The Modern in Southeast Asian Art: A Reader

This is a most important collection for the study of art and art history because it handles art on a Southeast Asian regional basis rather than as a “national” alternative to Euramerican modernism. It is implicitly non-binary and many of the orientalist, late imperial, and aggressive modernist trajectories proposed, or imposed, by Euramerica are thereby rendered redundant or in need of major qualification.

Looking from inside the region, the rich fecundity of art discourses becomes clear if for example we compare the 1843 text by Raden Saleh from what is now Indonesia with the 1946 text of S. Sudjojono, allowing a historical grasp of modernity from two of its original texts, or across the region to the 1971 text on Malaysia by Piyadasa. The tyranny of physical, cultural, and temporal separation are thus overcome. It is to the great credit of the editors that they have enabled this for us, and this work will be a basic art historical reference both inside and beyond the region for some time to come.

—John Clark, Emeritus Professor of Art History, University of Sydney

Needed now more than ever, this collection opens up new worlds in the guise of a region called Southeast Asia. Each carefully selected text offers a new point of access to thinking through, across, beyond and with the elusive idea of the “modern.” A signal achievement, this volume is both a rich introduction to the region as well as a vital resource for anyone genuinely committed to art histories that generate new spaces rather than settle for existing realms.

—Joan Kee, Professor, History of Art, University of Michigan