Aesthetic Criticism of “Longing for Love” by Syed Thajudeen

Abstract

With more than thirty years of creative output and a significant body of works to consolidate his reputation, Syed Thajudeen Shaikh Abu Talib, ranks as one of Malaysian's eminent figurative and lyrical painters. Thajudeen fuses indigenous motifs and symbols with universal ideas and concepts, filtered through his Indian background and circumstance. Syed Thajudeen is one of visual artists, who has been successful in achieving universal appeal in his works by bringing together symbols and motifs in Malaysian with aesthetic and metaphysical elements of Indian's arts. The theory has been used in this study is Art Appreciation by Harry Samuel Broudy. According to Broudy, Art Appreciation theory has been divided to two parts: 1) Aesthetic perception which is divided in four steps: sensory properties, formal properties, technical properties and expressive properties. 2) Aesthetic criticism which is divided in three steps: historical, re-creative and judicial. In this paper, the focus is on second part of art appreciation theory and in this aim, one master piece of artist's artworks "Longing for Love" has been selected from five main collections of "Paintings of Love". This research investigates the visual image in the painting of Syed Thajudeen Shaik Abu Talib; how it has been stirred inside the imagination? How it got stimulated by the figures and forms that are familiar to the transformations inside the artist's mind? And how it was born again on the canvas?

Chronology of Representation of Women in Painting in Malaysia: From 1930 to 2020

“…Umumnya wanita direpresentasikan dalam karya sepanjang masa pada semua budaya merujuk kepada keindahan fizikal (Lippit, 2020;Jungmann, 2018). Walau bagaimanapun, wanita mewakili pelbagai situasi, budaya, identiti (Synn, 2020;van Loon et al, 2020;Jungmann, 2018;Baicy, 2017), memvisualkan perasaan (Khanahmadi & Kahn, 2016), memperlihatkan sisi feminin (Lee, 2021;Pearce 2021;Abdullah, 2020;Jusoh, Sauman & Ramli, 2018;HBART, 2010), serta mewakili imej keagamaan (Liebregts, 2021;Min, 2021;Pearce, 2021;Zilberstein et al, 2021;George, 2020;Ghezelayagh, Fooladian & Khoshmardan, 2020;Baicy, 2017;Qasim, 2013). Penyataan ini dapat dilihat melalui kajian berkenaan sejarah representasi wanita dalam dua tamadun di dunia, iaitu tamadun purba Mesir dan China.…”

“…Selain daripada itu, untuk tahun 2000 sehingga 2010, diwakili oleh Syed Thajudeen bertajuk "Loging for Love II" tahun 2007 (Figura 8) berkongsi emosi cinta dan rindu seorang wanita terhadap pasangannya dalam penantian (Khanahmadi, 2016). Akhir sekali, pada tahun 2011 sehingga 2020, catan bertajuk "Teribble Two" (Figura 9) oleh Fadilah Karim merupakan potret diri pelukis dalam menjalani rutin hariannya di rumah bersama anaknya (Lee, 2021).…”

“…Ianya adalah, potret seorang isteri (Rahim, Mokhtar, Vermol, Legino, 2021), potret diri (Ting, 2019), menjelaskan identiti budaya dan masyarakat tempatan (Abdullah, 2020;HBART, 2019) serta menunjukkan tentang aktiviti wanita (Abdullah, 2020;Aziz, 2019). Selain itu, penggunaan wanita memvisualkan karakter ibu (Lee, 2021;HBART, 2012), menjelaskan pekerjaan wanita (Lin, 2019) serta menggambarkan emosi dan ekspresi (Lin, 2019;Khanahmadi, 2016).…”

“…Penggunaan figura wanita dalam catan tempatan memberi refleksi terhadap ciri-ciri yang sama yang ada pada catan di Barat dan Asia. Ianya mencakupi estetika sifat semulajadi feminine (Lee, 2021;Rahim, Mokhtar, Vermol, Legino, 2021;HBART, 2012) keadaan ekonomi semasa (Aziz, 2019) dan situasi sosial wanita (Lin, 2019), melambangkan identiti budaya, bangsa (Abdullah, 2020;HBART, 2019), dan emosi serta ekspresi (Lin, 2019;Khanahmadi, 2016) pada era tertentu. Penyataan-penyataan ini membuktikan bahawa, representasi wanita menyampaikan pelbagai situasi, karakter dan keadaan yang berlaku dalam era tertentu.…”