Cubic Roots; How Asians transformed a European movement.

Byline: Sonia Kolesnikov-Jessop

Malaysian painter Syed Ahmad Jamal can still remember when he discovered cubism. It was in 1951 in a bookshop in London, where the then 22-year-old bought his first art book on the work of Georges Braque. "I didn't even know the word existed," he recalls. "In those days, cubism hadn't really spread in Asia."

Eventually, it did. Just how widely--and uniquely--Asians adapted the movement is the fascinating subject of "Cubism in Asia: Unbounded Dialogues," a new show at the Singapore Art Museum (through April 9). With more than 120 modern works from 11 countries, the exhibition brings together some of Asia's most famous 20th-century artists, including Jamal, Anita Magsaysay-Ho from the Philippines, Thawan Duchanee from Thailand and F. N. Souza from India. "The idea for the exhibition was not to show what Asian cubism is, but to look at ways Western ideas permeate within the Asian space," explains Singapore Art Museum (SAM) curator Ahmad Mashadi, who co-organized the show.

Indeed, when it first began in Paris in the early 20th century, cubism was viewed as a radical way of redefining space in paintings. The movement quickly revolutionized European art, but spread slowly in Asia. And even then, the "buffet mentality" of Asian artists meant cubism never became more than one of the many Western styles expressed in their art. "Some like [the late Singaporean artist] Chen Wen Hsi thought nothing of switching from cubist painting one day to traditional Chinese inkwork the next," says SAM director Kwok Kian Chow.

Japan was the first Asian country to embrace cubism, around 1910. The style took another decade to appear in China --and Korea, and did not really penetrate Southeast Asia until the 1950s--ironically, at a time when many nations were gaining independence. Part of its appeal stemmed from the fact that cubism marked a rejection of Orientalism, the exoticized representation of Asian cultures that had contributed to the colonial project.

While references to Pablo Picasso's work in particular regularly cropped up in Asian cubism--most obviously in ...