Modern Indonesian Masters Exhibition at The Museum Rudana

The role of a Museum of Art is to inform and educate! This is a common enough objective and one that could be expected of any museum. But Nyoman Rudana, the owner of the eponymous Museum Rudana, has purposely given this objective a supplementary function: his museum aims to be at the service of the image of the nation. And what service. Beautiful paintings by many of the country's masters.

Nyoman Rudana wishes to create an image of Indonesia, and Bali, that goes beyond tradition. He wants to affirm that they are contenders on the scene of both cutting edge modern and post-modern.

Since the creation of the Museum Rudana, the aim has been to present Indonesian artists and their contribution to international modernism – with the inclusion of an Indonesian ethnic symbolism within a modernist form.

Eight artists are exhibiting at the present show, among them, the greatest names of Indonesian and Balinese modern art. These eight selected artists represent the two modernist traditions of Hindu Bali and Islamized Java as well as the two schools of Bandung and Yogyakarta. In Bandung modernism was taught in the institutions while in Yogya, it infiltrated through the consiousness thus leading, in the latter case, to a larger share being given over to the ethnic component.

All the Balinese artists included in the show were educated in Yogya, thus adding a supplementary layer to their adoption of the modernist principles of art. As the exhibition hopes to make clear, it is by its modern symbolic expression, derived from the traditional local cultures, that Indonesian modern art makes a significant contribution to international art.

The eight selected artists, two from Bandung, Srihadi Soedarsono and Sunaryo, while the rest consist of Yogya - educated Balinese artists, Nyoman Gunarsa and Made Wianta, as well as the younger Nyoman Erawan, Made Djirna, Made Budhiana and Wayan Darmika, all of whom, with the exception of Darmika, are already well-established names in the Indonesian art world. The only newcomer is Darmika, whose star has risen only in recent years.

Of the eight participating artists the name of Srihadi Soedarsono comes first. At 76 he is already an important name in Indonesian art history and he spans much of this history beginning his career in the late forties as an illustrator of the national liberation struggle.

The eight painters above, who are amongst Indonesia's most famous, illustrate the encounter of modernity and tradition. Yet, all are aloof from reality. Their world is that of symbols, dreams or ethereality. The real world is absent. There lies for artists, and for the museum, the challenge of the future.
Excerpt from Jean Couteau