JP/19/NUDES
JP/19/NUDES
Female Nudes exhibition: An act of provocation
Carla Bianpoen Contributor/Jakarta
On September 22, CP Artspace Jakarta launched an exhibition of Mochtar Apin's nudes, to honor the memory of a great artist.
Provocative Bodies, as curator Jim Supangkat has titled the exhibition (after his book that is to be published shortly) shows 24 nudes painted by the late Mochtar Apin, and 10 sculptures of nudes by 40-year-old Teguh Priyono.
Realizing the exhibition was bound to provoke controversy, Jim, in his introduction, propounds the theory that Mochtar wanted to present naked females as subjects instead of objects, or, looked at the "woman behind the physical nude", putting female sexuality to the fore.
However, not all agree. Feminist and professor of philosophy Toeti Heraty said it was not women's sexuality but men's that was at the crux of the work, with Mochtar's women simply the objects of his male gaze.
A similar view is expressed in John Berger's well-known book Ways of Seeing about artwork that represents the male gaze. "Men act and women appear", he states.
Taking the concept further, Daniel Chandler in his Notes on the Gaze, reminds the reader Berger advanced the idea that the realistic, "highly tactile" depiction of things in oil paintings and later in color photography, (in particular where they were portrayed as "within touching distance)", represented a desire to possess the things, or the lifestyle, depicted.
This concept also applied to women depicted in this way.
The female nude, as such, is an ancient object of artistic interest, and one of the first things learned about in the early stages of an art history course.
The full-figured Venus of Willendorf, and the bare-breasted, nursing Madonna in religious paintings are examples that have continued to serve art courses.
But the emergence in the 1960s of a powerful feminist movement and the concomitant development of a feminist critique of art history has challenged patriarchal assumptions and changed critics' field of vision.
Linda Nochlin alerted a generation of readers and students to the "genderedness" of modern vision, and to the figuration of liberation in solely masculine terms.
This exhibition, which combines Mochtar's female nudes made in the last few years of his life, with nude sculptures in the same mold by a young Indonesian sculptor, is once again a token of Indonesia's patriarchal society, where pleasure in looking has been differentiated between the active (male) and passive (female).
Although it is not clear why Apin, who was a painter in a variety of styles, switched mostly to nudes in his old age, and even the curator's notes in the catalog are unable to provide a convincing explanation, there is no denying that the nudes represent women who are being looked at, an act of the active male gaze that projects its fantasy onto the female figure.
Nudes appeared much earlier in his career as a painter, but then they were somehow blurred by the exquisite colors that dominated his canvases, as revealed in works such as Wanita Tidur (Woman Asleep, 1980), Wanita dan Ikan (Woman and Fish, 1970), Wanita Bersarung (Woman Wearing a Sarong, 1992/1993) and Pemandangan Bukit Bukit (View of Hills, 1991), almost all others placed the nude as the highlight of the canvas appearing in full and various poses, expressionless as if submitting to the will of the male viewer.
Only Bahagia Ibu (Mother's Happiness) and Ibu dan Anak (Mother and Child) reflect a nude where the joy of motherhood takes over from the fact of nudity.
Clearly, not all of Apin's nudes in the exhibition are masterpieces. How much more of an honor to the master it would have been had the curator at least blended the female nudes with other examples of Apin's work that have gained him a place among the country's pioneers of modern art.
Mochtar Apin was involved in the arts at a very early age. Even before he entered ITB as a student he was considered an accomplished painter.
Born in West Sumatra in 1923, he was barely 16 -- a high- school student -- when he learned drawing from Dutch art teacher JV Lookeren and painting from oil painter HV Velthuyzen; during the Japanese occupation he was in close contact with Jakarta artists.
He obtained various scholarships that allowed him to study at the Amsterdam Kunstnijverheid school, the Paris Ecole Nationale Superieure des Beaux Arts and the Deutsche Akademie der Kunste in Berlin.
Over a period of eight years he explored contemporary European art, became skilled in various techniques, and also studied lithography, offset and graphic art techniques, in which he excelled.
For sculptor Teguh, it came as quite a surprise when the exhibition curator contacted him and requested he exhibit together with a senior artist of another generation.
A graduate from the Yogya Institute of Arts (ISI), Teguh says he has always sculpted what he feels when viewing the female nude.
With more than 10 years' experience, his bronze female nude sculptures vary between innovations that are marked by leaving certain body parts unfinished or cut off, and a sexual fervor that reveals a man in the fullness of his male power.
Titles like Room No. 1, 2 etc., suggest a place where prostitutes ply their trade.
While some will indulge in this world of female nudes, others may find it suffocating. Provocative bodies An exhibition of Nudes by Mochtar Apin and sculptures by Teguh S. Priyono Sept. 22 through Oct. 12, 2004 CP Artspace Jl. Suryopranoto 67A, Central Jakarta tel. 3448126 ext. 604