The Dance of Colors on Canvas

One thing that makes choreography fascinating to contemplate for its own sake—apart from the merits of the specific performers who may be interpreting it—is the way choreographers employ time, space, and motion so that each dance becomes a little world all its own. — Jack Anderson, Choreography Observed, 1987.

As (Merce) Cunningham said, one keeps finding “more possibilities which were always there; it’s just that one’s own mind hasn’t seen them.”— Joyce Morgenroth, Speaking of Dance, 2004.

…A good artist is a human being who is able to develop all the potentials in his or her sensitivities. – Sardono W. Kusumo, Hanuman, Tarzan, Homo Erectus, 2004

In 2004, a collection of Sardono W. Kusumo’s essays was published in a book titled Hanuman, Tarzan, Homo Erectus (ku.bu.ku, Jakarta, 2004). After reading the book a few years ago, I was amazed by Sardono—or Mas Don to me—because from his essays I gleaned some important lessons: the immensity of his experience as a dancer and choreographer; his totality in living his life as an artist; and his intellectuality as an artist who is able to reflect upon his experience, journey, and creative process. I think it is precisely this last aspect that is rarely found along the journey of our modern and contemporary art in Indonesia. As far as I can remember and gather, it was only the late painter Nashar (1928 – 1994) who had eloquently and richly reflected upon his creative journey and written about it in a collection of “letters” published in a book titled Surat-Surat Malam (Night Letters, Jakarta: Budaya Jaya, 1976; republished in Nashar oleh Nashar [Nashar by Nashar], Yogyakarta: Bentang Budaya, 2002).

The similarity between these two figures—at least in their ability to dissect and describe in writing their creative processes and experiences—leads me to this assumption: only the artists who deal with their art in full totality, who make art run through their veins, and who breathe art in their lives, have the chance to attain such a reflective capability.

***

Sardono W. Kusumo was born in Solo in 1945. When he was only 8 years old, his father already prepared the path for him to work with his body. He was sent to learn from his father’s colleague, a master of silat—the traditional martial art—from the Palace of Surakarta, R. Ng. Kridosoekatgo. Three years later, when Sardono was 11, his silat teacher suggested that he learn dancing instead.

Following his teacher’s suggestion, Sardono went to learn to dance from the dance master of the Palace of Surakarta, R. Ng. Atmo Kesowo. From then on, Sardono started to discipline himself in the art of the alusan (refined) style of dancing, to portray the subtle movements of the true chivalry such as Arjuna, Abimanyu, and Rama. On his training and study to master the refined style of Javanese dancing, Sardono writes: “It was the movements of this refined style that I would later learn for years and years. The refined dance is a series of bodily movements with the objective of controlling our emotions. The series of movements gives the impression of a continuous and smooth flow, with neither ripples nor fitful motions, much less ruptures.” (Sardono W. Kusumo, 2004, p. 118.) In the subsequent part, he explains that the principle of detachment in the refined style of dancing might have to do with the Buddhist belief that is deeply rooted in the Javanese philosophy: the ability to contain one’s emotions, to meditate, up to the ability to merge with the one that has no form, the shapeless one.

Sardono’s thoroughness in living his art, I think, is rooted in his intensive training in Javanese dancing that he has received since his childhood. Not only had the training prepared his motoric skills in performing the right and correct dance movements, but, more importantly, it led him to see that dance, as an exercise of art, is a way to live one’s life. He explains it thus: “…dancing is process of education to become an ideal individual according to the Javanese philosophy. The ideal individual is the one who is able to control his or her emotions in the gestures and attitudes, in the body language” (2004, p. 119)

This explanation clearly refers to the demands for the totality of one’s immersion in the act or activity of art, to the way of life that sees art as equal with life.

Apparently, it is such a view that serves as Sardono’s basis and main motivations in living his life and his art vocation so far. Ever since the beginning of his career as a dancer, he has conducted a range of experiments and found many discoveries in his efforts to develop and nurture his ability as a dancer. Trained in the art of alusan, the refined style of dancing, he was taken by surprise when asked to perform as Hanuman, the sprightly monkey, in a dance performance. However, he then precisely used this surprise as a starting point to start recognizing and exploring a variety of possibilities in dance movements. He quickly made use of all sources available to him: the martial art, pictures in the Tarzan comic books, and a range of different genres in Javanese dancing. Then, as many of us have known and noted, Sardono keeps on developing his training methods; at the same time, his creative efforts have reached various corners of Indonesia as he studies and becomes familiar with a range of dances. Instead of merely mastering and comprehending the dances as technical issues of dance movements, Sardono goes further: he plunges into the problems of life in the society that he visits. He goes into the heart of the problem, becomes familiar with the traditions, history, and the various social and political issues that the community faces.

With such an in-depth knowledge of the dancing traditions, it is understandable how Sardono has come to be noted as the leading innovator in the dance and performing art in Indonesia. His study, training, and knowledge of the Sang Hyang dance in the Village of Teges, Ubud, Bali, gave rise to innovations in the Cak dance and the Balinese dance-drama (Cak Tarian Rina, Dongeng dari Dirah [The Tale from Dirah], 1971 – 1974); his intense efforts to understand the Dayak and Nias ethnic groups resulted in the choreography of a contemporary performance that presented elements of movements and dances from these remote communities, while at the same time conveying social messages about their existence (Meta Ekologi, Hutan Plastik [Plastic Forest]). He goes on to expand his realm of choreography to reach the discipline of singing, music, and art. He made friends with the Asmats people in Papua and got to know the richness of their dance and singing vocabularies in their way of life. He studied the history of the Java War, which led him to the knowledge of Raden Saleh, who painted the capture of the Javanese Prince Diponegoro, and Sardono then used all this knowledge to create Opera Diponegoro.

How does he go about it, going so far to so vast and varied realms?

One of the reasons, as I have stated before, clearly stems from his belief, established since the beginning of his career as a dancer: that art equals life. Or, in his own words, when he wrote about his views after he visited the island of Nias and learnt to dance with the children and the teenagers there: “…my belief that art is the earliest form of human expressions has become stronger. Also, art does not only provide a sense of functionality in the society, but also a sense of existence; it is something that serves as the foundation for the individuals and the society to grow further, to live their lives.” (2004, p. 109)

It is, again, a statement of the belief that equals art with life.

***

The house is at the back of a housing complex in South Kemang, in the south of Jakarta. It is quite a big house, but it looks old and rather unkempt. Even before entering the house, I could already see—from the wide open windows—so many canvases covered in colors, propped against the walls. As I stepped into the house, consisting of several rooms, I encountered even more paintings. Almost all the rooms are filled with canvases, covered in colors. Most of them are large—each with a height or width of more than 1.50 meters. Some are even larger. This is the studio where Sardono paints. It is in this big but dingy house that Sardono has been painting for the last seven to eight months.

The first time I heard that Mas Don had been painting was more than six months ago. I heard the news from Biantoro Santoso (Nadi Gallery), who conveyed the message that Mas Don asked me to come by to see some of the paintings he just created. Due to my hectic schedule with a range of art events, I could not immediately answer his invitation. Also, I did think that Mas Don was just whiling away, experimenting and preparing visual materials for his choreography or performance.

Finally, around three months ago, Vivi Yip confirmed the news that Mas Don was planning to exhibit his paintings. Vivi had agreed to organize the exhibition and I was asked to be the curator. Intrigued and curious, I relented and visited Sardono’s studio and home.

As I talked with him about his many paintings—which also filled the mezzanine at his house, and some of them lined up the ceiling as stitched-up canvases, ten meter long in total—I called to mind a range of issues that he had talked about in his essays about his life as a dancer and choreographer. Armed with such a recollection, I was able to observe and understand his paintings, which he created with such an admirable intensity: he had been working on them almost every day in the last six to seven months.

The totality and intensity of his energy and passion in painting are nothing new, and neither are they difficult to understand. For an artist with such rich experiences—and who has deliberately sent himself to a myriad “foreign” and different cultures and environments while maintaining a critical and creative outlook—I don’t think it would be hard for Mas Don to expend his energy and concentrate to work on something that his heart calls. But painting? Actually making paintings? With such colors and such abstract looks? How do we understand this?

Some ideas began to be revealed to me after I spent a few hours talking and discussing with Mas Don about his paintings.

Although in terms of their materials, forms and shapes, these works are obviously paintings, I would rather call them “choreography of colors”. I call them thus because it is clear to me that these paintings are the fruits of a dancer-cum-choreographer’s awareness and sensitivity.

In almost all of his paintings, Mas Don does not employ the tools or techniques that are commonly used by painters to draw lines, create forms, make planes of colors. The brush, for example, plays virtually no role in his paintings. Neither does he prop his canvas on an easel. Most of the times, he pours the paints on to the canvas and then reacts gesturally and motorically, responding to the potential movements of the colorful liquid(s) on the canvas and playing with them. Even if he indeed controls the viscosity of the paints, he does not do it for a certain visual effect, but rather to acquire the different possibilities of movements: the paint that drips, spreads, mixes, is spattered about, etc.

He attains it all with the movements of his body. After he pours the paints on to the canvas, Mas Don starts to dance with the canvas and the paints: he will hold one side of the canvas with one or two hands, tilt the canvas, bring it up, turn it, shift it, or he will stay still, waiting and watching the various movements of the dripping, spreading, and vibrating paints, blurring the boundaries between two or three colors.

Such characteristics of movements and performance become even more obvious as Mas Don explains to me about the things that he considers interesting in some of his paintings. In his words, Mas Don—whether he realizes it or not—often uses the vocabulary of movements when explaining what is happening on the canvas. He, for example, would describe it thus: “Here the color vibrates; there the lines seem to be running; the splashes of colors at the back seem to be floating; the textures and lines here overlap, waver, seethe.” At the same time, it is clear from his descriptions how he treats his canvas as a space. The understanding of the close relationship between movements and space is an integral part of the corporeal awareness of a dancer/choreographer.

The gestural and spatial quality in Mas Don’s paintings can be compared with the characteristics of Jackson Pollock’s paintings. Had Pollock still been alive, he would enjoy talking and discussing with Mas Don about paintings that record such gestural traces. Pollock became famous in the world of abstract-expressionism in the West due to the paintings that convey gestural expressions through the paints that dripped and were poured right on to the canvas on the floor. Mas Don, I suppose, has brought Pollock’s gestural approach even further, creating more varied possibilities. This is possible because Mas Don has clearly been trained as a dancer and has the experience, knowledge, and awareness of a choreographer. He has a more expansive range of free movements compared to Pollock, who in any case still moved in the realm of the visual art and painting. Sardono has once stated: “A dancer has the opportunity to interpret movements freely, and to convey his emotions expressively.” (2004, p. 121)

A dancer’s “freedom of interpretations” that he talks about has to do with dances and performances as acts of staging. A dancer/choreographer does not only work with his or her artistic sensitivity in terms of the body itself (the poses, gestures, movements), but also with the rhythm, music, time, sound, light, colors, and many others. In this case, Mas Don is certainly luckier, and more liberated, than painters who have been trapped within the issue of “making paintings”. Besides, Mas Don is clearly unburdened by a variety of technical restrictions or painting rules. Moreover, he is not weighed down by the tradition or history of painting.

If one wishes to compare further what Mas Don is doing with what has taken place in the West, one can say that what he does now is akin to what the renowned choreographer Merce Cunningham had done and experienced in New York since the forties. When Mark Rothko and Jackson Pollock was seeking and trying to define the art of abstract-expressionism, Cunningham was busily experimenting, working with artists from different disciplines. He managed to create his groundbreaking dance choreography, which broke a range of conventions and long-held ideas of the modern dance in the West, through the creative collaboration with John Cage (in music) and Robert Rauschenberg (in art).

So, if today Sardono has created his new choreography in the form of paintings, it is actually okay to accept it as something natural. It is even better to view this development as the chance to take on a number of experiments and innovations for our contemporary art—which has lately been dominated by paintings that most of the times choose the way of the realists, merely for the ease the style provides to convey stories. Such paintings are sometimes too obsessed with the desire to convey stories and messages. They wish to be narrative, but often become garrulous instead and end up saying nothing significant.

In the contemporary art history, it is actually common to make a foray into different media. We know that the contemporary artists are those who most often go across boundaries, trying to liberate themselves from the realm of the conventional media that they have so far been working on.

If a visual artist makes a work using sounds, we have the sound art, not music; if a visual artist uses corporeal movements as a way of expressions, or uses facial expressions accompanied with voices, sounds, or music, we have the performance art, not dance, and neither is it theatrical work; if the visual artist arranges and uses a range of shapes, materials, and objects in the space, we have the installation art, not interior or stage decoration; also, if the visual artist uses moving images and presents them on the monitor or projects them, then we have the video art, not film. And so on...

This time: a dancer-cum-choreographer presents the dance of colors on canvas.

***

Postscriptum:

The exhibition “Choreography of Colours” has taken place on November 12 – 17, 2009, at Vivi Yip Art Room 2, Jakarta. At the opening night, and sometime after the exhibition concluded, I received some inputs and criticism from a number of colleagues who went to see it. One of the most important inputs was this: Sardono is not a painter. Even if as a choreographer he wants to play with paintings, the resulting works do not need—or do not deserve—to be exhibited in an art gallery.

Apparently, the comments and criticism have missed the last few paragraphs of my introductory note to the exhibition. Or perhaps the text has not clearly affirmed the “legitimacy” of Sardono’s paintings. For this purpose, I cannot avoid discussing about the history and philosophy of modern art in relation to painting.

Modern painting has developed in such a way that it gave rise to a range of art traditions, intermingling with one another. If we refer to the painting development at the end of the sixties in the US, for example, we can obtain many examples of how painting was eventually “forsaken” because it was seen as having reached the end of its historical progression. At such end, painting today can also be entirely esoteric in nature: moving only within its own paths of history and philosophy, questioning itself. At the same time, however, painting as an artistic practice becomes a wide open field, which anyone can approach, with any gestures or attitudes. What Mas Don is doing, therefore, is merely taking advantage of this open possibility.

Painting that will only develop in the path of one distinct idea, style, or technical-ideological discipline has indeed “died”. This is not true, however, for painting that grows by continuing to develop the various traditions with all the pertaining possibilities. Affirming the relevance of painting today, an art expert states: “…there is a necessity to make and see painting that extends from the past to the future, that there is as much necessity in Polke as in Dürer, Beatriz Milhazes as Matisse, Vija Celmins as Fra Angelico. What we need to examine here is not the dying embers of one painting tradition but the continuities and changes in a variety of traditions—traditions that increasingly interweave.” (Tony Godfrey, Painting Today, 2009:17)

Meanwhile, to Mas Don, the issue of exploring the realms of different art practices might very well be only a matter of exercise and experiment in order to innovate—if that is at all possible. He has written about this: “Indeed, often the artist-innovator must seek a borrowed land to plant the seeds of renewal. Basically, a form of art that is not merely a form of entertainment (needs to) liberates itself from stereotypical ideas and expressions.” (Sardono, 2004, p. 9)

Unfortunately, the criticism directed to Mas Don—which I mentioned in the beginning of this postscriptum—has not been liberated from the stereotypical ideas about painting.

*This essay has been published in the catalogue for the exhibition “Choreography of Colours” at Vivi Yip Art Room 2, Jakarta, November 2009. It is re-published here after a few editorial changes and revisions. ** Postscriptum is the new appendix to the text, written especially for the exhibition at Nadi Gallery today.

Sardono’s Dance of Colors*