ART: FINE, IF NOT SO COARSE
a.k.a

BJ ABOUT FINE ART,
AND VICE VERSA

a.k.a Shadowboxers and the Saccharined Apples of Sodom

And BJ told me she would never, ever, lick some stamps to mail a stack of paper and pics of artworks to any committee which job is to distribute anti-social status to artists -- like, you're either a "Best 100", "Top 10", "Hit List of 5", or "The Best" -- in other words, you're either "A Million", "5 Million", "10 Million", "20 Million" or "15,000 US$". The rest can sulk somewhere in the dark, though this looks ungrateful from here because they're just saved from anti-socialism by the good committee and the status "Nobody At All" is shared with approximately 6 billion earthlings including those who don't have the dangerous tendency to be artistic.

BJ's reason is deafeningly commonsensical: "I wouldn't win anyway," and that the money lavished on stamps would be more useful to pour on some ice-cream.

I told you she's a realist. Reality is damp and rainy, but if you emigrate from there how can you get chocolates?

This attitude towards competitions has been -- I guess -- the lone result of her experiences since the start of the '90's. Before that, BJ was almost a zealot in this -- reluctantly at first, while her mom shoveled through the children's art jungle, pushed by the likes of Temmy Setiawan and Andree Suryaman, and when the day was done BJ shone anyway basking in the plastic light of trophies. Once in a while she's even verbally proud of the medals.

But blue ribbons are just a meal's victuals.

They rarely give anyone a new lease of life. A past master in being a champ still got to deal with the real and the factual: the grand juries are merely -- some are admittedly barely -- human, medals don't fill up bellies and trophies can't be converted into livelong nest egg.

Acid reviews and salty sidelong glances BJ's gotten in the wake of her professional career have left some hard-to-erase scars. After she found what was to be her style, she has never again ached for a rewind. Transliterated into my language, what she said was "Salability First". She cares about this and ceases to mind its usually divorced road, the so-called avant-garde art. Browsing the files of criticisms, she said she doesn't have any idea why critics include her in their fat-bottomed analytical bins if they seem to deal with the subject of Her in passing. She showed me some obese essays where S. Teddy D. and Arahmaiani and Heri Dono and others that are all the go got lengthy, detailed, seemingly heartfelt reviews of the whole artistic careers while she's only written as the one who did one of the artworks on the collective display at the time. She's not hurt. In fact she wondered about it out loud with her sides splitting.

One night I overheard some noises she made in her living room while I was wrestling the pots and pans in her "Dire Straits kitchen" (I hope you're ancient enough to remember the hit Money for Nothing -- you know, the '80's song that begins with "I want my MTV" and goes on to some microwave oven bashing). She was having a coffee-depleter in the form of the performer Iwan Wirjono. "Shucks," she said; "Don't you dare saying bad things about Erica (Hestu Wahyuni) to my face. What's wrong with her anyway? If you really believe in your creed that you're a real artist (me: creed?), you won't get bothered by Erica's way in being an artist herself. If you believe that she's for the market and you're for Art, you won't whimper about the price of her paintings. But you don't believe all that, do you? You envy her, don't you?"

See, BJ is never nice whenever she can afford to be the opposite.

Some time ago there happened, in BJ's artistic circle, a fungo caused by the ex-poet, practicioner of art criticism Adi Wicaksono's exposé of almost everything -- naming names, he delivered what he claimed as a sort of scientific (but) actual research of the cancer within the Planet Fine Art. He produced lists of the market-oriented wickedness, baring the thing that in colloquial tongue would probably be "mobsters" therein -- the intrigues in art auctions, the web of the price-setters, insider trading, and so on. Predictably he angered some people and according to the legend he got to flee the subsequent legal brouhaha and social scaffold by physically removing himself from the town and seeking sanctuary somewhere obscure. BJ asked me whether I took the episode as an amusing anecdote -- I've never gotten along very spiffily with Adi -- and she said she was surprised that I, for once, took Adi's side. I don't know how much of truth was in his diagnostic paper, I'm never in the world he and BJ share. But I am for Adi's rights to say what he saw fit -- he's no non-brainer; he's equipped somewhat for such research; he's classed with the rest of the mammals which acquire the title "intellectuals"; he's not going to raise hell if he didn't have any valid reason to do so. Demanding evidence from him is pretty much sane, asking him to back the accusations up with witnesses is sensible, even resorting to legal drainpipes to flush the mud out is civilized -- but making a personal enemy out of him is ridiculous. I asked BJ about what she made out of this. "I don't know if people who do things like Adi took as a crime are wrong or not," she replied. "I mean, those are common things and nobody has ever said anything against them."

She's uncertain because it got something to do with her pots and pans' ingredients.

I told you she's a realist. Reality is a marriage between a blockhead and a hothead, but where else can you get KFC?

The biggest competition on this Planet Art has unrolled the red carpet for some people who are close enough to BJ, this first week of November. It digs shallow graves for some others, too. BJ has always been interested in this yearly award's outcomes, but she swears she would never submit her works to it. "Funny," Bob 'Sick" said. "With the composition of the juries, you got a big chance to be the winner." "That would be my next reason not to participate," snapped BJ.

I think she's growing up.

From the outer space I saw the artist whose name was in the nationwide "Best 5" took the award half-heartedly and the big cheque of some 2,000 US$ -- equals to a public servant's salary for 20 months -- was just a lumpy piece of paper in his indifferent hands. He was heavily laden with drugs that night and when it waned he still couldn't read what the award signifies. The next morning he woke up with a severe hangover and told everyone what a shameful thing it was, getting the award, because the juries have told him a long walk beforehand that this was his time; others in his lot have gotten their cheques and crowns earlier so he'd better send in his CV and snapshot and win something for the dogs. "I was told that I would win. Or else I wouldn't enter the competition at all," he said. "

BJ told him to spruce himself up and pull his S-word together and cancel his intention to leave the money alone because, if he really doesn't want it, a charity to the neighborhood -- I took this as a personal insult to me because it is -- would be nice. Flipping through the competition's catalogue she said, "Most are just crappy, don't you think?".

There's someone who has only painted 6 or 7 pictures in a lifetime and yet got onto the stage as a national champ, too. Some mossy old-timers said it's just a free ride since two of the juries are curators for the artist's gallery which pays them a thousand bucks just for one project. BJ said this artist is pushed too early into the realm of praises and thorny crowns and knavery -- the art is good, but it spells immaturity. She said bloodhounds and money-grabbers could break the artist down one of these days. She said the artist was heaped up prematurely. "But," she instantly added, "If I say so in public some people will hate me." So she locked the opinion up among the legions of such files at the back of her mind.

Probably BJ is simply herself.

She doesn't believe in chasing or fighting shadows; she leaves what she can't change alone. On Planet Art, it takes a heavy metal. So many things are -- from the sidewalk, where I stand -- either bad, wrong, or worse. She doesn't poke a finger on them either if the ethics or moral judgment got into a clash with personal interests. "What's in it for me if I run against so and so?" she asked rhetorically. "That's bad for my career."

Not so long ago Ugo Untoro asked me to write a little something for his solo expo. "What is it about, your stuff?" I asked him. He said it was just "nothing", he was out to scare up the Homo ludens in him. So I did the piece. And forgot about it. One day the blue phone rang -- the gallery owner, where Ugo was about to be hosted, was on the other end of the line, asking me to reshuffle my piece to resemble what is, in her mind, a saner catalogue writing: "You got to sell," she said. "You have to discard the parts about Ugo's puppets. What sells is paintings. Not on paper, on canvas. With oil. I told Ugo so, too. I hope you can modify your essay, write about the oil paintings that will be on display, and make it so that people might want to get them home." It was a fraction of a week when the godd---d phone was about to get disconnected for good. I wasn't in any friendly mood towards the human kind, especially gallery owners. I told her that I got no business with her, or the gallery, or the universe of Prospective Buyers -- my sole biz was with Ugo. If he asked me to do those stuff, maybe I would do it. I only write for artists if I like them as persons or I sort of love their stuff. If I live to take commands, wouldn't I have been with the Room Service department at the Natour Garuda Hotel?

Ugo didn't ask me to remake the piece. He didn't use it in his catalogue, but he didn't install any substitute either. Later he apologised for it and told me that rather than crawling too low he decided to delete the subject altogether. And he gave me a puppet-like 3D work. "I feel weird," he said, "this time my paintings sell." As far as I know he's always had some steady private collectors at his tail, but I was glad if he's happy about the incoming cheques.

BJ witnessed all that and listened to Bob's usual bark -- he always feel like owing collectors and curators and gallery owners some gigantic grudge -- and said that she thought Ugo wavered between the artistic paradise and the financial inferno, like the rest of the flock -- "Good thing is, it's not my problem at all," BJ added. "I would never have a 'quarrel' with gallery owners or curators."

There are the shadowboxers and the apples of Sodom and there's BJ and the realistic workers within the compound. They all will endure. Martyrs and the cheap trashers and realists are timeless kids of nature.

Reality cheers for the wrong winners and boos the wrong losers, but you can't get some coffee anywhere else.

Niemandstrasse, November 2001

OF GODS & DOGS

Glances at BJ's solo exhibition Every Dog is #1
Edwin Galeri, Jakarta, Indonesia
March 26 - April 7, 2002
-- or maybe something else.

Sans Terre, March 30, 2002