YANGON (dpa) – Myanmar’s golden era for modern art, at least in the commercial sense, was a fairly fleeting affair.
“1994 to 1995 were our best years. After that it’s gone downhill,” said Myint Lwin, the owner of the GV Gallery.GV Gallery was started by Myint Lwin and his artist wife Zeyer Thinn in 1987 in their spacious home in the Golden Valley neighbourhood, a fairly well-to-do Yangon (Rangoon) residential suburb where many diplomats and government elite live.“Before we had a lot of businessmen from the U.S., U.K., France and Asia coming here,” said Myint Lwin. “Now we only get diplomats and a few tourists.”GV Gallery was the first privately run art gallery to set up in Yangon, and remains the capital’s largest establishment with two dozen Myanmar artists exhibiting their works there.But their modest success, especially during Myanmar’s short-lived business boom years of 1994-95 when foreign investors were rushing into the country, has spawned many imitators.Myanmar’s foreign investment climate took a steep turn for the worse in 1996 after the U.S. slapped sanctions on American doing business in the country – deemed a pariah by western democracies for its poor human rights record and failure to initiate political reforms – and the European Union followed suit with restrictions.Then came the Asian economic crisis on 1997, which dried up Asian investments in Myanmar.Despite the slowdown, on the tree-lined Golden Valley street alone there are three other galleries besides GV Gallery, including New Treasure, Vision Art and Zen House.Altogether there are now 18 art galleries in the city, and nine in Mandalay, Myanmar’s northern commercial hub.“We are selling less, but the galleries have come up like mushrooms,” said Myint Lwin.Myanmar’s military junta which came to power in September, 1988, after a bloody crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators that left hundreds dead in the streets of Yangon, has allowed the private galleries to bloom.The regime, which put an end to the disastrous “Burmese Road to Socialism” after coming to power and opened to country up to foreign investments and mass tourism for the first time since 1962, has depicted itself as an upholder of Myanmar traditions and culture.Luckily for the galleries, few of Myanmar’s “modern” artists are of the revolutionary sort, or if they are they keep their more rebellious pieces deep underground and not on display at the galleries.Myanmar’s modern art is a rather conservative affair, with most artists sticking to realistic depictions of Myanmar daily life – with a heavy emphasis on Buddhist themes (understandable in a predominantly Buddhist country), market scenes and pastorals.Nearly all well-known Myanmar modern artists were trained at the Yangon School of Fine Arts, where the prevailing techniques being taught date back to the staid traditions of British still-life paintings of the early 20th century – when Myanmar was still a British colony.Myanmar’s modern “masters” include Ban Nyan, who died in 1945, and Ngwe Gaing, 1967. Both were trained in England. Their works are now extremely rare, and relatively expensive, in Yangon.One of their pupils was Thein Han, who died in 1986, and taught many of the country’s new crop of artists at the Yangon School of Fine Arts, carrying on the British style.Some of these newer painters are now trying to break out of the “realism” mold.Maung Aw, 56, for instance, a painter whose works can fetch up to 2,000 dollars, has moved away from picture-perfect oil canvases to slightly more impressionistic offerings, although he generally sticks to the common themes of temple settings or bucolic countrysides.Hlaing Bua, 51, and Win Aung, 46, two favourites at regional art exhibitions, are also making a refreshing shift away from realism.Some of Myanmar’s younger generation artists have branched out into more abstract paintings, which can be viewed periodically at exhibitions the Lakanat Gallery on Merchant Street, downtown Yangon.Even at these modern exhibitions there is careful avoidance of controversial themes. Nudity, politics and of course portraits of opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi are all strictly taboo at all art exhibitions.“There is no official censorship, but we are careful about what we put on exhibit,” admitted one aspiring artist, who declined to be named. She acknowledged, “And there is some self-censorship.”
