2 Firing the Canon

2 Firing the Canon Indonesian Art Canons as Myth and Masculine Ideal1 Employing Griselda Pollock’s notion of differencing the canon, this chapter analyses two key eras in Indonesian art history, namely, the period of intense nationalist activity around the time of Indonesian independence (1940s-1950s), and at the time the radical movement Gerakan Seni Rupa Baru Indonesia (Indonesian New Art Movement, 1970s-1980s) emerged. The chapter presents a re-reading of the canons through an analysis of the structural nature of canon-making and its selective version of the past. By differencing the canon, this chapter does not simply replace the masculine canon with a feminine version; instead, it aims to difference it using an active re-reading and reworking “of that which is visible and authorised in the spaces of representation” (Pollock 1999: 8). These two periods are generally accepted by Indonesian scholars as the formative periods of Indonesian art history (Soemantri, Supangkat et al. 1998; Hasan 2001; Adi and Bujono 2012; Hasan, Malna et al. 2012). The first part of this chapter focuses on the figure S. Sudjojono – regarded as the founding father of Indonesian modern art. I will analyse Sudjojono’s writings and discuss his iconic painting Di Depan Kelambu Terbuka (In front of the open mosquito net, 1939, oil on canvas) as an example of how Indonesian modern art has been shaped by the masculine gaze as well as a masculine nationalist response to colonialism. The second part of the chapter will analyse another canon, namely, the Gerakan Seni Rupa Baru Indonesia (henceforth GSRB) that emerged from the mid-1970s to the late 1980s. The movement, spearheaded by 11 young Indonesian artists from three different cities in Java, was inspired by experimental arts from the West; from Fluxus to Pop Art. Most scholars agreed that this movement was the catalyst for a change in direction in Indonesian modern art towards experimentation and socially conscious art production. The section on GSRB discusses how, even within this most progressive group, the turn towards experimental arts not only neglected gender issues, but also strengthened gender stereotypes. I argue that the active re-reading of these canons will illuminate the margins and tease out the in-between spaces in the canons. These elements Copyright © ${Date}. ${Publisher}. All rights reserved. © ${Date}. ${Publisher}. Copyright 1 I borrowed the title Firing the Canon from the title of a panel that was organized by Linda Nochlin in CAA (College Art Association) conference in New York, 1990. 38 FEMINISMS AND CONTEMPORARY ARt In INDONESia have been rendered almost unrepresentable by the existing modes of hegemonic discourses, and thus the gendered nature of the canons have been normalized and accepted as tradition. This chapter deals with the canon as myth and masculine ideal as a framework to explain the context and background of the two women artists, Emiria Sunassa and Mia Bustam, discussed in Chapter 3. Specifically, this chapter aims to pave the way to understanding why, despite their small body of work, these artists are significant players in the Indonesian art world. As Pollock (1999: 8) has indicated, the writing of art histories, the place of the artist and of the woman artist are over determined by mythic structures that naturalize a particular range of meanings for masculinity, femininity, and sexual as well as cultural difference.2 In this chapter, I also discuss the 1999 inaugural exhibition of the Na- tional Gallery of Indonesia, to demonstrate how art institutions are heavily implicated in canon-making. I look at how the aftermath and representation of two historical periods, namely the nationalist struggle in the 1940s-1950s and the turn towards experimental arts in the 1970s, contributed to the strengthening of hegemonic masculinity in Indonesian art history in this particular exhibition.3 2 Some of the classical texts on modern Indonesian art history by female scholars in the West and the Asia Pacific simultaneously questioned and reaffirmed the canons of Indonesian modern art. For example, Claire Holt’s classic text Art in Indonesia: Continuities and Change (1967) was the first English text that introduced Indonesian modern art to the English-speaking world. The only woman artist that Holt mentioned was Emiria Sunassa, which will be discussed in more depth in the next chapter, whom she labelled as an “isolated voice” (1967: 251). Subsequent texts following Holt include Astri Wright’s Soul, Spirit and Mountain: Preoccupations of Indonesian Modern Painters (1994), which dedicated a whole chapter to women painters, yet her approach was largely autobiographical and did not touch on the deeper issues of patriarchal structure. Similar to Wright, Helena Spanjaard’s Modern Indonesian Paintings (1998) critically engaged with the issues such as the East vs West dichotomy in Indonesian modern art history, with more or less equal treatment of the discussion of women artists. Nonetheless, her book reaffirmed the now accepted view that the field of art production in modern Indonesian art largely belonged to male actors. A careful reading of the discussion of women artists in these publications (and below) emphasizes that these artists were not canonical – they were not necessarily benchmarked as great, but rather as polemical (Arahmaiani), sensational (Kartika Affandi), or token (Lucia Hartini). Pollock argued that the inability within art history to absorb women artists into the canon is because the structure of canon making is already defined by sexual difference – tradition, hierarchy and hegemony being the main stumbling blocks for feminist art historians (1999: 10). This is particularly evident in the writings of Indonesian art history Copyright © ${Date}. ${Publisher}. All rights reserved. © ${Date}. ${Publisher}. Copyright where the canonization of [male] artists was also an integral part of Indonesia’s postcolonial identity. 3 Even though Indonesian modern and contemporary art began to make their mark in the global art world in the 1990s, publications in the form of exhibition catalogues, edited anthologies FIRING THE CANON 39 An institutional approach will not only enable us to describe the social and economic conditions that make art possible today, but it also removes solitary individual agency from the question of art. Furthermore, it opens up analysis of the artwork as being constituted by a complex field of forces that are not visible in the art object itself. Postcolonial masculinity, canon making and Indonesian modern art Linda Nochlin’s Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists? (1988) was amongst the first text to raise the question of the lack of women in the canons of Western art history. Her influential text later paved the way for many feminist art historians to recover the works of women artists previ- ously unacknowledged or ignored by the masculine canon. Nonetheless, this type of scholarship also privileges valorization of the feminine by women artists and does not necessarily deconstruct the structure of art history itself. Feminist art historian Griselda Pollock defines canon as a discursive for- mation that constitutes the object/texts it selects as the products of artistic mastery and thereby contributes to the legitimation of white masculinity’s exclusive identification with creativity and with culture (Pollock 1999: 9). She proposes the use of psychoanalysis and semiotics to read against the grain, in order to deconstruct the structure of patriarchy that resides at the heart of art history. The complexity of Indonesia’s modern art history can be traced back to the central Modernist idea that modern art is universal, i.e. there is only one kind of modern art and it exists “everywhere”; paradoxically, “everywhere” was only the industrialized nations of the West, thereby excluding “other” modern art history outside the West (Clark 1993; Araeen, Cubitt et al. 2002; Desai 2007; Antoinette 2014). Moreover, the notion that modern art history exists in a linear timeline suggested that each new -ism began in a chronological sequence and that there was a clean break from the past. This and/or monographs on Indonesian modern art history, such as the important exhibition Modern Indonesian Art: Three Generations of Tradition and Change, 1945-1990 that toured the US in 1990-1991, still only discussed two Indonesian female painters, namely Kartika Affandi and Copyright © ${Date}. ${Publisher}. All rights reserved. © ${Date}. ${Publisher}. Copyright Lucia Hartini (Fischer (ed.) (1990)). Within the Asia Pacific, the second and third editions of the Asia Pacific Triennial (1996 and 1999), under the leadership of Caroline Turner, eventually introduced two representatives of the younger generation of women artists, namely Arahmaiani and Mella Jaarsma. 40 FEMINISMS AND CONTEMPORARY ARt In INDONESia is especially problematic when one considers the various developments that occurred at the same time within modernism itself, especially in Indonesia. Traditional arts have existed side by side with modern art practices and have been a rich source of context for Indonesian modern art since its inception in the 1940s. John Clark, writing about modernity in Asian art, argues that the closed discourse of Euro-American perspectives has relegated the dynamic development of Asian modernities to be derivative, secondary, disingenuous and inauthentic (1993: 2). And yet, the transmis- sion of knowledge that occurred constantly between the colonialists and the colonized also

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