Drawings cast new light on painter's career

Drawings cast new light on painter's career

By Sarah Murray

JAKARTA (JP): "The struggle of the Indonesian people to drive
out the Dutch colonial government cannot be freed from the
struggle and development of painting." So wrote noted artist and
critic F.X. Harsono in his 1991 thesis on the theme of "the
people" in Indonesian painting.

His remark might be dismissed as partisan hyperbole by those
who know Harsono's commitment to politically and socially
critical art. However, support for Harsono's statement comes from
an unlikely quarter, from a special collection of drawings
created by an artist who has stood for his entire career as an
emblem of freedom of expression in art removed from political
pressures or commitments. Besides bringing to light some
forgotten aspects of Indonesia's independence struggle in this
year's celebrations of Indonesia's 50th anniversary, the drawings
also shed light on the early work and precocious talent of a man
many believe to be Indonesia's finest living painter: Srihadi
Soeharsono.

The majority of the drawings, realistic pencil sketches, were
done by Srihadi at UN meetings aboard the ship Renville during
negotiations regarding Indonesia's independence. Others were done
in Bandung during other UN meetings and in wartime Yogyakarta.
Srihadi did the drawings as a member of an official team of
artists assembled by the military to document the historical
diplomatic meetings. They are direct and lively images of some of
the major and minor characters involved in the drama of
Indonesian independence. They remind us of the complexity of
history at the moment it's lived: there's Dr. Setiabudi, Dutchman
become Indonesian, looking out at us as a member of the
Indonesian delegation; and there's an Indonesian who served as a
member of the Dutch delegation.

It's hard to believe Srihadi was only 16 at the time, a self-
taught artist who felt a bit awed to be included in a group of
mostly older and established artists. His heart may have been
shy, but his pencil strokes are bold and confident, remarkably
capturing the expressions and postures of his subjects. I look at
a drawing of J.W. Barco, a member of the Komisi Tiga Negara
(Three Nations Commission), and know instantly from the perfectly
captured details of his posture, his rumpled T-shirt, and his
slightly cynical gaze that he's an American. Prof. Supomo of the
Indonesian delegation has a wide nose and a broad, open face,
matched by an expression of profound calm and inner peace. J. de
Vaal, a member of the Dutch delegation, has a thick beard shadow
even though freshly shaved, which shows off his pink cheeks and
fresh face, making him look like a boy who's gone to war and
suddenly, unexpectedly, grown up.

Unusual aspects

Srihadi was not alone among Indonesian artists in documenting
wartime Indonesia. Many other artists were caught up in the
struggle for freedom and tried to capture their experiences in
sketches and paintings. One of the more active in such
documentation was Sudjana Kerton, who drew illustrations for the
Yogyakarta daily newspaper Merdeka. Kerton's widow, Louise, still
has a number of these drawings, now in a precarious state of
preservation, in the artist's museum and home in Bandung.
Numerous paintings representing wartime Indonesia are also still
in existence.

However, there are three unusual aspects to Srihadi's
collection of drawings. The first is simply its miraculous and
excellent preservation during the harsh wartime conditions that
saw many other art works, books, and archival documents
destroyed.

How was this miracle achieved? What lessons can conservators
learn from Srihadi? What special techniques did he use to
preserve the drawings all these years?

Very simple.

He kept them in a suitcase. At least, that's what his mouth
says. What his face reveals, as he talks about the drawings, is
his intense pride in these early works. It's obvious that he
saved them as a labor of love. Perhaps the most important lesson
for those who worry about the crumbling of Indonesia's modern art
heritage is that without a love for the art, no preservation is
possible.

The second unusual aspect relates to the circumstances of the
drawings' creation. The drawings have limited historic value, as
Srihadi possesses only a small number of the total number of
drawings made to chronicle the meetings, and he himself did not
draw many of the key characters and events. However, social and
political observer Marsilam Simanjuntak says that the fact that
the army was so concerned to document these diplomatic efforts
suggests that the diametrical opposition often portrayed by
standard histories of the period between the army (pushing to
reach independence through military force) and the government
(pushing to reach independence through diplomatic means) is not
quite accurate. Srihadi himself knew that the experience was
unique and perhaps somewhat politically troubling, enough so that
in 1965 he burned his artist team member ID card, which he had
carefully saved along with the drawings, during the events
connected with "G-30-S", the failed communist coup.

The third unusual aspect of the drawings is the light they
cast on the artistic career of a man who has become one of
Indonesia's supreme formalist artists, moving further and further
away from conventional realistic representations. Many of
Srihadi's later works show him to be obsessed with that simplest
of formal elements, the line. He often paints works that consist
only of two fields of color divided by a line in the middle. This
line Srihadi sees as the line of the horizon, the only essential
element of the painting, the defining element of his vision.

"A single line is enough to define space, to make space," he
says.

Another of his obsessions, of course, is Balinese dancers --
at least, that's the simple statement of the theme, which might
be better described as that of motion and rhythm, the forces that
animate the upright vertical line of the human body. While his
dancers are painted in the figurative tradition, he says they
always begin too with a line, a line of movement, a gesture with
his brush.

When he first began painting dancers many years ago, he made
careful observations of Balinese dancers, so careful that his
paintings are used by a dance troupe in Bandung as exemplars.
These days he depends only on his imagination and inner vision.

Unexpected

The early drawings, so unexpected in their style, suggest that
at the very beginning of his career Srihadi had already taken the
first steps in following the impulses of the inner world. Of
course, he did not have free artistic choices in the doing the
drawings. They were created to accurately and quickly document
historical events. But Srihadi took pride in his ability. You can
see Srihadi's youthful delight at discovering the personalities
of his subjects with the tip of his pencil. Joining this team
also gave him an opportunity to be exposed to professional
artists. He says this allowed him to see that each artist had a
distinctive style, even though each was also drawing realistic
portrayals. This drove him to discover his own style -- a process
only barely visible in these drawings.

In the 1950s and 1960s, the fine art world was rent with
debate between the Bandung formalists (who were seen to represent
"art for art's sake" and a western orientation) and the
Yogyakarta expressionists (who were seen to represent the true
"revolutionary spirit" of Indonesian art that cared less about
formal invention than a search for the true soul of Indonesia).

These debates have now faded (although not disappeared), so
Srihadi's drawings are less of a bombshell than if they had
appeared in 1963. Today, students at the Indonesian Institute of
Arts accept without debate that there are different painting
styles. What you chose reflects who you are as an artist, not
your level of commitment to the Indonesian nation. However, these
drawings are, in a way, a quiet and modest resolution of that
debate, an afterword, showing how the skills and themes of a more
formalist painter such as Srihadi emerged from his ability to
closely observe and render external reality and portray human
emotion. They point to the truth that art, while it has many
branches, has the same root -- the ability to look, see, and
transform that seeing into compelling visual form.

The question of the moment is, what will happen to these
drawings? Srihadi himself is planning a retrospective for late
this year or early next year, and would like them drawings to be
included. However, in this 50th year of Indonesian independence,
the collection by itself cries out to be presented to the public
as a unique part of Indonesia's independence struggle. Creatively
curated, for example, by examining the role of artists in the
freedom struggle, and the relationships between artistic realism
and wartime experiences, the drawings could bring light to a
faded and almost forgotten part of Indonesia's past. That's what
anniversaries should be for, as the past is a fragile tissue of
memories that, just like Srihadi's drawings, will disappear if
the lines are not redrawn, the colors refreshed.