The Second Asia-Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art exhibition catalogue (APT2)

contemporary art cannot be perceived as not being related to the reality of this pluralistic modernism. This logically contradicts the belief in the correctness of the monolinearity of the development of modern art, as a historical process. 3 Indeed over the past twenty years, writing on art in Asia has tended to veer away from adhering to uni linear or singularly authentic (in terms of origination) notions of modernism, and leans towards constructing more open codes for interpreting modernism as w911 as contemporary art practices. It would be extremely valuable to undertake a critical overview of such endeavours with the aim of highlighting (i) dominant assumptions, (ii) modes of representing practitioners, practices, productions and institutions, (iii) methods employed to describe or analyse concepts, works and practices, (iv) discourses on modern and contemporary art in relation to those on traditional or pre-modern arts and in relation to discourses inscribed as dominant in specific sociopolitical domains. In some ways these considerations were registered at the first APT, most vividly in the late Roberto Villanueva's installation and performance, and especially during the screening of a video docu– menting his visit to the Pinatubo region (after the eruption of the volcano) undertaken to propitiate and pacify the spirit of the mountain-a ritual that entailed the participation and endorsement of the affected peoples of the region. In the presence of such a presentation, so many of the cherished conceptions and hierarchies which uphold the art world appear to have been bypassed and rendered irrelevant; yet, it would be a great mistake to construe Villanueva's aims in terms of strategies of negation. On the contrary, his practice is impelled by an expansive dynamic, whereby the practice of art reaches out to embrace and actively implicate entire communities and their beliefs. Set against this situation, Supangkat's insistence that modernism should be 'recontextualised' assumes dramatic pertinence. And herein lies a crucial signal. Even as I endorse his assertion (and in many respects his path crosses that scanned by Roces), it must also be remarked that the process of recontextualisation is continuous and has a chain of precedence. For instance (and hereon I turn my attention to the region of South-East Asia), Claire Holt categorises the sustained, passionate and partisan discourse which convulsed Indonesia in the first three decades of this century, during whose course matters concerning modernism, modernity and tradition were discussed and disputed, as The Great Debate 4 ; such occurrences and expressions were not particular to Indonesia. In The Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Singapore (and Thailand as well), the decades marking the 14 ESSAYS first half of this century were riven with Great Debates; even as they were principally instigated by ideologies and directions in cultural practices, these debates were inextricably connected with and stemmed from movements aimed at dismantling colonialism and constituting new, modern states in the twentieth century. Discussion swirled around matters such as (i) the reception of works of art as esteemed, discrete entities, (ii) definitions of the new or modern and their relationship with tradition, (iii) status and persona of the artist and (iv) the construction, projection and safeguarding of artistic identities; these continue to be pressed into issues in research and writing today. Even as they feature perennially, they are largely developed within specific country boundaries; no concerted attempts have been made to cross national boundaries and articulate, examine, these issues in relation to regional perspectives or perceptions. And then again, even as they are prominent in current critical preoccupations, seldom is their description and analysis rooted in contexts that could lead to the provision of historiographies of art. That is to say, rarely do discussions of these take cognisance of and build upon extant writings in the countries within the region in a rigorous, sustained and scholarly mode; every effort, every exegesis is, seemingly a new beginning! Consequently there is a marked absence of reflexivity in critical and art historical scholarship in South-East Asia. Not surprisingly this has retarded the development of suitable and requisite methodologies, a situation which, in a sense, harks to the very substance fuelling the call made by Roces-the call for 'a calibrated terminology'. In the spirit of propelling and engendering interests along these fronts, I propose widening the terrain of discussion and reaching into an earlier, pre– modern phase of the art history of the region, and briefly comment on the writings of two scholars; each conceptualised South-East Asia as possessing a binding art historical identity. They are Ananda Coomaraswamy and Georges Coedes; the texts are History of Indian and Indonesian Art and Les Etats hindouises d'lndochine et d'lndonesie (translated into English as The lndianized States of Southeast Asia-hereafter referred to in translation). There is no other art historian and writer on speculative philosophy from Asia who has been as valorised as Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy (1877-1947). His scholarship is wide-ranging and formative; a centennial commemoration has been convened. No writer on Indian art history can avoid referring to him, either in agreement and admiration or in disagreement. Coomaraswamy's oeuvre can be divided into two categories; the first, beginning from about 1910 until the early 1930s, is devoted to art historical themes and issues; Coomaraswamy inaugurated new methods and horizons in Indian art history. He was among the first to systematically employ literary texts in reading art and architecture, and in doing so laid bare not only technical meaning but also deepened interpretation of symbolic meaning; furthermore, he developed descriptive and analytical methods that were fresh and incisive, and employed language with an expository and reflective force unknown before. In the second category, after 1932, his writings veer towards metaphysical speculation, with the work of art as a perceptible, sensory entity receding in favour of spiritual resonances. Interest for this occasion devolves on the History of Indian and Indonesian Art, published in 1927; it was the earliest to feature art from South-East Asia; I will focus on this component of the publication. Of course Coomaraswamy does not refer to the region as South-East Asia but as Farther India (and in the title, the region is apotheosised by Indonesia). Farther India and Greater India are epithets by which the region of South-East Asia was named in the first half of the twentieth century; it was conceived and mapped as an appendage of India, dependent on it culturally and artistically. In 1926 the Greater India Society was formed to give such conceptions institutional rooting and stability. These conceptions were mooted by scholars and travellers from Europe who envisioned India as possessing a culture unified by a mystic one-ness which appealed to them, and which was especially popular in circles in Germany advocating various strands of transcendentalism in which yearnings for other-worldliness were pervasive and deep-rooted. What is more, this vision of India found hospitable grounds in India but for altogether different reasons, its appeal was tied in with the rising movements of anti-colonialism and nationalism, and a rediscovery of and newly found pride in Indian culture by Indian scholars. In wishing to exemplify the all-embracing, unifying and universalist dynamics and scope of Indian culture, scholars in the first half of this century enfolded South-East Asia as part of pax lndica; South-East Asia was sucked into a hegemonic cultural construction in which India was the nuclear, legitimising centre. And what of Coomaraswamy? He makes his position clear enough. By way of a general principle he observes that: India, indeed, provided the material of a higher culture, and perhaps a ruling aristocracy, to less developed and less conscious races; but the culture of these races, plastic, musical, dramatic and literary, as it flourishes in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries and still survives in Java and Bali, may justly be called native. 5 The relationship is one between the superior status of the originating or donor source and the benefit accrued by recipient peoples or 'races' who are