Deviation, rebellion and modern Indonesian art

By Chandra Johan

JAKARTA (JP): Deviation, rebellion and new movements have characterized the journey of modern fine arts, whether in Indonesia or in other parts of the world. In Indonesia, it was Sindu Sudjojono who first rejected the way his teacher, Mas Pirngadi, idealized nature in his paintings. That was in l928, and since then the Indonesian tradition of fine arts has had many other pioneers of "rebellion" and "deviation".

At that time, Sudjojono felt that the world of Indonesian fine arts, especially paintings, was stagnant, sterile and suffering from "anemia", because of taboos that posed as general limitations. Those taboos were manifested in landscape paintings, represented by the Dutch and the European middle-class (the bourgeois), which, in fact, were oriented to the market and a foreign tourist interest in Indonesian exoticism.

Sudjojono and Persagi's rejection of this tradition is considered the beginning of modern Indonesian fine arts, even preceding the words "rebellion" and "deviation" in the Indonesian fine arts vocabulary. On the part of the bourgeoisie who established the genre of Indonesian exoticism through paintings of Mooi Indie landscapes, Sudjojono had clearly rebelled and deviated. But on the other hand, he was freed, therefore implanting an awareness with his concept of the democratization of creation and visualization that modern Indonesian painting was a democratic art.

As a consequence, acts of deviation and rebellion showed that modern art was marked by a democratic character. People could have the freedom to like or dislike a certain form of art. However, not every deviation always runs smoothly. Because of its democratic nature, the establishment also has the right to refuse any form of deviation on behalf of the New. They, who in their youth supported changes or progress, are unable to sit back and allow just form of change or deviation from the norm.

There are several factors which explain why any change or deviation within modern Indonesian art is often first rejected. First, critics and the artists themselves are overly certain of the infallibility of their own concepts. Critics and artists tend to generalize based on a tendency and norm of the past, taking it as a reference to judge the development of the human condition. Sometimes the norms are not based on observations toward the development of the society but on the norms of art itself. In general, they assume that a society is unable to accept a new form of art, without considering changes which occur in the society itself.

The second factor, pertains to identity issues in the nation. These questions occur not only in Indonesia, but in colonies suffering paranoia. Such places tightly guard their own cultural values and consider "the new" or "the other", especially material identified as originating from the West, as a threat. In point of fact, as long as an artist attempts to present himself, the search for national identity is not a realized step.

A third reason relating to the rejection of new art forms relates to the desire to endow art with a role in society. The rejection of a new art trend is often based on a consideration of the distance between what is modern and the society in question. This concept neglects change in society, basing the judgment from a purist art angle. In this sense, a gulf exists between modern art and society.

In fact, it is because of the rapid changes in the society itself, beginning with the social system, science, technology, industrialization and the penetration of mass culture that the arts became marginalized activities. Practices, in which the activities of artists can only be observed in galleries or buildings, for the enjoyment of a handful of people. So the distance between modern art and society is not the result of one- sided change, but of multiple massive changes in society, including the world of art, which create heterogeneity and plurality.

Therefore, you will find there is no single form of art which could precisely represent the wishes of a society. In the history of modern Indonesian art, the enforcement of a form of art in the society resulted in the assumption that the form of people's art was the only ideal, and a priori toward another form of art, so that realism was considered the only suitable form.

The fourth factor is related to academic standards. In modern Indonesian art academies separate every field; specialization, standardization, professionalism are an inseparable part of the development and modernization process. Narrowing each field of activity means narrowing the media, method and valuation.

But standardization in the academies of modern art is sometimes contradictory. First because each academy has a general standard. But from this general standard subjective standards should not be rejected. These standards are surely not recorded in the list of the institutional aims (preference) of the academy.

Teachers in the modern fine arts academies are generally artists, who certainly bring subjective values with them. Although each teacher refers to established academic general standards, it is not impossible that subjective values influence the teaching system.

So, when an artist is called a deviator and a rebel, it might be because s/he steps outside the general academic standard, but also because they do not conform to the teachers' own subjective standards. In certain fine arts academies, the individual style of the artist-teacher often influences the students, giving an impression of a uniform style and trend to that academy.

It cannot be denied that this was the case at the School of Art and Design at the Bandung Institute of Technology (ITB), the Indonesian Institute of the Arts (ISI) in Yogyakarta, and the Institute of the Arts in Jakarta (IKJ). Has not our modern art history be known to have (mazhab) (schools of thought), like the Bandung School or the Yogya School? Doesn't Achmad Sadali, as an artist and former ITB teacher, exert a strong influence on the Bandung style? So, when there is a new form of art which is different from the established general form, the work and the artist are considered rebellious and deviators from the determined definitions. Rejection of a new art trend is contrary to the characteristics and nature of modern art itself, which supports plurality and individual freedom.

Those four factors occur in each era, and often lead to heated debates. However, not every deviation and rebellion can be equated with innovation. It is possible that the tool or media used by the artist originates from an old tendency, but the way it is used is different, as is the case of many installation works of contemporary art.