Details
CollectionSouth & Southeast Asian Collection
Object numberS1980-0768-001-0
TitleDance
CreatorChen Wen Hsi
DescriptionThe artist has painted a group of Indian women performing a stick dance. The dance movement is centered on the upper pat of the picture where the criss-crossing of arms and sticks generate a subtle swing of the dancers' hips and legs directing attention to their long skirts. It is on the skirts that one can detect hints of a Cubist connection. The skirts are modelled in sharp angular folds to accentuate hidden underlying forms. The same angular motif is carried over to the leaves of the plants lining the base.
Seven Indian maidens clad in red bodices and long white skirts are dancing bare-footed in a village compound. All of them have long plaits suspended over their backs. As they dance, they click sticks in the air, thus creating music and rhythm.“Pounding Rice, 1953, by Cheong Soo Pieng and Dance, 1954, by Chen Wen Hsi are complex works. Each is preoccupied with the female figure; in each picture, figures are presented in compact groups and depicted as performing coordinated actions. In Pounding Rice, three bare-breasted, standing female figures are shown husking rice; Soo Pieng developed a repertoire of figurative forms which was extremely influential for younger arts. The female figure in this picture was consolidated after his journey to Bali in 1952 (with Chen Chong Swee, Wen Hsi and Lui Kang). A close viewing shows an intricate weaving of components in the picture into connected patterns of rhythmic lines. In Dance, the figures turn deliberately, presenting a variety of viewpoints, each connecting with another, producing a sensation of linked movements. The figures are wedged into one another; these planes are subsequently developed and articulated as schemes of abstraction in Wen Hsi’s later pictures.” (Past, Present , Beyond: Re-nascence of an Art Collection, Page 63)Chen Wen Hsi's Dance depicts a group of ethnic Indian women performing the Dandiya folk dance which originates from Gujarat. Women traditionally perform the dance in a circle, marking time by the rhythmic beat of sticks called dandia. Chen Wen Hsi was on a painting trip to Penang, Malaysia, where he witnessed the village dance and spent days studying the dancers.
The painting adapts cubistic devices by stylising forms and surfaces with angular and geometric values. The compositional arrangement is simple but well conceived and highly effective in bringing to focus the circle of dancers in their brightly coloured costumes. Wihtin their tight circle, the dancers appear absorbed in their formation, each offering the viewer a different perspective of their movements.
One of the objectives by Sullivan during this time as curator of the Museum's collection was to collect exemplary works of contemporary Malayan art. Although not collected by Sullivan, Dance would have been one such work, demonstrating Chen Wen Hsi's accomplishments in arriving at a distinct personal style of painting based on the depiction of local subject matter.
“Painted in 1954, Dance depicts a group of ethnic Indian women performing the Dandiya folk dance which originates from Gujarat. Women traditionally perform the dance in a circle, marking time by the rhythmic beat of sticks. Chen Wen Hsi was on a painting trip to Penang, Malaysia, where he witnessed the village dance and spent days studying the dancers.
The painting adapts cubistic devices by stylizing forms and surfaces with angular and geometric values. The compositional arrangement is simple but well-conceived and highly effective in bringing to focus the circle of dancers in their brightly coloured adornments. The women are encircled and centralized in the shallow foreground as surrounding trees and flowering shrubs suggest the natural environment of a rural setting. Within their tight circle, the dancers appear absorbed in their formation, each offering the viewer a different perspective of their movements.” (Highlights of Southeast Asian Collection).
Production placeSingapore
Production date 1954
Object categoryPainting
MaterialOil on Canvas, Oil Paint, Paint, Canvas
Dimensions
H: 154 cm
L: 200 cm
L: 200 cm
