ABSTRACT
This chapter considers how art and literature overlap and rendezvous in Southeast Asia. The chapter comprises two parts. The first discusses the approximately contemporaneous historical emergence of modern painting and modern prose fiction during the twentieth and nineteenth centuries; the second analyses some artworks by two contemporary artists which offer powerfully poetic insights into the kinship between the literary and visual arts. The first part of the chapter argues that because western-style representational easel painting and vernacular novels appeared within a few years or decades of each other, the two phenomena are closely related to each other and to modernity. The second part of the chapter addresses artworks by Chulayarnnon Siriphol (b. 1985, Thailand) and Fyerool Darma (b. 1987, Singapore) and his collaborators. Chulayarnnon’s artworks are made in dialogue with the canonical 1938 Thai novel, Behind the Painting, by Siburapha (1905–1974). Fyerool’s artworks are a response to the canonical Bahasa Melayu verse form, pantun, which transformed and was appropriated as pantoum during the nineteenth century. Combining image and text, humor and rigor, Chulayarnnon and Fyerool reveal the enduring relevance and significance of early examples of regional modern literature for Southeast Asia and its contemporary artists today.
