Indonesian Art and its History

Since documenta 15, strange terms such as ruangrupa, nongkrong, lumbung and taring padi have crept into our ears, initially arousing our interest in the unfamiliar. Some were led to believe that there are people in the ‘global South’ who are dedicated to art and perhaps even have a history of it. The subject of art history, as taught at our universities, has, for longer than related disciplines, focused mainly on the Euro-American region, relegating the arts of the rest of the world to ethnological museums. Now, a team of curators from Indonesia has been invited to Kassel, and we have had to come to terms with the fact that they think and do some things differently than we are used to. The resulting conflicts engaged us for weeks. The following essayistic introduction to the history of modern Indonesian art should help to put some things into perspective.

Indonesia is the successor state to the Dutch colony of the Dutch East Indies. In 1945, at the end of the Pacific War, the country declared its independence, but had to fight for five more years to have it recognised. With a population of around 270 million, Indonesia is now the fourth most populous country in the world. Surprisingly, we know very little about this important country and even less about its art, even though the beginnings of Indonesian painting are closely linked to Germany.

Raden Saleh – the first ‘modern’ Indonesian painter

On 18 May 1839, the Javanese painter Raden Saleh (1811–1880) arrived in Düsseldorf from The Hague and visited the academy there. In a letter to Holland, the young painter wrote: ‘The German school [Düsseldorf school] produces magnificent compositions, but its colouring is harsh and it does not master the intermediate light. I therefore dare to say that German painters are more like poets. The Dutch, on the other hand, are less poetic, but are better at handling colours and [their paintings] are therefore more beautiful to look at.’

What a bold statement! A painter from a region that was the subject of more myths than knowledge, he spoke openly and critically about the flagship of German art at the time, the Düsseldorf School. Later, after years in Dresden, he revised his opinion and adopted the Düsseldorf style of colouring himself. Dresden, which he reached in September 1839, was to become the most important place in his artistic development.

Here he found his style and made friendships that lasted a lifetime. In his memoirs, he remarked: "The diversity and perfection of the many masterpieces I found on display in the Dresden Gemäldegalerie delighted me and filled me with admiration. I therefore decided to stay here for a longer period of time and make a living from art, rented a pleasant flat and copied van Dyck and Rubens in the gallery with tireless diligence."

And so it came to pass, if you will, that Indonesian art history got off to a strong start in front of the paintings in the Dresden Gemäldegalerie.

But this strong early start initially petered out in the machinery of colonial reality, and early Indonesian art history stumbled over unfriendly terrain. After his return to Java (1852), Raden Saleh did not succeed in establishing a strong local art tradition there. The colonial power was not interested in promoting local artists beyond map and plan draughtsmen. So Raden Saleh remained a monolith at first.

In the colony's modest art market, only idealised Javanese landscapes with people working peacefully were in demand. These images were mostly ‘produced’ by Dutch painters. Over time, a few Indonesian painters joined them, such as Abdullah Soerjo Soebroto, his son Basoeki Abdullah and Mas Pirngadi. They, too, did not go beyond pleasing landscape painting, although they had a different intention.

They wanted to use the beauty of their country to lift and heal the broken pride of the Indonesian people – look how beautiful our homeland is, how beautiful we are!

After the First World War, the number of European artists working in Indonesia increased significantly. As the art market had collapsed in large parts of Europe, many hoped to find motifs and buyers in the prosperous colony. Among these many, the number of German and Austrian painters was astonishingly large. They were drawn from the dreary post-war cities to the ‘South Seas’ and, since English and French colonial territories were closed to them, they found their South Seas in Java and Bali. These artists, now including women, brought with them a new understanding of images and art and took an aggressive approach to the tropical lighting conditions. Fritz Heinsheimer (1897-1958) wrote to his master Max Slevogt on 6 August 1931 about his difficulty with the light: ‘The result for the painter is restless images when he wants to get close to nature. ... I am curious to see how the stuff will look in normal light.’

Slevogt never came to Java, but one of his paintings did. In 1929, Elisabeth Delbrück curated the exhibition ‘German Contemporary Art’, financed by the Foreign Ministry of the Weimar Republic. This show had been put together exclusively for the Dutch East Indies colony. It was a global premiere, as never before had originals of European modernism been shown in a colony (apart from a small Bauhaus exhibition in 1922 at the Tagore School in Santiniketan near Calcutta). Among the approximately 100 works in the exhibition, which was shown in nine Javanese cities, were those by Kandinsky, Otto Dix, Karl Hofer, Max Pechstein, Emil Nolde, Moholy-Nagy, Schmidt-Rottluff, Eugen Spiro, Willy Jaeckel, Philipp Franck, Heinrich Vogler, Georg Kolbe, Max Slevogt and Arnold Bode. Bode, who later founded documenta, was represented in Java in 1929 with the oil painting ‘Edersee’.

The exhibition was not a success. The colonial bourgeoisie, who knew art solely as edification, stood perplexed before the paintings. Hermann Röseler, a Bauhaus artist and contributor to the Triadic Ballet, was represented with the painting ‘Grüne Flasche’ (Green Bottle) and was publicly mocked in the arts section by the colonial critic Hans van de Wall: ‘One of the excesses of modernism is Hermann Röseler's “Grüne Flasche”. If this painting reflects the innermost soul life or the artist's view of a simple object of daily use, then we are right to be concerned about the normality of this soul life or his eyesight.’

But the paintings were not only seen by conservative colonial society, but also by Indonesians, including approximately 2,000 Indonesian schoolchildren. Unfortunately, there is no autobiographical literature from which we can deduce the effect these paintings had on the emerging Indonesian modernism. However, since the curator of the exhibition, the painter Elisabeth Delbrück, offered highly acclaimed and previously unheard-of introductions to the development of European modernism at each vernissage, we can confidently assume that the presence of these powerful images influenced the development of young Indonesian modernism.

This was finally established in 1938 with the founding of the artist group Persagi (Persatuan Ahli-Ahli Gambar Indonesia – Association of Indonesian Painters). Persagi brought together a number of Indonesian painters to develop common artistic positions and counter the colonial view that modern art could only be understood by Europeans. Although the group did not develop a common style, it did develop a common will to finally free itself from the colonial society's saccharine concept of art and find new, appropriate forms of expression.

The Persagi members understood that a nationally independent art form could only find its place in an independent Indonesia and therefore used their resources to support first the national emancipation movement and then the Indonesian struggle for independence (1945–1949).

Here, in the national uprising of the Indonesians against Dutch colonial rule, lies the core of Indonesian modernism, and the spirit of those early years is still alive today as a romantic myth in large parts of Indonesian society and contemporary art. Another incarnated legend, namely that of the importance of the collective for artistic work, also dates from that period. The lack of paints and canvases and the bitter poverty of the years of struggle led to the formation of a number of artist collectives, which, as economic communities, ensured the survival of individuals. These communities, known in Indonesian as sanggar, supported both the republic in its struggle for independence and their members in their struggle for physical and artistic survival. It is therefore understandable that, in addition to the heroic narrative of early anti-colonial art, the memories of the collective organisation of artists of that time are also part of the national heritage.

The painters of the early years, who soon found their own visual language, were exposed to a range of very different influences. First, there was the aforementioned European tradition with its many facets. But Asian artists, such as Japanese and Chinese artists, were also represented with their ideas. Some young Indonesian painters moved to Santiniketan in the early 1930s to train in this Indian laboratory of modernism. This turn towards Asian modernism, which has hardly been researched, was another expression of the national desire for political and intellectual independence from the supremacy of global colonialism.

The early republic period (1945-1957) can be considered the most fruitful period of Indonesian modernism. Closely associated with this are names such as Sudjojono, Affandi and Hendra Gunawan. Encouraged by the first president of the republic, Sukarno, who was himself an artist and amassed a large collection of Indonesian art, a lively art scene developed, supported by an equally vibrant local collecting scene. Here, too, Sukarno's example was influential. Hardly any minister or businessman could afford not to collect art.

Between 1950 and 1965, most artists organised themselves in LEKRA, a sub-organisation of the Indonesian Communist Party for cultural workers. Interestingly, social realism, as we know it from many socialist systems of that time, did not find its way into Indonesian art history. Collaboration with LEKRA was advantageous for artists. They received support in purchasing canvases and paints and were able to join international networks. In 1951, for example, a large group of Indonesian painters travelled to the World Youth Festival in East Berlin, where they were able to expose themselves to an international experience for the first time.

But membership in LEKRA would prove to be a deadly trap for many artists. When the Indonesian military staged a coup against the left-wing nationalist Sukarno government in 1965, an unprecedented witch hunt ensued against all left-wing forces while at the same time seizing the opportunity, against the country's Chinese minority. Between one and two million people were murdered, and many others disappeared into prisons and camps for years. Among them were a large number of artists. Suharto's dictatorship remained stable for decades, partly because it was generously supported with weapons and economic aid by the West, including Germany.

In resistance to artistic oppression and cultural conformity imposed by the dictatorship, Indonesian artists experimented with various attempts at renewal.

In the 1970s, the Gerakan Seni Rupa Baru (New Indonesian Art Movement) was founded. This group established a discourse that had a strong influence on local art practice. Ideas from conceptual art found their way into the movement, with installations and performances often taking the place of elaborate artworks. Joseph Beuys became a secret star among young artists in Indonesia. For the second time, Indonesian art had reinvented itself and for the second time it was at the forefront of resistance against an authoritarian regime – this time against its own military.

Alongside and in competition with the new conceptual art, however, the tradition of agitational action art, as it had developed during the struggle for independence, remained alive. It became more radical among the student body of the art academy in Yogyakarta. In addition to state oppression, they now also fought for social and ecological justice, women's rights and religious self-determination. The artists of that generation, who had often lost their fathers or close relatives in the massacres of the dictatorship, pushed for new democratic conditions. After massive demonstrations, Suharto was forced to resign in 1998 and a reform government was formed. However, it soon became clear that the hoped-for major social reform would not take place. Although essential civil rights such as freedom of association, freedom of the press, an independent judiciary, etc. were introduced, the oligarchic structure of the Indonesian economy and new social pressure from Islamic parties prevented the hoped-for changes.

Taring Padi

Among the artist collectives that advocated for an expanded concept of democracy and the dismantling of old political and economic networks was Taring Padi, which sparked the great anti-Semitism debate at documenta 15. Who is Taring Padi?

When the art academy in Yogyakarta on the island of Java moved into a new campus in 1997, part of the old buildings was occupied by a group of art students. They set up an anti-hierarchical counter-academy there, with the aim of inventing a new style of coexistence and collaboration. The distinction between teachers and students was largely eliminated, as was the symbiosis between artists and the art market. On 21 December 1998, the new residents of the old campus officially organised themselves under the name Lembaga Budaya Kerakyatan Taring Padi (Taring Padi Institute for People-Oriented Culture), abbreviated to Taring Padi. Taring means fang and padi means rice plant and/or rice in the husk. The fang of the rice, taring padi, can be understood as a synonym for the people power so often invoked in Western alternative and pop culture.

Taring Padi's concept of art was and is characterised by its collective social and ecological commitment. Its collectively created action art aimed to support the desired political and cultural transformation of the country. In doing so, the group placed itself in the tradition of both the painters of the revolutionary years and the Bumi Tarung collective, which had also been founded by art students in Yogyakarta in 1961 and whose members fell victim to the mass murders of 1965 or were imprisoned for many years. Stylistically, the Taring Padi collective, which was never a stable but always a volatile, dynamic group, drew on various models of visual practice. In addition to figures from the repertoire of Javanese shadow theatre, there are references to international comic literature. Other references that catch the eye of Western viewers, such as those to the Chinese woodcut movement initiated by the writer Lu Xun in the 1930s or to early Soviet propaganda posters, are not confirmed by the Taring Padi members. They have probably crept into their work via secondary quotations. On the other hand, they speak of their great admiration for Käthe Kollwitz.

Taring Padi's first major campaign was the production of woodcuts for the 1999 parliamentary elections, the first elections after the dictatorship. The country was in crisis and it was unclear whether the republic could maintain its unity in the face of regional and religious conflicts. The woodcuts in DIN A0 format, of which up to 10,000 copies were made per printing block, addressed in simple language the need for unity in the country, social equality and religious peace. The inscriptions included, for example: Bangun Nusantara tanpa tetes Darah (Build your country without bloodshed), Senjata tak selesaikan Masalah (Weapons do not solve conflicts), Persatu dalam Perbedaan (United in diversity). Some of them were on display at documenta 15 in Kassel, such as the poster Berikan cinta pada Sesama (Give your love to everyone). It depicts the symbols of the world religions – Islam, Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism and Judaism – which are presented as equal. It is regrettable that the large poster People’s Justice, which was shown at documenta in Kassel, features, among other things, a grimace that can be interpreted as anti-Semitic. It shows a man with an SS rune on his hat, a cigar between his pointed teeth and strands of hair hanging down at the sides. The strands were interpreted as ‘sidelocks’, as worn mainly by Hasidic Jews. However, the mixture is confusing and the symbolism is ambiguous. The bowler hat does not correspond to any Jewish headgear, but is associated with the London Stock Exchange, the SS rune on the hat is clearly symbolic, and the strands of hair are not curled.

John Berger wrote that "The relationship between us and what we see and what we know is never final. ... We always see relationships between events and ourselves." In other words, our gaze creates the meaning of what we see. So what do we see? We can only see what we want to see. My many years of professional engagement with Indonesian modernism have shown me that anti-Semitism is not an integral part of the ideological and ethical stance of this art. And certainly not of the Taring Padi collective.

During documenta, the dean of Indonesian intellectuals, Goenawan Muhamad, wrote a letter to a fictional German friend, Bruno. In it, he writes about the events in Kassel: "The anti-Semitic attitude that regards Jews as the cosmic evil has never existed in Nusantara (Indonesia). ... It is also unclear to me how this (anti-Semitic W.K.) male figure could be seen as evidence of Taring Padi's alleged insult to Jewish people, when an SS rune is engraved on his hat. Why can't this figure be seen as a representation of a malicious Nazi German? ... The guilt-laden history of your country, Bruno, has made the people of Kassel forget that their perspective has become narrow."

Taring Padi is part of the socially critical tradition of Indonesian art, which was born in the ferment of the struggle for independence and took shape during the early years of Sukarno's left-wing nationalist government. The collective, which was an inter-ethnic and inter-religious group from the outset, was never concerned with race, but with class.

‘We are a left-wing collective, which is why in Indonesia we are traditionally labelled not only as enemies of the state, but also as enemies of Islam. Since our founding, fundamentalist Islamists have been destroying our banners, attacking us, beating us and burning our first large banner in Yogyakarta.’ (ZEIT, 7 July 2022 interview with Taring Padi)

In Kassel, their large banner was taken down – not burned.

Despite repeated counterarguments, they are still defamed as anti-Semites to this day. Not being taken seriously is a historical experience of Indonesian people. It was the essence of the colonial encounter between the Dutch and the locals and the fundamental experience of developing Indonesian modernity during the colonial era. At the wonderful documenta 15 in Kassel, which will go down in history as significant with its contemporary post-colonial approaches and examples of a different art practice, this age-old colonial attitude of not taking people seriously was once again practised excessively. Presumably in vain and therefore hopefully for the last time.