Unshackling the ‘modern’ at National Gallery Singapore

Among the ongoing exhibits at Singapore’s National Gallery is “Between Declarations and Dreams: Art of Southeast Asia since the 19th Century.” It’s an overview of how Southeast Asian artists by the mid-1800s came to embrace modernism, absorbing western techniques, European styles and new technologies like photography—gradually loosening the bonds over art and its subjects.

Before that, artists in SEA countries had been in the grip of colonialism for over a century. While royal and elite portraits tended to amplify the supremacy of ruling classes, this vestige of imperial rule was actually on the way out. Suddenly artists—in the West, at least—were depicting the world around them in all of its variety. (The ongoing Impressionists exhibit “Into the Modern” at the National Gallery offers a good parallel, showing how art became more focused on ordinary life and nature by the mid-1800s.)

As our guide Sze explains, “Art no longer represented just an expression of power, or the pleasure of the elite, but served as a tool for social consciousness, and uplifting the people who looked at art”—outside of the mansions and estates.

A good example of how things were changing is Raden Saleh’s “Boschbrand (The Forest Fire)” at Gallery 2 of the exhibit in the Supreme Court Wing: the Javanese artist, by 1849, was not only depicting royal hunting expeditions but tigers threatened by flames—and the very idea of political metaphor now reared its head.

It became fashionable, even under colonial rule, for a certain class of Southeast Asian artists to receive academic training in Europe, and Gallery 2 displays a row of Filipino artworks from this period, with Severino Flavier Paolo’s realistic portraits, Hidalgo’s Jose Rizal staring back at the viewer, and even the Juan Luna vertical wooden panel “España y Filipinas (Spain and the Philippines)” hinting at the struggle for independence to come.

Interesting, too, that we explore these art developments in a building that used to be the seat of power, law and order in colonial Singapore: several of the artworks are hung in the wing of the old Supreme Court—now part of the National Gallery—where we’re reminded of the lofty judge’s bench and the relative lowly “dock” reserved for the defendant who, in cases of murder, would also be hung—by the neck—a practice that persists today in Singapore.

Our guide Sze led us through several floors that trace the growing discontent with colonialism up into the late 19th century. Art became a vibrant form of expression and political dissent, as we see by Gallery 3, with its art that still seemed to echo trends in the Western canon (nods to cubism and abstraction) even as it featured local subjects and struggles: the “modern” world from a Southeast Asian (if urban-centric) perspective.

Elsewhere in the National Gallery, you can contrast this journey into the “modern” with the exhibit “Fernando Zóbel: Order is Essential,” which traces how this Spanish-Filipino artist adopted techniques from North America, Asia and Europe from the 1940s onward, developing a very personal style of abstract expressionism relying on bold innovations—like the use of syringes to “inject” lines of paint on canvases for his iconic “Saeta” series. There’s a balance between purity and chaos, structure and spontaneity that led to Zóbel’s full fruition as an artist.

The National Gallery itself is currently undergoing a reexamination of its curation, expanding beyond the “capitals” of Southeast Asia to focus more on remote and archipelagic areas in order to decentralize the collection from its “old favorites” version of art history.

“The truth is the scholarship of modern art history even in this region is very biased towards large cities and capitals,” notes Sze. One way of addressing this is “to spread ourselves and look at ‘off’ centers—to look at what’s happening in Mindanao instead of just Manila, or instead of Java, looking at archipelagos there; or instead of Bangkok, looking at Chiangmai.”

Upstairs, Galleries 13 and 14 of “Between Declarations and Dreams” take us further into the modern, concluding with contemporary pieces that explore commentary through irony, subterfuge and subversive humor. Even as colonial regimes waned throughout Southeast Asia, there was still the nasty business of autocratic rule to take on—through art.

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“Between Declarations and Dreams: Art of Southeast Asia since the 19th Century” is ongoing at National Gallery Singapore.