Long wait goes on for artist's works

JAKARTA (JP): Visual artist Ray Bachtiar is a dejected man today. An exhibition of his photomontage and collages that opened here recently brings him personal pleasure, but one that is accompanied by much pain.

For Hannah Hoch, who promised to be here for the occasion, has let him down. A visit to Jakarta was a promise made at least 12 years ago but her set date of arrival -- initially April 25 and later May 16 -- has come and gone and her art still has not shown up!

In his disappointment Ray, 50, has changed the original title of the exhibition at the Poland-Indonesia Cultural Center at Jl. Diponegoro 6 in Menteng, Central Jakarta, from Machine/Anti- Machine to Waiting for Hannah. And in her honor he has installed an on-the-spot monument with a three-dimensional effect.

Ray has adored Hannah's works since he became interested in photomontage. He finds the technique suitable for his protests against the rampant interference of machines in the lives of human beings.

Officials who do not want to be named say the delay is due to customs formalities, or, cryptically, the fallout of strained relations between countries.

Artists at Galeri I-See who have been involved in organizing the event that has cost more than Rp 60 million told The Jakarta Post that 12 years ago exhibition venues in Jakarta were not equipped to display the original works of Hannah that require a set temperature, right percentage of humidity, subdued lighting and adequate security (just one montage is insured for as much as 25,000 German marks). Now that the standards have been met it is almost farcical that other nonaesthetic and mysterious reasons are preventing the works from being shown here, said one member of I-See.

If Hannah were still alive she would have most certainly used the present incident to make yet another powerful statement of protest. Her photomontages show a savage quality; it was not unusual for artists to ruthlessly crop off heads and bodies and substitute machine parts for vital organs to create a shock effect. On the eve of World War II and against the fascist regime of Hitler, the Dadaists made the strongest protests with their montages, the power lying in the tension set up by the juxtaposition of disparate visual elements.

Dada was a nihilistic movement in the arts that was born in Zurich on the heels of WW I. It got its name at one of the meetings held in 1916 by a group of young artists and pacifists after a paper knife inserted into a French-German dictionary pointed to the word dada (French for hobbyhorse). The word was chosen by the group as appropriate for its antiaesthetic creations and protest activities which expressed utter disgust for the values of the ruling elite of all of Europe and despair over the war.

Reacting to a society that seemed too brutal to comprehend, members embraced tradition-busting not only in visual art, but also in theater, music and poetry. From Zurich, the movement traveled to Berlin where in 1917 it took on a more political character against Hitler. It was in Berlin that Hannah became the only woman to join the movement against German patriotism, as the group staged public meetings, shocking and enraging the audience with their antics.

One of the chief means of expression used by these artists was the photomontage, which was combined with printed messages. When Hitler was at the peak of his power, Hannah disappeared into the countryside and kept a low profile raising chickens, hiding controversial Dada documents and waiting for the war to be over. She died in 1978.

Now that her work is on alien shores waiting for release, lovers of her art here will have to console themselves by looking at the photomontages of Ray Bachtiar that stand alone for the moment, waiting for Hannah. (Mehru Jaffer)