Word: artful
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...Hendra Gunawan, and in the early 1950s the admiring Hendra (who is better known simply by his first name) joined Sudjojono in the cultural arm of the PKI, the Institute of People's Culture, referred to by its Indonesian acronym LEKRA. Sudjojono was to become its leader. "In Asia, art was integrated into nationalist movements," says Kwok. "Sudjojono was in the forefront of this...
...riveting retrospective of Sudjojono's work at the Museum of the National University of Singapore Centre for the Arts until Aug. 24, entitled "Strategies Towards the Real: S. Sudjojono and Contemporary Indonesian Art," now tries to shed light on his political context and artistic legacy. But it also goes a step further by hanging 16 of his rarely seen works alongside those of contemporary Indonesian artists - among them current auction-market favorites I. Nyoman Masriadi, Agus Suwage and Rudi Mantofani - in a bid to convey the influence Sudjojono has had on generations after him. "Sudjojono is regarded as the theorist...
...Sudjojono's figure and stands pickled in stiff solitude. "We are living in a different age from Sudjojono," says Suwage of his bleaker version. "We are fed up with politics." Nostalgic for the social engagement of artists like Sudjojono, he adds, "In the '90s there was a booming art market, but we artists are not necessarily happy. [Sudjojono] was closer to reality...
...tried to prevent him from divorcing his first wife," says Rose today. But Sudjojono refused to comply, and in 1958 quit the PKI and his parliamentary post. He married Rose the following year. It was a painful decision, as his parliamentary salary disappeared, along with government patronage for his art. "We didn't have a lot of money," recalls Maya, who says most of the family's income came from her mother's piano lessons and singing (Rose was a mezzo-soprano who frequently performed on national radio...
...under Suharto, however, that Sudjojono began to blossom as an artist. Unencumbered by the constraints of socialist realism, he began to experiment with Pop Art and Expressionistic techniques. In a time of dictatorship, it was perhaps just as well. "The Suharto era made it impossible for political thought to be rendered in art," says Ahmad Mashadi, head of the Museum of the National University of Singapore Centre for the Arts. In fact, by quitting LEKRA early, Sudjojono escaped the punishment that Suharto was to mete out to leftist artists, and became the most prominent figure of what Kwok calls...