Astri Wright: Soul, Spirit and Mountain

By Helena Spanjaard

The former colonial relationship between the Netherlands and Indonesia certainly contributed to this (colonial) fashion of confiscating another culture and calling it one's own. The cultural relationship between the Netherlands and Indonesia stagnated between 1958, when the Dutch were forced to leave the Republic of Indonesia and 1965. Therefore, it is hardly surprising that the first western study of contemporary Indonesian art was written by the American scholar Claire Holt. In Holt's classic Indonesia, continuities and change (Cornell University, 1967) several chapters cover the development of modern Indonesian painting, these are based on Holt's research during the fifties and sixties. This development, that evolved in nationalist circles, started during the thirties and aimed at the creation of a new "Indonesian" cultural identity.

Spirituality and symbolism
The recent publication of Astri Wright, Soul, Spirit and Mountain, Preoccupations of Contemporary Painters, can be seen as the follow up to and extension of Holt's book. The richly illustrated volume is divided in two parts, called 'The Mountain as Metaphor for the Spiritual (I)', and 'The Mountain as Metaphor for Society (II)'. Part I explores how traditional, spiritual symbols, and mythology are used as a primary inspiration by contemporary painters. The two symbols most frequently used, the mountain or triangle and the tree of life, are deeply embedded in Indonesian culture and refer to the Javanese Hindu-Buddhist cosmology of microcosmos and macrocosmos. Painters using these symbols see their individual ego as an unimportant and transcendent part of a wider, spiritual and invisible world. Often they practise kebatinan, Javanese mysticism, with the goal of attaining harmony and spiritual growth. These artists believe in supernatural powers and see themselves as modern priests (empu) or healers (dukun). The symbols they paint can be semi-abstract (Sadali), calligraphic (Pirous), mythological (Nyoman Erawan, Nindityo Adipurnomo) or "decorative" (Widayat, Made Wianta). Another way to perceive reality is treated in the more individualized, expressionist paintings of Affandi (self- portraits), the surrealist work of Iwan Sagito (searching behind the mask) or the "feminist" work of Kartika and Lucia Hartini. However, all painters discussed in Part I experience the spiritual aspects of their work as basic, more or less seeking the grace of God, Allah, or Sanghyang Widi.

Realism and national identity
The second group of painters is more concerned about the reality of Indonesian society and its real problems of rich and poor, pollution, deforestation, and the ambivalent results of the growing consumerism. Rooted in the revolutionary movement before and after the second world war the pioneers of this genre were Sudjojono, Affandi, and Hendra. The national identity of Indonesia was stressed by these painters through the use of a realistic, documentary style. During the Sukarno period this socially-engaged art was officially promoted, but after 1965 it lost popularity due to its presumed communist tendencies. In the late nineteen seventies an avant-garde group of young painters, Seni-Rupa Baru, continued the tradition of socially engaged art, in an extremely modern and international art-idiom, including installations and performances. In the mean time some of the older painters, who had been imprisoned for longer or shorter periods, made a come-back in the art world (Hendra, Tatang Ganar, Djoko Pekik).

Eurocentric standards
In her conclusion Astri Wright stresses that contemporary Indonesian art reflects a different set of conditions, challenges, and pre-occupations than contemporary western art. This fact is often neglected by western art critics, who usually measure contemporary "non-western" culture by their own, Eurocentric standards. In their eyes contemporary Indonesian (or other non-western art) is often labelled as "derivative" (of the western example) or "decorative" (too traditional). The content of Soul, Spirit and Mountain is clearly meant to counterbalance such (neo- colonial) paradigmas, and wants to prove that contemporary Indonesian art should be understood in its own right, perceived from the Indonesian context. In this way many hidden meanings, that would otherwise be overlooked, can be grasped. The emphatic attitude of the author has resulted in an almost psychological methodology of using the information supplied by the painters themselves as a most vital source. Wright states that her book is "not a history of modern or contemporary art" but much more an investigation of the different roles Indonesian artists play in a society that is moving between tradition and modernity.
By focusing on living artists less attention has been paid to the historical circumstances, especially the those rooted in the colonial experience, that formed the basis of the developments during the seventies and the eighties. Although the mystical and social aspects are the most important poles inside Indonesian contemporary art nowadays, both of them derived from a long intellectual search (The Cultural Debate) for an Indonesian identity that started during the thirties. The role of the Dutch influence in this process, via the colonial (Dutch) education systems, has been considerable, a fact that many Indonesian painters perhaps prefer not to stress too much. By its emphasis on the present, Wright's book is an important contribution to recent developments in the international art world. Nowadays exhibitions and conferences on contemporary Asian art have become an established fact. Western art historians follow slowly, embarrassed by a new world order in which Asia, including its art, is rising like a comet.

Astri Wright, Soul, Spirit and Mountain, Preoccupations of Contemporary Indonesian Painters, Oxford University Press, 1994. (270 pages, 64 colourplates, 154 black and white plates).

References:
Fischer, J. (ed.), Modern Indonesian Art, Three Generations of Tradition and Change, 1945-1990, Berkeley 1990.
Hadisudjatmo, S., (ed.), Streams of Indonesian Art, from prehistoric to contemporary, KIAS, Jakarta 1991.
Gate Foundation (ed.), Modern Indonesian Art, Indonesian painting since 1945, Amsterdam 1993.
Clark, J, (ed.), Modernity in Asian Art, University of Sydney, East Asian Series, no 7, Wild Peony 1993.
Queensland Art Gallery (ed.), The First Asia-Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, Brisbane 1993.

Helena Spanjaard is an arthistorian working at the University of Amsterdam