Glossary of Southeast Asian Art

Malayan art

“Malayan paintings are Malayan — in outlook, in expression and in spirit. In them you see a virility of expression, a mastery of colour and an insight into the spirit of the land which you can find in no others.
 “You see a canvas with its brilliant colours, its stark outlines and you say ‘Ah yes. This is…

Contemporary art

“Contemporary art has in fact reached a point when artists are prepared to adopted [sic] anything as a medium to work with. What is important is not the execution of an art work but the idea behind it. The speculation about the nature of things is sometimes more interesting than the rendering of…

Straw painting

“The work of villagers, these pictures may be seen hanging in kampong homes throughout Malaya, but their popularity is greater and the craft more widely practised in Sumatra and Java.
 “The craft is indigenous among Malays; no similar work is done by other peoples of the East. […] It has remained for…

Woodcut movement

“The dissemination of woodcuts through print media, such as magazines and newspapers, provide an alternative mode of exhibiting art other than the walls of an art gallery.
 “Due to the diversity of its subjects and genres, the woodcut movement is an art historically significant one in understanding…

Calligraphy

Internationalisation

“Artists from Singapore were being propelled into the ‘international’ art scene on two fronts. First, there was a growing recognition by art curators and historians that artists from Singapore and Southeast Asia were producing critically loaded works that fit into the for­mat of the art…

Malayanisation

“occurred as numerous Chinese immigrants renounced their ties with China to settle in Singapore and across Malaya. At the macro level, the search for national identity that emerged as part of Singapore’s and Malaya’s move towards inde­pendence also played a fundamental role in shaping the arts…

Picturesque

Realism