Bagyi Aung Soe, “My Embarrassment: Confessions of a Painter”, Sanpepyu (Oct 1985), 5154.1
51 “Truth is the only beauty.” I was quite young when I first entered the art scene. The young man that I was was a windbag, always having the tendency to think highly of himself although he was not really good at painting. I could not beat the painters [artists] who were already established in the art scene and get [my works] published in the newspapers, magazines and journals in those days. In my opinion, I assumed that I was better than them, that I could do way better than those artists, and that they would not know and could not create as much as I could. Therefore, I created my own kind of art by copying so-called “psychological” [Burmese: စိတၱေဗဒ] “Modern Art” [English] from books and made it “New Painting” [Art; Burmese: ပန္းခ်ီသစ#]. I was just pretending that I understood modern painting [art], although my understanding of it was not as complete as it is now. In that way, I managed to break into the field of printed media and became a household name. When people asked me, “What is it that you draw?” I could not explain it well since I did not know what I had drawn either. So, I would talk back to them, “I can’t explain. You’d better look at it and think about what I drew on your own.” The truth is, I could not clarify because I was only plagiarising others. Actually, modern painting [art] can be explained: what and why. 52 1
Characteristic of usage in the modern period, the Burmese word meaning “painting” is often used to stand for “art”, and likewise “painter” for “artist”. In this article, the original meaning of “painting” and “painter” is favoured. When translated as “art” and “artist”, “[painting]” and “[painter]” in square brackets follows. Bagyi Aung Soe, “My Embarrassment: Confessions of a Painter”, Sanpepyu (Oct 1985), 51-54. Translated by Pann Hmone Wai; edited by Yin Ker.
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AungSoeillustrations.org