Art Journal

ISSN: 0004-3249 (Print) 2325-5307 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rcaj20

Art History and the Modern in Southeast

Pamela N. Corey

To cite this article: Pamela N. Corey (2020) Art History and the Modern in Southeast Asia, Art Journal, 79:1, 116-119, DOI: 10.1080/00043249.2020.1724039 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/00043249.2020.1724039

Published online: 26 Feb 2020.

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Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=rcaj20 a French paramilitary terrorist group, the Pamela N. Corey and Malaysia, followed by the Association Organisation Armée Secrète (OAS). A struc- of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)’s ture designed to perpetuate the violence Art History and the spearheading regional artistic affairs in the of colonial rule in this moment becomes Modern in Southeast Asia 1980s and 1990s. As much as Sabapathy wrote the rubble of war. Here one wishes Henni about art and artists to create the building would pick up its pieces with attention to T. K. Sabapathy. Writing the Modern: blocks of an art history, he never ceased to the semantic transformations that Allais Selected Texts on Art and Art History rigorously tackle art’s frames of representa- addresses. in , Malaysia, and Southeast tion, from the written text to the gallery Despite their different leanings, read Asia, 1973–2015. Ed. Ahmad Mashadi, Susie space to the exhibition symposium, highly together these books reveal the extraordinary Lingham, Peter Schoppert, and Joyce Toh. attentive to his own role in interpellating wealth of documentation and representa- Singapore: Singapore Art , 2018. 448 readers from within these constituent ele- tion of architecture that lies in the dusty pp.; 70 color ills., 5 b/w. $48 ments at every turn. files of bureaucratic archives. Among many Thiagarajan Kanaga Sabapathy, more revelations, they show how wartime is less a A serious volume testifying to the con- commonly referred to as T. K. Sabapathy, hiatus in spatial production than a moment tributions of T. K. Sabapathy to the field was born in the British Straits Settlements of slippage in accepted ways of utilizing its of modern and contemporary Southeast and began his study of art history as potential. In both titles, the graphic material Asian art history seems long overdue, and an undergraduate history major at then is reproduced at small scale, but to address in this regard, this anthology published Singapore-based University of Malaya in this limitation Allais has placed some draw- by the in 2018 is a 1958, a year after the territories proclaimed ings online (http://we-aggregate.org/piece welcome development. For the first time, independence as the . /the-design-of-the-nubian-desert), and the Singaporean art historian’s prolific body He studied art history as an elective, as no Henni has curated a remarkable traveling of writing, extracted from such sources as major provision was available, a situation exhibition of planning and propaganda newspaper columns, exhibition catalogs, that he laments has not changed. He found images, Discreet Violence: Architecture and the French artist monographs, and symposium proceed- the teachings of his art history lecturer, War in Algeria. These visual narratives are ings, is presented in a formidable more- esteemed scholar of Chinese art history remarkably powerful in demonstrating the than-four-hundred-page compendium of Michael Sullivan, deeply influential, and sub- range of media used in these other forms of fifty-seven selected texts. The editorial team sequently pursued a master’s degree in the architecture, creating transformation poten- comprises Ahmad Mashadi (director of the history of art at the University of California, tials for practice at large. As architectural National University of Singapore Museum), Berkeley. He departed for California in 1962, work embraces broader diversity through Susie Lingham (former director of the making the journey by sea. At Berkeley he new professional identities, sites of impact, Singapore Art Museum), Peter Schoppert received training in the classical traditions of and communicative strategies, such histories (director of National University of Singapore art and art historical method, both European matter deeply for uncovering its overlooked Press), and Joyce Toh (senior curator at the and Asian: “The grandeur of history of art connections and consequences. Singapore Art Museum). as an academic discipline was revealed to The book surveys the development of me when I commenced studies in Berkeley Hannah le Roux is an architect, educator and Sabapathy’s grappling with several inter- in the fall of 1962. The propelling scheme curator. Her work in all these areas revisits the related inquiries as they have come to shape 1 modernist project in architecture in Africa and was the survey.” However, to gain specialist considers how its transformation through the studies of modern and contemporary art knowledge in Southeast Asian art, he contin- agency of Africa presents a conceptual model for in Southeast Asia over nearly half a century. ued his studies at the School of Oriental and contemporary design. From a Southern African Interrogated as fields, in terms of Sabapathy’s African Studies in in the later 1960s, perspective, she considers how apartheid and concerns with the nature of their discursive where he undertook research into premod- colonial constructions erase and are overlain by other human actions. She has written on these formation and utility, these frameworks may ern narrative representations. He continued dynamics for Blank: Architecture, Apartheid and be construed as art history, the modern (and his studies supported by a research fellow- Afterr (Rotterdam, Netherlands: NAi Publishers, the contemporary), and regionalism. How ship over two years, while supplementing 1999); Trade Routes: History and Geography, 2nd these topics have been imaginatively, even his income through teaching. 2 His focus was Johannesburg Biennale (Johannesburg: Greater forensically, explored in Sabapathy’s attempt Johannesburg Metropolitan Council, 1997); the classical, and the means of interpretation Afropolis: City, Media, Art; and the Journal of arguably to define a field of study—con- primarily iconological; when he encoun- Southern African Studies; curated exhibitions in comitant with his wariness of definition tered through the divergent Johannesburg, Venice, Brussels, and Rotterdam; as an act of prescription—is unparalleled approaches of Philip Rawson and Claire Holt, and engaged with the spatialities of diaspora in terms of a scholarly perspective shaped he recounts feeling unequipped, and that coffee ceremonies and the soccer culture of 3 earth fields through design research. In 2017 she from Singaporean, Malaysian, American, and “the modern was strange.” was a principal candidate in the Fulbright African British institutions. Enriching this body of With the establishment of an art his- Research Scholar Program and a research fellow work is a historical outlook shaped by mem- tory course (focusing on modern Malaysian in the Canadian Centre for Architecture/Mellon ories of 1950s and 1960s postcolonial fervor art) at the newly launched Universiti Sains Foundation project Architecture and/for the in former British Malaya and the respective Environment. Malaysia in 1970, Sabapathy returned to national projects of newly split Singapore Southeast Asia to take up a post as a lecturer.

116 SPRING 2020 He undertook the significant challenge of reviews, newspaper columns (the “Art and the artist” (31). Important topics introduced creating a curriculum and body of teaching Artists” feature in the Straits Times), and catalog in this section, and recurring throughout materials from scratch, from foraging for essays. The first essay—the 1978 “Towards the book, include the figure of Malaya in the teachable writings to photographing art- a Mystical Reality” from his monograph on artistic imagination, the centrality of art in works to create lecture slides. As part of this Piyadasa—is of major significance for his the cultural debates in the 1950s and 1960s in endeavor, he frequently collaborated with theorizing of what many consider to be an the British postcolonies, and the context of celebrated Malaysian artist and critic Redza example of the earliest conceptual practices in Singapore’s divorce from historical traditions Piyadasa: “Our early writings on art and art- to realize its ideology of “installing the mod- ists in Malaysia were collected and published ern/new at the very centre of its strategy” in 1982. In them are also nuclear attempts (110 ). Witnessing such a claim to tabula rasa at ascertaining the modern in this region, would appear to have fueled Sabapathy’s own critically and historically. Hence I began commitment to historicization, and to con- involvement with the modern and have nect to premodern models to conjecture on largely stayed with it, since I could no longer regional hypotheses in the present. traverse parallel worlds. Indeed, I had to turn The second section, “A Mind for away from one of them effectively, return- Method, and an Eye for Medium, Materiality, ing intermittently.”4 Sabapathy returned to and Form,” with an editorial overview by Singapore in 1980, where he began contrib- Susie Lingham, highlights Sabapathy’s sensi- uting to the Straits Times until he ceased writ- tivity to artistic process and the problem of ing art criticism—in that form—in 1993. In medium. These issues are relayed through 1981 he was appointed lecturer in the history writings on artworks grounded in such of art in the department of architecture at mediums as drawing, sculpture, ceramics, the National University of Singapore, where and installation, which further illustrate he has continued to teach to this day. aspects of artistic formation responsive to As one of the editors, Peter Schoppert, site, mobilities, personal and professional notes, “The goal in republishing a set of relationships, institutions, and alterna- Sabapathy’s writings in an anthology and tive forms of education. One example is mapping them against different themes, and an analysis of new approaches to artmak- against a timeline of changing art practices Southeast Asia. Other artists covered include ing by Sulaiman Esa and Piyadasa, whose and institutions, is to heed Sabapathy’s call those affiliated with the Nanyang artists, conceptual orientations were significantly to begin the hard work required to build the such as , , and shaped by their studies in Britain when foundation for a more historically aware and Georgette Chen, and those celebrated as her- major shifts in artistic pedagogy were taking regionally grounded practice of art writing” alding the contemporary, including Tang Da place.6 While some of the emphases in this (225). Writing the Modern is organized into four Wu and Cheo Chai-Hiang. The span is wide, section would appear to repeat those of the sections, following opening materials that in terms of both the period covered and the first, a distinguishing feature is Sabapathy’s include a foreword, an editors’ preface, short spectrum of practices that are articulated as consideration of the vantage points offered editorial notes by Chu Chu Yuan, and an illustrating the modern or the contemporary. through medium-based discourses attached introduction authored by Ahmad Mashadi. This is one challenge to the volume’s coher- to both classical art and modernism: “I have Each of the four sections is introduced by a ence in its framing of the modern: many of leaned towards texts on sculpture in the short essay that provides the editorial ratio- Sabapathy’s essays articulate the contemporary, Anglo-Saxon critical tradition that open up nale for the selection of texts. Within each and the conditions for such a distinction paths along which one can traverse in order section, the texts are organized chronologi- from—and its glossing with—the modern are to approach sculptural practices and ide- cally, from earliest to most recent, to give a not clearly addressed by the editors within the als here and offer explanations for them” sense of Sabapathy’s development of a meth- book’s purview. (194). This strategy is reiterated as a first odological inclination over time. The book The first section does illuminate how point of recourse in what he describes as concludes with a timeline of all his writings. “Sabapathy’s interest in biography as a means an ahistorical state of artistic discourse in Unfortunately, images are scarce and are and method of writing art history arches back both Singapore and Malaysia: “If one of the reproduced at an almost thumbnail scale, to a practice with centuries-old historical features identifying the modern artist is in which leaves the reader feeling somewhat roots, in both Western and Asian art“ (30), the adoption of a critical and self-regulating bereft in the face of Sabapathy’s committed demonstrating his sourcing of familiar and stance towards traditions as such, then the formalist scrutiny of the artwork. unfamiliar methods to navigate what was a modern artist in Malaysia must also embrace The first section, “The Southeast Asian new field of art historical representation not the tradition of the new as it has been per- Artist in Relation to Art History,” with an only in Southeast Asia.5 For Sabapathy, “It was sonified in this country. Ignorance of it may editorial overview by Joyce Toh, features a way of writing [that was] unlike the histori- well produce a context that is sterile” (171). Sabapathy’s writings about individual art- cal traditions of art in which I was schooled— The third section, “Art Institutions and the ists, extracted from monographs, exhibition to write on the modern was also to write on Exhibition,” with an editorial overview by

117 artjournal Peter Schoppert, focuses on Sapapathy’s writ- tion to Sabapathy’s own itinerant academic such as those that lie at the intersection of ing for and about exhibitions and exhibition- formation and to his scrutiny of art’s align- art history and the decolonial project. As making institutions. A salient feature within ment with national horizons: “Sabapathy such, it is tempting to imagine what other this group is Sabapathy’s trenchant commit- distinguishes modern art history from the forms the anthology might have taken to ment to wide-reaching politico-cultural cri- national, reminding his readers that discern- more closely align with Sabapathy’s intellec- tique. In response to the rise of region-facing able and coherent developments started well tual ambitions. projects vis-à-vis the ASEAN cultural agenda, before Malaysia’s independence in 1957” One avenue might have been through Sabapathy challenged the hollowness of such (333). Mashadi refreshingly situates Sabapathy a retooling of the editorial themes. Despite endeavors as diplomatic lip service: among a rising community of art historians the editors’ respective efforts to distinctively Exhibitions are acts of avowal and engage- in 1990s Southeast Asia producing what today foreground the overarching tenor of each ment, and the curator assumes a forma- are considered foundational studies, yet the section, the effectiveness of this mode of tive role in these processes. In this regard, question of cross-border research remained organization is uncertain. In Mashadi’s intro- the ASEAN exhibition has not fulfilled its elusive for Sabapathy: duction to the volume, he notes that role. There are three objectives underpin- How do we perceive the region today, some of these texts are iterations that ning this enterprise. I have mentioned and how do we perceive it art histori- have evolved over time, where passages one—consciousness. The other two are cally? Or is the quest for a regionalist may reappear, albeit somewhat repur- the provision of a base for comparative perspective a futile, self-defeating quest? posed, contextualized within and in study and a glimpse of cultures of the I ask this question because there is a relation to specific circumstances of their countries. Comparative bases for study pronounced tendency for art writers/ delivery and intentions. As a collection have to be structured and continually scholars in Southeast Asia to focus on the of Sabapathy’s writings rationalized along tested. Glimpses need positions of advan- constituent parts of Southeast Asia rather key subjects or interests, this publica- tage. These are means by which what than to develop a perception of the tion also hopes to construct grounds on has been produced is rendered intelli- region as a whole and as a suitable object which the texts may converse with and be gible, sensible. . . . So far, curators in the of study. (376) regarded in relation to other texts written ASEAN shows have been coy. (237) In a parallel deconstructive endeavor to that variously by other writers and historians, His desire to see more substantial criti- undertaken by scholars rethinking “the West” including his contemporaries. (19) cal thinking on regional representation of or “Europe,” Sabapathy similarly analogizes The breadth of writings compiled here is and from within Southeast Asia is strongly Europe as a regional construct: both an asset and a challenge. Those less emphasized throughout this and the follow- As an issue, region and regionness have familiar with Sabapathy’s work may have ing section. However, of importance here is historical and current pertinence for difficulty mining the book for conceptual his elaboration of the exhibition as a crucial Europeans. Indeed, it reaches into and threads given the extent to which the above- vehicle through which regional proposi- shapes mythological domains. . . . The mentioned themes recur across so much of tions can be tested. Other essays demonstrate euro as currency presupposes that there his writing and in diverse forms (e.g., from Sabapathy’s holding of national institutions are capacities and symbolic means for newspaper columns to lengthy monograph to account for the lagging development of art narrating Europe as an integrated region. essays). The extensive overlaps across the history as a public resource: “[The National It marks an ascendency of region-ness sections undermine the coherence of sepa- Museum Art Gallery] cannot avoid this over nation-states as nominal construc- rate themes, as Sabapathy’s writings wove responsibility. It has to purchase such works tions. (393)7 together compelling strains of inquiry that and not depend on donations by artists. Only This is a unique volume in that there should be seen as the warp and weft of the then can it begin to shape the history of art in are no comparable anthologies by a single same fabric of discourse rather than themati- Singapore, and thereby fulfil its role” (242). author devoted to writing about modern cally segregated. The fourth section, “Regionalist and contemporary Southeast Asian art as a A more challenging alternative—or Perspectives in Southeast Asian Art,” with field of study.8 The editors are to be seri- perhaps a future prospect—may have been an editorial overview by Ahmad Mashadi, ously commended for the task of compiling to focus on a more tightly curated selection draws out an enduring preoccupation in such a wealth of materials into an invaluable of more substantial texts so that each could Sabapathy’s writing, but because the ques- resource for researchers of Southeast Asian evince a more unique identity, a legibly indi- tion of region appears throughout the art. To some extent, an engagement with vidualized offering to the field. An example book, thematic isolation feels somewhat Sabapathy’s writings as categorized through would be the omitted 1996 essay “Developing unnecessary. Sabapathy frequently invited the themes selected here enables the parsing Regionalist Perspectives in Southeast Asian regional hypotheses through historiographi- of certain discursive priorities and the ways Art Historiography,” published in the cata- cal analyses, drawing on the works of cel- in which they beckoned deeper engagement log for the second Asia Pacific Triennial of ebrated scholars, such as Georges Cœdès from what we might assume to be a regional Contemporary Art. The essay consolidates and Ananda Coomaraswamy, and art, for readership at the time of their production. sections of several texts included in the vol- instance by returning to the Nanyang and However, Sabapathy’s writings were often ume, and demonstrates Sabapathy’s finely regionality within the nation. Mashadi attri- prescient queries into disciplinary and inter- honed thinking on historiography in criti- butes the how and why of this preoccupa- disciplinary problems beyond the region, cal response to a perceived nativist turn in

118 SPRING 2020 the theorizing of the modern within Asia. Katalin Cseh-Varga zation” and is mostly focused on “dialogues It furthermore stands out as an excellent and projects” (13 ); the second is devoted resource for teaching. The significance of the Eastern European Art to the creation of passages for “people and essay’s contribution, and that of others, could Histories of objects” (143) that lead to further expan- be explored through more specific editorial Interconnectedness sion of the network; and the third is devoted annotation or through partnered responses by to convergences “within the framework of interlocutors in the field of Southeast Asian Klara Kemp-Welch. Networking the shared exhibitions and events” and media art history and beyond—for example, an art Bloc: Experimental Art in Eastern Europe, (279). Kemp-Welch begins to works herself historian of China (perhaps another former 1965–1981. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2019. through the mobilization of a network, in student of Michael Sullivan) reflecting on the 480 pp.; 36 color ills., 198 b/w. $49.95 part one, by looking at the friendship of the Nanyang within Chinese art historiography, or French critic Pierre Restany and the Slovak another scholar preoccupied with the ques- Those familiar with Klara Kemp-Welch’s artist Alex Mlynárčik, which, starting in 1961, tion of regionalism in Asian art history, and so work have long awaited Networking the Bloc: provided Czechoslovak and Polish artists on. Perhaps such a project could be the next Experimental Art in Eastern Europe, 1965–1981, with information on trends and initiatives in step in furthering Sabapathy’s historiographi- the result of years-long and exhaustive the Western arts scene, while simultaneously cal pursuits while constructing the grounds research—research that led to travel through opening up the possibility of having their for continued conversation. many European countries and even over- work presented in . The critic believed seas, like many of the protagonists in this in the “idea of the united Europe” (38) and Pamela N. Corey is an assistant professor of book. Kemp-Welch tells stories of Eastern worked to overcome the Western domination Southeast Asian art at SOAS University of London. She is currently completing a book man- European art during the Cold War that cross of European art scenes. The main protago- uscript titled “The City in Time: Contemporary national borders and ideological boundaries. nists of Kemp-Welch’s next case study are Art and Urban Form in Vietnam and Cambodia.” This “collection of interconnected stories” the Czechs Jindrich Chalupecký and Milan (5) intends to overcome stereotypical histo- Knížák. Critic and theoretician Chalupecký 1. T. K. Sabapathy, Road to Nowhere: The Quick ries of experimental art in state socialisms became a key networker, with the aim of pro- Rise and the Long Fall of Art History in Singapore 1 (Singapore: National Institute of Education, as isolated and oppositional. Kemp-Welch moting contemporary art in Czechoslovakia. Nanyang Technological University, 2010), 18. instead seeks to understand the bottom-up Partly through the support of Chalupecký, 2. He also taught Asian art at Farnham School of processes and agency of art networks and Knížák, an artist with an event-based prac- Art, Surrey, in 1966—the first such appointment in experimental art’s internationally oriented tice meant to evoke change in people’s lives, the British school and college system—and at St Martins School of Art in 1969–70. distribution centers, strategies, and media. became internationally known, mobile, and 3. Sabapathy, Road to Nowhere, 26. The books The intention was not to write individual or well-connected. From interpersonal contacts he encountered are Philip Rawson, The Art of purely national historiographies: Networking Kemp-Welch then moves to the medium Southeast Asia: Cambodia, Vietnam, Thailand, Laos, the Bloc is a narrative composed of connec- of mail art, as manifest in the book Mail art, Burma, Java, Balii (1967; repr., London: Thames and tions, crossroads, encounters, and ideas that communication á distance, concept (1971) and a Hudson, 2002), and Claire Holt, Art in Indonesia: Continuities and Change (Ithaca, NY: Cornell reach from Central Europe to Latin America. follow-up exhibition in the same year at the University Press, 1967). We recognize a networking temperament VII Biennale de Paris and in Belgrade and 4. Sabapathy, Road to Nowhere, 32. reflected, as well, in the arrangement of sto- Zagreb. To artists like Petr Štembera, Gyula 5. See, for example, Richard Meyer, What Was ries and the cross-referenced writing style of Konkoly, and Endre Tót, participation meant Contemporary Art?? (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2013). Kemp-Welch. Because of this structure, each the possibility of global communication and 6. See Thierry de Duve, “When Form Has chapter can be read independently. a pathway to international recognition. The Become Attitude and Beyond,” in Theory in The book is a companionable guide author next presents the NET initiative: a call Contemporary Art since 1985, ed. Zoya Kocur and through the complex transnational art worlds for democratic and self-managing artistic Simon Leung (Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, of Eastern Europe between the mid-1960s exchange formulated by Polish artists Jarosław 2013), 21–33. 7. Such works on Europe include Dipesh and the end of the 1970s. Recent years have Kozłowski and Andrzej Kostołowski in 1971: Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial seen significant new scholarship treating the “NET sought to bypass existing art world Thought and Historical Difference (Princeton, NJ: subject from multiple perspectives beyond mechanisms by proposing a field in which Princeton University Press, 2000), and Iftikhar those of Cold-War or nation-state division,1 artists could distribute their ideas freely” Dadi and Salah Hassan, eds., Unpacking Europe: Towards a Critical Readingg (Rotterdam, the but Networking the Bloc comes with the syn- (100). As both the mail-art book and exhibi- Netherlands: Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, thetic coherence a monograph can provide. tion and the NET proposal show, most of the 2001). The book deconstructs myths of counter- communication in experimental art circles 8. Comparable figures include Australia-based art cultural, Communist Party–opposing, neo- was in writing, through the mail, as was the historian John Clark, renowned for establishing a avant-gardists and reveals that artists were case for Klaus Groh’s preparation of the book formative comparative approach to modern art in Asia, and Stanley J. O’Connor, the first profes- able to network internationally despite cons- Aktuelle Kunst in Osteuropa (1972), which sor of Southeast Asian art history appointed traints on travel or communication (315). featured Czechoslovak, Polish, Hungarian, at a university in the United States, but neither Networking the Bloc is divided into three Soviet, Bulgarian, and Yugoslav artists. The wrote exclusively on modern and contemporary comprehensive parts. The first looks at “ini- author argues that “Groh’s book marked a Southeast Asian art, nor have similar anthologies of their work been published. tiatives that brought about collective mobili- change. It became clear that the indepen-

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