Art History and the Modern in Southeast Asia

Art Journal ISSN: 0004-3249 (Print) 2325-5307 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rcaj20 Art History and the Modern in Southeast Asia 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. Submit your article to this journal View related articles View Crossmark data 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 Singapore, 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 Museum, 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 Singapore Art Museum 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 Federation of Malaya. /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 London 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 modern art 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-

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