The art of interpretation
Soo Pieng’s Visions of Southeast Asia was published in conjunction with the exhibition ‘Cheong Soo Pieng: Bridging Worlds’ at The National Art Gallery of Singapore (15 September-26 December 2010). As may be expected of a retrospect of the work of a visual artist, the volume contains a rich repertory of plates and illustrations, an overview of the artist’s biography (Xiamen 1917 - Singapore 1983), and, under the title ‘Bridging Worlds’, art-historian and art-critical reflections on Soo Pieng’s impressive body of work.
In the 130-page section ‘Plates’, these reflections are still rounded off with substantive notes on the artist’s preoccupation with Southeast Asian subject matter, his use of colour and composition, and his bridging forms and traditions. With a few fellow artists of Chinese extraction, Soo Pieng originated what has become known as the Nanyang School, in which the term Nanyang refers to the southern seas or the South China region, of which Singapore and Malaysia are a part. School or Movement stands for the synthesis of Chinese ink-painting traditions, and of styles that centred on Paris, such as Cubism, Fauvism, and Surrealism.
The artists concerned, mostly émigrés from China, were overwhelmed by the light, nature, and styles of life along the equator, which inspired a direct way of working, rendering their subjects in their own right or, as Soo Pieng observed, “This is how things are”. Soo Pieng’s work clearly demonstrates his affiliation with the commonplace that he depicted in a personal way of perceiving and doing things. This is obvious in the prominence of everyday life scenes in his work. Whether it concerns a fishermen’s settlement along the coast, a rubbish dump somewhere in Singapore, scenes from Malay life, stark portraits, common utensils, and what have you, they are reproduced in a direct manner through the mediation of the inner life of the artist. Together with his fellow Nanyang Style artists, Soo Pieng emphasised that their work should “reflect the reality of the South Seas” and “the localness of the place we live in”, in contrast with the well-known imagined Chinese landscapes of the distant homeland. In their drive to depict ‘localness’ and ‘everyday reality’, the adherents of the Nanyang Movement became ethnographers, so to say, participant observers of the Other, which entails the risk of over-interpretation and distorted representations.
To watch against this tendency, such artists as well as any experienced field-working anthropologist should submit to conscientious self-reflexivity. All the same, and within the means of their craft, visual artists or cultural analysts’ interpretations remain hostage to their personalities and experiences; it remains ‘reality as they see it’. Because of his unusual versatility and permanent self-renewal, the vision of Soo Pieng is consistently captivating. In the words of art-critic Sabapathy – often quoted throughout the volume – “Soo Pieng transformed norms, extended limits, created new ways of making art and pointed to directions that still remain to be explored.” For a simple anthropological observer as is the present reviewer, the best part of Visions is in the abundant illustrations and reproductions. Even though, during Soo Pieng’s stay in Europe (1961-63), he successfully exhibited in London and Munich, his oeuvre – despite it being world-class – regrettably remains virtually unknown to most of us. If you ever have the opportunity to see his work in person, make sure you grab it.
Niels Mulder has retired to the southern slope of the mystically potent Mt. Banáhaw, Philippines, where he stays in touch through .