Contemporary Art Southeast

Modern Art of Southeast Asia: Introductions from A to Z features 60 concise and accessibly written accounts of the key ideas and currents underlying modern art in the region. These are accompanied by over 250 beautifully reproduced artworks from the collection of National Gallery Singapore, and other public and private collections in Southeast Asia and beyond. The book offers an informative first encounter with art as well as refreshing perspectives, and is a rewarding resource for students.

A constellation of thoughts by 25 established and emerging scholars who plot the indices of modernity and locate new coordinates within the shifting landscape of art. These newly commissioned essays are accompanied by close to 200 full-colour image plates.

This foundational anthology maps the emergence of a dynamic new global phenomenon: contemporary Asian art. In 2008, Asia stormed the citadel of the New York art world when two major museums presented retrospectives of Asian contemporary artists: Cai Guo-Qiang at the Guggenheim Museum and Takashi Murakami at the Brooklyn Museum. Meanwhile, in Hong Kong, a painting by Zeng Fanzhi sold for $9.5 million, setting a new world auction record for Chinese contemporary art. The Western art world is still coming to grips with the challenge: it is all about Asia now. This book is the first anthology of critical writings to map the shift in both the nature and the reception of Asian art over the past twenty years. Offering texts by leading figures in the field (mostly Asian), and including more than fifty illustrations in color and black and white, it covers developments in East Asia (including China, Korea, and Japan), South Asia (including India and Pakistan), and Southeast Asia (including Vietnam, Indonesia, and Thailand). Together, the twenty-three texts posit an historical and pan-Asian response to the question, "What is Asian contemporary art?" Considering such topics as Asian modernism ("productive mistranslation" of the European original), Asian cubism, and the curating, collecting, and criticism of Asian contemporary art, this book promises to be a foundational reference for many years to come.

Reworlding Art History highlights the significance of contemporary Southeast Asian art and artists, and their place in the globalized art world and the internationalizing field of 'contemporary art'. In the light of the region's modern art history, the book surveys this relatively under-examined area of contemporary art which first found broad international recognition in the 1990s.Traced here are significant exhibitions that featured contemporary Southeast Asian art and brought it to regional and international attention. Examined are seminal foundational art histories, and dominant methods and thematic frameworks for engaging with Southeast Asian art. Key artists, exhibitions, collections, scholarship, ideologies, and discourses shaping its developing history are discussed, as are major works by artists associated with Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Singapore.Far from being peripheral, Southeast Asian art has helped create the very conditions of international contemporary art, compelling us to examine the Euro-American biases of art history. The book stresses local creative contexts and cultural histories of the rich modern and contemporary art of the region and its diaspora, revealing its plurality and diversity. The concept 'Southeast Asia' is treated as a crucial entry-point for examining art and artists associated with this unique region and for extending debate on the local/global constitution of contemporary art.Of central importance is the aesthetic agency of contemporary Southeast Asian art - its invitation to sensory and affective response - and its capacity for dialogue and diverse significations across borders. Also considered is the effect of shifting art-historical frameworks on engagement with this stimulating art.Richly illustrated and incorporating cross-cultural and interdisciplinary methods, Reworlding Art History is a foundational reference work for those interested in Southeast Asia's contemporary art, in¬cluding scholars of art history, Asian studies, curatorship, museology, visual culture, and anthropology, as well as pro¬fessionals working in art and museum contexts.Michelle Antoinette is a researcher of modern and contemporary Asian art affiliated with the Australian National University. She recently concluded an Australian Research Council Discovery Grant project on contemporary Asian art and museum networks. Author of numerous art-historical studies, she is also co-editor of Contemporary Asian Art and Exhibitions: Connectivities and World-Making.

Indonesian art entered the global contemporary art world of independent curators, art fairs, and biennales in the 1990s. By the mid-2000s, Indonesian works were well-established on the Asian secondary art market, achieving record-breaking prices at auction houses in Singapore and Hong Kong. This comprehensive overview introduces Indonesian contemporary art in a fresh and stimulating manner, demonstrating how contemporary art breaks from colonial and post-colonial power structures, and grapples with issues of identity and nation-building in Indonesia. Across different media, in performance and installation, it amalgamates ethnic, cultural, and religious references in its visuals, and confidently brings together the traditional (batik, woodcut, dance, Javanese shadow puppet theater) with the contemporary (comics and manga, graffiti, advertising, pop culture). Spielmann's Contemporary Indonesian Art surveys the key artists, curators, institutions, and collectors in the local art scene and looks at the significance of Indonesian art in the Asian context. Through this book, originally published in German, Spielmann stakes a claim for the global relevance of Indonesian art.

British artists and commentators in the late 18th and early 19th century encoded the twin aspirations of progress and power in images and descriptions of Southeast Asia’s ruined Hindu and Buddhist candi, pagodas, wats and monuments. To the British eye, images of the remains of past civilisations allowed, indeed stimulated, philosophical meditations on the rise and decline of entire empires. Ruins were witnesses to the fall, humbling and disturbingly prophetic prompts to speculation on imperial failure, and the remains of the Buddhist and Hindu monuments scattered across Southeast Asia proved no exception. This important study of a highly appealing but relatively neglected body of work adds multiple dimensions to the history of art and image production in Britain of the period, showing how the anxieties of empire were encoded in the genre of landscape paintings and prints.

Southeast Asia, that immense region stretching from India to the Far East, encompasses Indochina (Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Myanmar - the former Burma - and Thailand), Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines. Each country is endowed with its own national artistic identity and its own cultural heritage. At the same time, all gain strength from their common Asian identity. In a series of essays, a group of highly regarded scholars examine the mix of significant influences that have shaped the region's art. Of various nationalities, most have traveled, lived, and taught in Asia and are fluent in one or more Asian languages. Both the educated reader and the expert will find much that is new in these pages.

This anthology explores artistic practices and works from a diverse and vibrant region. Scholars, critics, and curators offer their perspectives on Southeast Asian art and artists, aiming not to define the field but to Illuminate its changing nature and Its Interactions with creative endeavors and histories originating elsewhere. These essays examine a range of new and modern work, from sculptures that Invoke post-conflict trauma In Cambodia to Thai art Installations that Invite audience participation and thereby challenge traditional definitions of the "art obJect." In this way, the authors not only provide a lively stUdy of regional art, but challenge and expand broad debates about international and transnational art.