Art dealer Jais Darga Wijaya goes international

By Jean Couteau

DENPASAR (JP): Indonesian modern painting is, at last, reaching the stage of internationalization. Born in the 1930s as a reaction against colonial exoticism, Indonesian modern painting has long remained confidential and known only to local art lovers.

Apart from Affandi from the 1950s on, few painters ever held individual exhibitions abroad. When they did, their shows drew little attention, the West being at the time little interested in any modernism other than its own. Real change only came in the 1980s, and it was politically motivated.

Yearning for international acceptance, and proud of what it saw as its economic achievements, Soeharto's New Order turned the arts into a tool of its foreign policy; followed by a series of painting exhibitions in the United States and the Netherlands, too often, alas, in second-rate museums and galleries.

At the same time, though, Indonesian culture was entering the field of other countries' politics. Japan, Australia and later Singapore were opening the doors of their museums to Indonesian painters, and started publishing "Asian" arts magazines and holding "Asian" art exhibitions or biennials. Indonesian artists were thus, for the first time, recognized beyond their borders, and their works were purchased from Fukuoka, Japan, to Adelaide, Australia.

Indonesian curators were also brought into the dance, with Jim Supangkat in particular, insistently demanding recognition for non-Western modernism in international forums. Recognition finally bestowed on those artist with a discourse of politically and ecologically correct art in the West: Heri Dono, Dadang Christianto, Arahmaiani.

This is where Jais Darga Wijaya enters the picture. Unlike Jim Supangkat's institutional, museum-based promotion, she relies on the market. Active as an art dealer since the 1980s, she was one of the first Indonesians to sell Western masters' works to Indonesian collectors.

Two years ago she opened her gallery in Sanur with a comparative exhibition of European and Indonesian modernists. She followed suit in 1998 by opening another gallery in Paris with a French partner.

She inaugurated it with a show of selected Indonesia artists such as Chusin, Made Budiana, Made Wianta, Nyoman Erawan, Herry Dim and Jeihan. This exhibition received wide coverage in the French media, in particular with an article in the prestigious weekly daily Le Figaro. Following the praise he received in this article for his "colorist talent", Jais exhibited Wianta's works in the same gallery from May 17 through July 17.

The interesting thing about Jais' endeavor is that she does not operate in Paris as an outsider: now living part of the year in Paris, she behaves as a member of the local art dealers' crowd, and she has no qualms about it.

"I have to be accepted by them," she says, "and in order to do so, I must not only select good painters, but also be, or at least, look 'rich'. And she certainly looks so. Sometimes working with her own capital, at other times on behalf of some wealthy collector, Jais can be seen at Drouot's, a Paris auction hall, or attending small provincial French auctions, where forgotten pieces of French masters sometimes appear on the market. She then resells them in Indonesia or the United States, or sometimes to other French dealers -- at a hefty profit.

"Information is all important in the art business," she says. So she subscribes not only to the glossy magazines published by the likes of Christie's and Sotheby's, but also to the small brochures put together by the commissaire priseurs (auctioneers) of the French provinces.

Another thing she insists on is "social recognition". "Image is paramount," she says. And she knows where to appear, and how. At Castel's for example, a fashionable nightclub frequented not only by the Parisian intelligentsia, but also by dealers from the Left Bank; she goes there once or twice a month, knowing exactly whom to call tu (informal for you) and vous (formal for you), and how to engage whom with her Indonesian smile and exoticism. In other words, Jais is keenly aware that, ever since the days of Ambroise Voillard and Kahnweiler, art dealing is a game which is more "bourgeois" than political, and she is trying to play it. With some success, and still learning.

With her knowledge of the market and artists, her social skills and information network, how does Jais assess the opportunities of Indonesian artists in Europe?

"This is hard sale," she says.

Indonesians do not usually exhibit in the proper places, where there is a real market; they too often make do with remote or marginal exhibition places which barely warrant the name of galerie.

They do it for the sake of appearing in Paris, and all too often fall into the hands of sharks. It must be added that Jais' gallery, the Darga-Lansberg Galerie, is located on Rue de Seine, in the very heart of the art dealers' area of Paris' Left Bank. And what about the famous reluctance of Europeans to accept a different kind of modern art or, on the other side, their insistence on "exoticism".

Talking about Wianta, she says: "Some people will of course see him as simply a Balinese, and thus an exotic artist, but others will judge him on his artistic qualities, and the reaction is usually good. We cannot simply say that the French are not ready to accept Indonesian modern art. If so, why would they accept Japanese or African art, as shown in many galleries? To see them as stuck to their colonial perception is an all too easy way to hide our own shortcomings. When we present them with good artists, they accept them willfully."

Beside Wianta, Jais is preparing an exhibition on work by Jeihan in October, and another on Joko Ks next year. "It is not sufficient to hold simply one exhibition," adds Jais. "Artists have to present on the market once every two or three years. Only then is their name known by the collectors and art journalists, and only then can they hope to enter the auction market and gain a stable reputation."

Until recently one of the obstacles was price: "A Lee Man Fong or Blanco could cost up to US$250,000," she says, "more than a Miro; so there was no hope of selling such artists in Paris, where they were unknown to the market. Now the prices are more reasonable."

What are Jais' other projects? An art magazine, which she plans to launch soon. And in Paris, she hopes to test Indonesian painters at local auctions, far from the artificiality of the Singapore market. When their quality -- and price -- warrant it, she also hopes to promote Indonesian art at international fairs such as Basel.

There is a hitch to Jais' international dream, though: Art, even modern, is always a discourse, at the level of form and/or content, of selected members of a people -- the artists -- on their society.

To push them to depend on the international market may be at the cost of authenticity. Jais may go and trade in Paris, of course, but let her not forget that art is not glamour. It grows in the lanes, night markets and schools of Indonesia. It grows more often in poverty than among riches.