3.
Another
Prelude - Rethinking ‘Malay revivalist proclivities’
Which master narrative?
Michelle’s
proposition on the role of ‘Malay-Islamic art movement of the late 1970s and
1980s’ in forming the basis of ‘postmodern investigations’ is rather
refreshing, in comparison to Piyadasa’s narration of what he referred to as
‘Malay revivalist proclivities’. Taking off from Michelle’s proposition, and in
response to Piyadasa’s narration, the issue of ‘Malay revivalist proclivities’
certainly needs to be revisited, especially in regards to Universiti Teknologi
MARA (UiTM) during the late 1980s.
Being
regarded as the ‘seminal art historian’ and ‘pre-eminent myth-maker’ in driving
the historical narrative of modern Malaysian art, Piyadasa’s narration in
interpreting what he termed as ‘Malay-Islamic art movement’ has been featured
quite prominently, including in several major publications by the
government-support National Art Gallery of Malaysia.
Piyadasa’s
narration was largely political, and framed within the context of post-National
Cultural Congress and its subsequent socio-political repercussion. He
expressed:
“What
is interesting about the Malay-Islamic art movement referred to above was that
it was motivated by politicised, ideological considerations rooted in the new
post-Cultural Congress governmental policies.”(23)
According
to Piyadasa, the movement had two distinct phases:
i.
Search for Malay ‘roots’ (1970s) and
ii.
‘Malay-Islamic revival’ in art (1980s) (24)
In
regards to the ‘Malay-Islamic revivalism’, Piyadasa further explained:
“The
Malaysian government’s Islamisation processes, begun in the early 1980s, had
also given an
added impetus to the Islamic dimension that appeared within the Malay-centered
artistic movement. The projection of Islamic culture and civilisation now
became the rallying cry within the larger Islamic world as well and many
Malay-Muslim artists linked to the ITM art school responded emotionally to new
impulses, which saw the introduction of radical new ideas about an Islamic
religious world-view being introduced” (25)
According to Piyadasa’s lenses, ‘Muslim
intellectuals’ during this period, began to denounce
Western modernism, considered as ‘hedonistic, not moralistic but decadent’. He
later painted a scenario:
‘”There
was now a rejection of the underpinnings of the modernist movement in art and the
Western-derived idea of modernity and secularism itself. At the ITM art school,
figurative art was now discouraged and a new prescriptive, abstract approach to
art making, founded on Islamic religious and design principles, began to be
encouraged, in earnest.” (26)
The
above-mentioned scenario, especially in regards UiTM from 1985 until
1990 was
partly imagined than factual, as the following sections will elaborate. In addition,
reference to Piyadasa’s personal take on such revivalist proclivities,
especially in relation to UiTM, should be done in comparison to the late Ismail
Zain’s essay Masa Depan Tradisi –
Dikhususkan Kepada Pengalaman Kuno di Malaysia (The Future of Tradition –
Focusing On Primitive Experience in Malaysia) and Syed Ahmad Jamal’s Rupa & Jiwa (Form & Soul).(27)
Ismail’s
works Permukaan Dalam Ruang # 3 (Surface
in Space) (1969) and The Wayang Story
– Yield, yield (1970) for examples, despite their apparent reference to the
shadow puppet tradition and Malay domestic space, contain traces of his early
interest in the semiotics of Malay visual nuances within a modernist context.
Syed Ahmad Jamal’s Rupa & Jiwa as
well as his work Tumpal (1975),
despite their Malay postures, were presented within a highly Western modernist
gallery context.
Furthermore,
Piyadasa’s observation should be read in tandem with Sulaiman Esa’s essay The Reflowering of the Islamic Spirit in The
Contemporary Malaysian Art, and Ruzaika Omar Basaree’s essay Kesenian Islam – Suatu Perspektif Malaysia
(Islamic Art – A Malaysian Perspective) as well as other essays, seminars
and exhibitions related to the interest in revisiting tradition and its
relation to the notion of nation-state or nationalism. Amongst them are
writings by Harun Abdullah Coombes, Khatijah Sanusi, Zakaria Ali and Mohamed Najib
Ahmad Dawa.
(28)
This interest or ‘proclivities’ employed the writings of several prominent
scholars as an inspiration and sources. Amongst them include Seyyed Hossein
Nasr, Ismail and Lois Lamya Al-Faruqi, Osman Bakar and Titus Burckhardt. (29)
Perhaps,
such proclivities should now be read within the context of ‘post-colonial’
reflex, as championed by Edward Said, and Syed Hussein Alatas’s ‘the myth of
the lazy native’. Both were instrumental in deconstructing ‘colonial
representations of African and Oriental peoples in order to reveal how they
were produced in the course of Western imperialism’. Malay-Islamic proclivities
can thus be taken as an example of a critique of ‘Western discourses of art
history’ or as a ‘reconstructive attempt to approach modernism based on a local
term’.(30)
Interestingly,
Piyadasa had placed narratives provided by the above-mentioned scholars as a
part of a ‘government-support master narrative’ that propagates a
‘politically-defined cultural vision’, founded on ‘Malay-centered discourse and
dominance’. Such discourse, as Piyadasa had stated, ‘reinforced the hegemony of
Malay nationalistic forces’ in the Malaysian art scene. In this regards, he
wrote:
“We
may also notice the shift from earlier artistic search for a broad-based
multi-cultural Malaysian-ness to a new notion of Malay-ness, as the defining
cultural paradigm. This new shift in emphasis inevitably caused the emergence
of a new Malay-dominated force within the Malaysian art scene.”(31)
Ironically,
Piyadasa himself, as stressed by Jolly Koh, had ‘dominated’ art writing in Malaysia for most
of the 70s, 80s, and 90s. One is therefore made to oscillate between Piyadasa’s
‘dominating’ narrative (which has been published by government-support National
Art Gallery of Malaysia) and what he termed as the government-support
Malay-centered master narrative in deciding which one is more dominating. This
is symptomatic of postmodern’s irony, paradox and fragmentation. Interestingly,
except for Piyadasa, none of the above-mentioned writers related to the Malay
revivalist proclivities have been credited as the pre-eminent myth-maker of
modern Malaysian art history.
Nevertheless,
artworks such as Ahmad Khalid Yusof’s Alif,
Ba, Ta (1972),Ruzaika OmarBasaree’s Dungun Series (1979), Sulaiman Esa’s Nurani (1983), and Fatimah Chik’s Meditation # 1 (1986) do represent
Piyadasa’s notion of Malay-ness or Malay proclivities. On the other hand, upon
closer look, none of these artworks indicates a ‘rejection of the underpinnings
of the modernist movement in art and the Western-derived idea of modernity and
secularism’. In fact, they were paradoxically presented in a highly Western
modernist gallery context. Evidently, instead of total rejection, they
represent revaluation and negation of Western modernism based on local term. Thus,
these works should indeed be taken as preludes to an early impulse for
postmodern revaluation of Western art historicism in the Malaysian art scene.
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