Victor Chin

Syed Ahmad Jamal, Endau Rompin, 1985, Acrylics on canvas, 173×223cm

Nature has always been an inspiration for artists throughout the ages. Mountains, in particular, have inspired many regional landscape painters.

From China there has been a long history of artists who painted the many outstanding geological features of their physical geography. Some of these artworks besides depicting the shapes and designs of mountain formations in great detail also conveyed clear information of the various geological compositions of their landscapes.

One of the most well-known Japanese artists, Hokusai, from the Edo period, made colour wood block prints of a series of 36 views of Mount Fuji. The Great Wave of Kenagawa done in 1831 is one of Hukusai’s signature compositions of this collection of early postcards of Japan.

Cezanne paid homage to his boyhood home in Provence by painting the Mont Sainte-Victoire in Aix at least 60 times from 1885 to 1906. His devotion to a single hillock slightly over 1,000m in his backyard set the modern standard of painting and looking at European landscapes since the Renaissance.

He began to dismantle previous ideas of perspective and started to flatten out and break up his subject by using fragmented shapes, colours and brush marks. His paintings led the way for Matisse and Picasso and to Abstraction.

Syed Ahmad Jamal, Gunung Ledang Visited, 1992, Acrylics on canvas, 173×239cm

The mountains of Malaysia have attracted a few artists. Fung Yow Chork and Razak Abdullah are among the few landscape painters who got inspiration form the mountain backdrop of Kuala Lumpur, the Ulu Klang quartz ridge and Genting Highlands. Mount Kinabalu (4,101m), our highest mountain between the Himalayas and the Snow Mountains of New Guinea, has a devoted Sabahan painter — Benedict Chong.

Syed Ahmad Jamal, whose retrospective exhibition is currently at the National Art Gallery, has been moved by Gunung Ledang, near Muar, his home town, in Johor. Jamal has painted three artworks with that name. The first Gunung Ledang was in 1978 (this painting is not in the show), then Gunong Ledang Visited in 1992 and the last one Semangat Ledang in 1999.

Read more in The Malaysian Insider here…

Mohamad Najib ahmad Dewa, Director General of the National Art Gallery

APRIL 12 – For 20 years or more, if you were a Malaysian artist, not in the popular line-up, yet one of those lucky ones with your artwork in the National Art Gallery’s (NAG) collection, you’ll probably have a quibble with NAG because you can’t find any of your works on display in the premier art institution. Why?

There could be many reasons for this distressing situation. One was that there was simply no deliberate policy, in the past, to display a sample of ever artist, past and present, old and young, of the 3,800 artworks in their collection, for the public to get an overview and judge for themselves what sort of artistic talents we have in the country.

But thanks to the current Director General of NAG, Mohamad Najib Ahmad Dewa, many things have changed. The 54-year-old, who has a PhD in textiles, was the former Dean of the University Science Malaysia’s Centre for Art Studies. He took over the helm of NAG in 2007.

Najib’s own artistic career has also seen many changes; starting as a batik artist at Central Market in Kuala Lumpur, he went on to university and later became an academic before moving on to the top job as custodian of Malaysian art.

NAG is now more inviting and informative about the general cultural wealth and health of the country. There are many more art activities by or endorsed by NAG in and outside the premises in Jalan Temerloh.

Read more…

Ibrahim Hussein, My father and the astronaut, acrylic painting, 1970.

FEB 19 — Ibrahim Hussein, who died early this morning, was the artist almost every working Malaysian artist, especially the Malays, looked up to in terms of local and international artistic achievement and financial success.

The price of his works, before his untimely death, is easily above RM500,000 and this is also why his works are well sought after as an art investment.

In my opinion, he was undoubtedly seated at the head of the artistic table before his death. In the second place, the position was open and it was a choice between Latiff Mohidin and Syed Ahmad Jamal. Now that the first place is vacant, who will take the spot is a matter of interest and for another article.

Why was he at the top?

Well, he started his artistic career in the ‘60s together with Anthony Lau, Jolly Koh, Cheong Laitong, Latiff Mohidin and Syed Ahmad Jamal, the six major creative personalities at that time. They had all just returned from their art training abroad and the National Art Gallery and art community welcomed them with open arms.

The emergence of this young — and at that time new — talents somewhat overshadowed the pioneer painters like Yong Mun Sen, Hoessein Enas, Chuah Thean Teng, Tay Hooi Keat and a few more artists.

But it was these older artists that first started Ibrahim or Ib’s interest in art.

Read more…

Victor Chin, Pulau Perhentian No 38, 2004, Acrylic on canvas, 81×67cm

Victor Chin, Pulau Perhentian, No8, 2003, Acrylic on canvas, 81×67cm

Letter to the Editor, StarMag.

In Andrew Sia’s splendid review, ‘Whither Malaysian art?’, StarMag, Sunday 23 November, 2008, presented us with a wide selection of opinions about the state of art and the art market. However there is the under side of the story which might add to your readers understanding on this issue.

What we would like to know as in the case of artist Jailani’s painting ‘Tribute to Latiff Mohiddin’, (which sold for about RM200,000) is, who put up his painting for sale at the Christie’s auction? What if this sale was an inside job by a profiteering cartel, where one party puts it up for auction and members of that group buy it up, just to push up the price and hence the profit margin, if they happen to have a monopoly of the artist’s works?

It is also vital to know which gallery and the people involved in dealing with the works of Jailani, Yee I-Lann, Nadiah Bamadhaj, Zakii Anwar and Cheng Fee Ming? Why it is that it is always the same few artists’ works from the same few merchants that are popping up at these sales? Why is the other artists’ works, just as good as any, not in the picture when it comes to promoting Malaysian art here and elsewhere?

The auction houses will not reveal the details of the sellers and buyers, but they will profit from both the sellers and the buyers, and this is the standard business practice everywhere. The secrecy and nontransparent methods such as it is, is in part, what that has lead to the present world wide financial crush, we are experiencing now.

What sort of artists will emerge from this present system dominated by finance, unfettered by any government or professional regulations?

How will the creative minds operate in an increasingly close market in the hands of a few self appointed profit minded ‘gate keepers’ of Malaysian art?

What if there are moves to improve the art production and the market place, with less self interest but more transparency, and with fair incentives to all parties involved with the aim of serving not just Malaysian art but all Malaysians?

Our exhibition was reviewed in The New Sunday Times.

Lucien de Guise wrote about, our current exhibition, at the KLPac, in the New Sunday Times, November 16, 2008. In that review he put our works along side another on going exhibition of Australian contemporary aboriginal paintings, in town. This insightful positioning of different artists’ works, in a comparative manner, enriches the readers’ and viewers’ perspective of art. This hopefully may lead to a better understanding of the what some artists may be trying to do in their artworks.

It didn’t occur to me before that my recent abstract paintings has an uncunning similarity to some of the Australian artists’ abstract visual constructions. The indigenous artists are naturally gifted in many ways and they have been making paintings with dots and lines in Australia for millions of years. The Australian motifs and designs is also different from those, from in other earlier cave artists’ works, found in other parts of the ancient world. They are truly our artistic fore fathers.

There are many theories as to what these different marks and shapes may mean, but the real meaning, in my view, is hard to get at, unless it is from the artists. What we are left with, in front of one of these artworks, is just our own terms of reference based on our memory and comprehension of things around us. In the end it may be just about intuiting the quality, intensity and inventiveness of lines, shapes and colours of the artist.

In the past few days, while manning the exhibition, we have come across, from the visitors, so many different ways of seeing our artworks and some of their views are a surprise to us. Intrepreting what we see is such fun and abstracting our physical and metaphysical world remains the preoccuping task of many of us and it will be so for many years to come. Enjoy the abstractions.