Those used to Latiff Mohidin’s Voyage series iconography of Star Trek-like dirigible USS Enterprise, might be surprised with this Rimbaud II work, still under the Voyage nomenclature, done between 2001 to 2008. Voyage is Latiff’s painterly excursions into Nature and ancient civilisations, besides allusions to literary figures. It’s probably a tribute of sorts to the controversial French Symbolist poet Arthur Rimbaud, as proclaimed in the title, but the metaphor used is less certain... The image, executed with the ponderous strokes of Voyage as compared to Gelombang, is obviously that of a place. As a poet too, and a SEA Write Awardee at that, Latiff may be weaving Rimbaud’s poetical stanzas in between the interstices of blooming vegetal clumps in front of what looks like a building. As Rimbaud had residences in various places in London, the French-Belgium border or Harare in Ethiopia, where he spent some five years, the location is anyone’s guess. The painting, by itself is interesting, and Latiff has also paid tribute to Charles Baudelaire in the same Voyage series, which was unveiled at Galeri Petronas in 2007. Suffice, Rimbaud has a ‘bad boy’ reputation like Indonesia’s Chairil Anwar. Latiff Mohidin is a national treasure in paint, print (printmaking), bronze (sculpture) and letters (poet, essayist and translator), being fluent in three languages – Malay, English and German. He started as a hobo, where he created the iconic Pago-Pago Series (1960-1969), the headlined mega three-month exhibition held at the prestigious Pompidou Centre in Paris in 2018, and organised by the National Gallery Singapore and Pompidou. Latiff was awarded a major Retrospective at the National Art Gallery Malaysia in December 2012 to June 2013, his second. His art studies were at the Hochschule fur Bildende Kunst in West Berlin. He won the John D. Rockefeller III Fellowship to study at Pratt Institute in New York (1965), and the French scholarship to study printmaking at the Atelier Lacouriere-Frelaut in Paris (1969). He was also won 2nd Prize (Graphics) in the 1968 Salon Malaysia. In literature, he won the SEA Write Award twice (1984 and 1986) and the Malaysian Literary Awards from 1972 to 1976, and he was also appointed Guest Writer at Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka in 1988.