia, notorious pipe in mouth and coat collar turned up. He could have been mistaken for the iconic French actor Jean-Paul Belmondo (in Jean-Luc Godard’s 1960 film, ‘Breathless’).
Soo Pieng had been sponsored to a European trip by Malaysian philanthropist Loke Wan Tho, and had met up with Chia, in London, with that sketch ensuing as a memento of their mentor/mentee meeting.
Chia and his pipe had, seemingly, become inseparable. Photographs, taken in and around the time Chia was in Paris (1959 to 1962), reveal the young artist as a playful, dapper young man, posing with a small, sometimes larger, pipe. Some black and white images are with, some without, cigarettes in the smaller pipe, delicately balancing a growing head of ash, such as ‘1959, First Studio in Paris 20 Rue du Sommerard, Latin Quartere, Sorbonne’, or ‘Paris, 1959’ or there again Chia posing with his artwork ‘Street scene, Madrid, Spain’, in London, (1960) or working on his mural for the Malaysian Embassy in Paris (1961).
Nineteen sixty one was also the year in which Chia’s painting,’View of Paris’, was bought by Dato Lee Kong Chian, and presented to the new Malayan National Art Gallery (opened in 1958).
On Chia’s return to Malaya, in the February of 1962, the ‘Straits Times’, 2nd of September, 1962, Page 2, remarks on him opening his, and Penang’s, first art gallery, at the Lim Chwee Leong building, in Prangin Road, Penang. The article was headlined ‘Malayan Artist Starts His Own Gallery’. That gallery was hailed as being the first of its kind in Penang. It was not, however, Chia’s first hanging in Penang. Doctor Lim Chong Eu had opened Chia’s exhibition (at Penang Library) on the 17th of May, 1958, a year before Chia had left for Paris. That was shortly after Malcolm McDonald (the Commissioner-General for Southeast Asia and the university’s first chancellor) had bought Chia’s painting ‘Young Woman’ and presented it to the University of Malaya, according to the ‘Straits Times, 10th of March, 1958 (page 5).
During the next decade (1970s), Chia’s work edged more towards a style which could be deemed Malaysian Gauguin. This is evidenced, particularly, in the colouration and subject matter of Chi’s portraits and figure work such as ‘Seated Woman’ (1973), ’Cowherd’ (1975), and ‘Maternity’ (1977). If anything, Chia, being born in South East Asia, and understanding its people and their nuances, was more successful than Gauguin in revealing the subtle distinctions of tropical living. Chia played down fragrant notions of exotica, while seeking to uncover equatorial normalcy, ultimately counterpoised by his heightened colour perception.
In ‘The Malay Family’ (1971), Chia uses a rich green to advance the yellow of the child’s dress, and the redness of the woman’s top covering. A similar transposition of colour draws the viewer’s eyes to the dress in ‘The Young Girl’ (1976), where the viewer becomes transfixed by the dress’s pattern and the unusual foreshortening perspective of the portrait. Chia’s ‘To Stitch Up’ (1973) sees a more subtle approach to colouration. It features a sitting figure whose clothing almost blends into the multi- coloured, textured, background. The effect of this blending is to bring the young woman’s face and her hands forward, the one transfixed in concentration, the other dextrously busy at her work. This painting was auctioned by Christie’s, Hong Kong, this year (2017).
The 1980s saw a profusion of Chia’s works. They were as simple as a ‘Van Gogh’ pot of ‘Sunflowers’ (1982) and as complex as his landscape ‘Abode of Recluses’ (also in 1982), but, for this writer, it is in his 1980s figure work that Chia excelled, in particularly ‘Dancing Gracefully’ (1983), a painting of an Indian woman, full of movement, and his ‘Hospital Series’ - sketched out while he was hospitalised in Kuala Lumpur and completed, later, in his studio. It was to be his final decade. He left a huge legacy of paintings, a catalogue of his life and the life of the newly independent Malaya, later to become Malaysia. A few paintings, created before his death (1990), indicate a real maturity to his style. His nudes, especially, had reached a very sophisticated air.
Chia’s paintings have continued to generate a great interest since that ‘Chia Yu Chian in Nanyang’ exhibition in 2009. That exhibition was held at the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts, Lim Hak Tai Gallery, between the 13th November and the 27th December of that year. It was only fitting that Chia’s work should, in a sense, return home. Even though Singapore was never home to Chia, but home to the very essence, to the soul and spirit of his work which is very much part of the idea of a Nanyang fusion of ideas from the West and the East.
A year after that exhibition, in the October of 2010, Chi’s work ‘Tin Mine’ (1958) was auctioned at Hong Kong Sotherby’s (the Modern and Contemporary Southeast Asian Paintings), and his ‘Paris Scene’ (1960) was featured in the local Henry Butcher Art Auction Malaysia. Also in 2010, under the Malaysian Modern and Contemporary Art Collection, Chia’s ‘KL Street Scene (Lebuh Pudu) (1985) was auctioned, and it is notable that Chia’s work has continued to be sold at Henry Butcher auctions each and every year since that initial Singapore exhibition.
As time has progressed, various notable auction houses have taken an interest in Chia Yu Chian’s works. This includes Bonham's, a well respected art auctioneer. In 2010, Bonham’s New Bond Street, London, auctioned Chia’s ‘Kek Lok Is Temple’ (1950) and in 2014, Bonhams San Francisco (Asian Decorative Arts) auctioned ‘City Night’ (1962). In the same year, Christie’s, Hong Kong, sold ‘A View of Penang’ (1958) at the Asian 20th Century Art (Day Sale).
In 2015, Chia’s painting 'By The River’ (1954) was sold, again at Christie's Hong Kong 'Convergences: A Special Sale of Singapore Art’, while his work ‘Penang’, sold in the Asian 20th Century Art (Day Sale) 31 May 2015, Hong Kong, HKCEC Grand Hall by Christie’s.
One year later, in 2016, Chia’s work was still being auctioned in both Christie's Hong Kong (Asian 20th Century Art, Day Sale), and Sotheby's Hong Kong (Modern and Contemporary Southeast Asian Art), as well as 33 Auction Singapore (Singaporean Art, Modern and Contemporary Asian Art) and in local Malaysian auction houses. It is a trend that grows.
Plato need have no concern. The static clouds have moved, been hidden or are simply no longer revealed. While the world moves inextricably on, the pipe dream continues. He captured the beauty and humanity of his environment, leaving this legacy to the country he loved, the one he chose to return to, from the excitements of the Parisian metropolis, where he had studied.
Koh Cheng Foo (principal of Ai Tong School), writing as Marco Hsu (in his book A brief history of Malayan art, page 91, and originally published in 1963) has this to say - ‘Chia Yu Chian is naturally talented and also outstanding in his art, I believe that he will do well in the Malayan art scene in future’. And he did do well. With dedication to his art, Chia painted a path to the very pinnacle of artistry in South East Asia, achieving recognition beside his former tutors, Cheong Soo Pieng and Chen Wen Hsi, indubitably giants in their field.
Eminent Asian art history scholar, T.K. Sabapathy, on seeing Chia’s work at the Chinese Chamber of Commerce (1984), mentioned this of Chia’s work; that his (Chia’s) ‘Colour and brush stroke exert a force and vitality, transforming the canvas into a field throbbing with energy.’ I can give no higher praise.
I am eternally grateful to the late Chia Yu Chian’s family, Leong Siew Hong and those family members who were able to be present during my interview, and to my wife Khor Pei Yeou who, along with Chia Meow Lin, translated for that interview and enabled a free flow of additional information for this writing. I exit stage left while Chia’s beloved pipe still resides in the house that he left, never to return to. The tobacco bowl languishes, never to be re-filled, a hasty flame never to be re-lit, a Shakespearian brief candle dowsed.
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| Catalogue with this article inside |
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| Presentation of catalogue |
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| This article |
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