Art Criticism in Malaysia - The Problem of Writing Malaysian Art
by Eddin Khoo

The roots of the condition have already been outlined, in illuminating ways, by Krishen Jit. Writing in his Introduction for Vision and Idea - Relooking Modern Malaysian Art, he elaborates;
"We know that very little of the writing on modern Malaysian art creates narratives on the meanings of art, its operations and social presence. On the contrary, the most epiphanous of the anecdotal writings on art have a propensity to evoke the mythic, in the sense that they tend to create and deify heroes and heroic moments in art. The mythic quest for a national identity following Independence inspired art critics to ferret individuals and individual achievements in art empathetic with the purpose of creating a new nation. Furthermore, the overriding consciousness of traversing in a relentlessly "developmental" phase in modern art since Independence has induced the birth of heroes poised to act as role-models for future generation of artists."
It must be conceded that, in more recent times, it is a long groan that greets the staging of most individual and collective exhibitions; which makes the serious lack of space for critical evaluation all the more lamentable. If a broad review of critical and historical Malaysian writings were conducted, the inevitable discovery would be a gathering of shards, fragments of writings confined principally to catalogues, articles and reviews and expressed in a vocabulary largely anecdotal and rooted in recollection.
And even within these, there is really little attempt at locating the making, production and staging of Malaysian art works in a critical and historical perspective.
If, as Jit, had observed, art writing in Malaysia demonstrated a "propensity to evoke the mythic," it appears, in more recent times, to have shed even this didactic purpose.
A host of reasons may be advanced for this.
The growing and global reality of art as a commodity, the gradual albeit deliberate abrogation of the importance of cultural activity in Malaysia's public life, the expanding institutionalization and bureaucratization of the experience of culture in Malaysia.
Still, whatever the challenges confronting art and art making in this country, there nevertheless exists an apparent inability (or reluctance) among contemporary art writers to grapple with more expansive complexities - social, political, economic - affecting the practice of contemporary art in Malaysia.
Art writing/criticism proved a belated spawn of art activity in Malaysia. Up till the advent of the formidable Redza Piyadasa-T.K Sabapathy alliance, there were but few attempts at carving a language and attitude conducive to expressing art writing in Malaysia. The writings by Piyadasa-Sabapathy, collected in the seminal "Modern Artists of Malaysia" and later in Vision and Idea, were formative attempts at initiating a tradition of art scholarship that would help inspire a method and perspective for the study and perception of Malaysian art
Yet, several decades on, the work resulting from this partnership remains the only credible effort at creating a sustained meditation on the meaning of art movements in Malaysia while sowing the seeds for the beginnings of a systematic art history tradition for this country.
All writing is essentially an effort at deconstructing authority. The act and art of writing is rooted in a spirit of rebelliousness. In this, it must exist and function in a condition of tension ~ challenging and subverting even as it postures and anticipates being challenged and subverted ~ even if that tension is individually willed.
But the specter haunting art writing in Malaysia today is the very stark absence of any such tension.
Let us then survey the spaces and locations in which art writing operates. Such educational institutions as universities and private colleges, ensnared in institutional agendas and bureaucratic edicts, offer little in the way of autonomous avenues for the contemplation of art criticism and history.
Newspapers and other media, meanwhile, are less willing to provide space and permit the language necessary to conduct a serious discourse on art activity. Catalogues and pamphlets, on the other hand, do little more than advocate the 'worthiness' of the exhibiting artist.
Then, there is the lack of any real self-regulating publishing culture to facilitate independent thinking and writing on art.
It is also becoming increasingly evident that the schemes and structures that once characterized the Malaysian art tradition, namely the art 'movement,' is no longer dominant and writers find themselves existing in an obvious intellectual vacuum. While the passing of the age of the 'grand' art movement is neither tragic nor unwelcome, it has nevertheless created difficulties of perspective and historical location which art writes have yet to address.
The 'crisis' affecting art writing, criticism and history in Malaysia is still part of a broader and perennial malaise that has affected intellectual and artistic activity…the stuff of cultural life…in Malaysia from the very beginning. The oscillation between autonomy and patronage, a result of the purposeful attempts by the state at constructing cultural, has fettered the artist and writer in profound, metaphysical ways. The systems and institutions created around this process, meanwhile, has succeeded in circumscribing critical and independent thinking while containing and neutralizing "alternative" activity.
T.K Sabapathy, in his Afterthoughts in Vision and Idea, employs the Anak Alam movement of the 1970's to illustrate the point;
"The Anak Alam artists strenuously resisted any calls or decrees from official quarters; jealously guarding their options and life styles, they turned towards cultivating intensely subjective reflections on nature, both natural and human, digging deep into and exposing the fragile, threatened conditions of man and the ecology. Even as Anak Alam artists maintained unaffiliated positions, they nevertheless were patronized by the establishment and, what is more, they accepted such support…Even as they ostensibly distance themselves from the establishment, and produce socially engaging, provocative works and are critical of the establishment, even as they situate themselves at the periphery, they also crave for recognition by the center."
A decade on, and representing a succeeding generation of artists, Wong Hoy Cheong, professed similar observations. In an interview with Krishen Jit, he said:
"…the majority of young artists would find no awkward contradictions between rebellion and a need for the support of the dominant art institution. But I see this as a development of a parasitic culture. It is a contradiction that needs to be discussed and confronted although, at this point, I don't know whether this tension can or needs to be resolved. You are critical of the power structures and yet you are dependent on these very powers to legitimate and evaluate the worthiness of your work."
Art writers must perceive themselves as suffering from the same dilemmas. What should distinguish them, however, is the privilege of critical distance afforded by the observer. But such distance only remains a privilege if it is acknowledged and, more importantly, cultivated.
But perhaps this is all making too much of an irredeemable abyss. It must be acknowledged that the contemporary art writer suffers from a serious lack of intellectual rooted-ness. Neither participant in the 'grand movements' of the past, the writer is also a spawn of a decades-long process of systemizing and institutionalizing intellectual life.
The corollary of such a predicament is the need for a process of 'breaking free.' And, idealized act as it may seem, it is also imperative and crucial. For the principal function of the contemporary writer of art (or any other aspect of Malaysian intellectual and cultural life) is to initiate the labor of deconstructing and reassembling.
At a recent forum on "Context and Creativity," organized by the Instant Café Theatre Company, a graduate student of the arts in Malaysia lamented the lack of "alternative narratives" and struck at the heart of the contradictions besetting the contemporary Malaysian writer of art; for these "alternative narratives" though obscured, continue to exist and demand now the act of assemblage and evaluation.
Archives > Art Corridor Issue 11 > Art Criticism in Malaysia

Art Criticism in Malaysia - The Problem of Writing Malaysian Art
~ by Eddin Khoo


zulkifli mohd. dahalan, shops, acrylic on canvas, 157.5cm x 266cm, 1973

For far too long, the Malaysian art writer has decried the lack of 'free space,' faulted the 'system' without cultivating the skills and learning for perceiving them; then commencing the act of negotiating and grappling with them.

But for such a process to occur, first there must be the concurrent experience of seeking…

Where then to locate contemporary Malaysian art writing. Certainly not in a scheme or tradition. More likely in a veritable no-place.

Tough and forthright, Krishen Jit advances,

"These sketchy writings reflect the sad fact that critical energies in modern Malaysian art from the 1980's up to the present are in a state of erosion. The questions of why such dissipation has occurred, and how the process of deterioration might illuminate and affect the current developments in art, are so far unanswered."

Almost a decade since the staging of Vision and Idea, this state of erosion has noticeably deepened, the reasons for its dissipation still unanswered.


But perhaps it is not an answer that is required but the will and spirit of inquiry to explore the proportions of Malaysian artistic and cultural life that is required.

Images taken from the Vision and Idea- Relooking Modern Malaysian Art, National Art Gallery.