Peeling the Paint, Unearthing History

A few months after his solo exhibition, ICONtroversial, at Gallery Canna, Jakarta, June 2009, Dadang sent me an email with a picture attached, a photograph of the new painting he was working on. He included in the email the following brief note: “An event, no matter how ugly or terrible, will only end up becoming a piece of memory.” The painting whose photograph he sent me looked realistic, like photographs in the newspaper or magazines, depicting again the event in which a student—or a resident of Beijing?—tried to block a line of tanks of the People’s Army of China that were going to strike down the protesters on the Tiananmen Square. On the side of the canvas, the date of the event is clearly shown: July 5, 1989.

In another part of his note, Dadang explained that he felt compelled to re-portray a variety of significant historical events—especially those that records human’s tragic fate—after he read the chapter titled “Welcome to the Holocaust Theme Park” in the book Postmodernism for Beginners by Richard Appignanesi and Chris Garratt. Dadang gives his paintings a unique visual characteristic: he depicts the events in blurry images and presents the date, month, and year when each event took place.

As I observe his latest works, it becomes clear to me how Dadang Rukmana quickly learns and how he decided to put behind him the paintings presenting world figures, which he displayed in his previous solo exhibition. He took this new path with the awareness that brought him closer to a better and clearer understanding of the theme for his paintings, and at the same time he mulled over a range of visual and technical aspects that he could use in harmony with the content and the message of each of his paintings.

Before we discuss further about his painting techniques, perhaps it is a good idea to dissect briefly his painting contents and the messages that he wishes to convey this time.

Looking at his latest paintings, we quickly understand that Dadang Rukmana makes use of photographic images as his visual point of reference and at the same time also as the content or theme. The relationship between painting and photography, in the context of the contemporary art today, is no longer contested or debated. It has become evident that both are present, accepting and affecting each other. Photography has finally been welcomed as an art media and practice that is as legitimate and important as other art works in a variety of media.

In the context of painting, it has become increasingly easy for us to see how photography acts as the point of reference or even as the conceptual basis for the practice of contemporary painting. We can see how the technique of realist painting has been pushed to reach the peak of photorealism genre that has developed in painting. Painting has also reached the issue of history in relation to photographic images, after Gerhard Richter in highly unique and unnerving ways were able to present this issue in fifteen of his paintings depicting the objects, place, and figures of three members of the Baader-Meinhof group (in the painting series of October 18, 1977, made in 1988 and is now in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York).

Richter’s paintings were made based on the official photographs issued by the government of (West) Germany, as the government stated that the captured terrorists had died of suicide when in jail. The small and blurry pictures did not explain anything except for the death of those people. At the same time, however, it was precisely these photographs that had become the representative of a phase in the historical journey of a nation (Germany). Making them in greyish, gloomy, and monochromatic hues, and furthermore blurring the persons’ figures and faces, Richter seems to be questioning the legitimacy of our construction of knowledge regarding an event of history—a construction that rests merely on blurry and vague photographic images.

Photography and death seems to exist in conjunction, shaping our knowledge about a range of humans’ tragic experience in various corners of the world. At least, according to Susan Sontag, ever since the compact and lightweight cameras with celluloid films are used, wars and death immediately became a “real” part of our lives as long as they can reach the newspaper or be reached by the newspaper. The camera and TV programs bring them even closer into the domestic realms, making them a part of domestic lives, in the family room and even the bedroom.

When it comes to memory, however, it is precisely the still images of photography that most strongly shape our memories, and this is still true even today when we are inundated by a range of images from various media channels. In Sontag’s words: The photograph is like a quotation, or a maxim or proverb. Each of us mentally stocks hundreds of photographs, subject to instant recall.

Taking another approach, when observing the relationship between painting and photographic images—especially pertaining to what is present in the painting series of “Baader-Meinhof” by Richter—Tony Godfrey in his book Painting Today seems to expand and affirm what Susan Sontag stated. Godfrey said that Richter’s paintings—or paintings of such kind—present the three main themes of the contemporary painting: our attitude to death and mourning, our approach to history, and our relation to photography.

With the above brief description about the issues of photography and painting, we can now understand how Dadang Rukmana can arrive at the same problem as revealed by his note that I quoted in the beginning of this essay.

It will indeed be difficult to us to reject or avoid the opinion saying the path Dadang takes this time is one that Gerhard Richter has opened and gone through almost two decades ago in the painting series of October 18, 1977. However, we can also identify several essential differences.

First, Richter chooses the event and figures that are specifically connected with the history of Germany, or of West Europe, during the Cold War. The event had a personal meaning, too. Richter, who spent his childhood and much of his adulthood in East Germany before crossing the border to West Germany, is someone who has had enough, and is even fed up, with ideological conflicts. He is sensitive to issues that can easily manipulate people’s consciousness under the specter of the propaganda by the power that be.

In Dadang Rukmana’s case, we can guess that the personal motive is clearly of a different kind. We can use his note about the origin of his painting series as a hint of how Dadang perceives the historical problems of the world and human’s experience within it.

The chapter of “Welcome to the Holocaust Theme Park” in the book Postmodernism for Beginners by Richard Appignanesi and Chris Garrat that Dadang mentioned in his email to me actually contains a very brief account about the content and events at the Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington D.C. The museum, which was intended to serve as a place for people to “understand” and “learn from the mistakes of the past”, is today akin to a mere theme park, a place of entertainment. Visitors to the museum are taken to situations and simulation that are thoroughly hyper-real. At the end of the session, what is left to the visitor is merely the piece of entrance ticket and garbage. There is no place for critical understanding of what Holocaust was and how it took place—there are only sensations of wonder, or even fleeting “joy” of spectacle. The murders, tortures, and gas chambers have now become a part of the game of simulation. In the virtual and hyper-real situations, the Holocaust presented in the museum is no longer a ghastly event of history, but rather an enchanting spectacle.

With that background as his point of departure, we can understand how Dadang Rukmana precisely arrives at a situation in which he feels compelled to question our whole understanding about the tragic history of humanity. Why and how did it actually take place? How much do we know, and how truthful our knowledge has been? Do all images and information about the misfortune and the pain of others, in other parts of the world, can make us sympathize or empathize with others? Can these events ignite our feelings of social solidarity? Or will they all eventually end up becoming a part of the pile of statistic data and archives; disappearing slowly from our consciousness, remaining only as numbers and dates, forming a part of the data in our general knowledge about a range of events.

Perhaps that was why Dadang then wrote his message to me: “An event, no matter how ugly or terrible, will only end up becoming a piece of memory.” He does not elaborate further about the issue of “memory”, but it is clear from his works today that he was thinking of remnants of memories, vague and blurry. What remains are just the numbers and the dates. There is neither any meaning nor lesson to be learnt there. No deeply rooted critical awareness, either. Dadang seems to be saying: Look at these tragic and painful images. All of them are so blurry and vague. Any effort of viewing and recollection seems to be so difficult and futile.

At the end of the day, is it not understandable why we keep on experiencing such tragedies? Humanity, us, has been devastated by two World Wars, separated by illusions of ideology during the iciness of the Cold War period, assailed by a variety of maladies and pandemics, bathed by blood from many kinds of conflicts and disasters. And yet we fail to learn from History. Here and there, with reasons and ways ranging from the most logical to the most absurd, tragedies keep on occurring. Photographic images revealing many tragic experiences of humanity seem to be saying out loud: Just discard the utopia of world peace and the harmony of humanity. U-topia! A no-place; a place that would never be.

Another aspect that we can use to distinguish Dadang from many other artists who deal with photographic images and “world history” is the fact that with most artists of today photographic images stop at being a point of reference for the visualization style and details, while the issue of “world history” has been reduced to becoming faces or portraits of a few figures of history. Dadang has also adopted such approach in his previous solo exhibition. Today, however, he seems to have acquired a more profound insight about the issue of history. He does not only lay the emphasis on the figures, but also on the events. He asks us to try to understand particular issues that are related to certain experiences, within a clear context.

Many of the pictures that Dadang depicts in his works are pictures of famous figures. In general, however, those photographs are not as well-known as the figures themselves. More importantly, there have been a lot of important events of history with fatal impacts on many human beings that did not involve any famous figures. The meaning of the event does not wholly depend on the greatness of the figure; rather, the urgency of the event often lends weight to the persons. On Dadang’s canvases, we encounter the body of a dead Che Guevara being observed by a troop of Bolivian soldiers. We see the stiff face of John F. Kennedy, almost unrecognizable compared to a variety of his slick and handsome portraits that we generally know. We see the blazing trail of Challenger’s smoke and fire and not the astronauts. We see the portrait of Ryan White (1971 – 1991), but almost no one recognizes him as a famous figure, although his death in such a young age had shocked people and brought home the virulence of HIV/AIDS, an illness that could become even more malevolent due to the misperceptions and prejudices that people have about the patients.

Dadang chooses to select photographs that are not popular or familiar to us in order to give a distinct emphasis and attention to what we have so far understood as “important events in history.”

The third aspect simultaneously brings together and distinguishes the works by Dadang Rukmana with the works by Gerhard Richter in the series of October 18, 1877—this is if we still wish to compare the two, or to compare Dadang with other artists showing a similar visual approach: vague, obscure, and blurry images in black and white or monochromatic hues. In Dadang’s works, the blurry quality has indeed a lot to do with the artist’s desire to trick us using optical illusions. The vagueness forces us to realize how our ability to see and remember things is just as vague. Furthermore, Dadang presents the haziness by means of his painting technique that precisely goes in reverse direction in comparison with the general process of painting.

It is actually such technique—or, to be precise, the unique process of painting—that lends a special weight to his paintings as Dadang deliberately selects the photographic images presenting events of history, memories, and recollections as the main theme for his latest series of paintings.

To clarify the matter further, let us observe Sanento Yuliman’s essay about “lukisan” (painting) and “melukis” (to paint), which he wrote more than twenty-odd years ago. In the essay, titled “Tradisi Lukis di Indonesia: Lukis dalam Pengertian Sediakala” (The Painting Tradition in Indonesia: Lukis in Its Original Sense, 1983), Sanento Yuliman tried to trace back the meaning of lukis in its original usage (in Indonesia). Basing his analysis on the term of lukis in the language of Kawi (Ancient Javanese), as recorded in the ancient book of Tantu Panggelaran from around sixteenth century, the author concluded that in the past the terms lukis and melukis in the traditions of Java or other ethnic groups in the Archipelago had broader meaning in comparison to our contemporary understanding of the term “lukis”, which today becomes the equivalent for the word/term “to paint” or “painting” in English.

At first, all manifestations of ideas or imaginations into (beautiful) visual arrangements had been included in the understanding of the term “lukis”. This also applied for the materials, the techniques, and the processes: from applying the colors to carving using hand-held tools—they were all covered by the term lukis in the language of Kawi. Meanwhile, the English term of “paint” or “painting” actually refers to specific material and process: the paint, and the process of applying the paints to create certain visual images.

I touch upon the issue to move on to the explanation about the techniques, processes, and procedures that Dadang Rukmana has applied to create the paintings he displays today. These can be considered as an atypical or different process of painting. Indeed, Dadang still applies the paint on to his canvas. However, this process does not result in any images or drawings, but rather in a simple plane of color that pervades his canvas. He fills his canvas with the single color of pitch black or dark grey that is almost black. Afterwards, using a variety of tools, he starts to erase, scour, or scrape off the paints from the canvas surface.

It is that very process that he does with great care and precision in order to create a plane of canvas whose dark and light elements are meticulously separated and arranged. Even if he wants to create fine lines or bands, he will apply the same process. This is a technique that many artists also know. In general, however, they use the technique only to create certain effects or textures. With Dadang's works, however, all the images with their rich details and photographic quality are the results of the scouring and scrapping off the paints. In other words, with this process and procedure, Dadang is cancelling or deviating away from the general understanding about the process of painting, which refers to the application of paints to create certain images.

The technique, process, and procedure of painting become important and special as they are related with the content of the photographic images and the issues of memory and history that are contained in Dadang’s works today. We can thus imagine that from the beginning Dadang has already taken a clear stance: He believes that we have been ignorant and have forgotten about history. He then chooses to try to bring it back from behind the dark, flat color of the paint that has first covered the entire canvas plane. He scrapes off the paint from his canvas as if trying to unearth the remains of our memories from the depth of the tomb of History.

So, rather than making use of all events of history to present several issues, Dadang has actually made his allegation: We have never learned from history, after all. Meanwhile, the artist himself—while doubting his own efforts of merely picking up few photographic records from various forgotten events of history—can only bring history back as vague and blurry images. What remains clear is the date, the month, the year... Numbers, without meanings.

Susan Sontag, Regarding the Pain of Others, Penguin Books, 2003, p. 19.
Tony Godfrey, Painting Today, Phaidon, London, 2009, p.90.
Richard Appignanesi and Chris Garrat, Postmodernism for Beginners, Icon Books, 1995, p. 122
Asikin Hasan (ed.), Dua Seni Rupa, Sepilihan Tulisan Sanento Yuliman, Yayasan Kalam, Jakarta, 2001, pp. 7-9

Enin Supriyanto (Curator)