Glerum popularized Indonesia paintings

By Amir Sidharta

JAKARTA (JP): Since 1994, Southeast Asian art was primarily auctioned by Christie's in Singapore. Last year, Sotheby's followed suit and held their first auction of Southeast Asian paintings in Singapore. Since then, the two largest auction houses in the world have been actively dealing in Southeast Asian art.

But the true pioneer of auctions of Indonesian art is neither Christie's nor Sotheby's. The person who first saw the potential for marketing Indonesian art was the Dutch auctioneer Jan Pieter Glerum.

Glerum entered the auction business in 1964, following his father's footsteps. In 1989, after having worked for Sotheby's for fifteen years, Glerum decided to establish his own auction house.

After five sales in 1990, Glerum decided to hold a separate auction of Indonesian paintings. In the following year, they held their first successful sale of Indonesian art. Glerum Auctioneers has held annual auctions of Indonesian paintings since then, and last year held two auctions in Singapore.

Jan Pieter Glerum, who was in Jakarta recently with R.O.B. Mulder, Glerum's Specialist, spoke about the history of his enterprising auction house and where it was headed.

Question: When did you start dealing in Indonesian paintings?

Answer: The decision to start with Indonesian paintings was made in 1990. I started in the auction business in 1964 with what was then the largest auction house in the Netherlands. At the time, any Indonesian (Dutch Colonial) painting was difficult to sell. All Dezentjes, Dakes, and Elands could not be sold by the auction house where I worked, and were sent to a "rubbish" auction house. We would sell a Hofker, because he was a nice man and still alive, for NG200, but that was the maximum.

I never understood that until later. Just as there was a lot of frustration in Indonesia about its colonial past, there was also a lot frustration in Holland about being "kicked out" of here in 1958. This means many people returned here under sad circumstances. The children of that generation wanted to be as Dutch as they could be. For a long time the Indonesian experience we had was completely neglected, as our Indonesian past of 350 years was completely forgotten after 1958.

When I was young, I learnt everything about the Netherlands- Indi. But my children hardly knew that a large part of the Dutch riches came from here. There was a large gap in the knowledge. That was very clear in the art market.

I was the director of Sotheby's in Amsterdam for 15 years, and I started my own auction house in September 1989. We were in The Hague, the center where Dutch people from the East came to live. In the first five auctions, we obtained a relatively high number of Dutch colonial paintings. That year we had a short season, and we had six auctions.

In 1990 I noticed there was interest in those paintings. There was an interest from people in the Indonesian Embassy in The Hague. We even sold a beautiful picture of a volcano erupting by Raden Saleh, for the unbelievable amount of NG25,000. We had 20 auctions that year, and since then we have had 20 auctions a year in Holland, in different fields.

Q: That is unbelievably high. Was it a record?

A: Yes, it was completely unbelievable. It was the record price. We had all the record prices until 1994: the Hofkers, the Le Mayeurs, Bonnets, and even the Spies.

In 1987, we didn't even know who Walter Spies was. We knew about Hofker, Bonnet and Dake. We knew Raden Saleh because he was in the Rijksmuseum, but we didn't know about Spies, Abdullah, or any of the modern painters.

In 1990 I said to Jeannette ten Kate, who later became my wife, "we are going to have a separate sale of Indonesian art beginning in 1991, and you will be the expert". The only reason she was the expert was because she had visited Jakarta, Surabaya and Bali. Those were her credentials.

At the time, the only book on Indonesian art available in Holland was Verlaat Rapport Indi by Loos-Haxman.

We immediately received two fake Bonnets, which were made after the ones in the catalog of the Soekarno Collection, which we owned. They were made with an epidiascope. When we found that out, we thought we were extremely clever.

But on the cover of the first sale was Le Mayeur, which we later learned was a fake, and I took that back last year.

Q: What do you mean you 'took it back'?

A: I got it back from the buyer, six years after it was sold.

We learned there were three Abdullahs. We had never heard about Abdullah, and so we learned about Basuki Abdullah, his father and his brother. We knew nothing about modern Indonesian art. Affandi was another name we had never heard of. Between 1990 and 1993 we learned a lot from people in Holland and from the few Indonesian people that came to The Hague as buyers. We were very surprised that in the first sale, we had five Indonesian buyers.

Q: When was the first separate sale of Indonesian art?

A: It was in May 1991. We started collecting in October, 1990. The first painting fetched NG400,000. We were extremely proud and said we had discovered a new market. By the end of 1992, Christie's started having separate sales of Indonesian art. Sotheby's started very late. They included Indonesian paintings in their sale of 19th century paintings.

Q: How would you describe the second Glerum sale?

A: The second sale was a lot better. We doubled the sale and gained NG800,000. In 1995 we gained NG5 million in Holland alone, making it our best year. We then decided to go to Singapore where Christie's had been established since 1994.

Glerum is a rather small auction house. We are the third auction house in Holland, but we are only half as big as Sotheby's. An auction in Singapore costs a lot of money, so it wasn't until 1996 that we could afford to hold one.

Problem

The problem with the Dutch and English auction houses was, apart from the Dutch Colonial paintings, that everything before 1945 we knew quite well, but everything after 1945 was extremely difficult to gain knowledge about. The majority of us have visited museums in Jakarta, visited Oei Hong Djien's art collection in Magelang and seen one or two collections. But for most experts, it is extremely difficult whether they be Jop Ubbens, Meity Heiden or anyone else.

Q: There were many fakes in your auction in December last year. What do you say about this?

A: Fakes are unavoidable in a market that is as expensive as this one. I wish there was a group of Indonesian experts who were able, in an objective way, to detect the fakes. That is the only way one could learn about them. No major auction house wants to sell fakes, because sooner or later they will them back. So it is a matter of having the right experts.

And there are far too many uncertainties. The Raden Saleh painting in Sotheby's last sale, didn't look much like a typical Raden Saleh painting. But then another one was considered a good Raden Saleh.

You have to trust your own experts and your own knowledge. You should have objective experts. And they will come. The trouble is there is so much money involved that people are afraid to get an opinion.

Q: How did you find out the Le Mayeur was a fake?

A: It was on the cover of the 1991 catalog. When you've seen 20 Le Mayeurs you know a little bit better, but after you've seen 200 Le Mayeurs, you can spot the fake.

But of course that is the trouble. You may have seen 12 Trubus paintings, but maybe that is not enough.

Q: Are the fakes from Indonesia or also from the Netherlands?

A: Both. Mostly everything after World War II was Indonesian fakes, but before the War they were European fakes. But it is very difficult because there ways to create a fake. You can have an original painting with a fake signature. Or you can have an original painting that is 50 percent painted over by somebody else. The easiest fake to detect is the deliberate stupid copy.

Q: What is the future of Indonesian art?

A: What I would like to do is a sale of contemporary Indonesian art. There are enough good artists and good art around.

But in the meantime we have to go on with our normal sales. We'll concentrate more on Malaysian and Singaporean art. We now have an agent in the Philippines to cover part of the region.

Q: Is the supply of Dutch Colonial pictures running short?

A: Yes. The basis of all our sales has been Dutch Colonial paintings, and the supply is running short. In Europe, there is very little remaining. But there is hope. A lot of Dutch, after they were thrown out in 1958, didn't like Holland anymore and settled in the United States, in Canada, and in South Africa. There is still some Indonesian art in those countries.

Q: Have you learned of any other unknown Dutch Colonial painters since Haks and Maris' Lexicon of Foreign Artists who Visualized Indonesia was published in 1995?

A: Yes, we are finding more. We are now aware of almost double the amount of artists in that book. Of course that was because Haks and Maris became tired writing their book. That is not surprising because it was such a feat. But there are not many other artists who are considered of great importance.

Artists like Jan Frank, Sayers, the Modernists and Ouburg are still underestimated. But that is already changing.

Q: What do you think about Balinese art?

A: I like Balinese art a lot, although commercially it is not all that interesting. But its time will come.

Q: The circle of collectors is still relatively small and they are becoming more selective. What do you plan to do to broaden the market?

A: One of the things that should be created is a market for contemporary art. In the last three days, I have seen so many good artworks, which are not so expensive. It could be the start of a new group of collectors here.

There will be new collectors here, although not in the same league as the Riady or Ciputra. But you need those collectors to sustain a balanced market. In five years, there will be a middle class, and you need to have a healthy art market.

What is also needed is a good museum, and US$1 million to keep the paintings in the Museum Seni Rupa Jakarta. Of course a rapidly growing country such as this one has priorities other than art, but this is also very important. It is a pity to see beautiful Sudjojonos and Hendras falling apart.

Q: Indonesian auctions often have a local audience. Do you think contemporary Indonesian art can be extended outside Indonesia?

A: It deserves to be more international. We should try to attract a market bigger than Indonesia. Some artists, especially some of the post-1945 artists like Hendra and Affandi, deserve to have an international recognition. Christie's and Sotheby's also need to go more international with their sale of Indonesian paintings.

Q: When is your next sale?

A: We will hold two sales in September. We will have one sale of Indonesian furniture and another of Indonesian works of art including silver, copper, bronze, Chinese porcelain, Indonesian paintings, and a group of 25 Philipino paintings. In December, we hope to have a sale of Western art and we aim to hold a separate sale of Indonesian contemporary art. The next step is to include Indonesian art in our sales in Holland.