Batak of All Trades
ARTS
A Batak of All Trades One of Indonesia’s most artful dissidents catches the spotlight at Bentara Budaya.
T
50 |
| SEPTEMBER 8, 2013
for Bintang Timoer, a newspaper closely affiliated with the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI). He was not a communist himself, both Sanggam and Priyanto said, but rather, like Sukarno, an ardent nationalist. Augustin was not adverse to criticizing Sukarno, especially before he met him, Sanggam said, but over time the two became friends, and Sanggam became, on balance, a supporter of the president. He became involved in government initiatives, joining cultural delegations to places like East Germany and China. It was not to last. In 1966, General Suharto took over power and Augustin’s life was turned upside down. Instead of encouraging him, the government tried to isolate him. “He was banned,” Sanggam said. “He couldn’t work. The government accused him of being a communist. He was lucky he wasn’t sent to Buru Island. Almost all of his friends were imprisoned.” It was the beginning of hard times, Sanggam said. The family had little money. Augustin was sometimes able to find work under a pseudonym. He usually got away with drawing humor, but when it came to politics it was never long before the government found him out. The publication would receive a call from an official who presented them with two options, Sanggam said: drop Sibarani, or face banning yourself. He also painted. A less political and lower circulation medium, it was less risky,
A visitor studying Augustin Sibarani’s works in Bentara Budaya Jakarta.
and therefore more practical. He was prolific during Suharto’s New Order regime, and from 1973-2013, the period covered by the exhibition, he filled more than 150 canvases, Sanggam said. Many of them were sold out of necessity for less than they were probably worth, he added. Augustin never gave up on his caricatures. Especially toward the end of the New Order, he circulated his drawings underground with the help of others opposed to Suharto’s regime. “I still have a stack of them this big,” Priyanto told Tempo English, holding his thumb and forefinger about an inch apart. Few artists were so aggressive as Augustin, Priyanto said. And the man lampooned no one more than Suharto. “Suharto was his favorite target,” Sanggam said. “No one could draw Suharto like my dad.” Augustin’s distaste for the ‘Smiling General’ comes through in some of the 17 caricatures on display at Bentara Budaya. One shows him sitting seated upon a throne of sacks of cash each labeled yayasan—the word for Suharto’s so-called charitable foundations, used to embezzle vast sums from the state—receiving Western businessmen bringing him bags of their own. Another depicts him somewhere between
PHOTOS: TEMPO/DIAN TRIYULI HANDOKO
HE glaring visage of Sisingamangaraja XII, the last great Batak holy man, met visitors upon their entrance to Bentara Budaya Jakarta’s main exhibition hall at the opening of a new show on Thursday night last week. Past the oil painting which hung directly opposite the hall’s main door, dozens of people stood before its maker, Augustin Sibarani. The 88-year-old man, whose work was the subject of the show, was flanked by his three sons, their wives and children, and a cousin. He sat in a wheelchair facing the crowd, looking quite bohemian dressed in a black suit, scarf and beret. One of them was Priyanto, Tempo’s longtime cartoonist. The 66-year-old man talked about how he had been attracted to Augustin’s work as a teenager. Later he became truly inspired by it, and he sought out everything he could. He even conducted a formal study of his work, part of a project on images from the 1950s. Despite his deep knowledge of Augustin’s creations, however, today was the first time Priyanto had seen any of the 44 paintings on display. He had had to come early for a look around, just so he would have something to say. “My favorite paintings are in the back,” he said. “They look the most like his caricatures.” It is indeed for his caricatures that Augustin is best known. It was Sukarno himself, so the story goes, who encouraged him to make it his primary medium. Augustin came to know Indonesia’s founding president some time after the revolution, when Augustin left the army to dedicate himself to art, his first son Sanggam Sibarani told Tempo English. Sukarno loved meeting Indonesian artists, and one day they were introduced. “He told my dad, ‘We already have enough painters. What we need are caricaturists’,” Sanggam said. During the Sukarno years, Augustin drew
Augustin Sibarani attended his 88th birthday celebration with the opening of his solo painting exhibition in Bentara Budaya Jakarta, August 22.
death and heaven, wondering if his sins will be forgiven. In both images, the old man wears a smirk upon his jowly, wrinkled face. If the paintings are less political, they stand on their own. Sisingamangaraja XII’s portrait carries a particularly interesting backstory. It begins with the Sukarno administration’s initiation of a program to acknowledge national heroes. The government wanted to declare one from North Sumatra, and the obvious choice was Sisingamangaraja XII, the revered Batak figure who led a lengthy guerilla war against the Dutch until he was killed in 1907. The problem was, no photograph of the man existed. So the government commissioned a small team to remedy the matter. It was led by Augustin. “The aim was only one: to find the picture of Sisingamangaraja,” Sanggam said. Augustin set about the task like a police sketch artist. He went to North Sumatra and interviewed as many people as he could who knew Sisingamangaraja. It turned out that some of his children were still alive. So were some of the soldiers who had fought with him against the Dutch. Augustin also went to where Sisingamanga-
raja used to live and questioned as many people as he could. Written descriptions he found helped too. In this way Augustin reconstructed what Sisingamangaraja XII looked like. It was an impressive feat, given the legends surrounding the man said to have disappeared like a phantom, before the Dutch could take his picture, as was their habit. “People believed the Dutch couldn’t photograph him because it was impossible,” Sanggam said. It made Augustin the go-to guy for Sisingamangaraja reproductions. “Any Batak people with an interest in that sort of thing comes to my dad,” Sanggam said. “People acknowledge him as the founder of the figure of Sisingamangaraja.” But what in the Sukarno years had been a great success became during the Suharto years a bitter pill—albeit one Augustin refused to swallow. In the late 1980s, the government used his rendering of Sisingamangaraja on its Rp1,000 note. Augustin considered it an act of piracy and sued. He did not win the case, Sanggam said. Under Suharto, no one could hope to win a lawsuit like that against the state—but he did get some publicity. Asiaweek wrote a piece about him. It just so happened that
the government ditched the image after only a short time. Sanggam appreciates the painting, but it is not his favorite. That honor goes to Chess Is Not Fair, which depicts a young boy playing chess against a grown man. Once, when Sanggam was a child, his father encouraged him to play in a neighborhood tournament against adults. Now he saw himself in the painting. Bentara Budaya displayed about half of the paintings’ first showing. Augustin’s last exhibition was about 10 years ago, at a small gallery in South Jakarta, although it had presented only drawings of George Bush and the war on terror, and on corruption in Indonesia. In 1998, some of his paintings were part of an exhibit in Paris. Gorky, Sanggam’s brother, said Augustin was different from other Indonesian artists. “My father was a painter, a writer, a caricaturist, and a pejuang (fighter, soldier),” he said. “The whole package.” Other Indonesian caricaturists had taken up painting, Sanggam said, but Augustin was the only one who was a painter first. “That’s what made him unique and gave beauty to his work,” Sanggam said. ● PHILLIP JACOBSON
SEPTEMBER 8, 2013 |
| 51
A Batak of All Trades One of Indonesia’s most artful dissidents catches the spotlight at Bentara Budaya.
T
50 |
| SEPTEMBER 8, 2013
for Bintang Timoer, a newspaper closely affiliated with the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI). He was not a communist himself, both Sanggam and Priyanto said, but rather, like Sukarno, an ardent nationalist. Augustin was not adverse to criticizing Sukarno, especially before he met him, Sanggam said, but over time the two became friends, and Sanggam became, on balance, a supporter of the president. He became involved in government initiatives, joining cultural delegations to places like East Germany and China. It was not to last. In 1966, General Suharto took over power and Augustin’s life was turned upside down. Instead of encouraging him, the government tried to isolate him. “He was banned,” Sanggam said. “He couldn’t work. The government accused him of being a communist. He was lucky he wasn’t sent to Buru Island. Almost all of his friends were imprisoned.” It was the beginning of hard times, Sanggam said. The family had little money. Augustin was sometimes able to find work under a pseudonym. He usually got away with drawing humor, but when it came to politics it was never long before the government found him out. The publication would receive a call from an official who presented them with two options, Sanggam said: drop Sibarani, or face banning yourself. He also painted. A less political and lower circulation medium, it was less risky,
A visitor studying Augustin Sibarani’s works in Bentara Budaya Jakarta.
and therefore more practical. He was prolific during Suharto’s New Order regime, and from 1973-2013, the period covered by the exhibition, he filled more than 150 canvases, Sanggam said. Many of them were sold out of necessity for less than they were probably worth, he added. Augustin never gave up on his caricatures. Especially toward the end of the New Order, he circulated his drawings underground with the help of others opposed to Suharto’s regime. “I still have a stack of them this big,” Priyanto told Tempo English, holding his thumb and forefinger about an inch apart. Few artists were so aggressive as Augustin, Priyanto said. And the man lampooned no one more than Suharto. “Suharto was his favorite target,” Sanggam said. “No one could draw Suharto like my dad.” Augustin’s distaste for the ‘Smiling General’ comes through in some of the 17 caricatures on display at Bentara Budaya. One shows him sitting seated upon a throne of sacks of cash each labeled yayasan—the word for Suharto’s so-called charitable foundations, used to embezzle vast sums from the state—receiving Western businessmen bringing him bags of their own. Another depicts him somewhere between
PHOTOS: TEMPO/DIAN TRIYULI HANDOKO
HE glaring visage of Sisingamangaraja XII, the last great Batak holy man, met visitors upon their entrance to Bentara Budaya Jakarta’s main exhibition hall at the opening of a new show on Thursday night last week. Past the oil painting which hung directly opposite the hall’s main door, dozens of people stood before its maker, Augustin Sibarani. The 88-year-old man, whose work was the subject of the show, was flanked by his three sons, their wives and children, and a cousin. He sat in a wheelchair facing the crowd, looking quite bohemian dressed in a black suit, scarf and beret. One of them was Priyanto, Tempo’s longtime cartoonist. The 66-year-old man talked about how he had been attracted to Augustin’s work as a teenager. Later he became truly inspired by it, and he sought out everything he could. He even conducted a formal study of his work, part of a project on images from the 1950s. Despite his deep knowledge of Augustin’s creations, however, today was the first time Priyanto had seen any of the 44 paintings on display. He had had to come early for a look around, just so he would have something to say. “My favorite paintings are in the back,” he said. “They look the most like his caricatures.” It is indeed for his caricatures that Augustin is best known. It was Sukarno himself, so the story goes, who encouraged him to make it his primary medium. Augustin came to know Indonesia’s founding president some time after the revolution, when Augustin left the army to dedicate himself to art, his first son Sanggam Sibarani told Tempo English. Sukarno loved meeting Indonesian artists, and one day they were introduced. “He told my dad, ‘We already have enough painters. What we need are caricaturists’,” Sanggam said. During the Sukarno years, Augustin drew
Augustin Sibarani attended his 88th birthday celebration with the opening of his solo painting exhibition in Bentara Budaya Jakarta, August 22.
death and heaven, wondering if his sins will be forgiven. In both images, the old man wears a smirk upon his jowly, wrinkled face. If the paintings are less political, they stand on their own. Sisingamangaraja XII’s portrait carries a particularly interesting backstory. It begins with the Sukarno administration’s initiation of a program to acknowledge national heroes. The government wanted to declare one from North Sumatra, and the obvious choice was Sisingamangaraja XII, the revered Batak figure who led a lengthy guerilla war against the Dutch until he was killed in 1907. The problem was, no photograph of the man existed. So the government commissioned a small team to remedy the matter. It was led by Augustin. “The aim was only one: to find the picture of Sisingamangaraja,” Sanggam said. Augustin set about the task like a police sketch artist. He went to North Sumatra and interviewed as many people as he could who knew Sisingamangaraja. It turned out that some of his children were still alive. So were some of the soldiers who had fought with him against the Dutch. Augustin also went to where Sisingamanga-
raja used to live and questioned as many people as he could. Written descriptions he found helped too. In this way Augustin reconstructed what Sisingamangaraja XII looked like. It was an impressive feat, given the legends surrounding the man said to have disappeared like a phantom, before the Dutch could take his picture, as was their habit. “People believed the Dutch couldn’t photograph him because it was impossible,” Sanggam said. It made Augustin the go-to guy for Sisingamangaraja reproductions. “Any Batak people with an interest in that sort of thing comes to my dad,” Sanggam said. “People acknowledge him as the founder of the figure of Sisingamangaraja.” But what in the Sukarno years had been a great success became during the Suharto years a bitter pill—albeit one Augustin refused to swallow. In the late 1980s, the government used his rendering of Sisingamangaraja on its Rp1,000 note. Augustin considered it an act of piracy and sued. He did not win the case, Sanggam said. Under Suharto, no one could hope to win a lawsuit like that against the state—but he did get some publicity. Asiaweek wrote a piece about him. It just so happened that
the government ditched the image after only a short time. Sanggam appreciates the painting, but it is not his favorite. That honor goes to Chess Is Not Fair, which depicts a young boy playing chess against a grown man. Once, when Sanggam was a child, his father encouraged him to play in a neighborhood tournament against adults. Now he saw himself in the painting. Bentara Budaya displayed about half of the paintings’ first showing. Augustin’s last exhibition was about 10 years ago, at a small gallery in South Jakarta, although it had presented only drawings of George Bush and the war on terror, and on corruption in Indonesia. In 1998, some of his paintings were part of an exhibit in Paris. Gorky, Sanggam’s brother, said Augustin was different from other Indonesian artists. “My father was a painter, a writer, a caricaturist, and a pejuang (fighter, soldier),” he said. “The whole package.” Other Indonesian caricaturists had taken up painting, Sanggam said, but Augustin was the only one who was a painter first. “That’s what made him unique and gave beauty to his work,” Sanggam said. ● PHILLIP JACOBSON
SEPTEMBER 8, 2013 |
| 51
