'Duh' people on the arts
COMMENT | Real art has the capacity to make us nervous: Susan Sontag.
If that’s the measure of real art, there is real art and nervous administrators in the National Art Gallery (NAG).
The removal of four of Ahmad Fuad Osman’s works is another illustration why the government, besides helping with funding and infrastructure, should stay away from the arts because I would be surprised if the National Institute of Public Administration (Intan) had a course on the history and critical appreciation of the arts.
Reminds me of a video that has been doing the app rounds for years – a chimp with a spanner monkeying with a car engine for long minutes, trying to get something to work.
Ludicrous beginning – attempting to remove works that had been on exhibit since October 28, 2019. What about the many in the past few months who visited NAG to have their sensibilities refined; instead having their morals outraged and corrupted, their minds blighted, their eyes assaulted by images of PKR president Anwar Ibrahim, a naked man and pigs?
Pigs, okay, I understand, Lucifer’s hell-beast for all Muslims, but Anwar? He has detractors even within his own party, but surely his mug is not that offensive.
As for the image of a naked man on a...
COMMENT | Real art has the capacity to make us nervous: Susan Sontag.
If that’s the measure of real art, there is real art and nervous administrators in the National Art Gallery (NAG).
The removal of four of Ahmad Fuad Osman’s works is another illustration why the government, besides helping with funding and infrastructure, should stay away from the arts because I would be surprised if the National Institute of Public Administration (Intan) had a course on the history and critical appreciation of the arts.
Reminds me of a video that has been doing the app rounds for years – a chimp with a spanner monkeying with a car engine for long minutes, trying to get something to work.
Ludicrous beginning – attempting to remove works that had been on exhibit since October 28, 2019. What about the many in the past few months who visited NAG to have their sensibilities refined; instead having their morals outraged and corrupted, their minds blighted, their eyes assaulted by images of PKR president Anwar Ibrahim, a naked man and pigs?
Pigs, okay, I understand, Lucifer’s hell-beast for all Muslims, but Anwar? He has detractors even within his own party, but surely his mug is not that offensive.
As for the image of a naked man on a snowy mountain – pornography? Pornography is sleaze, bodies in moaning motion in video, body parts in publications. Pornography is naïf drawings of genitals on the walls of public toilets. This is NAG and a retrospective on a notable Malaysian artist in mid-career.
Simple solution: do what the theatres and films have been doing in this prickly, easily upset era; have a notice at the entrance - The National Art Gallery has artworks with nudes and pigs that may be offensive to sensitive souls. Grandparental guidance advised.
To compound the fun, NAG goes into the typical civil-service shuffle when shit hits the fan – retreat, slowly, but make it look as if progress forward is being made.
First line of defence: dig in the heels. Talk about usual practice in making changes during the course of an exhibition to achieve appropriate results. What a vacuous term, bureaucratic gobbledegook – appropriate result.
"Certain artworks need a lot of guidance, explanation and understanding of art in order to be appreciated and not misinterpreted." Whoa! Talking down to us plebeians. I must go and get a copy of Art for Dummies.
Second line of defence: we will have a meeting. Damn, a deputy minister has gotten into the act. Can’t dilly-dally on the meeting. Okay, we will reinstate three works, but the naked man, that’s still a no-no.
This defence is breached when Ahmad Fuad notes the presence of a couple of other nudes in the exhibition that avoided censure.
Compound this with Richard Koh, a member of NAG’s board resigning in protest, and dozens of collectors saying they will never lend their works to NAG, and you have total capitulation.
Turning a mole-hill into a mountain, an error of judgment becoming a tendentious issue of art and censorship.
This episode reminds me of 49 years ago, my debut as a theatre director won Best Play, Best Director, Best Actor at the Third Malaysian Drama festival. A few months later performances of the play, Christopher Hampton’s “When Did You Last See My Mother?” at the University of Singapore was banned by the government on the grounds of homosexuality, mocking religion, language from the gutter, and portraying an adulterous relationship without any overt expression of disapproval.
My penalty was harassment at immigration for a decade whenever I crossed over.
To balance it out, my group was the first Malaysian group invited to perform at the Singapore Arts Festival with my first script “Caught in the Middle”. We rocked the Singapore houses, but that would not have happened if Special Branch had had its way with our performances in Kuala Lumpur.
I have written about it here, why they wanted to ban the play for foul language, and why I called the Special Branch officer a bloody fool.
I am spared paranoia because I am not an exception. Every artist has tales of woe when creative freedom crash against obdurate bureaucratic mental limits.
A tape of Ramli Ibrahim’s (above) dance performance of “Jebat” has been gathering mould in Angkasapuri for decades. Who knows what afterthought led to its shelving?
I was the casting director for L Krishnan, hailed for his time with P Ramlee, shooting the first English drama for RTM.
It didn’t see the light for over two years (for legal reasons I cannot go into). The ostensible objection: the opening scene was of the lead couple visiting a parent’s grave, arty puffs of smoke shrouding the scene. In the foreground a gravestone in the shape of a cross, the camera shooting from ground level, the couple looming in the background as they neared. Cross? Haram! Cannot.
What can one do in the face of "duh" people? No point ranting and fuming. It’s par for the course for dealing with civil servants, particularly those “guiding” the arts. Just laugh at their idiocies.
My dear departed friend Yasmin Ahmad is now revered as an icon of Malaysian film, but the authorities didn’t view her as such in her early days in film.
She was hauled off a plane by Special Branch because she had done a Petronas ad on the May 13 riot. Only after viewing by Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad, who said it promoted racial harmony, was she released.
Yasmin (above) rang me, fuming about the “objectionable” scenes that the National Film Development Corporation Malaysia (Finas) saw in her first two films, Rabun and Sepet. But we always ended up laughing (Yasmin had a roar of a laugh) at the idiocies of "duh" people.
My favourite scene in Rabun was a tender moment when the old man, taking his bath, asked his wife to scrub his back. Aww! Cannot! Why cannot? The actress touching the actor’s back. They are not married. What?
In Sepet, actors Harith Iskandar and Ida Nerina, in bed, head and shoulders shot, looking up at the camera, discussing their daughter’s relationship with a Chinese. Cannot! Why? Ref: Rabun above.
Actors Adiba Noor, Ida and Sharifah Amani, sitting on the steps of the house, drying straightening knots in the hair after a bath. Cannot! Why? Insult to Malay women. Huh? They are looking for kutu (head lice).
Picasso said art is a lie that reveals the truth, and the truth here is there are people who look at life and see the threat of kutu and pigs and naked men, and there are people who see art/life in life/art.
THOR KAH HOONG is a veteran journalist.
The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of Malaysiakini.
