New Scene en

An artistic style that emerged towards the end of the 1960s in Malaysia. A group of young artists, who had returned from their art studies in the United Kingdom and the United States and were influenced by ‘hard-edged’ Constructivist and Minimalist ideas, put forward an idea that art-making could be rational and objective, based on ‘pure’ elements of art such as line, colour, texture and shape. This approach to art disregarded nature and external realities, as well as subjective emotions and sensations. In 1969 this group of artists held their first exhibition ‘The New Scene’, which was positioned as a response to the abstract expressionist tendencies dominating the Malaysian art scene at that time. Called the New Scene artists hereafter, the group continued to hold exhibitions, wrote manifestos and organized dialogues to promote their artistic ideas.