Long wait goes on for artist's works

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)