Indonesian New Art Movement

The Indonesian New Art Movement, also known as Gerakan Seni Rupa Baru (GSRB) was an art movement of young artists from Bandung and Yogyakarta against the institutional concept of Indonesian fine art (Indonesian: Seni Rupa) being limited to paintings and sculptures. The movement emerged in 1974, first organised in a protest against the judging of the Second Jakarta Painting Biennale which awarded prizes to decorative style of paintings and sculptures. The protesters published the Black December Statement (Desember Hitam) criticising the lack of social and political consciousness in Indonesian decorative art practices.
The "new art" championed installations, ready-mades, photographs, found-objects and photo-realist paintings, which translate to the experimentation of different mediums and mixed media in Indonesian contemporary art. In 1987, a manifesto was written by key figures of the New Art Movement titled "Fine Art of Emancipation, Emancipation of Fine Art."
The New Art Movement ended in 1989 and is considered the beginning of Indonesian contemporary art.
In 1974, a group of young artists emerged calling themselves the New Art Movement. The movement was first and foremost an academic rebellion towards fine arts universities in Bandung and Yogyakarta, rejecting the institution's definition of fine art that was limited to decorative art, paintings and sculptures.
The New Art Movement arose spontaneously in both Yogyakarta and Bandung, the two groups having little contact with each other. It was the art critic Sanento Yuliman, a teacher at Bandung Institute of Technology (Indonesian: Institut Teknologi Bandung or ITB), who noticed the anti-modernist tendency common between the two. He then joined them together under the name New Art Movement.
The movement first began in a protest against the judging of the Second Jakarta Painting Biennale of 1974, which awarded prizes to decorative styles of paintings. Protesters consisting of young artists from Bandung and Yogyakarta published the Black December Statement criticising the lack of social and political consciousness in decorative art, and declaring that it was indicative of the lack of creativity in Indonesian art.
Artists of the New Art Movement perceived decorative art as elitist and centralised on Western-derive aesthetics, which they claim were irrelevant to both Indonesia's traditional arts and to the issues of contemporary society. They wanted a more democratic and accessible art, in medium and in style.
By 1977, after the first Exhibition of the New Art Movement in Taman Ismail Marzuki, it was clear that the movement was against any narrow definition of art. They claimed that the existing rigid definition of fine art hindered the development of contemporary art and creativity in Indonesia. The movement emphasised the importance of redefining art and its purpose, supporting the basis for its name: "new art"
The movement's exhibitions in 1975-1980 and in 1987-1989 introduced artworks other than paintings and sculptures, championing installations, ready-mades, photographs, found-objects and photo-realist paintings.
On 2 May 1987, a manifesto was published by key figures of the New Art Movement titled "Fine Art of Emancipation, Emancipation of Fine Art."
The New Art Movement ended in 1989 and is considered the beginning of Indonesian contemporary art. Notable figures of the movement include Jim Supangkat, the art historian Sanento Yuliman, Dede Eri Supria, Dadang Christanto and FX Harsono.
On 31 December 1974, Muryotohartoyo, Juzwar, Harsono, B. Munni Ardhi, M. Sulebar, Ris Purwana, Daryono, Adiyati, D.A. Peransi, Baharuddin Marasutan, Ikranegara, Adri Darmadji, Hardi and Abdul Hadi WM, presented the Black December Statement.
The statement critiques Indonesia's lack of clear cultural strategy in art making, and that the producers of arts and culture are not in the smallest sense aware of the discourse regarding the most basic human problems in Indonesian culture.
The Black December statements are as follow:
Note: The Black December Statement is translated from Bahasa Indonesia to English in 2015 after the collaborative efforts of the Indonesian Visual Art Archive (IVAA) and Asia Art Archive.
Thirteen years after the Black December Statement was presented, the New Art Movement published a manifesto titled "Fine Art of Emancipation, Emancipation of Fine Art." The manifesto was presented in Jakarta on 2 May 1987.
The manifesto states three key proclamations:
The movement also made an explicit statement in relation to the third proclamation:
The manifesto was deemed successful in the way installation and conceptual art becomes immersive in modern Indonesian art compared to the few previous attempts which had no manifesto to back them up.
The "new art" primarily consists of installations, ready-mades, photographs, found-objects and photo-realist paintings.
The New Art Movement was anti-modernist. It rejected modern art's purity of expression, the individualism of the artist, and the tendency toward the decorative as the highest form of art. As the movement developed, the works of New Art artists began to take on the character of installations and collaborative practices.
In an arguably post-modern approach, the movement also aims to tear down the barrier between high art and low art. The interest of the New Art artists in low art was closely linked to the problems of poverty in the city and maintenance of traditional culture in rural regions.
The style and concept of New Art artists are characteristically different to contemporary Indonesian art in the present day, which consists of post-reformasi artists known most commonly as Generation 2000. Although the installation and mixed-media format of this newer generation of artists is heavily influenced by the New Art Movement, their concerns are significantly different.
New Art artists experience politics in a more strident environment before the end of the Suharto regime, which strongly inform their art practice. In such ways, artists like FX Harsono and Dadang Christanto comment on specific tragedies in Indonesian history most notably the Indonesian mass killings of 1965–1966. Many of the New Art artists emphasised social criticism in their works.
Contemporary readings and studies of the New Art Movement propose that memories are central to the works of these artists. Their works become a site of remembrance, recollections of the past, and reconciliation that reference the power struggle of the 'common people', the marginalised, and the severe consequences of socio-political tensions that occurred in that time.
The New Art Movement was often criticised by the conservative art establishment as a derivative to Pop Art, although leading New Art artist FX Harsono claims that the artists were more interested in Neo-Dada than Pop Art.
This conversation with the West, presented in a rather revolutionary manner by New Art artists, returns to the modernist debate about East-West confrontation in art of developing countries.
In the interest of 'national identity', the New Art Movement was criticised to have championed avant-garde mediums and concepts of Western art history instead of embracing the nation's traditional values that makes it characteristically "Indonesian." The movement tackled this issue by emphasising the importance of basic aesthetic thinking and a study of art history to replace the cultural identity debate.
Also critical to the progression of the New Art Movement is clarifying the positions of contemporary art and traditional art. Artists and critics responds to this struggle by claiming that "traditional art is not something of the past, but is still alive and evolves like contemporary art." In other words, New Art artists sought to merge the two art forms in their contemporary art practice.
In the latter part of the 1980s, the New Art Movement concluded that "art is a plural concept," embracing installations as its primary/hybrid format in ending the East-West confrontation debates and claiming the inter-relationship of contemporary and traditional art.
The issues and methods involved in the New Art movement play an important part in the great interest on cultural identity that emerged in Indonesia in the 1980s, and continue to inform the practice of contemporary art in the present day.
Below is a list of artists belonging to the Indonesian New Art movement.