Siam Society invites interested persons to learn about Javanese history through iconography on glass during a lecture on "Reverse Glass Painting In Java, 19th–20th Centuries: Reflections Of A World On The Move", on Thursday at 7pm.
Painting under glass was widely practised in Indonesia between the end of the 19th century and the 1970s. It was so successful that almost all Javanese iconography was reproduced on this medium.
However, as works on other media (paper, wood, leather) have survived less well over time, reverse glass paintings give us access to a range of images that would be hard to find elsewhere.
In this talk, French scholar Jérôme Samuel, who has been conducting extensive research on traditional and contemporary reverse glass painting in Indonesia for the past 20 years, will focus on the question of modernity.
During the span of time mentioned above, reverse glass painting has been a kind of emblem of "modernity", not only by virtue of the medium itself but because of the models these paintings reproduced -- the images they displayed and the ideas they conveyed.
Based on a corpus of several hundred items, he will show how iconography on glass can contribute to the study of Javanese history in the 19th to 20th centuries, and in particular enable us to better understand iconographic tastes and uses, as well as the circulation of ideas, both religious and political, within the different strata of colonial society in its non-European components.
Samuel is currently a full professor on Indonesian and Malaysian studies at Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales in Paris and also director of the Research Institute on Contemporary Southeast Asia in Bangkok.
The fee is 200 baht (free for members and students). Email pinthip@thesiamsociety.org or call 02-661-6470--3 ext 203.
