Blog - Tuesday in the Tropics 176 - Art Talk South East Asia

TUESDAY IN THE TROPICS 176

14^th February 2023

Dear friends and colleagues

As I have grown older I find myself reading obituaries more often. Sadly, I find myself writing them today. Last year two artists of South-east Asia died with whom I had worked and whom I had liked: Ashley Bickerton and Srihadi.

Ashley Bickerton (May 26, 1959 – November 30, 2022)

I could have met Ashley in I think the year 2006. I had gone to see a friend who worked In Lehman Maupin Gallery, New York. An exhibition of Ashley’s paintings had just been installed. In the middle of the floor a man was lying, curled up, fast asleep. “Who is that?” I asked. “That’s Ashley,” I was told. I chatted with my friend, Courtney, and then we went out for coffee. Ashley was still asleep when we left so I did not get to meet him. Odd behaviour, falling asleep on the gallery floor, I thought. I am sure Ashley thought it was wholly logical: “I have finished installing the show. I am tired. I will go to sleep.”

I did meet him a few years later in Jogjakarta, Indonesia at an opening. I had recently published a book with Phaidon Painting Today. Ashley had views on that subject. There was a copy of the book there so we went through it together, we looked at each image, one by one, and he gave me his opinion of each. It took a long time: there are 483 Illustrations. Everyone else had lost interest, wanted to go eat, but Ashley would not stop till we had finished. Obsessive or methodical? A bit autistic or very focused?

Was he a South-east Asian artist? Well, yes, sort of: from 1993 he lived in Bali, Indonesia. He liked being part of the scene, that gang. He had an American passport but was by birth really British. He should have stayed British: once he left the US the American tax authorities pursued him ferociously and made his life a misery.

In 2012 I invited him to show in the opening exhibition, Marcel Duchamp in South-east Asia, at a Singapore gallery (Equator Art Projects) where I was curator. We had a miscommunication, I thought he wasn’t interested, he was, increasingly wanted to be part of the local scene – and say something, however indirectly, about Duchamp.

Works by Nikki Luna, Geraldine, Nindityo Apinurmo, S. Teddy, Wire Tuazon, Ashley Bickerton, Yuli Prayitno, Ian Woo, Tintin Wulia, Arin Dwihartanto at Marcel Duchamp in South-east Asia 2012.

Ashley Bickerton. Eyeball paintings (Van Gogh and Picasso/Gauguin) 2012

It is a regret that though we got on well, I even went and stayed with him in Bali, I never got round to interviewing him or writing something substantial about him.

His house was unique and as always eclectic, but logical: a bar, or discussion area, beside the pool. His view on gardening was, “Buy plants, put them in the ground and let then grow.” Pruning was for anal-obsessives. Let things happen.

3. Ashley Bickerton in his garden 2011

4. Ashley’s garden in Bali

Ashley’s house and pool in Bali

He worked hard, played hard. He was always an independent voice. In his later Bali years his wife Cherry Saraswati was an especial inspiration.

In Ashley’s studio 2011

7. Ashley’s workshop 2011

It was a varied career, uneven, I think, but never dull. Is anyone planning a retrospective? They should. For me his best works were the ones he showed at the Venice Biennale in 1990. They were impeccably thought through and made – beautiful consumer objects, but fiercely sardonic in their portrayal of consumerism and ecological malpractice.

8. Ashley Bickerton. Wild gene pool. 1989 as shown at Venice Biennale 1990

9. Ashley Bickerton. Catalog Terra Firma. 1989 as shown at Venice Biennale 1990

Srihadi Soedarsono (4 December 1931 – 26 February 2022)

10. Srihadi in his studio.

With Srihadi I did do a major project: an exhibition in 2014 at Equator Art projects accompanied by a small book.

11. Srihadi bedoya paintings as installed at Equator Art projects 2014

In preparation for that we met several times in his studio in Bandung. Sometimes he would take me for a lunch at a club he belonged to. Life was not to be rushed. He was a patient and courteous man. His English was good though sometimes we had an interpreter. It was fascinating to talk to someone who remembered so far back: to when in 1946 during the Indonesian liberation war he had been arrested by the Dutch police and charged with carrying a grenade. Because of his youth he was not executed. His artistic career began during the war in Yogjakarta, which was centre of the independence movement, making posters.

But after peace came, in 1952 he took a different direction – away from the activism and socialist realism that dominated the Jogja art scene – enrolling in a Dutch led, De Stijl orientated course at the art school in Bandung (later to be ITB, Institut Teknologi Bandung). He learned how to use cubism, work abstractly. In 1960 he went to study for an MA in Ohio State University. But, returning from the States in 1962 on seeing the poverty and corruption around him abstraction became morally unsustainable to him. His paintings of hungry people were gaunt, angry and compelling. Some of his paintings contained coded protests or jibes at the corruption and vulgarity of the right-wing Suharto government, but mainly he painted landscapes and he taught – he took his role as a teacher at ITB seriously (1958-1998). One of his students, Farida, he was to marry in 1964 – along and supportive marriage that would last 58 year.

His horizon series were seascapes at once monumental and minimal. Other landscapes were of Boroboudur, the great Buddhist stupa in Central Java. He became interested in Balinese dancers and then in the dancers of Jogja and Surakarta. Although a devout Muslim (he undertook the Haj) the Bedaya court dances still performed in Jogja and Surakarta, that re-enacted pre-Islamic myth, were to him profoundly spiritual. Such a syncretism devoid of irony was typically Javanese.

12. Srihadi’s garden

His interest in Javanese culture and his commitment to being a Javanese meant writers often emphasised the Javaneseness of his work. He had Javanese sculptures and design objects scattered through his studio. In my book I sought to show how his work was global, equally rooted in the work of Mondrian, abstract expressionism, et al.

13. Javanese sculpture in Srihadi’s studio

From the mid-nineties he became pre-occupied with Bedoya paintings. What size, what main colour, how many dancers (it had to be 2 or an odd number 1,3,5,7,9) he would ask those who wanted one. But this was no hack work. These were just the parameters within which he worked. It is typical of late style: the same subject returned to again and again, but here, always anew. Once the work began he was as intuitive as de Kooning, or Mondrian. The motif (see images of works in progress) had to be discovered anew each time by vigorous, gestural drawing, then painting.) “They are all the same!” his critics said of these paintings. But people said the same of Morandi, an artist he liked very much. So many ended up as prestige objects behind the desks of Indonesian CEOs they were see, incorrectly, as corporate art. One day they will get the international recognition they deserve.

I remember once being at his studio when several people arrived, dealers, collectors. As always he was calm, polite to them, courteous. But after a while as the visitors discussed things amongst themselves, he slipped away, returned to his canvas and did what he always wanted to do: paint.

Srihadi in discussion