Jason Monet does Kemang with loads of ladies

Jason Monet does Kemang with loads of ladies

Briony Kidd, Contributor, Jakarta

Jason Monet says he has been a professional painter since the age of 21. His current show "New Horizons" at the Santi Gallery in Kemang reflects the confidence of these years of experience, as does the sheer volume of creative output on display, though perhaps at the expense of thematic clarity.

This exhibition gives us Monet the commercial artist. The paintings are large, colorful, figurative and very 'sellable'. This is not an insult, but much of the work does suffer from the lack of what one might call controversy.

There are quaint fishing scenes, island landscapes and sweet- faced women curled up like cats. A side room is full of boat pictures -- candy-colored oils that startle, but mixed in with more conservative efforts. Monet's images are well executed, energetic and sometimes passionate. But this is not always enough.

As a guest of honor at the elegant opening of "New Horizons" on Oct. 16, Monet cut an eccentric figure. With his unruly white hair and beard, wearing just a casual shirt and sarong, he looked more at home on Kuta Beach than an upmarket Jakarta gallery. And this is true: the UK-born former resident of Australia has lived on Bali for many years and draws much of his inspiration from its dramatic settings.

In temperament, Monet seems equally non-conformist. Observed chatting enthusiastically with guests, he became notably less forthcoming during the official stage of the event. Though standing dutifully at the microphone, no amount of prompting could persuade Monet to offer up more than a few sentences.

Oh yes, and a brief rendition of what he described as an "Aborigine love song" on the (imaginary) didgeridoo. If the audience was baffled they were too polite to show it.

Love, explained Monet, is the theme of his work. He paints what he loves -- and no more than this needs to be said. Gallery staff may have been tearing their hair out at Mr. Monet's reluctance to laud his own genius but it is a position that commands respect.

Actually, perhaps this little show of rebelliousness -- slight as it may have been -- is just the sort of thing an art dealer hopes for. The notion of the artist as a showman persists. While many reject it -- seeing themselves as private individuals and their persona is nobody's business but their own -- some artists have reinterpreted that for their times. In the 1960s, Andy Warhol presented himself as director of a "factory" and in the 1990s, Damien Hirst was a pop star for Cool Britannia.

Jason Monet's approach is old school. Artists do not wear suits. An artist is there to be an artist. Artists are not just like everyone else and it would be cheating the public if they were. There is something rather noble about this. The image of a beatnik wearing a beret and smoking French cigarettes is an old joke by now, but could it be that maintaining some sense of "difference" is important somehow?

Photographs show Monet as a large, earthy man, big-bellied and tanned, at home in his tropical surroundings. He paints beautiful women, many of them, and this too informs us about his image (justly or not). The artist as potentate, master of all he surveys. The maestro. An artist in the Picasso tradition. Gauguin also comes to mind. Monet looks like a beachcomber and is a European who has abandoned Western values for the simplicity of island life, perhaps to leave behind "everything that is artificial and conventional" (as Gauguin explained it, and it must be a tall order.)

In keeping with his heroes, Monet's approach is very much a masculine one.

A male painter paints women and landscapes -- of course. Choice of subject matter is one of main things we look to for an artist's intentions, so in a show of this size and chronological depth it is tempting to construct some kind of narrative. If we read simply, one might say that Monet's world consists of himself (there are some self-portraits), scenery and women. Perhaps this is a reasonable outlook for a heterosexual man, but it's not stunningly original.

Monet is a romantic. Beauty is everything. His is a world better than the real one: outside time and politics; vibrant and exotic but essentially simple.

This veers into banality.

Fortunately, some grit is mixed in. While the themes and settings explored in "New Horizons" often seem too general, the specifics of character are this show's salvation. The ability to read people, to communicate something through a human face, is another old-fashioned talent. But a real one. The most satisfying portraits in "New Horizons" are those where Monet truly sees his subjects.

Monet's self-portraits do not flatter but neither are they contemptuous. In Self-Portrait (2000), pastel on canvas, the artist's large shaggy head fills the frame, his eyes sad, mysterious -- a modern day Lear (an impression reinforced by the presence of Monet's two beautiful daughters by his side at the exhibition opening).

Monet's paintings of women are most successful when he affords them the respect of judging them as harshly as he judges himself. Often he positions his women in passive poses; curled in a hammock, a couch, on a bed. These supine figures are unthreatening, gentle. Sometimes this works, such as in Dog and Sachiko (2001), a gently humorous depiction of a woman and her pet, vivid with details like rough purple splodges on her dress.

But often it does not work. The paintings seem too contained and decorative. The women seem placid, even bland.

But then a painting like Emi (2004) comes like a dash of cold water. Against a red background, she stares out at belligerently, a cigarette dangling in one hand. The look in her eye says something unprintable. For this one moment, we feel that we know her.

And Maija (2004), a pale women with a sad, elongated face. There is no projection here. She's just a person.

Sometimes Monet seems under the influence of the idea of woman as something part of nature, wild and unknowable. Voila Dancing (1997) shows a girl, probably in Bali, dancing naked. But it is just a body and does not come to life.

It is when such conceits are forgotten that something more convincing is able to emerge. Such as Malay Girl (1996), a painting of girl against a red background and overlaid with gold. She holds a flower, stares at it angrily. The surface of the paint is scored and scratched, so that the red seems to seep through like blood.

"New Horizons" fills two large rooms and two side rooms and features a mix of styles and mediums. As well as contemporary work there are paintings going back to the early 1970s. Pictures are grouped by subject, though inconsistently. Some subjects seem overdone: too many curled up women, too many boats

Ultimately this exhibition would have benefited from being smaller. It feels a little crowded and chaotic. Admittedly, this is kind of fun: there is something satisfying about an exhibition jam-packed with paintings. It feels European, a bit decadent.

But it also lessens the impact of the strongest works, their effect dissipated by the presence of so many lesser variations. All artists have failures. Such paintings will even be seen (unless, like Francis Bacon, the artist decides to destroy them in a fit of ruthlessness) and can be interesting. It is through these experiments that an artist, filmmaker or novelist can be understood better. This is not to say that these lesser works should be exhibited.

While not billed as such, "New Horizons" comes across as a retrospective (where else would you see more than thirty paintings by one artist in the same room?). But retrospective or not, it needs to have been more selective.

The upside to the show's sprawling abundance is that it allows the viewer to feel a sense of discovery, of searching out hidden gems. Like Mountain Agung (2004), a landscape that is bold, energized and light-filled.