Widayat a living legend of Indonesian art

JAKARTA (JP): The opening of Galeri Widayat is held Saturday (today) in conjunction with the launching of a book on Widayat, The Magical Mysticism of an Modern Indonesian Artist, written by Dutch scholar Helena Spanjaard. The opening also coincides with the artist's 80th birthday. Widayat was born in Kutoarjo, Central Java, on March 9, 1919.

Widayat received informal training in art from Kartono Yudhokusumo, later studying at Yogyakarta's Indonesian Fine Art Academy. After graduating from the academy, Widayat taught at his alma mater until 1988. He also founded an art organization called Pelukis Indonesia Muda (Young Indonesian Painters) in 1952.

Influenced by the intricate and colorful works of Kartono Yudhokusumo, as well as the motifs in traditional Indonesian arts and crafts, Widayat continued the development of a style known as decorativism. Widayat's works use a repetition of different patterns of lines, dots and shapes to present incredibly detailed, intricate and complex scenes of the natural environment.

Although some of his paintings can still be considered decorative, most of his current work shows a significant shift in style. Perhaps he no longer has the patience to paint as he did in the past.

However, his strong determination remains and he still has the energy to paint large canvases. In order to be able to create large paintings, Widayat designed a hydraulic device in 1992 which enables his canvases to be moved up and down, right and left, while he himself remains in one position. He got this idea from painter Abdul Aziz, whose studio in Bali is equipped with a simple system of pulleys which moves his canvases.

Widayat's shift in style, in fact, has positively surprised critics and collectors. They consider his ability to shift the meticulousness of the complex and detailed patterns in his past works into the energetic and expressive strokes in his recent works an important turning point in his artistic career. This is what distinguishes him from artists of the same generation.

Widayat seems to possess relentless creativity. Four years ago, bored and frustrated because he was not allowed to paint following an eye operation, Widayat came up with many ideas for future projects. He intended to purchase 500 meters of denim to paint a continuous scroll of scenes. Unfortunately he was only able to obtain 143 meters of denim, on which he drew 43 scenes from his life, starting with a trip he took to Japan.

The ends of the denim are each rolled onto a pair of vertical rods, allowing the 43 scenes on the scroll to be revealed one at a time. It seems that the artist got the idea for this scroll from the ancient Javanese wayang beber tradition, in which stories from the Ramayana and Mahabarata are told using a painted scroll of wayang scenes. Widayat's scroll is a kind of modern wayang beber.

Today, Widayat continues to create paintings which show his unique observations and insights into many aspects of life. He does not just paint scenes of nature or scenes from holy books, but is also inspired by what he watches on television, his experiences in international airports when he travels, and world issues, such as the plight of Vietnamese refugees. It is this amazing creativity which makes Widayat a legend in the world of Indonesian art. (Amir Sidharta)