Five paintings will represent RI in ASEAN Art Awards

Five paintings will represent RI in ASEAN Art Awards

By Astri Wright

UBUD, Bali (JP): Paintings by five artists, which last week
won this year's Indonesian Art Awards, will represent Indonesia
at the ASEAN Art Awards 1997 in Manila in September.

The five finalists are Dede Eri Supria's Those Left Behind, A
Panorama (1996), Hanura Hosea's Story of the Blind from the
Official Island (1997), Nasirun's Diluted in Colors (1997), Tisna
Sanjaya's Tears of Feet (Prayer for the Victims of Violence)
(1997) and Yuswantoro Adi's Masterpieces of Indonesia (1997).

They had beaten five other semifinalists, painted by Dikdik
Sayahdikumullah, Effendi, Hanafi, Teguh Ostenrik and Zulkarnaini.

The jury considered the finalists as the best works according
to content, fulfillment of the competition theme, technical skill
and innovative spirit.

The jury, chaired by Amir Sidharta of Museum Universitas
Pelita Harapan in Lippo Karawaci, consisted of former education
and culture minister Fuad Hassan; chief of the Indonesian Fine
Arts Foundation, Susrinah Sanyoto Sastrowardoyo; senior painter
Srihadi Soedarsono of Bandung, West Java; owner of the Ubud-based
Agung Rai Museum of Art, Agung Rai; Yustiono; and Suwarno
Wisetrotomo.

During June, the jury reviewed photos of 1,246 paintings
submitted by 890 painters from around Indonesia, selecting the
best 100.

Sidharta said this initial selection was done without the jury
knowing the names of the artists. The original paintings were
then submitted to the jury.

From these 100 works, 10 were chosen as semifinalist winners,
receiving Rp 1 million (US$400) each. From these 10, five were
chosen as grand winners and received $5,000 each.

Unlike last year, when submissions were elicited in all
mediums, on the subject matter of the artists' choice, a
particular theme was set this year by the Phillip Morris Group,
the sponsor of the Philip Morris 4th ASEAN Art Awards.

In addition, medium and size were also defined. Submissions
had to be two-dimensional paintings on canvas, no larger than two
meters by two meters, appropriately framed without glass, and
each artist could submit only two works. The theme was defined as
"work connected with the awareness, impressions, feelings and
views of real life in Southeast Asia/Asia".

With last year's open framework, over 2,000 works were
received from more than 1,000 artists. With the lower number of
artists and works this year, it was clear that requirements
limited the number of participants and the number of artworks.

This regional art competition was inaugurated by the Phillip
Morris company in 1993 to stimulate the development of modern art
and appreciation in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations
(ASEAN) countries -- Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the
Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam -- and to facilitate
knowledge about contemporary ASEAN art internationally.

For the past few months, ASEAN members have been preparing
national competitions to select the finalists for the regional
finals, to take place at Manila's Metropolitan Museum of Art in
September.

While including artistic and cultural activities in mandates
and budgets has become a corporate commonplace in the last 10
years to 15 years, with bank and corporate collections of art
developing worldwide, the Philip Morris Awards is the only such
regionwide art competition conducted by a company.

Vice president of Philip Morris Asia Incorporated, Don Harris,
said: "The artistic expression of a nation is just as vital to
the life and growth of a community as its economic advances.

"Through art, we are able to explore and appreciate the many
faces of life which distinguish a nation's people and culture as
well as the strength which hold it together.

"And by examining visual expression, we gain insight into the
diversity of history culture and nationalities which make up
ASEAN."

Completely missing from such a statement is any reference to
the fundamental raison d'etre of multinational corporations,
which explains their presence in Asia and around the world in the
first place: to do business.

The philosophy of megascale capitalism is to see significant
new levels of growth each year. The cost-benefit analysis is the
analysis that matters; major profits are the bottom line and,
needless to say, these profits do not get shared equally, across
the board.

For a conglomerate of companies that still bears the name of
its original tobacco company, for example, the following
questions have to be asked: What is the relationship between the
dwindling markets for cigarettes in North America, Europe and
Australia as people quit smoking, and the need to develop new
markets elsewhere in the world?

What is the relationship between the cost and effectiveness of
traditional forms of advertising and the dissemination of a
company's name by the goodwill and broad participation generated
by highly publicized sponsorship of cultural events?

Such events inevitably serve similar purposes as advertising,
only better, perhaps, and cheaper, and certainly in a nicer way.

Rhetoric, corporate idealism and subtexts aside, events like
the Philip Morris ASEAN Art Awards also raise as many questions
and concerns on the artistic level as on the economic level.

They create new fashions and precedents in national and
regional art worlds which are increasingly driven by outside,
foreign models and concerns and by nonart world leadership and
sponsorship.

By providing themes and requirements, artists end up working
within the controlled framework of a dominant patron rather than
freely.

At the same time, having specific goals to work towards and
the promise of possible professional recognition, is of
inestimable value to a nation which only 10 years ago counted
only a few hundred artists, only a very small number of which
could live off their art.

This situation is now changing. From the material perspective,
art need no longer be the loser's, or the "black sheep's" choice
of profession. It remains to be seen whether the forces of
globalization and commercialization in art will also spawn a
contemporary Indonesian or Asian art heritage that can stand the
test of time.

Diversity and visual splendor is not all; depth, sincerity and
seriousness of purpose are harder to attain but of greater and
lasting value in visual art.

While patronage of modern artists took a particular shape
during the era of the late president Sukarno, and evolved into
another equally particular form under the New Order, it would
appear that current national and international sponsorship is
setting the table for an unprecedented broad range of acceptable
expressions, both formal-aesthetic and thematic, in contemporary
art.

It is to be hoped that the requirement that all submissions be
in the medium of painting, a retrogressive requirement, will not
continue to hold sway in future competitions.

If this continues to be the case, then the Philip Morris Art
Awards will, in the end, be labeled the "economic establishment's
art competition".

Essentially, it will be viewed as promoting a narrow
conception of fine art, dominated by a conservative western
ethic. However inaccurate the view may be, it will be seen as
competing with the more experimental regional art exhibitions,
where installation performance art and aesthetic experimentation
have dominated in the last few years.