Grassroots: The late Tew Nai
Tong said his works were most often inspired by his frequent travels to remote
areas both locally and in the neighbouring countries. The late Tew Nai Tong’s works resonate with a perpetual yearning for freedom and the free spirit.
THE visage and spirit of Tew Nai Tong are discernible in the oval faces of phoenix-eyed damsels that dominated his oil canvas even as the artist is now gone. Nai Tong died in Kuala Lumpur last Saturday on the eve of GE13 from an aggravated lung infection. He was 77.
Nai Tong, who studied at the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts in Singapore (Nafa, 1957-58), is one of the last “Matinee Heroes” of the Nanyang Style – a romanticised amalgam of regional art of the “Southern Seas” (South of China) by then émigré China artists to Malaya and Singapore who were mostly artist-lecturers. It was taken up by succeeding generations of teachers and students at Nafa, which was set up by Lim Hak Tai (1893-1963) in 1938.
The style was inspired by the beauty and innocence of a then pastoral frontier-land Malaya/Singapore, with the spicy local tropical colours and feeling, and nubile damsels after the Gauguin Tahitian ideal.
Added to the matrix is a School of Paris sophistication, as Nafa graduates would ritually follow up their studies at the Ecole Nationale Superieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris. It’s also influenced by the cult of mannered figurations inspired by shadow-puppets and Euro-Balinese art, especially that by the Belgian Adrien-Jean Le Mayeur de Merpres (1880-1958).
Nai Tong adopted the style as seen in his first solo in Kuala Lumpur in 1964 signing his works with the name “Chang Nai Tong”. After his Paris studies, he had modified and refined the style for its spirit and nostalgia in a changing and vastly changed place.
His repertoire also included the humpbacked cows and buffaloes of an amazing technicolour dreamcoat; the rustic camaraderie among village people, shown amidst their environment and domesticated animals – a time of traditional pastimes like kite-flying (Kite Series 1992-2001) and bird-rearing symbolising freedom; nudes; Balinese life and dancers (1993-2006; he visited Bali again just two weeks before his death); and the panaromic multi-cultural Festival Series microcosm.
When he did his first nude paintings in 1968 when he studied at the Paris institute from August 1967 to 1968, it was a culture shock. But he re-explored the subject with refreshing vigour and greater experience of delicate contours and sensuality when he revisited Paris in 1999 (February to April) under the Cite Internationale des Arts programme, and again in 2000, 2001 and 2002 (he had confided in me that he planned to go back to Paris next year).
Village life: Tew Nai Tong said
he never painted city life as he was bored with it. At the Paris institute, he came under the tutelage of William Sham and Tondu. Several other Malaysians were also studying there – Long Thien Shih, Chew Kiat Lim (now based in Toronto, Canada), Wong Moo Choo, Loo Foh Sang, Tan Pek Cheng (later Loo’s wife) and Tan Tong, who curated his (Nai Tong’s) major Odyssey retrospective at the National Art Gallery in 2007.
They were preceded in Paris by Liu Kang (later a Singaporean, and a pioneer artist), Chia Yu-chian, Lai Foong Mooi and Yeo Hoe Koon (now in Singapore).
At Nafa, then at its No. 49, St Thomas Walk premises, his contemporaries included Ho Khay Beng (1933-86, later trained in Italy), Singaporeans Thomas Yeo (born 1936) and Wee Beng Chong (born 1938).
There were still teachers there with good pedigrees, like Chen Wen-hsi, Khor Chien Tee, Tan See Teik and Chen Chong Swee (only part-time then), although the Golden Age of the Nanyang style, between 1938 to 1965, had lapsed by then. Nai Tong never studied under Cheong Soo-pieng (1917-83), the style’s spiritual proponent, as many have mistakenly thought.
In an interview in Bangkok in 2011, Nai Tong also dispelled the narrow interpretation of the Nanyang style as prescribed by Nafa founder Lim Hak Tai: “Nanyang style is not exclusive to those studying at Nafa, and Hak Tai’s guiding principles are not the gospel truth to be followed strictly, but are visionary and are more open-ended,” he said.
Nai Tong’s “squint eye” feature was not a Nanyang concoction but was actually based on the figure stereotypes of the Tang and Sung dynasty arts in China, and the hollowed-out stub of an eye is more reminiscent of the style of Indonesian modern master Jeihan Sukmantoro (born 1938).
Although Nai Tong’s art is about the simple pleasures of life, human dignity and the joy of living, there have been nuanced changes over the years in techniques, style and treatment of colours, spacing, perspective, depth, forms and surface painting (brush and palette knife) with radial multiple focal points for a more airy approach. He used a horizontal format, centre-sideways and sometimes a top-down bird’s eye view for more dimensionality and light.
His story was about the intimate bond between Man and Nature, with all that it represents, pushing up and compressing the sky region to a narrower space, thus pushing the Figure centre-front. His lines and aura were more towards the Modigliani figure-types than anything by Cheong Soo-pieng.
As a sign of the times in the 1970s, and for decorum’s sake, his damsels were no longer half-naked but were modestly clad in saree blouses or bras.
From the drab dark brown and cold blue and purple of his early days, Nai Tong moved onto to free his colours for a mood affinity. His figures were later less angular and Cubist. In 2002, he attempted an ambitious series of huge canvases, in the 150cm x 360cm format, for works on rural economic activities including those on Sarawakian natives apart from the Balinese pageantry.
At the end of 2012, he started experimenting with “negative” space around the corners, for strategic contrast.
He was also daring for his use of the vertical pole, either a tree or a stave, which often cleaves his composition into parts.
Nai Tong began painting mostly in watercolours until he switched to oil in 1990. His career included a stint in copper tooling (1960-70) and metal sculptures (1975-85).
He became a full-time artist in 1992 after teaching for 23 years at three different art institutions – the Malaysian Institute of Art (1969-80), the Central Academy of Art (1982-85) and the Saito Academy of Art (1986-88).
He was also active in promoting watercolours as co-founder of the Malaysian Watercolour Society in 1982-83 and the Malaysian Contemporary Watercolours Association in 1994.
The other ways in which he promoted Malaysian art included organising exhibitions at home and abroad, the last being the Malaysia-China Friendship Arts Exchange, which had its first leg in Kuala Lumpur in March. He was to have joined the second leg in Qingdao in China.
More than a sentimental lark, his paintings are about joie de vivre, of village people celebrating and playing together, with notions of plenty, like a bountiful fruit harvest or flower still-lifes.
Most of all, his works resonate with a perpetual yearning for freedom and the free spirit – Chagall-like figures in dreamscapes, the nudes bereft of inhibitions, the open outdoors for kite-flying, and the larger format paintings.
Quiet, unassuming and taciturn, Nai Tong often wore a perpetually distracted look while indulging in his regular past time of having a drink with buddy Low Kong Wen and watching the world pass by. But the world around him lit up when he broke into a gentle smile. In his casket during the wake, he looked so at peace: he must have learnt the art of ultimate freedom.
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