Is it a painting, a calligraphy or a cut parchment of declaration in a transcribed soliloquy with a titular name that could perhaps confuse and pique more than clarify? It’s a spontaneous rambling of a spotless mind, like painting strokes, but with blemishes et al with the letterings dripping down by sheer gravity, an intimation about life taken from where the top was cut off. Something like the German Conceptualist Hanne Darboven block of cursive scribbles. It’s bottle anxiety, about some kind of vicarious thrill from being alone, with some hope and fear about what the future would bring, and then imagining himself on a boat, rudderless perhaps and hostage to the water current. This is an example of penmanship that earned Datuk Ibrahim Hussein a place at the Nanyang Academy of Fine Art in Singapore (1956), which he didn’t complete as destiny had prepared him for the life of art that has made him an iconic artist and a legend. Going by the tenor about the meaning of life and its absurdities, one would think the Kanchana title refers to something esoteric, like the Sanskrit word meaning ‘golden’. Probably it’s the name of a Thai woman he met while in New York. How the name triggers or conjures up such running script is anybody’s guess, but it does present a transformative way in maybe, how Pop Art, invited the textual into its body politic. Datuk Ibrahim Hussein is an extraordinarily gifted artist impacting the world with prestigious awards such as the Crystal Award (presented by the World Economic Forum, 1977), the Order of Andres Bello of Venezuela (1993), the Order of Bernardo Higgins of Chile (1996), the Japan Foundation Cultural Award (1988) and Malaysia’s Anugerah Tokoh Terbilang (2007) and is the only artist conferred the Datuk title thrice. Datuk Ibrahim’s tripartite exhibition that also featured Andy Warhol and Salvador Dali, in Kuwait in 1977 was a game-changer for him. He was the first Malaysian in the Venice Biennale (1970), through the aegis of the American Smithsonian Institute workshop. Datuk Ibrahim was accorded a Retrospective by the National Art Gallery in 1986. He set up the Ibrahim Hussein Museum and celebrated it by organising the Langkawi International Festival of Arts in 2000. He also organised the Club Mediterranee Asian Arts Festival in Bali (Indonesia, 1987) and Cherating (Pahang, 1988). His art tutelage was in the Byam Shaw School of Drawing and Painting (1959-1963) and the Royal Academy in London (1963-1966). A double scholarship of Fulbright and John D. Rockefeller II Fund in the 1960s saw him in the United States, with two solos in New York to boot.