The Crowning Glory of Indonesia : Art Treasure Trove Is on View at the Natural History Museum of L.A. County

Mexico isn’t the only foreign land taking over Los Angeles art circles these days.

Although it doesn’t compete logistically with the L.A. County Museum of Art’s massive Mexican retrospective, “Mexico: Splendors of Thirty Centuries,” a new exhibition at the Natural History Museum of L.A. County seeks to provide the same kind of overview of a different kind of art: that which has been passed down through the centuries in Indonesia’s royal courts and palaces.

“Court Arts of Indonesia,” on view at the Exposition Boulevard museum through Jan. 5, 1992, is one of three centerpiece exhibitions in the Festival of Indonesia, an 18-month nationwide celebration focusing on arts and culture from the more than 13,000 islands of the Republic of Indonesia. Mounted by New York’s The Asia Society, the exhibition features more than 150 diverse objects from the 8th through 20th centuries, including intricate Wayang shadow puppets, gold and jeweled weapons, rare illuminated manuscripts, delicate textiles, gamelan instruments, ritual vessels and sculptures, and detailed performance masks.

The other two Festival of Indonesia shows, “Beyond the Java Sea: The Art of Indonesia’s Outer Islands” (organized by the National Museum of Natural History) and “The Sculpture of Indonesia” (organized by the National Gallery of Art) will not be shown in Southern California. Both are on view in San Francisco (at the M.H. de Young Memorial Museum and the Asian Art Museum, respectively) and also run through Jan. 5.

“Court Arts” draws works from 45 palaces, royal heirs, museums, private collections and historical organizations in various parts of Indonesia, the Netherlands, Australia, Great Britain and the United States. The exhibition is sponsored in Los Angeles--its final U.S. stop before going on to the Netherlands--by the Texaco Foundation.

According to the exhibition’s curator and catalogue author, Helen Ibbitson Jessup, focusing on Indonesia’s court arts allowed her to not only show works from a variety of Indonesia’s 27 provinces, but also the chance to show the creme de la creme of all arts produced within the republic.

“The courts have been a great unifying theme in the arts of Indonesia because they commissioned the best,” said Jessup, who spent more than five years researching the exhibition during about 15 trips to a total of 22 Indonesian provinces. “And today, the courts are still very important as patrons of the arts. That’s still where you see much of the performing arts like music, dance and shadow puppets, as well as painting and sculpture.”

But while those traditional court arts are well-known by Indonesians, many of the most important objects are considered sacred heirlooms and are never exhibited, Jessup said. This exhibition breaks that barrier, and includes more than 75 pieces directly from the courts that have never been seen publicly, even by Indonesians.

“All these ceremonies and the performing arts are really shared by the whole society, but . . . Indonesians don’t go to the center of the courts, anymore than Americans get to dine at the White House,” Jessup said. “So they never see the finest pieces. They’re kept in treasure boxes.”

The exhibition features a number of pieces from the popular performing arts traditions--including more than 15 beautiful and intricate wayang shadow puppets, used in the telling of such famous epics as the Ramayana, Mahabharata and the Bratayudha; a handful of ornate instruments used by members of the famed gamelan orchestras, and detailed scrolls and masks used in other forms of storytelling.

Also included are forms that resemble primitive art, such as textile designs depicting ancestor ships transporting the souls of the dead; ritualistic works like a traditional marriage bed and the fertility figures placed before it in noble houses of central Java; various vessels and utensils used in the once-popular ritual of betel chewing, in which the pinang nut is mixed with spices and chewed in a matter similar to tobacco chewing; and several examples of the kris, an important and highly decorative Indonesian weapon which is believed to have its own spirit and represent spiritual potency, and military and sexual power. Also featured are a number of jewelry items, such as ear pendants, rings and even crowns.

“These pieces are not just vernacular; this art springs from the very deep roots of Indonesian culture,” Jessup said. Reflected in the pieces are various myths, such as those dealing with origin, ships and the power of the sea; the influences of the arts of Indonesian trading partners such as China and India, and a number of traditional rituals dealing with the life cycle, many of which are still practiced today.

Through her research, Jessup discovered records of the existence of more than 200 Indonesian courts, ranging from small regional rulers to very powerful centers of Indonesian empire. Although the courts lost much of their political power when the land came under Dutch control in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, and the rest of it after Indonesia declared independence in 1945, Jessup said about 60 or 70 courts remain today, and some still function as highly respected arts centers. Others have been converted to museums, and may have a member of the royal family serving as its director.

“Probably, the future of these courts is to exist as a focus point for maintaining the arts. And really, that’s what they always did anyway,” Jessup said.

According to Jessup’s exhibition catalogue, the courts’ support of the arts led to what was known as the “Cult of Glory,” in which a ruler used art--such as dance and music performances or the commissioning of new ceremonial regalia or cloths--to impress his subjects with outward signs of his royal capabilities and the prosperous state of his realm.

Today, many of these objects still represent tremendous power, so much so, Jessup said, that she could not persuade remaining rulers to release all the objects she sought.

“There was a lot of personal anguish involved, especially for them to let the works out of the palaces,” she said.

One particular set of objects Jessup craved was a group of ceremonial vessels from Jogjakarta.

Those vessels are represented in the exhibition only by a photograph, however, because “it was deemed just too risky, spiritually, to let them out,” Jessup said.

“The subjects know all about these objects even though they’ve never seen them. And the power that they’re believed to have is such that any misfortune would be blamed on the disappearance of the sacred objects,” she explained.

In fact, Jessup said that it was not until she talked one important Indonesian collector in particular, Ide Anank Agung Gde Agung, to lend his objects that others decided to part briefly with theirs as well.

“He was the great standard setter--once they knew that he was lending to us, and that he was encouraging the exhibition, other people began talking to us about it,” said Jessup, who noted it sometimes took her six visits to get to any discussions “beyond the tourist level” in some of the remaining functioning courts.

* “Court Arts of Indonesia” a the Natural History Museum of L.A. County, 900 Exposition Blvd ., (213) 744-DINO, through Jan. 5, 1992. Closed on Mondays.