State guest portrait maintains low profile
Yusuf Susilo Hartono, Contributor, Jakarta
When presidents and other guests of the state come to Jakarta, you will notice huge pictures of the visitors appearing at the Hotel Indonesia roundabout and other strategic places in the capital.
Many have no idea that the portraits are made by IB Said.
Said - who was born in Malang, East Java, in 1934 - graduated from the Malang Art School, which was closed down years ago and has never been referred to in the country's fine arts history. It has been obscured by the big names of the Yogyakarta Fine Art Academy and Bandung Institute of Technology's Fine Art School.
He first got the opportunity to paint pictures of the president's guests after moving to Yogyakarta in 1957, where he joined the Group of People's Painters chaired by Hendra Gunawan. He worked together with dozens of senior artists, like the late Wakijan, Mardiyan, Maniyaka, Wiem Nirahuwa and Widagdo, who frequently received painting commissions from Jakarta.
They had to paint a lot of 6x4-meter portraits of foreign statesmen, as well as pro-government propaganda posters and banners. Orders would mount as the national independence day approached, because apart from the presidential palace, other buildings in the capital were also decorated to mark the big event.
In 1961, Said moved to Jakarta and was recruited by Henk Ngantung, who was in charge of the decoration section of the State Committee under the State Secretariat.
In the section, Said got to know Karniati, who sewed national flags of foreign countries. Two years later they were married and eventually had four children (one of whom has since died). Karniati has continued to assist him in non-technical matters.
Working as a state-guest portrait painter -- rather than a palace painter like Dullah or Lim Hasim -- did not go as smoothly as he had imagined. The ups and downs in domestic politics have affected his career.
After the aborted Sept. 30, 1965 communist movement and the subsequent fall of President Sukarno, followed by the collapse of the Old Order, he was jobless until 1968. Anticipating the worst, he burnt all his valuable documents, something he later regretted.
In 1968, he was reemployed following the formation of Suharto's New Order government. After working for a fairly long time without any definite duty owing to the dissolution of the decoration section, he was placed in the presidential palace's art studio when Sampurno became palace household chief, a job he has retained to the present day.
"As far as I can remember, the first portrait I painted in the New Order period was that of Malaysian prime minister Tengku Abdurrahman," he said.
Throughout further political developments, with the presidential succession after Suharto's resignation -- from Baharuddin Jusuf Habibie, Abdurrahman "Gus Dur" Wahid to Megawati Soekarnoputri -- Said has carried on his portrait painting.
When painting state guests, he has to follow the official photographs provided by the presidential protocol section.
He still follows the same working pattern, whereby he usually gets the photos when deadlines are imminent, so that he hardly ever has enough time to study the character of his subjects. He therefore strives simply to produce their precise facial features and formal dress on poster boards.
In the early period of Suharto's reign, he painted the First Lady's portrait with a small hair bun. "I followed her photo. She didn't have an official picture with a big bun yet. And Pak Harto was still in his military uniform," he said at Galeri Linggar, Kemang, South Jakarta, where he is staging a solo exhibition until Dec. 9, 2001.
Of the hundreds of state guests he has immortalized on posters since the 1960s, there are Japanese Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka, Zia Ul Haq of Pakistan, George Bush and Bill Clinton of the United States, Queen Juliana of the Netherlands and Lady Diana of England.
In the present term of President Megawati, he has recently finished painting the pictures of leaders of China, Vietnam and the Philippines. Nonetheless, he has never met any of them, including the presidents of Indonesia.
"With Bung Karno, we only met at an exhibition. When he knew that I had painted portraits of his guests, he extended an invitation to me but he lost power before I could take up his offer," recalled Said, who was accompanied by his wife and children during the interview.
How much does he get for the pictures? Said didn't want to go into specifics. Of the official sums he is entitled to, he has of late received only 60 percent.
In his spare time, Said keeps painting on canvas for joint or solo displays. He prefers populist themes handed down by his instructor, Hendra Gunawan, depicting such objects as traditional markets, fishermen, workers, blacksmiths, sulphur pit miners etc. While he uses brushes for realistic portraits, his impressive canvas works with coarse textures are created with palette knives.