Artist captures naked form and body language
Artist captures naked form and body language
Yusuf Susilo Hartono, Contributor, Jakarta
Lately, the Indonesian art world has begun to show more grit
-- not only in jacking up the value of paintings, a common but
dirty practice by brokers at exhibitions, but also in exposing
themes that lay bare the rottenness of the powers that be, along
with their corruption, collusion, and nepotism.
Paintings with nude figures have been prominently displayed
without barely any protest from the public.
All of this is the spirit of the reform movement: to do
anything in the name of human rights and democracy.
A very good example can be seen in the solo exhibition of Ade
Arti Tjakra, 54, at Galeri Cipta III Taman Ismail Marzuki,
officially opened by art enthusiast Melani W. Setiawan.
The exhibition, held under the theme of Human Beings in Their
Complete Forms, features about 30 medium-sized oil, acrylic and
watercolor paintings on canvas and paper.
The models are both men and women in different poses: sitting
and lying prostrate.
The paintings illustrate people in mixed states --
contemplating, daydreaming, pondering, or in a mood of simple
indifference. The format is the whole body, half-body and one-
third of the body.
Some subjects are viewed from the front, others from the back
(including buttocks and backs) or from the side.
Ade is probably the first female painter with the courage to
hold a solo exhibition of her paintings of nudity at the TIM Art
Center. As for the Fine Art Committee of the Jakarta Art Council,
this is the first time that they have "passed" an exhibition of
paintings of nudity.
"Ade Arti Tjakra began by taking lessons from a number of
senior painters at home. For the past two years, she has
regularly joined the "life figure drawing" sessions led by artist
Teguh Ostenrik.
Since then, she has come up with a number of paintings
concentrating on human figures.
"Regardless of theme and technique, she seems to have gotten
carried away by indulging herself in painting activities," wrote
Syahnagra Ismail of the Fine Art Committee of the Jakarta Art
Council in a catalog of the exhibition.
Her teacher, Teguh Ostenrik, said that Ade, was one of his
students who made rapid progress.
After two years of sessions with nude paintings, she has come
up with the works now on display.
Her works are always anatomically correct; however, even
though they expose nude men and women, they do not arouse sexual
desire on the part of the viewers.
How is it possible that these nude paintings stop short of
arousing sexual desires? Perhaps because the paintings are not
portraits of human bodies as captured by realist or naturalist
painters or photographers.
Ade has captured only the anatomical figure, read the
composition of the muscles and then captured the body language.
Then, in transferring these figures onto canvas, she first de-
constructs them and digests the image of the body from her own
viewpoint. Then the deftness of her hands in using the
paintbrush, her choice of colors and her processing of the aspect
of light to give shape to profundity of forms.
In her acrylic paintings, the colors make themselves firmly
present in an overlapping manner.
One of her more impressive paintings, Scarlet Rhapsody, shows
the figure of a woman thinking, with the focus on her bowed head
and breast area in the dominant color of reddish brown,
accentuated with the color of white around the shoulders, cheeks,
nose and nipples.
Also one of her paintings called Tidak Peduli (Do Not Care),
there is the figure of a sitting woman with her left hand holding
her raised left leg, while her breasts are alluringly exposed.
The figure with the domination of brown lines accentuated by
the white color has, in its background, a piece of bluish figure.
This "double exposure" technique is also found in her other
works. In her painting called Melihat di Kegelapan (Seeing in the
Darkness) one can see the figure of a man. Ade has arranged the
flexibility of the body and the muscles of the shoulders, the
back and the buttocks in blue, white and ochre.
In her watercolor paintings, the atmosphere appears sweet and
soft, with a controlled spread of colors.
Look, for example, at her Yang Hilang (The Lost One), Setetes
Warna Hatinya (A Drop of the Color of Her Heart) and Hangover. It
is clear that Ade has been using water color for quite a long
time.
Having taken part in joint exhibitions since 1997, Ade is now
a member of the Association of Indonesian Watercolor Painters.
It is not infrequently that Ade inserts symbolism in the
beauty of her paintings. Take, for example, her Jangan Taruh Di
Sini (Don't Place it Here). This painting gives prominence to the
knees of the female object, and is intended to warn everybody not
to place their brains in the knees.
In fact, before Ade, many Indonesian painters were charmed by
nudity as an object of painting.
Many paintings in the theme of nudity have been exhibited,
although in most cases the exhibitions were not specially
designated for the sake of nudity alone.
Some famous Indonesian painters like Affandi, S. Soedjojono,
Mochtar Apin, Hardi, and even Kartika, have exhibited their
paintings of nude figures.
Earlier, nudity could be found in Asmat and Nias sculptures,
for example, and on the reliefs of Sukuh, and the Karmawibangga
of Borobudur Temple.
As the fine art critic Merwan Yusuf has emphasized, painters
and sculptors often use the bodies of men and women as their
models either to convey a message to the public, or to express
their admiration or search for a mystery.
Ade realizes that it is easy to paint a nude figure, but that
the market share is small; often it is also difficult to find
places to display such opinions. Even collectors cannot freely
place nude paintings in their own homes because they may get
objections from other members of the family.
Many of her friends who usually collect her paintings do not
want to purchase the nude ones, owing to cultural and religious
inhibitions.
So she is thinking of painting non-nude figures after this
exhibition. One thing is for sure, however: she will never take
up her brush to paint herself in the nude.