Howling in Siem Reap

John Oh’s Expressive Fauvism

 

While in the West the nude in art dates back to ancient times (Egyptian, Greek and Roman), in the current Malaysian modernity there has been some tentativeness concerning the depiction of the unclothed female form.

There were occasions of semi-nudity, in paintings such as in Patrick Ng Kah Onn’s, “Spirits of the Earth, Sky and Water” (1959) and, despite nudes and semi-clad females (from Bali, Indonesia) being de rigueur to what was coined Nanyang Art (by Redza Piyadasa and T.K. Sabapathy, in 1979) and paintings by practitioners such as Cheong Soo Pieng (Balineses Girls, 1950s, or Long House Inhabitants, 1975), all this was before Malaya became Malaysia. Latter-day Nanyang artists, such as Tew Nai Tong (in the 1980s), and Kelantan’s Khalil Ibrahim (who, like Nai Tong, was also art schooled in the West) created ethereal sketches as well as watercolours (also in the 1980s) of East Coast beach women semi-clad.

Even the renown Choong Kam Kow, a ‘Modernist’ figure in Malaysian art, teacher and trend setter was required to ‘hide’ his nude artworks (from the 1960s) in a small room in Malaysia’s National Art Gallery, during his ‘Retrospective Exhibition’ (November 2014  - June 2015). Admission to the nakedness was by permission only.

John Oh has made the decision to reveal his ‘art school’ paintings in his first ‘solo’ art book, with images created some thirty years previously. Those paintings have stood the test of time well. With an Expressionistic/Fauve style that, simultaneously, recalls cartoon erotica, and John Oh excites our eyes with the dynamism of his strokes as well as the vividness of his colours.

The artist clearly understands colours and their effects on each other and on us (his audience), with poignant use of warm and cool colours he draws attention to his subjects with aplomb. His colours shimmer due also to the method of paint application, and the overall expressive effect is stunning, thought provoking, with all the playfulness of the American underground cartoonist and illustrator Vaughn Bodē (1960s – 70s).

Taking this in consideration, it is indubitably an act of bravery by John Oh (Jyh Neng) to consider publishing an edition with forty-five nude torsos of the female form (acrylic paint on ‘Arches’ watercolour paper), in a culturally ambivalent Malaysia and a world increasingly questioning concepts of ‘the male gaze’ and female nudity.