Danarto

Biography

In 1973, at the Ismail Marzuki Arts Centre in Jakarta, Danarto staged an exhibition called “Empty Canvas” (Kanvas Kosong): white canvases lay on the floor, “white on white”. For a writer known above all for his stories, it is a rather eloquent gesture.

He was born in the Sragen regency of Central Java, in the Dutch East Indies. Sources give different years of birth, 1940 or 1941; the day is always 27 June. His father worked at a sugar factory (sources call him a foreman in one place and a labourer in another), and his mother sold batik at the market. By one account Danarto was the fourth of five children. He finished school in Solo.

From 1958 to 1961 he studied at the Indonesian Academy of Fine Arts in Yogyakarta (known by its Indonesian acronym, ASRI). At the same time he edited the children’s magazine Si Kuncung. From 1959 to 1964 he belonged to Sanggar Bambu (the “Bamboo Studio”), a group that brought together painting, theatre and literature. The painting “Rasa Pasar” (“Market Spirit”, 1962) dates from this time and later entered the collection of the National Gallery of Indonesia.

From the late 1960s he wrote short stories and published them in periodicals. In 1968 the story “Rintrik” won a prize from the magazine Horison. Collections followed: “Godlob” (1968 or 1975, depending on the source), “Nostalgia” (1971) and “Adam Ma’rifat” (1982). The last of these won a prize from the Jakarta Arts Council. His prose is full of mysticism, Sufi imagery and subjects from Javanese epic, and the boundaries of place and time are blurred. Some pieces are built as parodies: “Nostalgia” reworks the battle of Kurukshetra from the Mahabharata. He is regarded as one of the first Indonesian authors to write in the manner of magical realism. One of his poems, “Nine Squares”, consists of nine empty boxes with no words. To my mind this is the same logic as “Empty Canvas”.

Alongside this came theatre and teaching. From 1969 to 1974 Danarto worked with the Ismail Marzuki Arts Centre, and in 1970 he was chief designer of the Indonesian group at Expo ’70 in Osaka. From 1973 he taught at the Jakarta Institute of the Arts (then known as LPKJ, now the Jakarta Institute of the Arts, IKJ). In 1978 he performed and designed sets with the troupe of the choreographer and director Sardono Waluyo Kusumo, which toured Europe and Asia. He took part in the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa (1976) and designed the staging of “Oedipus” directed by the dramatist and poet Rendra. In 1978 he showed an exhibition of concrete poetry. Later he worked as a theatre director in Jakarta.

Among his other books are “Orang Jawa Naik Haji” (1983), an account of his pilgrimage to Mecca, published in English as “A Javanese Pilgrim in Mecca”; the collection “Berhala” (1987); the novel “Asmaraloka” (1999); and the collection “Kacapiring” (2008). His stories appeared in English in the translation of Harry Aveling: “Abracadabra” (1978). In Russian, “Nostalgia” (1988) and “Above Heaven and Earth” (2011) have been published.

In 1988 Danarto received the S.E.A. Write Award, a literary prize for Southeast Asian writers, and in 2009 the Ahmad Bakrie Award for literature.

He died in Jakarta in April 2018; according to most accounts, on 10 April. He was buried in Sragen, next to his parents.