Download Lucia Hartini Realistic Representation Overarching

Realistic Representation
Lucia Hartini
Essential Questions
Overarching
1) What is reality?
2) How can artworks be a reflection of life?
Topical
1) What is the subconscious?
2) How might our everyday lives influence the subconscious?
3) What is a paradox?
4) How does a paradox in a painting lead us to think about
reality?
When
1959 – present
5W1H
How
Where
Oil
paintings
Indonesia
Lucia
Hartini
Why
Exploring the
“other” reality
What
Cosmology
Identity
Which
Surrealism
The Artist
Her life- Related chain of events to her art
• 1959: Born on January 10 in Temanggung, Central Java.
Her career started in the mid-seventies with a series of self-portraits. Leading
up to the historic date of May 22nd 1998 when Suharto resigned, spontaneous
art events erupted before huge crowds in Indonesia.
• 1997: Studied at Indonesia Art College (STSRI), Yogyakarta, the Art High
School for students intending to proceed to either the Art Academy, ASRI, or
to ISSI for training as an art teacher.
• There she studied art, taught from an Indonesianised European academic
Fine Art perspective, developing her ability to draw and learning the
techniques of painting in oils on canvas. (Dudley, 2000)
• More avenues for the art-oriented Indonesian citizens, like Hartini, to open
up and make her works more noticeable in Jakarta and to the world. Her
artworks often challenges her minority status as a woman and Catholic in a
predominantly Muslim environment.
The Artist
Her life- Related chain of events to her art
• early 1990’s: She collapsed due to mental exhaustion,
overwork, and the socially induced pressures.
• Lucia encountered her spiritual teacher, the Taiwanese
female guru Master Summa Ch’ing Hai, and was able to
work her way back to psychological well-being through an
ordered regime of meditation and spiritual practice.
• This experience has strong influence in many of her
works.
Which
• Lucia stresses that her compulsion to paint, and her
ability to find the strength enabling her to continue as
normal well into the course of her madness ‘came of its
own accord’. She did not wish it in her conscious mind,
but she was able to perform.
• This has echoes of the ‘automatic writing’ practiced by
the Surrealists, as does Lucia’s statement that she
combines the ideas which come to her from inspiration,
observation and experience with how she feels and what
is happening to her in life at any point.
• She has never deserted the figurative for the abstract as
a painting style.
What
• Addresses her status as a woman and Catholic
in a predominantly Muslim environment.
• Realistic paintings that are no longer connected
to “reality”
• Alternative female archetypes from Indonesian
history and legend
• Hartini is known for paintings that
have thematic complexity, a
strong sense of drama and visual
richness.
• Her visionary, surreal paintings
reflect the reality of the human
life in the twentieth century: One
filled with many complications.
• They are realistic yet at the same
time ‘unearthly’ – resulting in
their surrealistic quality.
• Hartini infuse fantasy and reality
together: an effective blending of
the trapped human soul, the
desire of wanting to drift forever
in fantasy with reality.
Subject Matter
Subject Matter
• Symbols are used extensively
in Hartini’s works.
• She paints horses (signifying
gentleness and virility), flowers
(fragility, beauty and femininity),
earth and sea (dynamic
interacting forces of nature) to
create personal narratives
emblematic of contemporary
Javanese gender relationships.
Horse by the ocean , 1998
Oil on canvas, 60 x 70 cm
• Her intimations of submerged
violence, social coercion, lack
of privacy and difficulties in
establishing boundaries speak
to the problems of shaping a
distinct self.
Subject Matter
• Most of her works are seeking to
examine the intersecting
boundaries of gender and culture
in Indonesian society.
• Some works are relatively
feminism-based, as a result of the
patriarchal society she is from.
• Her main characters normally
have their faces hidden, and if it
were a woman hiding her façade,
Hartini will justify as to why the
woman is doing so with a good
reason, e.g. she is jaded at the
sight of repeated adversities all
over the world and thus opts to
not see or listen further for it is
beyond her threshold of tolerance.
Why
• She believes that it is possible to enter the
“other” reality
• Encountered the “invisible” reality in her
•childhood, sensing the wind, sounds and smells
that were not related to any source which enabled
her to imagine another kind of “reality”
• Paintings were also a kind of self-identification
aside from being a record of the other reality
How
•Oil paintings with landscapes that portray the “other” reality
•Her surrealistic style paintings are manifestations of her fantasies,
imaginations and dreams
•She uses a visual language she has developed on her own since the
early 1980s
•Sensitive to all kinds of phenomena around her
•Painting to her is a way of meditation in which her imagination and
feelings from moment to moment are left to flow out at will.
•She fully comprehends and enjoys a very detailed work
Style and Technique
• Uses oil-paints on canvas.
• Her brush strokes are
rather elaborate with
smooth blending of the
paint. This is evident in the
creases of her subject’s
dresses, the luscious
quality of fabrics and
clouds.
• She captures her subject
matter realistically, paying
careful attention to
textures, details, proportion
and light/shadow to create
3D modeling.
Child on the Edge
• Painting is heavily loaded with
symbols, indicating
apprehension for the future.
• Displayed a woman in among
the rocks, with her face
looking back at the mighty
wave of the ocean.
• The woman is holding an
umbrella, the spokes and the
top of which was drawn as
circling clouds. And at the
fringe of the umbrella hung the
planets.
Beneath the Umbrella of the
Millennium, 1996, Oil on canvas
• Painting seems to suggest an
imminent storm, the use of
umbrella is like a sign to
prepare for the turbulence
ahead – urging others to get
ready for trials in the 21st
century.
 Hartini married a fellow artist at a
relatively tender age and gave birth to two
children. She was later abandoned by her
spouse and struggled to make ends meet as
a single mother.
 Being in a conservative society, Hartini’s
status as a single mother was a stigma and
she was constantly under the disparagement
of surrounding people.
 The artist is portrayed as a vulnerable
object of scrutiny from those prying, floating
eyes.
 She is asleep and crotched in a foetal
position.
Spy Lens, 1989.
Oil on canvas
145 x 145 cm
 Her subsequent painting will portray her
as someone stronger, standing up to
society’s criticism.
Interpretation
Srikandi is a powerful rejection of
society’s prescribed role for the
woman. Here, the artist projects
herself in the persona of Srikandi, the
wife of Arjuna, an exceptional female
known for her strength of character
and prowess as a warrior in the
Mahabarata. This painting is a sequel
to an earlier self-portrait “Spy Lens”.
Where “Spy Lens” expresses her
vulnerability as a passive object of
prying eyes floating in a foetal
position with a surreal landscape
allegorical of existential reality. Hartini
in her sequel attributes to her persona
the semblance of power; physical
strength, a commanding if not
aggressive stance, and above all, the
power of the gazer over society’s
gazing eyes, now stripped of their
import. (Source: Themes in Modern
Indonesian Art)
Srikandi, 1993. Oil on canvas. 150 x 150cm.
See text box below for more information
 Srikandi - mythical warrior woman, a favourite character from the Hindu epic, the
Mahabharata, well known throughout Indonesia.
 Lucia paints herself as Srikandi, dressed in the blue cloth worn by members of
the womens’ armies who historically protected the Sultans of feudal Central Java.
 In the painting, she piercingly repels the critical and doubting eyes of society
which had formerly rendered many of its women prisoners of tradition.
 She glares back unflinchingly, her posture determined and uncompromising,
ready to fend off these critics.
• This canvas shows a young man
standing in a mountain-range,
holding a bouquet of white roses.
• He has stopped, mid-step, uncertain
whether to proceed or turn back, his
posture like one who is in hesitation.
• However, his expression hides
behind a mask, obscured from view.
• His army-print trousers indicate battle
or struggle, the flowers indicate
beauty, longing, ideals.
Young Man of May, 1998
200 X 200cm
Oil on canvas
• The artist revealed that she has
painted what a wishful portrait of her
estranged husband, where she
visualises him with the power to fulfill
his dreams.
• The painting represents a clear
concern with the pain and struggle of
a human being.
Kasih Sayang
by Lucia
Hartini, 1999.
Oil on canvas
150 x 150 cm
Style and Technique
Blinded Young Man
• Colour/Harmony: The colours
selected by Hartini may vary, from
hues of a main primary colour
(e.g. in Blinded Young Man, one
of only two colours used is blue,
and this is used different hues), to
a spectacular fusion of two
colours which, in reality, seem to
contrast (e.g. in the painting
shown on next slide, red and
blue are used to create
‘opposition’ between serenity and
peril as the baby plunges into the
vortex of darkness).
Style and Technique
• Gradient/Blending of Colour: This is
most evident in all of Hartini’s
paintings. Her usage of colours is
highly commendable. A perfect blend of
black and blue of different shades
seem to complement each other. In the
painting on the top right, Hartini uses
red in contrast with blue to distinguish
between the two human forms in the
painting, the mother and her baby. The
wisps of clouds are also well blended
at the end where the colour blue meets
red.
Style and Technique
• Negative Spaces: Her usage
of appropriate negative spaces
helps to create contrast and
even more depth to her
hallucinogenic painting.
Negative spaces help to make
her painting more threedimensional and layered,
enhancing the judgment of
depth of the painting’s viewers.
Style and Technique
Movement:
The main figures in her paintings, most of
the time, have ‘twisted’ bodies in a
graceful manner. Their faces are covered
either by their hands or other objects
around them. In one painting, swirling
cloud movement which leads to seemingly
a ‘black hole’, upon viewing, appears to
draw you in until your surroundings
dissolve into the magical world of Lucia
Hartini’s mind: her imagination. The focal
point was created and the audience’s
viewpoint is directed.