작품 상세

This nondescript work, an oil on canvas laid on board, betrays the sombre colours of Sit Down Demonstration In Trafalgar Square (London, 1960), so, the date is in the first half of the 1960s. It represented the early days of studies by Ibrahim Hussein's, later Datuk, at Byam Shaw (1959-1963). What is discernible are the two legs holding a stocky body frame of one, presumably a man wearing pants, who looks of some social standing. Who or what cannot be ascertained. The figure (or figures?) is rendered in semi-abstract with a mixture of angular ends and curvilinear lines, looking like a jester. Fee-fi-fo-fum, who comes here? Is he, or maybe a she, alone, and striding towards you? As T.S. Eliot wrote in The Wasteland: "And I will show you something different from either Your shadow at morning striding behind you Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you..." Or as in the quote of the washerwoman (who turned into a tree) in James Joyce's Finnegans Wake: "My foos won't moos" (My feet won't move). The mind boggles! Datuk Ibrahim Hussein is an extraordinary gifted artist with three world-acclaimed triumphs. 1) He was chosen in the tripartite exhibition of world art giants together with Andy Warhol and Salvador Dali in Kuwait in 1977. 2) He won the presitigious World Economic Forum's Crystal Award in 1997; and 3) He was the first Malaysian selected for the Venice Biennale under the aegis of the Smithsonian Institute Workshop programme in 1970. He was accorded a garland of prestigious international country awards like the Order of Andres Bello of Venezuela (1993), the Order of Bernardo Higgins (Chile's highest honour to a foreigner, 1996), the Japan Foundation Cultural Award (1988), and the XVIII Prix International D'Art Contemporain de Monte Carlo (1984). The National Art Gallery Kuala Lumpur accorded him a Retrospective in 1986. Besides getting three Datuk awards, he was awarded the Anugerah Tokoh Melayu Terbilang (2007). With his wife Datin Sim, Ib organised the first Langkawi International Festival of Arts in 2000, after setting up his museum and foundation, and also the Club Mediterranee Asian Arts Festival in Cherating (Pahang) in 1988 and Bali (Indonesia) in 1987. His art tutelage was at the Byam Shaw School of Drawing and Painting and the Royal Academy in London. He was also awarded the double scholarship of Fulbright and John D. Rockefeller II Fund that exposed him to art trends in the United States.