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.