Time to keep wary eye on art treasures

By Astri Wright

VICTORIA, Canada (JP): The emphasis in Indonesian media and art exhibitions in the last few years was on emerging painters. Young men and women who 10 years ago would have had a terribly hard time gaining access to mounting solo exhibitions in smaller galleries were invited to hold large shows in the nation's most established galleries.

In the wake of the art boom that began around 1990, the numbers of would-be artists, ranging from more to less talented, soared.

Competition was ignited by stories of sudden successes, like unknown young artists winning major international art awards. In such a busy and congested scene, perspectives of art history and esthetics were often forgotten or ignored.

Pricing of artworks became arbitrary, based on greed and ignorance. Amid all the new debuts, senior artists, the pathbreakers of past historical eras, at times were lost from the larger picture.

Prices soared out of sight both for the lucky few among the new artists, whose art or personality hit a media nerve, and for those fortunate senior or historical painters who still captured the collecting public's interest.

With the economic downturn in Indonesia over the last six months, the art boom -- already slowing down over the past two years -- is over. At least for the time being.

This seems to be the case from the perspective of most Indonesian collectors. But the situation also invites important questions.

As a culture critic and art observer, I recommend keeping a very close eye on what is painted, sculpted, performed and written in the country now and in the months to come.

It has been documented in many times and places that modern artists often produce their best work during personally and socially challenging times.

During wartime, with its military and civilian struggle, in periods of political oppression, hunger and economic crisis, the insincere artists fall away. Good-luck hunters seek opportunities in other, more immediately lucrative areas.

The making of high-quality art demands a nonmaterialistic attitude as the basic starting point. During difficult times, only those artists who are obsessed with their need for artistic expression continue to work.

Commodity

Since such artists are filters through which the deepest spirit of their historical moment manifests itself, their art increases in intensity.

If local collectors are not buying art at present, will modern Indonesian art now revert to being a commodity collected mostly by outsiders, as it was during the colonial period and the first three decades after independence?

Will the significant works produced by artists in this time of general suffering and increased national tension be brought out of the country, perhaps even before they are documented photographically? Will they be lost before they can become part of the record of modern Indonesian art history and of individual artist's careers?

Or will foreign speculators be able to buy up the art cheaply, hoard it and wait for the moment when the market has stabilized again, to sell the works to the highest bidder?

Furthermore, with public and private budgets disintegrating throughout the country and massive unemployment, what will happen to the security around already established art collections?

If art theft was already a problem in the last two years, what will happen to the national, municipal and provincial government collections of art, not to speak of significant large private art collections in Java and Bali?

The questions about the fate of modern Indonesian art, in regard to its aesthetic development and its marketability, at home and abroad, are linked to the questions of the national economy as a whole, particularly the urban economy.

I urge art collectors and art lovers with resources left after the family's provisions have been secured to think seriously about how it may be paramount to take special steps to protect the national artistic heritage at this time.

Examine for yourself the role art has played in the archipelago's culture since ancient times, the role modern art and literature played in the nationalist struggle for independence, and the role art has played since independence in forming the nation.

Art has been paramount in reflecting and shaping its complex and fascinating identity, and forever representing the country and its people on domestic and international fronts.

This should not be the moment when, carefully and anxiously guarding the granary, you forget to safeguard the ancestral shrine where all your pusaka, those inherited cultural treasures both old and new, are stored.

Astri Wright is an associate professor of art history, B.C. Canada, and author of Soul, Spirit and Mountain: Preoccupations of Contemporary Indonesian Painters (Oxford University Press, 1994).