Issues of culture, nationhood and identity in modern Malaysian art

Modern art activity in Malaysia began in earnest in the years after World War II. This belated development, peculiar to the Malaysian situation, may be attributed to the lack of encouragement given to cultural activities by the British, who begun to annex parts of the Malay peninsula, beginning in 1786. As part of the colonising process, the British had introduced a Western system of education during the 19th century, for the purpose of training the natives to serve in the lower echelons of the administrative service. Central to the British objective was the colonial subject\u27s competency in the English language. Some knowledge of English history, legal and cultural values was also introduced to ensure loyalty to the new colonial regime. Art had no useful political function and was thus never seriously developed during the colonial era. The western system of education paved the way for a modernisation process whose impact lay in the new modes of perception and thinking founded upon rational, investigative and individualised considerations. These new perceptual considerations differed radically from the traditional spiritual and religion-centred world-views prevailing among the multi-ethnic peoples of peninsular Malaya and the northern Borneo territories during the 19th century. The subsequent introduction of western cultural forms including architecture, modes of dress, literature, music and art was an inevitable outcome of the ongoing modernising processes. The exposure to naturalistic tendencies derived from western art influenced the emergence of a new kind of visual artist, equipped with new interpretations of the environment. By the mid-1920s, a small number of self-taught artists, drawn from the Chinese, Malay and Indian segments of the populace, had began to render the local landscape in the naturalistic manner via the watercolour and oil mediums. These initial efforts, reflecting romanticized, idyllic and picturesque approaches, were linked to outmoded western academic art models.Also imbibed was the new notion of a self-expressive mode of artistic creativity. (Copied from article)