Sudjana Kerton recorded history of modern Indonesia

By Astri Wright

JAKARTA (JP): Sudjana Kerton, internationally known Indonesian painter of national revolutions, street entertainers and small town culture, passed away in Bandung on April 6 at the age of 72.

Leaning against the wall in his studio-gallery-home on Bukit Dago, one of the hills that surround the city of Bandung, is an unfinished canvas entitled Tanjidor. This is the name of a form of street and party entertainment, reputedly near-extinct, in which people, hooting and tooting on Western brass instruments, accompany life rituals or provide a sheer street spectacle.

This unfinished work, which captures a childhood memory of raucous noise and celebratory ramai-ness, is in some ways emblematic for Sudjana Kerton's life and art.

First of all, the paintings celebrates a feature of popular Indonesian culture, which is the kind of theme Kerton, who was born in 1922, returned to, all his life, even when living in the United States for nearly 30 years.

Despite his cosmopolitan life, he had an unshakable faith in the vitality of the Indonesian people, with and for whom he risked his life as an artist-journalist on the battlefields during the Indonesian revolution.

Second of all, rather than depicting the hardship of village and small town life, in which poverty, inflation and unemployment characterizes the lives of many, Kerton nearly always chose to depict moments of positive emotion, such as the happy noise of street musicians, be they black saxophonists on the streets on New York or the Sundanese dangdut musicians of West Java.

And, finally, the unfinished state of this painting is eloquent because Sudjana Kerton was always looking ahead, weaving his past experiences into future plans. Despite serious health problems over the last several years he never for a moment admitted to the possibility of an end to it all.

First generation

Sudjana Kerton belongs to the first generation of modern Indonesian painters who came of age during the period of struggle for national independence. In Bandung, Kerton studied art in the 1930s with Dutch teachers. But he received his first training and sense of vocation from his cousin, Kendar Kerton, seven years his senior.

Kendar, a contemporary of Basuki Abdullah and a student of Abdullah senior, was already considered one of the most talented artists in Bandung before he was 20. He was sought for advice and critiques by peers and elders in the artistic community. When he was dying from tuberculosis in 1939, Kendar's last words to Sudjana were to the effect that since he himself could not finish his life's work as an artist, Sudjana should continue it. Henceforth, Sudjana signed his works S. Kerton in memory of his cousin.

When the Japanese occupied Indonesian in 1942, Kerton was 20 years old. The Japanese, campaigning to realize their plans for the East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere, allowed for a greater degree of Indonesian participation in government and cultural organizations than the Dutch had, and the Japanese Cultural Center and Poetera in Jakarta became an active center for art classes and exhibitions.

Artist-journalist

During the revolution (1945-1949), Kerton went to work as an artist-journalist, sketching directly on the battlefield in an era when Indonesia did not have easy access to photo-technology.

Most of Kerton's early work was lost, burned or destroyed when the Dutch occupied Yogyakarta in December 1948. Kerton himself escaped by sheer chance because he had been ordered on a mission to sketch events on the island of Timor. By the time he returned to Jakarta, Yogyakarta had been occupied and his boss, Oesmar Ismail, editor of Patriot, was under arrest.

From a booklet of sketches and photographs put together by the artist and his wife in 1981, the nature of some of Kerton's early work can be gleaned. Apart from their skillful execution, what characterizes these works is the intensity of feeling or mood they convey.

Many of his early works are similar in style to those of other Indonesian painters at the time. They do not yet exhibit the original style of Kerton's later work. The most striking difference between these early paintings and Kerton's later work is the absence of humor in the former; these are characterized by deep seriousness.

This is not surprising, given the times. But our knowledge of this period and of the way Kerton worked deepens our understanding of his art. The change not only reflects the change that has taken place in Kerton's own life-circumstances, but in Indonesia as a whole, aided by the stylistic influences of his Dutch, American and Japanese teachers during his long stay abroad.

In the same way that modern Indonesian art developed from the combining of local ideas, art traditions and needs with those from Europe and later America, Kerton's life wove back and forth between Indonesia and the Western world. Leaving Indonesia in 1950 to study art in Holland, France and the USA, he settled in the latter and started a family.

Louise, an American nurse who took care of him during a brief period of hospitalization, became Sudjana's wife and close associate, supporting him in his 25-year long dream to return home and acting as secretary, archivist and coauthor of Tanah Airku-My Country, Indonesia, published in 1990.

Affiliation

In 1976, Kerton could return to his birthplace, Bandung, to buy land and build his home, dedicating the gallery to his wife and partner.

Kerton was able to renew old contacts and, most importantly, renew his day-to-day contact with local people -- farmers, becak drivers, market vendors, builders. Kerton's work in the 18 years that have passed since he moved into his new home spans many media, techniques and approaches, applied to a consistent body of ideas.

At times working with silkscreen, at times with watercolors, oils and murals, each technique demanding a slightly different style, Kerton has created a number of memorable works. Many of them have found their way into private collections all over the world.

With his involvement with the Indonesian culture and the need to incorporate an Indonesian sensibility into modern arts, many of Kerton's preoccupations were the same as other prominent Indonesian artists. In this sense, Kerton was part of the same movement as other Indonesian artists, both of his own and of following generations.

Kerton writes: "I believe that the rich cultural heritage of Indonesian art should form a foundation for the work of the younger generation, who should have a new style and form. While still respecting the traditions of the past the artist should be able to express himself in any way he chooses.

"Each artist should feel a spirit of responsibility for his country, a sense of pride in the great traditions, and a desire to create new works for a new society. Each artist...should be respected as an important force in the lives of all people. Automatically they will learn to appreciate and enjoy the value and quality of good art work and to realize that this is only the beginning of a new era in Indonesian culture....

"It is my hope to see all artists in Indonesia free to work toward some great new pattern. The high standards of the past will be a driving force in this accomplishment."

It is fitting that this year, the UNICEF representative from Geneva has once again -- the first time was in 1964 -- nominated Kerton's work for the annual card. It is also fitting that, in the last five years, Kerton had been gaining increasing international attention, with curators and writers from Holland, the USA, Japan and Australia making the journey to the circular house and studio at the top of Mount Dago.

Sudjana Kerton was represented at the first large-scale retrospective exhibitions of modern Indonesian art in the USA in 1990-1991 and in the Netherlands in 1993, and his work will be participating in major exhibitions in Australia and Japan in the near future.

Creative solutions

Kerton's paintings are characterized more by their creative solutions to the problems of composition and his unique style of drawing than by their coloristic qualities. His figure drawing is the descendant of Western traditions of naive art, expressionism and the cartoon and caricature tradition.

There is both childlike innocence and a devilish wit at work in giving shape, not -- in the final analysis -- to West Java villagers, but to the characters that inhabit Kerton's mind.

Although his work during the revolution was unavoidably grim, dark and filled with nationalist determination, Kerton's talent lay in the direction of combining a sharp eye for observation with a lively feeling for aesthetic form and the expressive and communicative potential of distortion.

With his death at the age of 72, Indonesia has lost one of its most vital, locally rooted and cosmopolitan senior painters, but Sudjana Kerton's role in the history of modern Indonesian art will continue to be written in the years to come.

The writer is professor of Southeast Asian Art at the University of Victoria, Canada.