Nanyang Style
[3][9] In the accompanying exhibition catalogue, Sabapathy examined the Nanyang artists' use of School of Paris styles and Chinese ink traditions in their practices and pictorial schemas, noting that their approaches "can be identified with the principal directions of modern art.
"[3] This suggests that the creation of a Nanyang style is based on the strategic selection of varied approaches and techniques, chosen to suit each artist's sense of expression in terms of connotations and aesthetics.
Works from Singapore in the 1930s demonstrated early attempts of artists to capture local life and aesthetics in the region, incorporating tropical light and its motifs.
[2] The Nanyang artists' interest in Southeast Asia may be seen as part of a broader historical phenomenon of Malayanisation, occurring as Chinese immigrants renounced ties with China to settle across Malaya and in Singapore.
[3] Nanyang art may be considered an open-ended category, established on the ambiguous idea of "localness" in their approach to subject matter that would expand over time, starting with the Straits Settlements and eventually growing in scope to encompass the entire Southeast Asia region, such as the works produced during a 1952 painting trip to Bali.
[3] This concept of the "local" is complicated when one considers that many of the Nanyang artists often viewed Southeast Asia from the perspective of a tourist with an inherent exoticisation of their subject matter, made more critical considering Nanyang art's depiction of Southeast Asia as a tropical paradise while the wider phenomenon of its decolonisation played out across the mid-20th century.
[3] Le Mayeur was part of a community of European artists that had been attracted to the region and based themselves in Bali, their practices perpetuating images of the place as an idyllic corner of Southeast Asia.
The art style reflects the universal culture of migrants, who in this case adapted to and accepted a new mix of Western, Chinese and Eastern beliefs and practices.
