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.