Disjointed Notes on Contemporary Art K.L

DISJOINTED NOTES ON CONTEMPORARY ART K.L (2010)

Young Malaysian Artists-New Object(ions) Exhibition

Published by Petronas Gallery

In an interview recently, an independent curator and I were asked for our views regarding the state of the local contemporary art scene (I must admit that I am no expert but it was an informal sort of an interview, nothing implicating……..I hope) and one of the questions that stood out for me was that, to know the feelings of the people of a country, is it possible one can gauge it from the types of works produced by its artists, especially issue based art?

My personal opinion was ‘No’. We may not know much about the ‘feelings’ exp. the views, sentiments, concerns or even political inclinations of the population just by looking at the artworks or even performances produced but it does tell us a bit about the powers (institutional, corporate and religious-cultural) that governs a country or society (1). We may not even know about the real motives or intentions of the artists who produced those works in the first place, (in fact we may not know much about anything anymore) though we can judge if the artists are ‘concerned’ with certain issues through their actions/deeds in exp, where the proceeds from the sale of their works are channeled to, the activities they organized to broaden awareness about certain causes or issues or the time, energy and the ‘services’ they rendered to a community or country.

In that same interview, I also mentioned that the late 1990’s and early 2000s were more exciting times for the local art scene but things slowed down a bit in terms of experimentation of media, visual language and even content. (2)

Which brings us to this exhibition entitled ‘The New Object (ions)’ a witty play of three loaded words by the exhibition’s curator. New, object(s) and objection(s), each of these words can be elaborated further to elucidate my own readings towards this exhibition.

(1) Herbert Read. ‘To Hell with Culture’ (2002) Routledge Classics.

‘The symptoms of decadence as they reveal themselves in the art of a country are indifference, vanity and servitude. Indifference is the absence of appreciation: it is the general attitude towards the arts in an industrial age. It is true that we still have a few patrons who carry on the bygone system, they are neither numerous enough nor influential enough to affect the general body of art. It is significant, too, that they confine themselves to the arts of painting and music, whose products can be used for their personal profit-for the decoration of their houses or the amusement of their friends’ (pg85)

(2) Ooi Kok Chuen ‘The Syiok of the New’ A Comprehensive History of Malaysian Art (2002)

‘In art, there seemed to be a crisis of “-isms” with the death knell to stylistic concepts and flamboyant posturings. There was a sea-change of attitude with the young artists, “orphaned” by a lack of “buddy-system” by an aloof art aristocracy and by a global disenfranchised / democratization/ empowerment. All of the sudden, the art epicentre had shifted, and to nowhere in particular, and Post modernism, with an explosion of information overload, appropriations and a return-to-indigenization cum ethnicity became de rigueur”

‘Malaysia’s fine young artistic cannibals jettisoned the painting format in droves, embracing installations, with their novelty, all encompassing nature and non-(art) materials as signature models. These new mode presents problems to galleries and museums in installing, re-installing and storage, and the more ephemeral and site-specific ones survive only in video documentations. To few exclusively dependent on installations, economic prudence demanded that they reverted to drawings and paintings to sustain them in the in-between major-installations period.’ (pg 32) (Emphasis added)

#1: LETHARGY

The difficulty of categorizing and describing the trends and stylistic ‘movements’ if we can or even care to identify one for certain stems from many factors and chiefly, from the epoch that we live and operate in. In our age of ‘horizontal’ developments, in most if not all endeavors, the word ‘new’ has now come to mean nothing more than another sequel, prequel or remake of an existing story, a rehashing/ re-spinning of (un)popular and competing/conflicting narratives, rediscovery and appropriation of previous styles/trends or add-on features to instant upgrades on an existing product all competing in the open market.

The choice of the new generation is between Vanilla Coke or Pepsi Twist….?

Instantaneous connectivity, easy accessibility to information and gratification leads to confusion and sensory overload, numbing of the taste buds, boredom, ADD and restlessness. It’s terribly hard to feel excited or take anything seriously, especially when something lacking ‘spirit’ takes itself seriously.

Why do I feel lethargic?

#2: RECENTLY

There are many art exhibitions and art related events taking place in the capital on a weekly (three or more exhibitions), monthly (Annex Gallery’s ‘Art for Grabs’ event) as well as yearly basis such as the Malaysian Art Expo (with international participations) and the youth-targeted event, Klue magazine’s Urbanscapes, which create opportunities for young artists (and those still young at heart) to showcase their works.

Funding and grants for projects are admittedly still limited (a handful of local and foreign foundations, government schemes and private sponsors) and a there are only 2-3 art residency programs available through out the year.

What about online spaces, real time and digital-based art?

The Ministry of Tourism Malaysia recently realize that the visual arts, especially ‘contemporary’ art are potential tourists’ drawers, and has taken baby steps by including the visual arts in its promotional activities. But what does ‘contemporary’ mean? What are its criteria and characteristics? How does it qualify and does it even matter?

The last I check the word ‘contemporary’ means ‘most recent’, but a huge number of works being touted as ‘contemporary’, no disrespect to the artists, does not fit into that category proper unless one associates the word ‘contemporary’ (description) with ‘postmodern’(condition)

Though ‘contemporary’ art is not necessarily ‘post-modern’ art, but the context from which any artworks regardless of styles, approaches and content is created, is ‘allowed’ to thrive and embraced is symptomatic of the ‘post-modern’ condition. These encounters with post modernity locally have been well elucidated and presented accessibly by Hasnul j. Saidon (3)

Even the term post-modern when applied to contemporary art practices and culture is problematic (post-post modern, high or higher modernism, post contemporary or post history etc).

What is clear according to Danto is that contemporary art, “…. has no brief against the art of the past, no sense even that it is all different as art from modern art in general. It is part of what defines contemporary art that art of the past is available for such a use as the artists care to give it. What is not available to them is the spirit in which it was made” (4) emphasis added

Danto is quick to point out that it was the ‘death’ of Western Civilization’s grand narrative(theories/philosophies) which all modern art adhered to in the past, and with that passing, artists working today (in complicity with their promoters and consumers) are free to create based on alternative/independent/personal narratives. In a way, everything is permissible in an open market of supply and demand with contemporaneous consistency.

Baudrillard’s assessment is less favorable. “The adventure of modern art is over. Contemporary is only contemporary of itself. It no longer transcends itself into the past or the future. Its only reality is its operation in real time and its confusion with this reality. Nothing differentiates it from technical, advertising, media and digital operations. There is no more transcendence, no more divergence, nothing from another scene: it is a reflective game with the contemporary world as it happens. This is why contemporary art is null and void: it and the world form a zero-sum equation” (5)

Aha! So that’s why the writer feels lethargic when talking (and thinking) about the local art scene.

“Postmodern irony and cynicism become an end in itself, a measure of hip sophistication and literary savvy. Few artists dare to try to talk about ways of working toward redeeming what's wrong, because they'll look sentimental and naive to all the weary ironists.” (6)

(3) Hasnul J. Saidon. ‘Overview of Contemporary Art in Malaysia after 1990’ (pg 80) Prosiding Sidang Seni SINI 2008. National Art Gallery.
(4) Arthur C. Danto ‘Modern, Post Modern, Contemporary’ (pg 5). After the End 0f Art: Contemporary Art and the Pale of History (1997) published Princeton University Press
(5) Jean Baudrillard. ‘Art...Contemporary of itself’ (pg 89). The Conspiracy of Art (2005) published by Semiotext(e)
(6) Quotes by David Foster Wallace found online.

#3: HISTORY

‘In the current climate, issues of culture, identity and tradition, while still important, have seemingly become less “imperative”. Ironically, it has also at the same become more complex and difficult, than during the nation building years.” ‘The Malaysian reality has changed in very many ways, Many local artists have sought ways to translate this reality, at the same time pushing the possibilities of their practice in formal and conceptual terms. Artistic production has, perhaps, lost the “earnestness” of its early years, but makes up for it in being witty, critical and sometimes brave”

Between Generations (50 years across Modern Art in Malaysia) by Beverly Yong and Hasnul J. Saidon (2007)

Many may not realize that as early as the late 50s, there were already conscious efforts to push the boundaries of art, materials and content wise. ABC (Antara Bahan Campuran) an exhibition surveying the use, response and reactions to both traditional and non-traditional art materials by local artists from the 1950s-2009 currently at the National Art Gallery aims to highlight the emergence of mixed media works, though in very conservative efforts and very limited numbers points to the fact that some of our artists already felt the need to explore different approaches in non traditional methods and materials.

According to the exhibition’s curator Amerrudin Ahmad, most local artists’ use of non traditional/ conventional materials has more to do with its significance as cultural and identity markers rather than pure formal experimentations (except for a few exceptions, namely veteran artist Fauzan Omar for example). It was one of the strategies employed by our artists in post colonial times to break out though not discarding entirely the inherited Western mold of artistic expression, the ‘imperative’ to explore and construct new identities to reflect new realities from local focal point.

The fusion of indigenous, conventional materials (as well as symbols) used in a local context, reflecting local realities which drive such outputs did not happen over night.

With the return of many of those trained overseas where they were exposed to the latest trends and ideas in the late 1960s (and a succession of many others for 50 years) to teaching positions in the academe and training colleges, as writers and propagators in the print media, art practitioners coupled with the wider availability of publications on the visual arts, the setting up of a number of art institutions to produced trained (read: professional) artists, the changes in socio-political, and economic all contributed to the diversity of practices in modern Malaysian art in general.

Realizing that there was a need to create a platform to cater, to encourage and promote the growing number of art practitioners and different art practices, the National Art Gallery first launched its Young Contemporaries Competition (Bakat Muda Sezaman) back in 1974. It was an idea that was inspired by a visit to the Young Contemporaries exhibition in London in the 60’s, seeing how effective it has been in developing British art. The individuals who were credited as founders of this competition were Johan Ariff, Farid Wardi, Redza Piyadasa, Mat Yassir Juli, Joseph Tan, Zuraina Bt. Majid, Ismail Zain and T.K Sabapathy. (6)

One may notice that some of the founders are pivotal figures as both practitioners and promoters of non-traditional mediums or practices. One may also notice that a sizable number of past winners as well as in the special mentions category from the early 70’s to late 90s in the competition submitted installation works, mixed media and even electronic media (video, animation, sound etc). Criteria for judgment are usually focused on the technical finishing, the accomplishment in mastering the use of materials, the proficiency in conveying the artists’ intentions and messages from the context of which they operate in terms of tackling issues (local to global), creativity and originality (though the last criteria is moot)

Experimentations and exploration of media and visual language are nothing new and will continue to occur regardless. How have the practices in the past say 30-40 years differed from today (taking into consideration the emergence of New and Social media, performance art etc)? Will this exhibition shed ‘new’ light on the current developments of the local art scene which has grown somewhat conservative with many artist producing paintings (due to economic prudence?) or the rise of trends such as pop surrealism, fantastic realism, gothic, Manga and others (7)

Who do we blame for this conservatism (if it is a problem)?

Will we point our fingers at the education system (Art Curricular, Art teachers and lecturers, art institutes and universities) or government policies that do not place emphasis on the importance of the arts? Do private and state galleries, wealthy but philistine collectors and patrons too share the responsibility for this ‘domestication’ of the arts? (Which reminds me of a passage from Herbert Read’s ‘The Symptoms of Decadence’ where the “Vanity in the patron of art leads to servitude in the artist”.)

(6) Young Contemporaries in Review 1974-1997, National Art Gallery. (1999)

(7) The influence of alternative pop/urban culture, low brow art and entertainment accessible online and publications like Beautiful Decay, Juxtapoz, Giant Robot, design and product magazines have played an important role in shaping the ideas of some of these artists. Their works have that ‘current’ trend and international look.

#4: ILLUSION IS THE SUBVERSIVE TRUTH OF ART

What is art? What purpose and to whose benefit does it serve? Are they utilitarian, novelty, fetish or commodity? Strident but logical, Zerzan wrote in his excellent ‘The Case against Art’ that “The primary function of art is to objectify feeling, by which one’s own motivation and identity is transformed into symbol and metaphor. All art, as symbolization, is rooted in the creation of substitutes, surrogates for something else; by its very nature, it is a falsification” (8)

This creation of substitutes such as symbolism and metaphors result from alienation of man of himself and his surrounding. It arises out of division of labor, the beginning of specialization and is closely link with the dawn of civilization, patriarchal feudalism, class hierarchy and exploitation. But Marcuse wrote that “The artistic alienation makes the work of art, the universe of art, essentially unreal-it creates a world which does not exist, a world of Schein, appearance, illusion. But in this transformation of reality into illusion, and only in it, appears the subversive truth of art.” (9)

In ‘Civilization and its Discontent’ (10) Freud postulates that the creation of rules, regulations and punishment are needed to control and cull desirable traits in the individual so as to make community life possible, but the unhealthy (and zealous) repression of the sexual and aggressive instincts in negative ways in the individual causes neurosis and in extreme cases, psychosis. To keep this lapse of reason at bay, to keep the individuals at socially functional level, the energy of those instincts is channel unconsciously (either through prescription, coercion,) to various outlets through what Freud called Defense Mechanisms which he identified as repression, displacement, denial, reaction formation, intellectualization, projection and sublimation. Sublimation is indentified by Freud as the best for it helps to direct that (libidinal) energy towards socially useful and acceptable achievements such as art.

Sepulveda wrote “Art is the negative mirror of reality that compensates for the miseries of life with the illusion of liberty” (11) which by that illusion, peculiarities of all kind inspire and are celebrated, against the cold deathlike standardization of industrial life in ‘civilized’ societies. Art is an affirmation for life.

(8) h̶t̶t̶p̶:̶//w̶w̶w̶.p̶r̶i̶m̶i̶t̶i̶v̶i̶s̶m̶.c̶o̶m̶/c̶a̶s̶e̶-̶a̶r̶t̶.h̶t̶
(9) Herbert Marcuse.’ Art and Revolution’ (pg98) ‘Counter Revolution and Revolt’ Beacon Press (1972)
(10) Sigmund Freud’ Civilization and Its Discontent’
(11) Jesus Sepulveda ‘The Garden of Peculiarities’ (pg45) Feral House (2005)

#5: BEING TRUE TO ITSELF.

After (in no proper order) De Sade, Dadaism, Surrealism, Artaud, Art Brut, Duchamp, Yves Klein, Peiro Manzoni, Joseph Beuys, Chris Burden, Carl Andre, Rauschenberg, Fluxus, Warhol, Pop Art, Situationism, Congo the chimpanzee painter, Sterlac, St. Orlan, Timothy Leary, Daniel Pearl’s beheading online, Yukio Mishima’s seppuku, Pollock, Rothko, Joel Peter Witkin, Andreas Serrano, Paul McCarthy, Kim Jones, Billy Curmano, Hermann Nitsch, Fakir Musafar, Dennis Oppenheim, Marc Quinn, Barbara Krueger, the Burning Man festivals, Zhu Yu, Issei Sagawa, Damien Hirst’s painting and numerous others, is it still possible or even desirable to talk about objections (protest, oppositions, hostility) through the arts?
Objections to what?

In the Young Contemporaries 2004 catalogue, Ooi Kok Chuen wrote “The obvious flaw, if at all, is to look for the Artist as an Anarchist. An Artist who dares, who can break through conventional thought and practices. An Artist who is able to define the people, the cultural ethos and issues of the time. New Ideas, new approaches, new forms, but with our diverse Asian backgrounds, from a platform of tradition and heritage, from old ways where things were done. All tall order which one never expects from the more established and veteran artists. Why? because the young is often seen as a harbinger of renewal…” (12)

I derive great satisfaction knowing that those who with their doctorates and master’s degree hiding in the ivory towers of the academe, those in the institutions who wear the tag of ‘curator’ but are afraid to curate, those in art business who meekly recommends safe works to their clients, art writers with their hip jargon but parochial agenda, and collectors with their philistine tastes cannot make heads or tails of what’s going on. Their befuddled, flabbergasted and embarrassed faces when confronted with the works by some of the artists in this exhibition amuses me no end.

At the risk of being seen as ‘sentimental and naïve by weary ironists’ I leave you again with a passage taken from Herbert Read’s ‘The Symptoms of Decadence’.

“Art as I have defined it is so intimately linked to the vital force of that it carries society towards ever new manifestations of that life. Art, in its full and free subjective action, is the one essentially revolutionary force with which man is endowed. Art is revolution, and art can best serve revolution by being true to itself” (pg 90)

(12) ’The young Artist as an Anarchist’ BMS 2004. National Art Gallery.