Indonesian art entered the global contemporary art world of independent curators, art fairs, and biennales in the 1990s. By the mid-2000s, Indonesian works were well-established on the Asian secondary art market, achieving record-breaking prices at auction houses in Singapore and Hong Kong. This comprehensive overview introduces Indonesian contemporary art in a fresh and stimulating manner, demonstrating how contemporary art breaks from colonial and post-colonial power structures, and grapples with issues of identity and nation-building in Indonesia. Across different media, in performance and installation, it amalgamates ethnic, cultural, and religious references in its visuals, and confidently brings together the traditional (batik, woodcut, dance, Javanese shadow puppet theater) with the contemporary (comics and manga, graffiti, advertising, pop culture). Spielmann's Contemporary Indonesian Art surveys the key artists, curators, institutions, and collectors in the local art scene and looks at the significance of Indonesian art in the Asian context. Through this book, originally published in German, Spielmann stakes a claim for the global relevance of Indonesian art.
A complete survey of Indonesian contemporary art. Indonesian Eye presents the most exciting works by emerging Indonesian artists in the most exhaustive way and comprehensively discusses their distinguishing characteristics differentiated from other contemporary art in Asia and the Western world. As an illustrated study, the book features seventy five up and coming artists and five essays to explain vibrant and dynamic art scene in Indonesia as an undiscovered jewel of Asian contemporary arts. Four pages will be given to each artist to allow the audience to experience more diverse spectrum of young artists' works never introduced before outside Indonesia. Each artist's section will have a brief descriptive text on the artist and his/her work and detailed captions.
This book covers the development of modern and contemporary art in Indonesia, from the colonial period in the 1930s to the present time of globalization. Each chapter is based on important historical moments that changed the course of the art world. Special attention is paid to individual artists who invented new concepts, styles, and techniques. The Indonesian art world is divided over several geographic centers that are far away from each other (Jakarta, Bandung, Yogyakarta, and Bali). For an outsider, it is not that easy to discover the places where modern and contemporary art can be found, but this book gives us insight into those worlds.
Indonesia, with its mix of ethnic cultures, cosmopolitan ethos, and strong national ideology, offers a useful lens for examining the intertwining of tradition and modernity in globalized Asia. In Inventing the Performing Arts, Matthew Isaac Cohen explores the profound change in diverse arts practices from the nineteenth century until 1949. He demonstrates that modern modes of transportation and communication not only brought the Dutch colony of Indonesia into the world economy, but also stimulated the emergence of new art forms and modern attitudes to art, disembedded and remoored traditions, and hybridized foreign and local. In the nineteenth century, access to novel forms of entertainment, such as the circus, and newspapers, which offered a new language of representation and criticism, wrought fundamental changes in theatrical, musical, and choreographic practices. Musical drama disseminated print literature to largely illiterate audiences starting in the 1870s, and spoken drama in the 1920s became a vehicle for exploring social issues. Twentieth-century institutions—including night fairs, the recording industry, schools, itinerant theatre, churches, cabarets, round-the-world cruises, and amusement parks—generated new ways of making, consuming, and comprehending the performing arts. Concerned over the loss of tradition and "Eastern" values, elites codified folk arts, established cultural preservation associations, and experimented in modern stagings of ancient stories. Urban nationalists excavated the past and amalgamated ethnic cultures in dramatic productions that imagined the Indonesian nation. The Japanese occupation (1942–1945) was brief but significant in cultural impact: plays, songs, and dances promoting anti-imperialism, Asian values, and war-time austerity measures were created by Indonesian intellectuals and artists in collaboration with Japanese and Korean civilian and military personnel. Artists were registered, playscripts censored, training programs developed, and a Cultural Center established. Based on more than two decades of archival study in Indonesia, Europe, and the United States, this richly detailed, meticulously researched book demonstrates that traditional and modern artistic forms were created and conceived, that is "invented," in tandem. Intended as a general historical introduction to the performing arts in Indonesia, it will be of great interest to students and scholars of Indonesian performance, Asian traditions and modernities, global arts and culture, and local heritage.
This book provides the first comprehensive study of feminisms and contemporary arts in Indonesia. While Indonesian contemporary arts are currently on the rise in the global art scene, no in-depth study has been done on the works of Indonesian women artists and the feminist strategies they employ when operating within the Indonesian art world. Focusing on Arahmaiani, Titarubi, and IGAK Murniasih amongst others, this pioneering work uses feminist reading to analyse the works of Indonesian women artists historically and today. It also illuminates the sociocultural and political contexts in which the artists worked and a nuanced understanding of local feminisms in Indonesia. These artists achieve this in feminist terms by orienting their works towards the production of positive images of the female body, expression of female desire, and adherence to certain universal principles such as erotic appeal and inclusiveness in attempting to formulate or convey a conceptual ideal.
Gets to the heart of what is unique about Indonesian art. Exploring the work of established and emerging artists in Indonesia's vibrant art world, this book examines why so many artists in the world's largest archipelagic nation choose to work directly with people in their art practices. While the social dimension of Indonesian art makes it distinctive in the globalized world of contemporary art, Elly Kent is the first to explore this engagement in Indonesian terms. What are the historical, political, and social conditions that lie beneath these polyvalent practices? How do formal and informal institutions, communities, and artist-run initiatives contribute to the practices and discourses behind socially engaged art in Indonesia? Drawing on interviews with artists, translations of archival material, visual analyses, and participation in artists' projects, this book presents a unique, interdisciplinary examination of ideologies of art in Indonesia.
"Beyond the Dutch" gives a colourful picture of that struggle. Leading artists, curators and historians from Indonesia and the Netherlands have pored over a series of questions posed by the history of art in the Dutch East Indies/Indonesia. What was and still is Dutch about Indonesian art? What relationship does it have with Western techniques and views on art? How does contemporary art in Indonesia and the Netherlands allow for the links between the two countries? And how do we actually perceive Indonesian art? The book takes three cross-sections through fine art in the Dutch East Indies/Indonesia: the colonial period around 1900, decolonisation and independence around 1950, and the current, post-colonial period around 2000. Only by taking a detailed look at these three pivotal moments can a clear picture be obtained of the turbulent development of art in Indonesia.
This book presents the essence of Werner Kraus's many years of research and studies. It contains a fascinating essay about Raden Saleh's spectacular life as a painter, scholar, art & education reformer, collector & preserver, and combines it with a rich documentation of his works providing a whole host of illustrations, pictures and portraits of Raden Saleh - many more than those shown in the exhibition, and some of them published for the first time.
