Sudjana Kerton recorded history of modern Indonesia

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.