And to think just a few years ago I would say, “Nothing ever changes in Burma….”

 

 

 

 

 

Wow!

 

 

 

 

My sincere thanks to good friend Ma Thanegi for providing the following excerpt from her new book, This is Kin Maung Yin.

 

“The man…

KMY, as he often signs his paintings, is more artist than man… the passion of his art suffuses his being so thoroughly that it seems he never had much to do with or within the human realm. He dismisses luxury or material possessions as superfluous. He never had any use for them in the first place so that he did not even have to discard them after deliberation and awareness, which usually come with time and maturity.

There is no hypocrisy in him, for he does not care what others think of him, only of what he thinks of himself. If he speaks of people, himself included, he speaks of facts, never presumptions. He cannot do evil nor harbour malice, for these are, in even their lightest sense, alien to his nature and not acceptable to his soul.

******************

Dr. Toe Toe Tin, grand daughter of Daw Khin Thet Tin and niece of KMY, recalled another incident about how much KMY loves music. In the late ‘80s she had bought a video tape of Milos Forman Amadeus, the eight academy award-winning movie on the life of Mozart. KMY heard from the family grapevine that Toe Toe had it and arrived on her doorstep.

“He came about 10 a.m., and my parents were thrilled to see him, thinking he’d come to see them. He immediately said he wanted to watch Amadeus, and he sat down and began watching it over and over I don’t know how many tines, until late in the evening. My parents simply went to bed, as they had no chance at all to have a chat with him.”)

******************

The artist….

About why he wanted to become an artist, KMY would write: “I paint because I am interested in colours; I love to spread colours on the clean surface of the canvas. I like to use colours straight out of the tube. No mixing for me, I only do it when it’s really necessary. I like colours to be kept separate on the canvas, too, not seeped into each other. I like them pure and simple.”

As he wrote in English in one article “Simplicity is perfection and perfection is tender”. He knew the fragility of perfection and has done not the slightest harm to it.

******************

When he began doing abstracts, his pure, gem-like colours astounded all viewers. Artists agree that no one in Myanmar was better at non-objective themes than him. It was not only the colours but his strong sense of composition that made these works full of joy as well as luminosity. He was doing portraits from time to time and he also made sketches of faces, often his own or of artists and writers and international figures he admired. Perhaps these inspired his famous seated ladies series but it could also be the result of his love for Things Myanmar. He never wanted to live away from his country and he found many subjects to paint that symbolised Myanmar culture.

******************

His friend Win Pe explained in an interview: “KMY read a great deal before he started painting; he looked at a lot of paintings. Others usually begin painting with some trepidation, but from the start KMY knew exactly what he must do, exactly what he wanted to do. He is simply painting what he wants and how he wants, as he always did. He is true to his art.”

The purity of his colours defines KMY’s art.

The purity of his mind defines KMY’s life.

He is simply and sincerely loved by all who know him, for his simplicity and sincerity.

This is Kin Maung Yin.”

—Available at Lokanat Gallery or by mail from Select Books, Singapore.

 

 

My favorite short story by U Win Pe.

This introduction is very dated as it is from the first edition (1993) of the book INKED OVER, RIPPED OUT : “U Win Pe is generally agreed to be one of Burma’s most popular storytell­ers, whether it be as a film director, a maker of video movies, or a short-story writer. Now in his mid-fifties, he is, by his own admission, something of a jack-of-all-trades; he has at various times been a journalist, cartoonist, gem dealer, musician, arts administrator, film director, painter, and writer. He grew up in an artistic family and learned Burmese classical music before he began primary school. He attended Mandalay University, studying first natu­ral sciences, then philosophy, political science, and philosophy, but he left without a degree because, as he said in an interview, he was “painting, making music, and involved in politics.”

His first job was as a cartoonist on a left-wing daily newspaper. When the paper was nationalized he went to work in the jade mines owned by his father-in-law. At the age of thirty-one he was appointed to the post of principal of the State School of Fine Arts, Music, and Dancing in Mandalay under the Ministry of Culture, which gave him some six years of experience as a government servant under the Burmese Way to Socialism. He left this post to take up filmmaking, an activity that gave more scope to his creative imagina­tion and his many talents.

U Win Pe now divides his time between film direction, painting, and writing short stories, turning to the latter two during breaks in his filming schedules. He first started writing short stories in the late 1980s, when shortages of film stock left him with time on his hands. More recently he has returned to films, but concentrates on video films, for which it is much easier and cheaper to obtain the necessary equipment in Burma. Cinema’s loss has been the gain of the literary world. U Win Pe’s varied career has furnished him with a richness of experience that gives power and authenticity to his short stories: at the same time his artist’s eye enables him to paint a scene vividly in just a few lines.”

The Middle of May

“It is hot in Mandalay in the middle of May.

By two in the afternoon, the heat is at its height and the tarmac on the main road in the Bawdigon Quarter is melting. There is not a soul to be seen. Everyone with an ounce of sense stays indoors trying to keep cool as best they can.

It was at this time of the day and year that a flatbed truck, loaded down with pots of flowering plants, was rumbling east along the A-road. There was no other traffic and it was going at quite a rate when a clay pot balanced near the edge of the back suddenly fell off. It landed on the hard, dirt road and smashed into smithereens. The soil inside scattered everywhere, and the little green plant lay denuded, just as if someone had pulled it up from the earth and shaken it free of all the soil clinging to its roots.

The truck driver braked sharply and the tires gave out a screech, piercing the stifling silence of the neighborhood. People from the surrounding houses came running out to see what was up. The driver’s mate sprang down from the cab and looked back at the broken pot—the debris was already a full fifty or sixty feet behind. Instead of running back to pick up the pot, he glanced up at the driver with annoyance and said, “It’s in bits, boss.”

“What sort is it, one of the big or little ones?”

“Little.”

“Forget it, then. Jump in!”

The heat had made them impatient and with another screech of their tires, they were gone.

Go to the archive to continue The Middle of May