Imagining the Global: Indonesian Painting and the Three-World Order

The forms and meanings of globalization are not inevitable, writes Néstor García Canclini, but imagined. Different visions of global interrelation compete for dominance on the level of the imaginary through cultural production, including art. In this talk, I study art’s role in the contestation over and advancement of our contemporary global order, since its beginnings in the anti-colonial era. I do so by discussing Indonesian painting between 1945 and 1980.

In order to account for works by Hendra Gunawan and Dede Eri Supria, we both have to understand shifting global relations since the colonial era, and we have to see today’s “globalized” world as emerging out of that period: In the 1940s, Hendra painted scenes of anti-colonial struggles, first against the Dutch, then the Japanese. In the 1950s, as aspiring and newly formed nations in the Global South strove to renegotiate relations with the First and Second Worlds, Hendra once again did work on the level of the imaginary––by creating an emblem of Third World solidarity. In the 1970s––faced with Indonesia’s authoritarian government, encroaching Western cultural imperialism, and rampant developmentalism––Dede spoke to the ambivalence of diverse national audiences.

The global turn, I propose, is valuable not just for the way that it supplements art historical knowledge through increased attention on discrete sites in the Global South. Rather––drawing on Kobena Mercer, Caroline A. Jones, and Jim Supangkat––I argue that global art history helps us perceive the continuous reweaving of global politics and economics, which continues today.