Nanyang style dusun special

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2014

e-journal of Asian Arts and Culture

dusunquarterly

Nanyang‘Style’?

special issue

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Dusun Quarterly 3 cover by Tew Nai Tong Editor Martin A Bradley email [email protected] Dusun TM Published by EverDay Art Studio and Educare September 2014

Dusun remains an entirely free and non-associated publication concerned with bringing Asian arts and culture to everyone

Nanyang

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Dusun Quarterly 3 cover by Tew Nai Tong Editor Martin A Bradley email [email protected] Dusun TM Published by EverDay Art Studio and Educare September 2014

Dusun remains an entirely free and non-associated publication concerned with bringing Asian arts and culture to everyone

NanyangSouthern Seas

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inside....

11 Black lines and flat colour

16 That Japanese connection

18 A subtle beginning

26 Immigrant art

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2014

30 Nanyang

32 Naively questing the naive

67 Four Chinese men on an island

87 Ergo Nanyang Style

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A Dusun Special, especially for you.

For some weeks I had been wrestling with the concept of Nanyang Style. I had spoken with many sons and daughters of the Nanyang Academy of Fine Art, and read about others.

It just so happened that there were a number of exhibitions around at the time, emphasising the importance of the Nanyang painters on Malaysian and Singaporean modern art, and this further piqued my curiosity. I began to have an idea to write about Nanyang.

I was invited to give a sharing about Nanyang, in Muar, Malaysia round about that time, so the idea grew that I should write an essay based on my findings. Now I know that not everyone will agree with my findings. But do understand that this is an opinion piece coupled with some history I have dug out. It does not propose to be the definitive history or definative essay on the subject.

Here is my illustrated essay, I do hope that it piques someone else’s interest in the subject.

Now read on................

Martin Bradley Editor.

editor’s note


dusunquarterly

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Lim Hak Taifounder of the Nanyang Academy of Fine Art

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Exposition UniverselleParis 1889

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Exposition UniverselleParis 1889

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Nanyang‘Style’?an essay by Martin Bradley MA

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It would, surely, be naïve to proclaim that it all started with that French exhibition - the Exposition Universelle of 1889, set in a curious Paris full of curiosities, and naïve because the West has had a not-so-secret fascination with all things Orientalist Eastern and, perhaps, a little visa versa with a growing occidentalist East.

In the late 1850s, Eugène Henri Paul Gauguin (Paul Gauguin) and his artist mentors (Manet, Pissaro, Degas, Monet and Van Gogh) had already come into contact with Japanese (ukiyo-e) colour prints. G a u g u i n had included J a p a n e s e artefacts in his ‘fan’ paintings in 1885. He had bought those Japanese prints, and carried them with him to Tahiti, for reference. For t h e sake of our story, we will make the claim that without that Paris ‘Exposition’, Paul Gauguin may have had no such interest in making a ‘Primitive’ or ‘Savage’ life in Tahiti. For Gauguin, the Southern Seas would not have held such an exotic allure, and Bali may not have been the destination for four Singaporean artists to generate notions of a new Asian style in painting.

It is, perhaps, as tenuous a thread as that which held the sword of Damocles aloft, as it unites the Singaporean fusion of Nanyang (Mandarin - South Seas), to the utopianism notions of Gauguin,

Black Lines and Flat ColourPaul Gauguin Self Portrait 1896

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and Western Orientalism. It is tenuous, but nevertheless tangible and traceable. At that, now infamous, Exposition Universelle, Paris,1889, Gauguin had seen the mock-up of a Javanese village, and marvelled at the Borobudur (Indonesian Buddhist) wall reliefs.

It is there, at that exposition, that Gauguin is reported to have bought at least two photographs of Buddhist friezes from the Temples of Borobudur, in Central Java, allegedly taken by J. van Kinsbergen

(1872), and a fragment of a reproduction of Cambodian art at the Exposition Coloniale (the ‘Colonial’ section of the exposition). Images of Tahiti and other islands of French Oceania were also there. Those well thumbed photographs of Borobudur were constantly with Gauguin, along with his Japanese prints, during his travels and, it is suggested, that they were used as reference for more than one of Gauguin’s sketches and paintings.

There is little doubt that the study of other cultures, initially Peruvian (from his childhood in Peru), the Japanese line-work and prints, and the Buddhist works from Cambodia and Borobudur, influenced Gauguin’s painting style enormously. Gauguin’s imagery moved towards flatter planes, brighter colours, with dark lines similar to those seen in Japanese prints. They gave delineation to Gauguin’s figures. He used ‘motifs’ found in Hokusai, and perhaps Kuniyoshi, and began an abstraction which others were to capitalise on, in the future of ‘Modern Art’.

A Borobudur frieze

Katsushika Hokusai1831 Utagawa Kuniyoshi 1830

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Paul Guaguin Still Life with Fan 1889

Paul Gauguin Where Do We Come From?, 1897

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Gauguin had long been disillusioned with the trappings of the bourgeoise life he had been leading. He had always had an urge to travel, and a romantic yearning for other places and other peoples. To a large degree Gauguin was a self-taught artist, but was mentored by Camille Pissarro and had painted with the Impressionists. He gradually emboldened his canvases with more lurid coloration and soft shapes, perhaps gleaned from those Eastern images has was encountering. Gauguin’s wanderlust, no doubt imparted by that early life in Peru, led him to Martinique, Brittany and to spend an enlightening autumn/winter (1888) with Van Gogh in Arles, then, finally, for him to seek his own utopia, a place of exotic naivety, simplicity, away from all that was familiar, conventional and Western bourgeoisie - the South Pacific islands of Tahiti and later to Hiva Oa (in the Marquesas Islands, French Polynesia). In Tahiti, Gauguin had met too many French missionaries.

Gauguin described the Tahiti of 1891 thusly - ‘….civilisation is leaving me little by little'… ‘I have all the pleasures of a free, animal and human life. I escape from the artificial; I enter into nature.’ Tahiti was primitive, and Gauguin was naïve. Maybe fuelled by daydreams of Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Noble Savage, Gauguin believed that he had entered his island paradise, a utopia of simple, carefree, living.

Having grown into a new romanticism, which became known as Symbolism his style of painting, drew away from his erstwhile friends the Impressionists and towards the new style emerging. Gauguin had been emboldened by the strokes of his good friend Paul Cezanne, and his own researches. In his letter to Henri Cazalis (1864) the French poet Stéphane Mallarmé had explained the need for intuiting the perceived world and “To paint not the thing itself,

Paul GauguinTe arii vahine 1896

Paul Gauguin Peace (above), War (below) wood carving 1889.

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but the effect it produces.” Gauguin had taken note and fused what he saw as ‘Primitive’ styles from Borobudur and Angkor Wat, with striking Japanese line work and distinctive coloration, with his own symbolic elements into a fresh new style of cloisonnism, able to capture the vibrancy he was encountering on his own exotic island ‘paradise’.

After Gauguin’s death (of syphilis, 1903), British artist and art critic Roger Fry, when organising an English exhibition of French artists (past the heady days of Impressionism), had looked for a retrospective term. ‘Modern’ was becoming cliché even then. Fry coined the term Post-Impressionist, denoting artists whose styles came after, and differed from, Impressionism. The exhibition (1910) was eventually called ‘Manet and the Post-Impressionists’. It was held at London’s Grafton Gallery, and included the works of Paul Gauguin.

Paul Gauguin Peace (above), War (below) wood carving 1889.

Paul Guaguin Three Tahitians 1899

Grafton Gallery poster 1903

Grafton Gallery catalogue 1903

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While artists in the West - Manet, Pierre Bonnard, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Mary Cassat, Degas, Renoir, James McNeill Whistler, Monet, van Gogh, Camille Pissarro, Paul Gauguin, Aubrey Beardsley and Gustave Klimt, had become enamoured with Japanese prints and Eastern styles, Japanese artists were beginning to learn about Western art too.

In 1856 Japan signed a trade treaty with America and, in 1861, a painting division was created at the already established Institute for the Study of Western Documents (Bansho Shirabesho,1856). It was there that a government sponsored study of Western art took place. By late 1880s, the Tokyo School of Art was founded (1887) by Ernest Fenollosa and Okakura Tenshin. The school of art (now the Tokyo University of the Arts) offered courses on Western styles of art. Japanese painters (adopting Western styles) became known as yōga.

Kuroda Seiki, aided the introduction of the concept of “fine arts” to Japanese society and prospered a revival of Western style painting in Japan from the 1890’s. Kuroda was invited to teach at the Tokyo School of Fine Arts, and later formed the Hakubakai (White Horse Society) for the promotion and exhibition of works influenced by the French academic and Impressionist plein-air painting styles. Japanese artists began to study abroad, many in Paris, bringing back new art theories and styles, with them.

Slightly later, in China, Western ideas of art were taking hold. In 1902, Western style drawing and painting was introduced into the Chinese school curriculum, and two teacher’s training colleges opened departments of painting and drawing. Over time, in China, many such courses were taught by Japanese instructors, who encouraged their pupils to go to Japan for further studies. It is reported that by 1909 there were some 461 Japanese teachers in

That Japanese Connection

Kang Youwei 1858 – 1927

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schools and colleges in China.

In 1898, Kang Youwei - Chinese scholar, calligrapher and wide spread traveller, had written;

“ Four or five hundred years ago Chinese painting was the best. What a pity that it has not developed since then….if we can correct the false painting doctrine of the past five hundred tears then Chinese painting will recover and develop further….if we adhere to the old way without change, Chinese painting will become extinct. Now, at this historic moment, it is up to those who are up to the challenge to arise. They must begin a new era by combining Chinese and Western art, (Travels in Eleven European Countries).

Many of the earlier Chinese students and teachers, who studied in Japan, preferred Western classical styles, but the later students, arriving back in the 1920s and 1930s, brought ideas, ideals and concepts of Modern Art back with them. Chinese Western Art aficionados split into two fractions, those for Modern (Western) Art and those against.

Shanghai Sketch, was a weekly pictorial magazine published in Shanghai from 21 April 1928 until 7 June 1930

Ye Qianyu: Unfortunate Love 1928

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When a leading Chinese writer - Lu Xun, returned to China from Japan, in 1918, in a lectured entitled “Methods of Reforming Chinese Painting” he proclaimed that ‘The decline of Chinese painting has reached its nadir. A civilisation should never go backward. But Chinese painting today has gone back fifty paces from twenty years ago, five hundred paces from three hundred years ago… and a thousand from seven hundred years ago’. He believed that the Chinese artist must ‘keep what is good…change what is bad…and adopt what he can from Western painting.’

Shanghai of the 1920s and 1930s was very cosmopolitan. Looking Western was all the rage, Western looks, Western names, even Western plays and an orchestra. Shanghai became the centre for spreading Western art in China. In 1922 the Shanghai College of Fine Arts inaugurated a Department of Western Art. There were many other smaller art schools springing up, but 1926 saw the founding of the Xinhua Academy. Zhu Qizhan, one of the teachers, was an oil painter who was strongly influenced by the Post-Impressionists.

In the late 1920s artists were returning from art schools in France, mainly due to the conclusion of W.W.1 and the lure that France and French artists continued to have over young Chinese art students. The fresh artists were bent on fusing two worlds together - the Chinese world and the Parisian world. In design, distinctive Shanghai book and magazine designs came into being, born out of Art Deco and Shanghai themes. By the middle 1930s young artists, still with links to Japan, were being influenced by avant-garde conceptualisations such as the neo-fauves and the surrealists. It is from this melting pot of cultures and ideas about Eastern and

A Subtle Beginning?Liu Haisu The Spectacle at Mount Huangshan

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Ye Lingfeng: Untitled 1928

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Cubist Shanghai Life by Zhang Guangyu

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writer - Lu Xun, returned to China from Japan, in 1918, in a lectured entitled “Methods of Reforming Chinese Painting” he proclaimed that ‘The decline of Chinese painting has reached its nadir. A civilisation should never go backward. But Chinese painting today has gone back fifty paces from twenty years ago, five hundred paces from three hundred years ago… and a thousand from seven hundred years ago’. He believed that the Chinese artist must ‘keep what is good…change what is bad…and adopt what he can from Western painting.’

Shanghai of the 1920s and 1930s was very cosmopolitan. Looking Western was all the rage, Western looks, Western names, even Western plays and an orchestra. Shanghai became the centre for spreading Western art in China. In 1922 the Shanghai College of Fine Arts inaugurated a Department of Western Art. There were many other smaller art schools springing up, but 1926 saw the founding of the Xinhua Academy. Zhu Qizhan, one of the teachers, was an oil painter who was strongly influenced by the Post-Impressionists.

In the late 1920s artists were returning from art schools in France, mainly due to the conclusion of W.W.1 and the lure that France and French artists continued to have over young Chinese art students. The fresh artists were bent on fusing two worlds together - the Chinese world and the Parisian world. In design, distinctive Shanghai book and magazine designs came into being, born out of Art Deco and Shanghai themes. By the middle 1930s young artists, still with links to Japan, were being influenced by avant-garde conceptualisations such as the neo-fauves and the surrealists. It is from this melting pot of cultures and ideas about Eastern and Western art, that many Chinese immigrants to Singapore and Penang, came.

Luo Qingzhen Against the Current Woodblock print 1930's

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China roars Li Hua 1935

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Woodblock print.Hu Yichuan.1930's

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Xia Peng fourth class car 1931

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Xia Peng street sweepers 1931

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Nanyang (South Seas) is a distinctive region, named by Chinese, and exists in what others call South East Asia. The name Nanyang was applied to many businesses in Singapore, and it comes as no surprise that it should be chosen to head up a school of art there too.

For many decades from the 1800s to the 1900s, Singapore had been a magnet for Chinese migration. All manner of trades people, educated and less educated people had washed up on the shores of that small island. It should not be a surprise that many Chinese artists, or those having a liking for the arts, found their ways to Singapore to blend into a culture rapidly becoming multi-racial and multi-cultural diaspora.

It is believed that one of the earliest art training establishments in Singapore, was the Su Bin Ting Art Centre, began in 1906 by photographer Su Binting. Many other art training establishments sprang up, such as the Overseas Chinese Art Academy (Hua Qiao Art Academy), founded by Chen Bingzhen in 1922, followed by Lin Youfei’s Mei Gui Arts Academy in 1929 and the Nan Xing Specialised School for the Arts in 1931. From between 1937 and 1938, there were Lin Junde’s Bai Lu Art Academy, Jiang Xiuhua’s Xi Nan Art Academy, Deng Siyi and Chen Daju’s Xi Hu Art Academy, and Lin Xueda’s Nanyang Specialised School of Art. Following on from previous Singaporean ideas, and literary movements, concerned with "Nan-yang se-ts'ai," (South Seas colour), Lim Hak Tai, along with businessman Tan See Siang, founded the Nanyang Fine Arts College in Singapore, 1938.

Lim Hak Tai was born in Xiamen, Fujian Province, China in May 1893. He had graduated from the Provincial Art Teacher's Training College in Fuzhou, China (1915) and taught at the Siming High

Immigrant ArtLim Hak Tai Shipyard 1953

Lim Hak Tai

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School and Jimei Teachers Training College before co-founding the Xiamen Academy of Fine Arts in 1923. In 1936, Lim Hak Tai taught at The Chinese High School, in Singapore, before founding the now famous Nanyang Fine Arts College (later Academy). At first the new Nanyang College of Fine Arts (Nan-yang Yi-shu Yuan) had only fourteen students and three part-time lecturers, they were Kao Fei Tse, Chang Ming Tse and Qiu Ying Kui. By 1940, and the outbreak of war again, the Academy had moved premises and had attracted fifty students, and a staff of twelve. The Japanese occupation of Singapore closed the Academy, from 1942 until 1945, but it was a start.

Nanyang Academy of Fine Art at St Thomas Walk campus in 1949

Tongkangs on the Singapore River, c 1930s

Lim Hal Tai Inner Beauty (1954)

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"I do not think we should indiscriminately discard all that our predecessors left behind. Rather I am all for a flexible way of

integrating the essence of art of the masters, Oriental and Western, and taking from the aspects that are most suitable for the Nanyang

(South Seas) region." (from Lim Hak Tai, Art of the Young Malaysians, 1955).

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"I do not think we should indiscriminately discard all that our predecessors left behind. Rather I am all for a flexible way of

integrating the essence of art of the masters, Oriental and Western, and taking from the aspects that are most suitable for the Nanyang

(South Seas) region." (from Lim Hak Tai, Art of the Young Malaysians, 1955).

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Returning after the Japanese occupation, there were a lesser number of schools of art in Singapore. Some believe that the Nanyang Academy might have been the only surviving school of art post-war. Founder of the Nanyang Fine Art Academy, in Singapore, Lim Hak Tai, eventually put together an unbeatable team of artist/lecturers which, over time, was to include Tchang Ju Chi, Yong Mun Sen, Chen Wen His, Cheong Soo Pieng, Huang Pao Fang, See Hiang To, Chen Chong Swee, Georgette Li Ying Chen and the Academy’s close associate Liu Kang . Lim Hak Tai died in 1963 (aged 70).

Lim Hak Tai had been trained (in China) in traditional ink brush painting, as well as watercolour, calligraphy and Western oil painting. In his oil painting Lim Hak Tai had been heavily influenced by the Post-Impressionist works (Inner Beauty, 1954) and by Expressionism and Cubism/Futurism as seen in Composition (1953) his 1955 paintings Riot and Construction on Site of a Shipyard at Tanjong Rhu. While the Academy still struggled, during the 1950s there came an event which, according to many art historians, changed the entire nature of how we conceive Singaporean/Malaysian art.

NanyangNanyang Academy at St. Thomas Walk Lim Hak Tai 1949

Lim Hak Tai, Riot 1955

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Flowers Lim Hak Tai 1935 Bamboo Rock Lim Hak Tai 1950

Composition Lim Hak Tai 1955

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From 1912 onwards there was a lot of ‘artistic’ interest in the island of Bali, Indonesia. Western photographers such as Dr Gregor Krause and Arthur de Carvalho were flocking to Java, and especially Bali, to capture, perhaps, the last paradise with half-dressed women. Avant-garde artists such as German Walter Spies had settled in Bali since 1927, when he was reputed to say “I shall move into my little bamboo hut here in the lovely, lonely Ubud, and soon be lost to the world”.

The Dutchman Rudolf Bonnet had already discovered the rare beauties of Bali, in 1929, while Belgium painter and photographer Adrien Jean Le Mayeur de Merpres had followed Gauguin’s route to French Polynesia, and to Tahiti, but finding it in decline, visited India and Cambodia. Finally he landed in Bali, 1933, and exhibited his paintings of Bali in Singapore in the same year, again in 1937 and 1941. In 1951, the Belgium’s house and museum on Bali were featured in the National Geographic magazine.

In the early 1930s Dutch painter A.E.Herrmann was active in Bali, painting local women, and in 1931 José Miguel Covarrubias Duclaud, the Mexican painter arrived in Bali. And returned in 1933, later (1937) he produced the book Island of Bali featuring his own sketches and his wife Rosa’s photographs. While in 1933, a travel book by Eva Yates (Bali: Enchanted Isle) describes Bali thus;‘“A modest woman has nothing to hide” is the theory of Bali. The first few days you are on the island, your eyes nearly pop out at the sight of so many “Eves” - but after a few days of seeing these bronzed natives, busy about their living, entirely unconscious of their bared beautiful breasts, you no longer notice them. Their dark skin seems like a garment.’ Also in 1933 there was the Edouard de Keyser novel: L'île des seins Nus (The Island of Bare breasts).

Naively Questing the Naive

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Walter Spies with Balinese by Rosa Covarrubias

Rosa Covarrubias with two Balinese girls by Miguel Covarrubias

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Island of Bali, by Miguel and Rose Covarrubias, 1938

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1936 cover, titled “Bali Beauty,” by Miguel Covarrubias

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Nieuwenkamp "played a critical role in creating the myth of Bali, most importantly through his support of the German doctor and amateur photographer, Gregor Krauser. Together they held the first exhibition of Balinese Art in Amsterdam in 1918, with Krauser's photos and Nieuwenkamp's drawings. It is Krauser's later book which brought many later artists to Bali

source wikipedia

Bali and Lombok written and illustrated by W. O. J. Nieuwenkamp 1910

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Ben Lenhoff’s Bal Bali resuarant, Chicago, USA, early 1950s

Club Bali opened in 1943, Washinton USA

Sumatra Java Bali K T Satake 1935

Bali Folk Country Dance Festivals temple

Gregor Krause 1918-1945

Bali Enchanted Isle Helen Eve Yates 1933

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Legong Dance of the Virgins, Dutch version, Paramount Film, 1935

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See Bali. 1938. Designed by E. Korver

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Legong by Milestone Films, USA, 1935

Honeymoon in Bali, 1939

1930s Netherland Indian State Railway poster

promoting travel to Java and Bali.

Life Magazine January 1940

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1952

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Walter Spies

Iseh in the morning light Walter Spies 1938

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Jungle scene Walter Spies

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River landscape Walter Spies

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The ladscape and her children Walter Spies

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Rudolf Bonnet

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Ni najas by R.Bonnet 1950 Ni Radji by R.Bonnet 1954 "Wanita Bali menabur bunga" by R.Bonnet 1952

Rudolf Bonnet, undated

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R Bonnet 1933

R Bonnet 1941

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Ploughing with Water Buffalo R Bonnet, undated

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Adrien Jean Le Mayeur de Merpres

Balinese Woman at her Window Le Mayeur

Le Mayuer painting

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Two Balinese Women Le Mayuer

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Two women at the balcony Le Mayuer

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Ladies with Parasol Le Mayuer

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Theo Meier

Reclining Nude Theo Meier 1933

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Girl by Theo Meier

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Romantic Reed Theo Meier

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In 1936, the Swiss painter Theo Meier, who had studied under Otto Dix in Germany, also sampled the delights of Tahiti by following the Gauguin trail, and eventually landed in Bali then wrote;“When I arrived in Tahiti, I was very disappointed that the culture I had dreamed about no longer existed there, but I did observe the components that Gauguin had used to build up his beautiful paintings. He showed me tropical Nature, and this influenced me so enormously that I began looking for a place where perhaps more culture had survived, but in the same natural setting. That place was Bali. There I was shaped, and became what I am today.” And in 1940 Willem Gerard Hofker and his wife settled in Ubud, where he painted numerous romanticised and exoticised images of local women.

While the film South Pacific, and the song Bali Ha’i (Rogers and Hammerstein), were not to be made until 1958, during the 1950s Bali was beginning to be as tourist friendly as the Tahiti Gauguin had complained about. According to Singapore’s The Straits Times (6th June, 1952) Bob Hope and Bing Crosby’s all singing, all dancing romanticised American comedy film; Road to Bali (Paramount,1952) was being seen in cinemas across the world. It was a continuance of the ‘Road’ series of films sometimes featuring Dorothy Lamour, sometimes not, but this one was the only film in the series in Technicolor. Previously (1939), Fred MacMurray had seduced Madeleine Carroll in another American film - Honeymoon in Bali. The romantically orientalist inclined Westerners had ‘discovered’ Bali, overlaid that simple society with their own romantic notions of ‘Paradise’ and ‘Eden’. Then it was time for four Singaporean Chinese immigrants to do the very same.

Young Dancer Theo Maier 1970 Balinese Legong Dancing Theo Meier

Balinese girls with offerings Theo Meier

Offering to The Sea God Theo Meier

A Balinese beauty Theo Meier 1953

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Willem Gerard Hofker

W G Hofker 1943

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Dressing for the Feast WG Hofker

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Balinese Lady W G Hofker

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Gusti Kampyang dalam Pesta Pura W G Hofker

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That Tripto

Bali

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In 1952, perhaps fuelled by some of the above, romantically exotic/erotic notions of a final paradise, four Chinese male artists from Singapore - three teachers from the Nanyang Academy and one associate, made the now art historical three week trip to Bali. There is little doubt that those four artists, Liu Kang (President of the Society of Chinese Artists of Singapore), Chen Chong Swee, Chen Wen Hsi and Cheong Soo Pieng had expected a gentile utopia.

Many years later (1979) art historians Redza Piyadasa and T.K. Sabapathy coined the term ‘Nanyang Style’ and intimated that it had developed because of that notable trip to Bali. According to T.K.Sabapathy (1986) “The choice of Bali is significant. As if in response to Lim Hak Tai’s suggestions, these artists sought the one context in Southeast Asia in which art and life appeared to be inextricably meshed and which also promised the extension of pictorial motifs and subject matter.”

It must be noted, however, that Singapore’s jungle clad sister - Malaya, was enduring a civil strife at the time, named by British colonisers as ‘The Emergency’, after a series of murders of British plantation managers in 1948, and the assassination of the High Commissioner Henry Gurney in 1951. The Emergency effectively lasted until 1960. Whereas Singapore had just recovered from its own (1950) (Maria Hertogh) religious riot. The siren call of a painter’s paradise must have been very strong in Singapore, in 1952.

Those four Chinese artist friends, three from the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts, and one their friend and supporter quested for a ‘Modernist’ style to incorporate their Eastern heritage, Western painting methods and ideas about painting and the equatorial lands they all had migrated to. They were…..

Four Chinese men on an islandLiu Kang

Chen Chong Swee

Chen Wen Hsi

Cheong Soo Pieng

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“I went to Bali on a sketching trip, and there I was fascinated by the scenery and by the Balinese women. I discovered that Balinese women are the ideal subject for me, and I made a good number of paintings,

modern in feeling and to my own liking many of which I do not wish to sell”.

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“I went to Bali on a sketching trip, and there I was fascinated by the scenery and by the Balinese women. I discovered that Balinese women are the ideal subject for me, and I made a good number of paintings,

modern in feeling and to my own liking many of which I do not wish to sell”. Cheong Soo Pieng

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Liu Kang

Liu Kang was born in 1911, Yongchun county,Fujian, China, and followed his father to Muar, in Malaya, at the age of six. He later studied at the Shanghai College of Fine Arts, Shanghai, from 1926 to 1928 and from 1928 to 1933 in Paris, where he favoured works by Degas, Cezanne, Matisse, Gauguin and van Gogh. In Paris Lui Kang painted Farmer’s House (1930) a study with van Gogh stylisation, then Breakfast (1932), seemingly a study after van Gogh. After Paris, Liu Kang taught in the Xin Hua Arts Academy for five years in the Western Art Department, the war with Japan forced him to return to Muar in 1937, until he settled in Singapore, in 1942. During the war years Liu Kang was not still, he spent his time sketching and, in 1944, produced a volume of his works called Chop Suey cataloguing atrocities by the Japanese in Malaya. In the 1949 he used pastels to render a portrait of a Muslim man with a white beard. It was masterful, but bore little relationship to the works he was to complete. His later ‘utopian’ (1950s) works are a stark contrast to the Chop Suey sketches, appearing influenced by both Renoir and Gauguin. 1952, using black outlines for his figures, Liu Kang presented After the Fire, the aftermath of one of the many fires in Singapore at that time. In a 1953, post Bali trip, there is an image of a Balinese dancer, outlined in black , she is stylised and clothed. Balinese Girl in Sarong, was painted in the same year. By 1954, Liu Kang had stylised his work even more, with even more distinctive outlines in a Gauguin fashion, with flatter, more vibrant colours.

Offerings Liu Kang 1957

2004 Singapore Post released a set of 20 stamps featuring artworks from Liu Kang

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Souri Liu Kang 1953

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Siesta In Bali (Liu Kang 1957

Siesta in Bali sketch Liu Kang 1952

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Adjusting the Waistband Liu Kang 1997

Artist and Model Liu Kang 1954

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Balinese Woman Chen Chong Swee 1952

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Chen Chong Swee

Chen Chong Swee was born in Chenghai County, Guangdong Province, China in 1910. 1929 he studied fine art in the Union High School in Shantou (Swatow). In 1931 he studied in Xinhua Arts Academy in Shanghai. 1932, Chen Chong Swee migrated to Penang, teaching art in Chinese schools in Malacca and Penang. In 1934 he moved to Singapore. In 1951 Chen Chong Swee became the head of Chinese Painting Department at the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts, and taught there until 1975.

Specialising in watercolour and ink brush painting,Chen Chong Swee was one of the first of local artists to capture local (Singaporean/Malaysian) scenery and figures, with ink brush painting techniques. It is believed that the 1952 painting Dancing Lesson (in his familiar line and wash technique) was painted during the Bali trip. The artist captured the vividness of the dancers’ costumes while washing out the background. Chen Chong Swee’s works include Offering, Market, Fishermen and Satay Stall, many of which are undated. Coffee Shop is dated 1953, and Drying Fish,1961. Kashmiri was painted in 1971. 1971 Chen Chong Swee produced the frieze Pounding Rice, which is a stunning example of Chinese ink brush painting adapted to equatorial subject matter, and giving an impressive representation of local life, and River Bank, an examples of the painter’s plein-air watercolour realism. We will come to the different approaches to a Nanyang style later.

The final, last but not least, of the four artists engaging on that fateful Bali trip was .......Chen Wen Hsi.

Fruit Market Chen Chong Swee 1986Market Chen Chong Swee

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Pounding Rice Chen Chong Swee. Year 1971

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Chen Wen Hsi

Chen Wen Hsi was born in Baigong Village, Guangdong, China, in 1906. He graduated from the Xinhua Academy of Fine Arts, in Shanghai, and it was there that he had befriended Chen Chong Swee and Liu Kang. Chen Wen Hsi lectured in the South China College, Shantou, China, between 1946 to 1947 and, later (1948) settled in Singapore to teach at the Nanyang Academy (1951 to 1959)

Chen Wen Hsi has the privilege to have painted one of the largest artworks that Sotheby’s in Hong Kong has had the pleasure of auctioning, and that is Pasar (Market) painted somewhere in the 1950s. It stretches to 130 by 104.5 centimetres, and is very evocative, densely coloured, tropical abstract in a Cubist/Modernist style. Chen Wen His was adept in oils, pastels and in (Chinese) ink brush painting. His image Two Gibbons Amidst Vines (ink on paper, 1970s) was chosen to be on the rear of the Singaporean S$50 banknote.

He continued to experiment with an early Cubist style, perhaps inspired more by the lengthy angular lines of Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (1907), than his later Cubist works. In 1990, Chen Wen Hsi returned to his ‘angular cubism’ with a stunningly original work entitled Herons, all the more unusual as it was painted with Chinese ink on paper, different from his oil paintings Still Life (1960) and Grazing (1965).

Gibbons Chen Wen Hsi between 1980 and 1989

Gibbons looking for fish Chen Wen Hsi

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The Couple Chen Wen Hsi 1950s Bali Sketch 1 Chen Wen Hsi

Bali Sketch 2 Chen Wen Hsi

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Balinese Dancers Chen Wen Hsi 1960s

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Indian Children Chen Wen Hsi 1950s

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Malay Life Cheong Soo Pieng 1981

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Cheong Soo Pieng

Cheong Soo Pieng was born in China, 1917 and had taught at the Nanyang Academy from 1947 to 1961. He had been trained at the Xiamen Academy of Fine Art, in Shanghai between 1933 and 1935, and then the Sin Hwa Fine Art Academy (Shanghai), which was destroyed in 1938.

During the 1950s as he was formulating his style, Cheong’s paintings wavered between different approaches to Post-impressionism, from the more emotive near abstract of Seaside (1951), which to some might seem influenced by Dali, with a towel hanging like a like watch, to Iban Girls (1953) which reflects a distinctive van Gogh and Gauguin influence, both in style and in coloration of his two seated subjects, one green one red. Brook (1953) could almost have been painted by Lim Hak Tai, and has that near Cubist feel. Indian Temple (1956) had all the energy of a van Gogh or Gauguin, but with more subdued coloration; mixed cool blues throwing forward a range of warm colours. The following year (1957) his palette is almost entirely warm, emotive, colours in his Balinese Girls with Offerings. It is believed that Cheong Soo Pieng had created over 300 sketches during the Bali trip.

Balinese Girls with Offerings Cheong Soo Pieng 1957

Balinese Girl Cheong Soo Pieng 1952

Weaver Cheong Soo Pieng 1981Two women with baskets on their heads

Chen Soo Pieng 1976

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In the Village Cheong Soo Pieng 1980

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Two Sisters Cheong Soo Pieng 1980

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Four Chinese men go for a three week plus trip, to an island famed for women, pastorale landscapes and a culture both slowed by time but also highly advertised, written about and

publicised through films, paintings, photographs and books. Perhaps there was more to the ‘gaze’

of those artists than knowing how to sketch.

The fact that the four artists stayed over in the Belgium painter Adrien Jean Le Mayeur de Merpres’ house, met Le Mayeur whose style

of paintings were heavily featuring the female bounty of the island at that time, including that of his wife, the Balinese dancer Ni Pollok, surely

had some influence over the four men’s style and subject matter.

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Tan Tee Chie (Senior Lecturer of Nanyang Academy of Fine Art), in 1985 wrote;

“…the aesthetic concern of the Nanyang Style was to represent the essence of the Nanyang spirit in both its ideological and physical manifestations. The art served as a bridge between tradition and ethnicity, as well as between local customs and the natural environment.”

However, writing in 1991, Founding Principal of the Malaysian Institute of Art, Chong Cheng Sun intimated that;

“The Nanyang Style in its Western art form was characterised by the representation of local subject matter in the manner of School of Paris, with the infusion of the Balinese figurative form. The Nanyang Style in its ink painting form, on the other hand, was characterised by the representation of local subject matter in the manner of the Shanghai School with plein-air drawing and calligraphic elements, and sometimes incorporating Western compositional elements.”

There is much debate over what is, what was, and what should be a Nanyang Style. The significance of that 1952 Bali trip, in regard to the creation, or continuance of what has been termed the Nanyang Style only muddies the water. Western and Eastern styles were brought from China and from Paris, either via China or directly by Chinese immigrants into Singapore. Artists before and after the Second World War had incorporated elements of local scenery, objects people etc into their works. Therefore were Redza Piyadasa and T.K. Sabapathy correct in nominating that 1952 Bali trip as the catalyst for a proposed Nanyang Style, or is it simply, like Roger Fry coming up with the term Post-Impressionism, a handy peg to put a hat on, and little more than that. I have no intention of answering these questions.

Ergo, Nanyang Style

Chong Cheng San

Dr Chean Tien Soong

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The Nanyang Academy of Fine Art has changed since the days of the first artist immigrants into Singapore and Malaya. Art has moved on in most quarters. Whether ‘Nanyang Style’ referred to those early artist settlers, their artworks, or the region they were creating in, is all a matter of history and sublime conjecture. Should we, for instance, include all those Western artists, living on Bali, as Nanyang Style artists, or is that a privilege only for those Chinese immigrants. And what of successive generations of students leaving the Nanyang Academy of Fine Art. Are each of them creating in the Nanyang Style, and who gets to say?

There is little doubt that the name Nanyang style has been convenient, for some, as perhaps a branding of Singaporean/Malaysia art, without which galleries, auction houses and writers would have to be a little more creative in their descriptions and notions about art and artists in this (the Nanyang) region. Perhaps, like a brand, ‘Nanyang Style’ has developed as a benchmark, setting the bar, as it were, for other artworks and artists to attain. Or, perhaps, it means nothing at all, just like Fry’s - Post-Modernism, or Guillaume Apollinaire’s term - Surrealism, coined on 18th May, 1917, in a programme note for the French ballet ‘Parade’.

Stylistically, Gauguin got there first. Was what followed in Singapore/Malaya simply a reenactment of Gauguin’s mixing of Eastern and Western styles in an exotic locale, and was the trip to Bali akin to Gauguin’s move to the South Pacific. Was a Nanyang Style fuelled by the same naiveté, the same desperation for paradise that urged Gauguin to leave bourgeoise society questing another Eden. Or were there other, less exotic and more erotic motives, such as those levelled at Gauguin, for that famous Bali trip. That Malaysian/Singaporean art developed in exciting directions after the Second World War, cannot be denied. So dear reader, it’s up to you to decide.

Lai foong moi indian curry 1959 Self Portrait Georgette Chen 1936

Koeh Sia Yong, Balineses Girl, 2006

Aw Tee Hong balinese festival 2006

Lau Moa Seng 2006

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Ceremony in Bali Tew Nai Tong

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River Crossing, Khoo Sui Hoe 2010

Togetherness Lim Kim Hai 2003

The Nanyang genes continue, bringing new mixes of Eastern Western and Equatorial visual art before us.

Teachers, who were once students of the Nanyang Academy, pass their knowledge on to fresh students, and in turn they too become teachers and pass their skills on. It seems a never ending process, yet each generation is further divorced from the excitement and wonder of those first few immigrants, landing in Malaya and Singapore, their mouths agape and eyes wide open.

Fresh artists working in Malaysia and Singapore have to re-capture that wonder, that innocent gaze and those intial feelings of wonderment of seeing these tropical lands, its flora and fauna,that had captured those first artists and, in turn, create fresh wonders for succeeding generations.

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Loo Foh Sang 2013

Angkor Yeo Eng Hin 2013

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Further Readingfor those interested

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Chen, Georgette. Letter dated December 8, 1956. Collection of Singapore Art Museum.

Chen, Georgette. Letter dated February 19, 1963. Collection of Singapore Art Museum.

Chen, Georgette. “Some thoughts on Nanyang, Art, and the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts”. In Nanyang Academy of

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dusunasian arts and culture emagazine

Dusun is an Asian Arts and Culture e-magazine, bringing you the very best of Arts and Culture from the Asian region and by Asian writers, Poets and Artists. Dusun

aims to inform and educate in the broadest sense of the term.Dusun is entirely FREE and owes no alligences to country, party, poltitics, gallery,

race, relgion or gender. If you are a ceative, then Dusun belongs to you.

nurture yourself with

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