EUROPEAN ARTISTS IN SINGAPORE DURING THE EARLY 20TH CENTURY: TOWARDS A GLOBAL MULTICULTURAL UNDERSTANDING OF NANYANG ART

Abstract

This thesis enriches and expands on normative definitions of Nanyang art discourse that are largely confined to the contributions of Chinese migrants, by examining different groups of European artists who fled the instability of interwar Europe to practice art in Singapore alongside Chinese artists at the turn of the 20th century. Beyond the usual narrative, this thesis argues that European artists, as well as their localization of Western artistic genres (as varied as Russian Peredvizhniki art, German Secessionism, and Italian Neoclassicism), had an equal role in shaping Nanyang art. Importantly, this thesis shows that the search for the local/ Nanyang was a quest underpinned by an aspiration to become modern through an openness to Otherness or the foreign from both sides, a sentiment that became intensified under Singapore’s cosmopolitan setting during the immediate pre-war years. In short, this thesis shows how Nanyang art has global, multicultural origins and impacts.