By Jim Duncan CVFDude@aol.com
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Ignatius Widiapradja’s “The
Homeless Spirit”
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The Art of Living Dangerously
Ignatius Widiapradja’s home and
studio shelter shards of shattered
histories — skulls, taxidermy
freaks, body organ models, religious
relics, ancient books, Salvation
Army dolls and mutilated mannequins.
That’s not too unusual for a contemporary
painter. After Damien Hirst institutionalized
morbid realism (and became the
richest living artist in history),
young painters began hooking up
with existentialism and accessorizing
their lives with gothic props.
Widiapradja is anything but a
poseur in this territory. Like
the reptiles and Bible stories
that dramatize his paintings,
he is himself transformational.
Even his name is an adaptation.
“I was 5 years old in 1965, ‘the
year of living dangerously.’ The
Suharno government fell to a coup
that managed to blame the Chinese.
There were horrible reprisals
everyday. Fortunately, a powerful
village leader gave my father
an Indonesian name to protect
our family. That’s when I became
Widiapradja,” he said.
“The Year of Living Dangerously”
is an Oscar-winning Peter Weir
film about 1965 in Indonesia.
Made in 1982, it identified the
CIA, not the Chinese, as masterminds
of the 1965 coup. In America,
it’s known as probably the best
work ever by actors Mel Gibson,
Sigourney Weaver and Linda Hunt.
For a 5-year-old ethnic Chinese
boy in West Java, “The Year of
Living Dangerously” was an ironic
understatement. It lasted much
longer than a year, abruptly ended
childhood and began shaping a
worldview that would desperately
clawed its way into artistic visions.
“Indonesian schools closed in
1965, for two years. Daily demonstrations
continued even longer. Between
the ages of 5 and 12, I was never
allowed to leave the house without
bodyguards. For a while I saw
dead bodies floating in the water
every day. Friends were killed
for voting Communist. Friends
were killed for being Chinese.
Fear makes one aware of his utter
vulnerability. I became acutely
aware and constantly reexamined
my life view,” he recalled.
Widiapradja attended a strict
Roman Catholic school and was
trained for 12 years in the dogmatic
Old Dutch school of drawing and
painting. Yet ethnic Chinese students
were admitted to Indonesian universities
in such limited quotas that art
school was impossible. He moved
to America in 1979 to attend the
University of Texas in El Paso.
Widiapradja didn’t think he could
learn much there about drawing
and painting, but the jewelry
department impressed him. His
grandfather had been a master
goldsmith, so he took up a family
tradition. By the mid 1980s, he
was on the fast track to international
recognition as a jewelry artist
— featured at the American Craft
Museum and included in their world
tour exhibitions. Drake hired
him to teach jewelry, but that
discipline was becoming frustrating.
“Education kept leading me to
more doubts and investigations
into the nature of living. I wasn’t
able to see the history of civilization
as progressive. Persecution still
exists, brutality and torture
even. Evolution moves in baby
steps, at least measured emotionally.
The ideas that entertained my
mind were too big to be expressed
within the discipline of jewelry
so I started painting again. I
rejected abstraction, for the
same reasons. I returned to old
Dutch realism because abstraction
couldn’t accommodate expressions
of individual struggle that I
was feeling,” he said.
Widiapradja’s paintings today,
mostly seven-foot squares, can
accommodate big ideas. Many are
riffs off themes drawn from sacred
texts.
“When you’re forced to the edge
of the cliff, you lose the luxury
of entertaining options. The Old
Testament is full of hard decisions
from the edge of the cliff, brutal
ones even. Abraham had to decide
whether to kill a son,” he said.
Then, as if to illustrate the
regressive history of civilization,
he jumped to the New Testament.
“The crucifixion is the most potent
image of all time. Imagine, at
the moment of his apotheosis,
Jesus asks, ‘Why hast Thou forsaken
me?’ What a moment,” he mused.
Ignatius Widiapradja‘s new paintings
comprise “Vanity of Vanities,
All is Vanity” opening Friday, June
19 (running through Aug. 1) at
Moberg Gallery. CV
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