Diversity of Indonesian art starts to emerge

Diversity of Indonesian art starts to emerge

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Amir Sidharta
Contributor
Jakarta
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Even though the new era of post-Soeharto openness started over
three years ago, only this year did we get the sense that
diversity was emerging on the art scene. It was a year that saw
the emergence of a significant number of young artists,
particularly through art competitions and festivals.

There were also many more exhibitions of the works of female
artists than ever before, and art forms other than painting,
particularly sculpture, gained prominence. A number of
significant books on both senior as well as junior artists were
published. While the news from the Indonesian art world has for
the most part been happy, it also mourned the deaths of a number
of its prominent members.

Many promising young artists featured at the annual Yayasan
Seni Rupa Indonesia - Philip Morris Indonesian Art Awards held in
November. This year, competition entries seemed much more
expressive as a result of the elimination of a number of
restrictive rules that had been applied in previous years.
Consequently, highly creative and imaginative works were produced
by the 10 winners and even by some other of the almost one
hundred competition finalists.

Unlike previous years, the work of a female artist, Ay Tjoe
Christine, and the work of an artist residing outside Java or
Bali, namely Andrie Artawang of Palembang, appeared on the
winners' list.

The JakArt@2001 packaged various art events in one festival.
Although the festival itself was quite a success, the organizers
unfortunately did little to offer promotional materials such as a
bulletin or calendar of events that would have meant art
enthusiasts were better informed about the events happening
throughout the city.

Featuring more fine arts, the Bandung Art Event unfortunately
failed to gain much attention because of its distance from the
centers of the mass media. Very little about the event appeared
in the national news.

It was a promising year for female artists. In April, Erica
held her second solo exhibition, Reka-reka Erica, featuring four
gigantic new canvases, as well as many of her earlier works.

Later that month, the Indonesian Women Artists Exhibition was
held at the Galeri Nasional. The following month a similar group
show was held at the Bentara Budaya Jakarta. The two exhibitions
showed the diverse scope of the art being created by Indonesian
female artists.

Dolorosa Sinaga held a series of exhibitions of her
sculptures, culminating in her solo exhibition at the Galeri
Nasional Indonesia. The exhibition, which featured many of her
recent works, showed the current state of the sculptor's artistic
progress.

In November, the painter Wara Anindyah showed her depictions
of what she imagines the life of the Chinese to be, which seem to
be derived from portrayals of life of the inhabitants of mainland
China in the 19th century as can be seen in movies or television
serials. Frankly speaking, these works lacked the witty humor,
not to mention the quality of the craftsmanship evident in her
earlier works.

Apart from Dolorosa's sculpture exhibition, other sculptors
also had good opportunities to exhibit their art. Iriantine
Karnaya and G. Sidharta held a joint exhibition at the Galeri
Sisi of the Bentara Budaya Jakarta in September. In November, the
Association of Indonesian Sculptors (API) staged a large show
featuring the works of its members at the Galeri Nasional
Indonesia.

Leading sculptor Anusapati exhibited his familiar pieces in
wood in an exhibition entitled Genesis, held at the Nadi Gallery
in July. Teguh Ostenrik, who is better known as a painter,
surprised his collectors when he featured a series of intriguing
bronze sculptures at his solo exhibition at the Alila, Jakarta,
in October.

One of the best shows held this year was the Art-craft
Exhibition prepared by curator Asmudjo Jono Irianto for the
Galeri Nasional Jakarta. The show revealed another way of looking
at crafts as a fully-fledged art form.

Another interesting exhibition, Membaca Frida Kahlo, featuring
a number of artists' interpretations of Kahlo's personality,
thoughts and art, was held at the Galeri Nadi, West Jakarta,

However, by far the best art exhibition held this year was the
display of Bung Karno's collection at the Gedung Pola, Central
Jakarta, in September-October. For the first time, the artworks
collected by the late Indonesian president were made accessible
to the general public.

The great collection of paintings and sculptures by many of
the most important artists in Indonesian art history, which had
until recently only been available in the form of reproductions
in five-volume albums, could finally be viewed directly in this
show. The exhibition featured many monumental paintings,
including Rudolf Bonnet's exquisite rendition of the backstage
preparations for a Balinese dance, Basoeki Abdullah's depictions
of legends and myths, as well as Le Mayeur's paintings, striking
due to their sheer size. However, other, smaller paintings were
just as impressive as they were scrupulously selected by the
president, who was a refined connoisseur.

Despite the uncertain economic conditions following the Sept.
11 attacks in the United States, regional art auctions held in
Singapore experienced a surge in sales. At the end of September,
the auction houses Christie's and Sotheby's reaped revenues of
S$6,423,985 and S$5,682,780 respectively. The paintings fetching
the highest prices were still those depicting Indonesian
subjects. Christie's revenue figure included sales from an
auction of modernist Balinese paintings, which collected
$607,005. This represented an improvement on their combined sales
in early April, which had totaled over S$ 9 million.

Despite the successful sales, the Indonesian art market was
shocked by rumors that Christie's would be quitting Singapore as
an auction base. This was later confirmed in a letter signed by
the auction house's new director, Cecilia Ong, which said that
Christie's would from now on be including its Southeast Asian
section in its Hong Kong salesrooms. The move came just as the
local auction houses dealing in fine art, namely Balindo and
Larasati, were starting to gain prominence on the Indonesian art
market.

At least five new galleries opened and a significant number of
art books were published this year, the most important of which
was the volume on Hendra Gunawan. It is the first book on an
artist associated with the People's Cultural Institute.
Previously, publishers had been reluctant to release material on
artists associated with the Indonesian Communist Party.

The year also saw the passing of some of Indonesia's best
known artists. The Decorativist Soeparto (1928-2001), known for
his use of geometric motifs and psychedelic colors in depicting
his figures, passed away in March after suffering a chronic
illness. The death of Redha Sorana (1952-2001), who was known for
his paintings of fish and Menong dancers from West Java, came as
a shock to the Indonesian art scene, as the artist was still
relatively young. The older Amang Rahman (.-2001), whose
paintings often included dreamy imagery of his thoughts, also
passed away rather suddenly. The paintings he left behind were
later exhibited at the Museum Nasional in October.

The hearing-impaired painter Tarmizi (1935-2001) passed away
in late November, just a month after being diagnosed with cancer
of the liver. He died before he could see the solo exhibition
that his friends and colleagues had prepared for him. A solo
exhibition of his works was something he had longed for
throughout an artistic career that spanned almost half a century.

"One lost, a thousand to emerge," an Indonesian saying reminds
us. Despite the gloomy economic outlook, Indonesian art faces a
bright future, and in the years to come it seems that there will
not only be many more Indonesian artists, but that they will come
from even more diverse backgrounds and will produce more diverse
forms of art.