Just who is that woman on the wall?

The play Georgette begins with this question – appropriate enough for a woman whose early life is relatively unknown. Georgette Chen is mainly known as a pioneering Singaporean artist and one of the few women of that time. As a result, it is Georgette Chen’s arrival at Singapore customs that has captured the attention of heritage boards and historians, examining her impact on the Singapore art scene and her role in Singapore history. If there is a mention of her pre-Singapore activities, it is contained in the following words – born, married, studied, left.

Part of these lacunae is due to resources, rather than the understandable desire to cast a nationalistic cloak on Georgette. Georgette’s Singapore life is well-documented – simply because she was here. By contrast, records of her earlier life lie scattered across three continents, and in all likelihood, gone.

All is left is the question that the play tries to answer - who is Georgette Chen? Throughout the play, her portrait hangs, enigmatic as the Mona Lisa herself.

A narrator begins the musical, introducing us to the mystery of Georgette Chen. From there, the story proper begins at a customs checkpoint in Paris. Georgette Chen is still the bright eyed Chang Liying, and as the customs officer asks for the purpose of her visit, she declares confidently, “To be an artist!”

That customs checkpoint is a leitmotiv of sorts, in Georgette’s life. For the rest of the musical, Georgette bounces from continent to continent, crossing customs and cultures, with a family reunion in China, an art exhibition in New York, a stopover in Malaya. Georgette was a cosmopolitan woman, an enthusiastic traveller, and always in movement.

The sheer energy of the musical brings across this multiplicity of experiences that infused Georgette’s early life. A Moulin Rouge-sque hokey number introduces as to the La Bohemia that is Toulouse-Latrec’s Paris. An awkward family dinner, where modernity clashes with traditional customs, emphasises Georgette’s status of standing between worlds. A completely unnecessary Caribbean-influenced jingle jarrs, but otherwise the music is perfectly serviceable, tapping into common musical genres.

In certain ways this is not so much a musical about Georgette, but about Georgette’s world. By examining the world she lives in, the playwright Ng Yi-Sheng deliberately, or otherwise, compels us to understand the forces that were potentially shaping her worldview. Georgette herself as portrayed in this musical is oddly uncomplicated - she is a fairly standard literary character, that of a rebellious young artist, with a great love that forms her anchor. By focusing on her world, Ng escapes certain problems of having to recreate Georgette with the little textual evidence available, but instead draws on what is commonly known about the greater world to let the audience fill in the blanks themselves.

This has the potential to turn into a messy pastiche, if not for Eugene, Georgette Chen’s first husband and the great love of her life. The strength of their marriage and their mutual affection has been documented in the form of Georgette’s numerous sketches of her diplomat husband. The essence of their relationship plays out across several continents and in a particularly charming song by the narrator. The strength of their marriage sings out bright and clear, despite career paths that sent them in different directions – Georgette in New York for an exhibition, Eugene in Australia for peace talks, and a hopeful rendezvous in Malaya. Here, too, the most unusual aspect of Georgette Chen is illustrated; a powerfully independent career woman, confident of her love and lover.

The story of their love forms the overarching narrative for the early portion of Georgette’s life, framing and punctuating the story being told. A chapter of Georgette’s story ends with Eugene’s death, and she arrives on at a Singapore customs point, much as she began, waiting to paint a new life.

That being said, something more complex than a usual “rich girl bucking against society” would have been interesting. Georgette was unconventional for her time, but unconventionality is getting, well, rather conventional when it comes to historical figures. If only the historical sources had allowed a deeper look into her thoughts on art and representation, which might have given a sense of Georgette’s importance in Singapore art history, other than being unconventional. As it is, the uninformed viewer is left slightly puzzled as to what all the fuss is about this “woman on the wall”.

But for all this faults, Georgette wins on sheer charm, thanks to Ng Yi-Sheng’s deft handling of multiple genres and the English language.

So who is the woman on the wall? The question is repeated at the end, with the chorus in front of easels, Georgette’s portrait watching overhead. Judging by the musical, Georgette could be anything you wanted her to be – devoted lover, independent traveller, patient daughter, and of course, an artist. Now, if only there was a sequel.

Ng Yi-Sheng is a playwright, performance artist, and free-lance writer. Other works include 251 (the Annabel Chong story) and the book SQ21, profiling Singaporean homosexuals. He also has a completed play called The Last Temptation of Raffles, which has been read, but not performed. The reviewer strongly approved of the play, and hints broadly that it’s looking for a sponsor.

1. Having watched the play Georgette, what do you think of the playwright’s depiction of Georgette’s early life? How realistic is any of it?

First and foremost, it is the prerogative of the playwright to exercise his imagination in the depiction of Georgette Chen. The play should therefore, not be judged strictly on the criteria of how realistic it was in its depiction of Georgette Chen. Although Georgette is a towering historical figure in the history of art in Singapore and Malaysia, one which therefore demands a certain level of historical accuracy, imaginative use of invented characters to enrich our understanding of her life and struggles is illuminating.

For instance, Georgette’s aversion to her parents, who were portrayed as the embodiment of the bourgeois with their high-flying lifestyle and disdain for the proletariat highlights her strong personality and sympathy for the more unfortunate, while prompting audiences to question Georgette’s own privileged background and how she benefited from it by being able to travel to countries such as France and America, places that artists in Singapore could only dream of then.

There is scant evidence supporting the play’s portrayal of her parents as unsupportive of her decision to either marry Eugene Chen, her first husband due to their large age gap or her desire to be an artist. In all probability, Georgette’s ability to study at the Academie Colarossi, Academe Biloul and the Art Students’ League when she was young and still financially dependent on her parents implies her parent’s approval and support of her as an artist. However, these are of academic interests. What the play succeeds is to bring Georgette’s personality to life with honesty and humanity without exaggerating or creating an image of her that is larger than her real life, and that is “realistic” enough for me.

2. The play Georgette ends when she steps on Singapore soil. However, clearly her story doesn’t end there - what’s part 2?

The play ends with Georgette coming to Singapore in 1954. It is certainly a rational to divide her life into her life before and after she settled in Singapore. Ni Yi-Sheng was also astute in choosing to focus on the first part of her life, which is relatively less researched and thus more amenable for imaginative interventions on the part of the playwright.

From a playwright’s perspective, there are several potentially interesting areas that one can explore after Gerogette settled in Singapore. Her artistic and personal friendships forged with her contemporaries and students will be interesting. How was her relationship with other women artists such as Lai Foong Moi and Sun Yee? She also developed close relations with historical figures such as Tunku Abdul Rahman, the then Prime Minister of Malaysia.

On her personal life, she had a tumultuous relationship with her second husband, who was also a close friend of Eugene. Her own health also deteriorated and how she coped will be something else to explore. I firmly believe that a second instalment is warranted and will be even more interesting and relevant to Singapore audiences.

3. How would you describe Georgette’s paintings in Singapore? Were they different from her earlier works, in style or subject matter?

Georgette was an artist with conviction and belief in her own artistic practice. In terms of subject matter, she remained fairly consistent throughout her life. Landscapes, portraits and still life largely dominated her paintings. There were, however, changes in her style.

Georgette’s earlier style (i.e. works done before she came to Singapore in 1954) was heavily influenced by Cezanne. In Still Life with Cut Apple and Orange, her formal interests in colour, composition, and loose brushwork to create volume and shape is evident. In this work, the different textures of the sliced oranges and apples rendered convincingly is testimony to her painterly abilities.

In comparison, her later works such as Mosque in Kuala Lumpur (1957) and Tropical Fruits (1969), her brushwork is more controlled and colours more vibrant. The bright tropical sun in Singapore could have influenced her use of brighter colours. Apples and oranges in the still lifes of her earlier works are replaced by fruits and other foodstuffs such as pineapples and rambutans found in the region of Southeast Asia. Some of her later works were signed as “Chen” from “top-down”, following the convention of traditional Chinese Ink painting rather than “left to right” in accordance to Euro-American painting conventions.

4. Did Georgette ever really pioneer the new style - “neither east nor west” that the play claimed she was looking for?

The new style probably refers to the “Nanyang Style”, which is a synthesis of pictorial conventions from Chinese Ink painting and the School of Paris. The School of Paris can be understood as a series of styles such as Cubism, Impressionism and Fauvism based on the pictorial conventions derived from the Western easel traditions.

In my opinion, the “Nanyang Style” was not pioneered by any one specific artist. The understanding of the Nanyang Style as “neither east nor West” is also understandably simplistic. It is after all a play, not an art historical exercise. In fact, recent studies on the Nanyang Style have began to question it as a “style”, loosely defined as an artist’s or group of artists’ characteristic manner of expression.

The problem is, artists whose practices are rooted in the Nanyang Style (e.g. Chen Wen Hsi, Cheong Soo Pieng, Chen Chong Swee, Liu Kang, Georgette Chen and so on) are eclectic in terms of medium, genre and even artistic ideas. The lack of coherence in the Nanyang Style is reflected by the split in Nanyang artists whose artistic practices centred on Chinese Ink and Brush and others who used oils. I prefer to use the term “Nanyang Movement” because a movement captures the diverse artistic interests and motives of a group of émigré artists from China (otherwise known as the Nanyang Chinese) who shared a desire to synthesize pictorial traditions from the “Chinese Scroll” and the “Western Easel” and a particular vision of seeing and representing the Nanyang.

5. What role did Georgette Chen play in the development of the Singapore Arts scene?

This is a broad question and as such, I will only highlight some aspects of her contributions towards the Singapore art world, focusing on her role as an art teacher at NAFA.

Georgette was an influential teacher at NAFA who taught oil painting for students enrolled in Western art. As a teacher, she encouraged students such as Ng Eng Teng to pursue their artistic education overseas through the friends and schoolmates such as Professor Chaplin Midy, whom she knew at the L’Ecole Nationale Superieure des Beaux Arts in Paris. For example, she encouraged Eng Teng to continue his interests in sculpture, who later became one of Singapore’s foremost sculptor and ceramists.

She would never insist on teaching students to paint in a particular style or worse still, copy her style. Encouraging students to find their own artistic direction was her pedagogical approach. Even students who detracted from her own artistic practice received support and encouragement from her. For instance, former she aided a group of NAFA students who leaned towards Social Realism to register their art society, called the Equator Art Society. Given her official connections, she was able to assist in the registration of the society in 1956.

Being fluent in English, (amongst other languages which included Bahasa Melayu, Mandarin and French), she symbolised the epitome of the cosmopolitan and modern woman who pursued her dreams as an artist in the face of seemingly insurmountable difficulties. Societal perceptions of artist as a viable career were dim and even more so for a woman, who at that time was probably, expected to play the role of a homemaker. Like other women artists in the 1950s such as Lai Foong Moi and Sun Yee, Georgette Chen paved the way for more women artists to choose art as their career.

Having travelled and studied in Paris and New York, the art centres of the world, her cosmopolitanism and ability to communicate in different languages allowed her to attract students of other nationalities, which gave NAFA a more global dimension by having students of different cultures interacting with one another. Having a teacher like Georgette who had actually studied fine art at the most well known academies added to the prestige of NAFA. Georgette brought to NAFA an expanded vision of an academy that drew both local and foreign students.

5b. What is so interesting about the Equator Art Society?

The Equator Art Society, officially registered on 22 June 1956 was one that emerged from what Kwok Kian Chow described as a realist confluence. This society was the primary force behind the Social Realism as a style in Singapore/Malaya. The Society was therefore played an important role as a proponent of Social Realism and its ideologies.

Art related activities organized by the Equator Art Society included art classes that were divided into three levels - beginner, intermediate and advance, exhibitions for its members, art theoretical research, study seminars, and even had possibly over 300 members at its height. Besides the fine arts department of the art society, the literature, music and theatre departments were also active.

However, the Equator Art Society de-registered on January 11, 1974 with 6 exhibitions held at various locations such as the Victoria Memorial Hall, the Chinese Chamber of Commerce and its premises at 56 Geylang Lorong 32, Singapore 14. Some Equator artists have since achieved commercial success and their place in the art history of Singapore cemented while there are others who have been cast outside the pale of history for various reasons. Most importantly, the history of the Equator Art Society is still shrouded in mystery.

To date, in-depth studies that devote entirely to the Equator Art Society remain almost non-existent, a situation exemplified by the mystery that still surrounds the reasons behind its dissolution in 1974. It is also precisely the deafening silence on what exactly happened to such a prominent art society that must have played an important role in shaping the history of Singapore art that renewed interest in the Equator Art Society is currently propelled by the series of Errata exhibitions organized and curated by p-10 and art researcher Mr. Koh Nguang How. This art society is further mystified by a plethora of representations or possibly misrepresentations of it as “leftist” organization.

A Masters graduate from the Department of History, National University of Singapore, Yu Jin is currently an Assistant Curator at the Singapore Art Museum.