Tan Swie Hian
Portrait of an Artist and a Writer
Indonesia-born Tan Swie Hian’s paintings have sold at auctions for millions of dollars. He broke into the Chinese art market when few foreigners did. His literary output—40 volumes of verse, criticism, prose and translations—is equally impressive.
When the hammer came down during the Beijing Poly International Auction in November 2014, Portrait of Bada Shanren by Tan Swie Hian drew a figure of $4.4 million. This auction house is said to be the world’s third largest by sales after Sotheby’s and Christie’s. Tan’s success was viewed as a major achievement for Singaporean artists, as the booming Chinese art market has been dominated by big-name Chinese artists and a continued demand for Western art.
Art has been part of Tan’s life since young. Growing up in Indonesia, he often drew pictures of the God of Earth and folk heroes for his neighbours. When he was 12, his parents sent him to Singapore, where he attended a primary school in Jurong and later, The Chinese High School.
During his adolescence, Tan said he played truant, got into fights and was almost expelled. His father wanted him to run the family business back home, but he turned down the opportunity. He repeated another year of school, during which he participated in art competitions and bagged many awards.
Eventually, Tan made it to Nanyang University. There, he studied Modern Languages and Literature, and immersed himself in the works of John Keats, T.S. Eliot and other writers. Tan’s affinity for both Eastern and Western artistic traditions is reflected in his creative works.
Tan published a volume of modern Chinese poetry, The Giant, in 1968, the year he graduated from university. It was the first anthology of Chinese modernist poetry in the literary history of Malaysia and Singapore. After his graduation, Tan worked as the press attaché at the French embassy in Singapore, while pursuing painting as a passion. He launched his first solo exhibition in 1973. At the same time, he continued publishing literary works, including translations of writers like Samuel Beckett, Henri Michaux and Jacques Prévert from French into Chinese. It was only 19 years after his first exhibition, when he had amassed enough savings, that Tan quit his job to focus on art.
Tan began to win fame in China when he published a five-volume collection of his writings there in 1993. Since then, his artworks have been on permanent display in various museums throughout the country. The works on display include an essay and calligraphy to celebrate the birthday of Huangdi, or Yellow Emperor, at his tomb. In 2004, Tan was the only Southeast Asian artist out of 20 renowned artists who were invited to collaborate with South African anti-apartheid revolutionary Nelson Mandela for a charity exhibition. Tan juxtaposed the image of Mandela’s shackled hands with a Buddhist “No-Fear” hand sign, which depicts the Buddha holding up his open hand.
To Tan, art and religion are inseparable. He said in an interview with The Peak magazine, “My art is just a drop in the ocean of wisdom expounded by Prince Siddhartha (The Buddha).” Religion, he said in an interview for the book, has freed him from dogmas and superstitions, and “with an unfettered mind, everything is possible”. He published a book titled Fables in 1996, in which the stories illustrate Buddhist philosophies about man’s transient nature in the Universe. The book, first written in Chinese, has been translated into five languages. While writing the book, he meditated and spoke to “the flowers, the birds, the plants and the trees.” He said in a 1996 interview that “my understanding of life affects the way I write the fables.” Indeed, Portrait of Bada Shanren came about when Tan was meditating in his friend’s apartment in Beijing. He had an “epiphany”, he said, adding, “One night, a genius of Chinese art who is regarded as one of the most influential personalities and ink painters of his time just came to me.” And in 60 seconds, he drew Bada Shanren—a Ming dynasty prince who became a Buddhist monk in order to survive the Manchu invasion of China in 1618—and the Chinese calligraphy inscription surrounding it. Bada Shanren means “Mountain Man of the Eight Greats” and the prince was known for his black-and-white ink paintings, which were outlets for and manifestations of his grief.
Portrait of Bada Shanren fetched a higher price than Tan’s first painting auctioned in China—an acrylic and oil painting titled The Moon is Orbed (2012), which was sold for $3.7million at the Beijing Poly International Auction. No artist in Southeast Asia today has been able to sell his art at such a high price in China. Tan Chai Puan, a Malaysian poet, said in the The New York Times, “For a tiny country to have produced an artist of his calibre, recognised internationally, he’s put Singapore firmly on the international cultural map.” TIME magazine called Tan the “Singapore Renaissance man” and the The New York Times noted that Tan is “a multifaceted Singaporean Painter”.
Despite being a millionaire, Tan’s studio at Telok Kurau Studios, an art community, is barren, with only a large wooden desk, a worn sofa and a bookshelf brimming with books ranging from Vladmir Nabokov’s Lolita to Osho’s New Dawn: Here and Now, and a collection of quotes from the Tamil poet Thiruvalluvar. When a fire broke out in the studio in 2013, the first thing he did was to save a stray cat instead of his artworks. He told The New Paper that it was because “between art and life, I chose life.” Many of the diaries where he jotted down his inspirations were also destroyed, but he has slowly penned down his recollections and aims to reproduce them in a monograph.
Tan, who became a Singaporean in 1973, has amassed a total of 29 national and international accolades, among which is the Cultural Medallion, which he won in 1987, and the Meritorious Service Medal, which he received in 2003. That year he also received the World Economic Forum’s Crystal Award which honours artists for helping to make the world a better place.
References
Su-Yin Yap, “A Multifaceted Singaporean Painter Breaks Barriers,” The New York Times, Jan 12, 2015.
Koh Yuen Lin, “Tan Swie Hian–a Multifaceted Man,” The Peak, July 3, 2015,
http://thepeakmagazine.com.sg/2015/07/tan-swie-hian-a-multifaceted-man/
Kerri Heng, “Top Painter Saves cat First During Blaze,” The New Paper, January 16, 2013.
“Tan Swie Hian Fables,” The Straits Times, January 30, 1996.
Interview with Tan Swie Hian via email in June 2015.
Tan Swie Hian
Indonesia, b.1943