Director's Column

Art is hard to capture or isolate, because it is as difficult to place as it is to make. We try to put a name to it, to elucidate the formula for a muse that will draw it out, but it remains ever elusive, ungraspable, secret. But what is certain is that art is elemental, dispensing with the need for speech and crystallising into worlds that one may enter on the condition of a willingness to see. To its mysteries and multiplicities, its forms and factions, we honour all things art in BiblioAsia April 2011.

In “Drying Fish in Singapore Art”, Yeo Wei Wei explores the resonance of cultural nostalgia that brought about the longing for rural village life that characterised Nanyang-style art during the 1960 and 1970s. These iconic works of the Nanyang art movement based on the humble way of life of fisherfolk were signifiers of a romantic, idealised model of self-sufficiency – a poultice for the physical and psychic upheaval of industrialisation, and for the uncertainty felt in those years.

Joanna Tan traces this selfsame period of social and political reform in “Popular Music in 1960s” Singapore, instead examining a converse artistic response to the dissatisfaction of vexing times. Where artists of the Nanyang style chose to look to the village – an icon of the past – as a harbour of solace from the frustratingly transient, young musicians shifted their gaze to new worlds. Discovering the familiar in the foreign, Singaporean bands of that era such as The Quests, The Crescendos and The New Faces found their voice in the Western idiom of rock ’n’ roll.

Our curiosity towards the currents that affect whole generations often surface when we view art; the question on the tip of one’s tongue often is: What are the sources of inspiration for the artistic vocabulary? This is also posed in our interview with filmmaker Boo Junfeng. Wending through the facets of the filmmaking process behind the critically acclaimed Sandcastle, Boo discusses the constant negotiation required in mediating the dynamics within and between history and how these relationships and their fluctuations inform works of self-expression.

Finally, we turn our attention to the art of writing in asking: How do we, and can we, look to the future in a culture of artmaking? In his survey, “The Growth of Imagination in Singapore Children’s Literature in English (1965–2005)”, Lee Kong Chian Research Fellow Noel Chia takes a critical look at the progress made in this particular literary field over a four-decade period and finds a contradiction impeding the pace of developments.

In addition to harvesting creativity and imagination, a taste for perspective needs to be cultivated as well. The latest instalment of “Women’s Perspectives on Malaya” by regular contributor Bonny Tan offers a view of late 19th-century Malaya as was seen through the eyes of Emily Innes in her book, The Chersonese with the Gilding Off. In this publication, we find a voice by turns dryly humorous, vulnerable and indignant about the grievous conditions of her life at the time. Though Innes documented her account for reasons other than art, hers is an example of how the unique voice warrants preservation in a world increasingly automated and globalised, sometimes depersonalised.

The National Library wants to contribute to a future of creative possibilities, one that celebrates the work of individuals and their efforts to define themselves and the culture in which they live and breathe. So whether it’s by highlighting local works, organising collaborative workshops, or setting up digital resources on all things Singapore, we hope to play a part in your creative life – our creative life.

Happy reading!

Ms Ngian Lek Choh
Director, National Library