Tungkol sa napakaraming art/arts

Si Joseph Beuys sa isang performance art noong 1978 na may pamagat na Everyone an artist – On the way to the libertarian form of the social organism [photo pulled from Art - Wikipedia]

ANG specific arts and art practices walang problema sa kanilang mga sarili. Wala naman usually problema sa mga bagay na yan, tungkol sa kanilang pagiging art, until may nagta-tackle sa art as a whole at nagdedeklarang ang isang uri ng art ay art at ang isa ay hindi.

    For instance, pag may nagsasabing painting na may drawing lang ang tunay na art at ang abstract painting ay hindi, o di kaya na ang installation art o bricolage art using found objects ay hindi, dyan nagkakaroon ng problema.

    In fact, kahit sa painting palang marami nang sub-arts, if you will, at may mga nasa mother art o sa isang sub-art nito na hindi nakakaintindi sa isa pang sub-art ng mother art na ito. Ibang practice ang minimal art, halimbawa, and superior minimal art practices were not easy intellectual practices. Of course easy sila sa ignorante. At ang sub-art na minimalism naman, meron ding sub-sub-movements.

Bawat sub-sub-art ng sub-art ng isang art practice ay may sariling lexicon na madaling pagtawanan kung di natin alam ang lexicon na ito at ang concerns nito. Kaya maaari tayong matawa pag may nagmumura sa free jazz na mga practitioners ng psychedelic pop, o mga French cuisine art practitioners na feeling high above creative norimaki art.

    The best way to criticize a product or practice of a sub-sub-sub-art of a sub-sub-art of a sub-art of an artform is to thrash it through its own lexicon. Criticize art punk or avant-garde metal or gothic fashion or Turkish fusion cuisine, for instance, not from the lexicon of grind or glam rock or ramp punk fashion or Thai cuisine, each of which latter sub-sub-sub art practices may know practically nothing about the concerns of those former. [AP-CA]

On the idea of there being real art critics distinct from the mere ass kissers

(a mini-essay inspired by a public Facebook post by artist Kin Misa)

SA ganang akin, ang problema ng art critic, akala niya siya lang ang dapat pinakikinggan tungkol sa art ni Juan. Ang problema ni Juan, gusto niya siya lang ang pinakikinggan dahil art niya raw yun. Ang problema ng art collector na may maraming pera, gusto niyang iparating na siya lang ang may huling salita sa kung aling artwork ni Juan ang superb at aling art ni Pedro ang walang kuwenta.
    Ako ay political critic. Wala akong pakialam sa problema ng ibang political critics tulad ni Tom. Wala rin akong pakialam sa problema ng mga pulitiko tulad ni Dick. Wala rin akong pakialam sa problema ng mga powerbrokers tulad ni Harry na may hawak na mga political pundits at pulitiko na rin.
    Pero, teka. Mali yata ako. Kasi sa mga sinabi kong iyon, di ba't kasasampal ko lang sa mga problema nila? At dahil sinampal ko ang presensiya nila, ibig sabihin, pinoproblema ko pa rin sila!
    Well, paano ka naman tatahimik kung nakikita mo silang tatlo at hindi lamang ang isa?

AND since we mentioned the word political, I'd have to agree that art criticism is indeed politicking, in many senses of the word, depending on how one is politiciking with their art criticism. Presumably, some, if not all, critics have their own agenda.
    It's a given, then, that critics and curators and art theorists do carry these agendas of theirs with them, some not even latently or subtly but in the loudest fashion available to them, and in some cases in cahoots, even, with artists and artists' groups whose considerations for a buying public might come last. It is "the modern conceit," this artmaking and art-seeing within one's politics, and vice versa, shared by everyone at the production end, whether they like it or not.

HAVING said that, the ass kisser critic, being in the act of politicking within their politics of ass-kissing, is simply being an art critic and a politicker at the same time, the way all critics become every time they critique. The only difference is that not all critics own the ass-kissing politics that Tom/Dick/Harry (or whatever their name is) has, even though a nation's critics may 90%-95% be a bunch of ass kissers like Tom/Dick/Harry (or whatever their name is). But that doesn't make the ass-kissing critic a fake critic, the politics of ass-kissing being as real as any ass that is seen. In short, ass-kissing critics are real critics, and we have to acknowledge that they exist and are practicing their politics in the here and now. [AP-CA]

Paano na raw ba ang Philippine art kung walang totoong o masyadong art criticism?

 

OO. PAANO na nga raw ba ang Philippine art kung walang umuusbong na seryosong art criticism o art historical writing tungkol dito? Magiging craft na lang ba at trendy commodities tulad ng mga bagong toys na pang-Happy Meal sa McDonald's? Ironic dahil ang dating itinuturing na skill lamang ng pagluluto ng Pinoy food ay tinuturing nang art ngayon!
    Pero, you see, ang art critic, kasama yan sa isang tradisyon o movement. Minsan pa nga siya ang nagsisimula ng isang description ng isang phenomenon kung saan hindi alam ng mga artists mentioned na tila meron nga silang pagkakapareho ng reaksyon sa isang bagay o previous phenomenon. Ibig sabihin, lalabas ang pagiging art critic ng art critic kung kasama ang dugo njiya dun sa kanyang chinachampion. Mapapansin natin halimbawa na bawat critic sa Artforum ay may hilig-to-write-about at hindi magsusulat tungkol sa ibang art. Kumbaga, fan din siya. Ang Artforum mismo ay isang publication na may kinikilingang mga art trends, may sariling mga chinachampion, in the same sense na ang NME o ang Rolling Stone ay may kanya-kanyang chinachampion o kinikilingang music trends. In that reality's sense, criticism does not only carry on as a career, it carries on as a missionary post from someone na gustong makipagpatayan in defense of a trend or movement they feel they have to champion. In the Philippines kasi, ang mga nagchachampion ng persona or image trends ay mga dealers, at kumukuha na lang sila ng writers na maaaring wala namang simpatya doon sa isusulat nila. Yun ang problema, pag ang tastemaking ay di nanggagaling sa isang art critic-cum-fan, kaya nananatili lamang unwritten (or written as PR blurbs).
    So, ano ang puwedeng gawin ng art world laban sa ganitong kakulangan? Sa tingin ko simple lang. Ang artist mismo ang lalabas upang magpaliwanag sa kung saang tradisyon siya nanggagaling, ano ang kanyang direksyon, ano ang mga bagay na wala siyang pakialam. Sa ilang mga galleries sa ibang bansa, ang exhibition catalogue ay hindi lang listahan ng mga pieces na may intro ng isang hired hack, madalas narito rin ang mga gustong sabihin ng artist, in their own words, in their language, in their own style of writing, whether in little quotations o in verse. Kung kayang magsulat ng stylish na thesis ang isang pagraduate pa lang na painting student, kaya ng established artists na magdisenyo ng kanilang sariling catalogue o guide para sa kanilang art, hindi lang in visual terms kundi also in terms of textual insistence.
    Pero qualified ba ang artist na maging sarili niyang "critic" o "art historian"? Bakit hindi? Kung ang mga grunge na banda noong 1990s ay may tapang na magsabi sa harap ng kamera na gusto nilang iwasan ang kalokohan at cliches ng nagdaang glam rock both in their daily lives and in their music art, bakit hindi kaya ng isang Pinoy artist na sabihin kung ano ang kanyang gustong i-explore sa bago niyang koleksyon at ano ang gusto niyang iwasan? Of course ginagawa na ito ng ilan sa ating mga artists, minsan pa nga in words na hindi ko maintindihan. Pero ang importante kasi sa ngayon ay maipaliwanag ng artist ang kaniyang presence o modest significance. Kung sa writing ang sabi ay "don't write if you have nothing to write about," then sa painting maaaring ganun din: don't paint if you have nothing to say to the tradition you belong to (as, anyway, even a mere tribute to somebody else's art is already saying something, one only has to articulate it or visually clarify it). Kung ang isang drummer ay kayang magsabing kinombine niya ang drumming style ni Neil Peart sa comping patterns ng jazz para sa sarili niyang drum-based compositions, kaya rin ng isang artist na sabihin kung ano ang ginagawa niya sa bago niyang mga piyesa o exhibit. Sa ganitong paraan, oo't hindi nga natin masasabi na siya'y nagiging art critic na, pero siya'y nagiging art historian ng genre niya in lieu of an absence of art historians who presently are either nowhere to be found, too busy doing other things, or simply don't seem to give a crap. Sino pa nga ba ang tutulong sa artist kundi ang sarili niya? Sino ang tutulong sa mga araw na ito sa mga tulad nating ayaw mawala ang sense for art history and tradition/s kundi ang mga sarili natin? [P-CA]

Passion for Profit (and Vice-Versa) Part 2

photo borrowed from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross-stitching

CROSS-STITCHING has arrived at a level of popularity among women in the late ‘90s that had shops catering specially to the cross-stitching market cropping out everywhere. What were sold in these shops were patterns for the hobby, threads, needles and accessories, and of course such shops would usually offer framing services (largely outsourced beyond most people's knowledge).

    Many a provincial art-gallery visitor must have become accustomed by now to those constant walk-in wives’ whispered comments to their husbands regarding the steep price of paintings compared to cross-stitched works sold at cross-stitch shops. Yet the art gallery goer would simply either smirk or guffaw at these possibly middle-class- or nouveau-riche-class-deriving comments, comments therefore coming from positions of unworldliness, as it were. But, of course, those art gallery goers' guffaws would just be nervous guffaws from the art-loving world.

    Kitsch or not, when certain clients prefer to spend their hard-earned-overseas dollars-now-pesos on large cross-stitched Mona Lisas rather than on either medium-sized originals by a local artist or style-rich still life pieces from a prestigious gallery in Manila or Cebu (offered perhaps for the same modest price), neither tastelessness nor a threat should be read into this relatively mechanized reality.

    Instead, the symbols dangled by the cross-stitching presence ought to be culturally valuable to artists, gallery visitors and gallery owners---for symbols these are the significations of which should stop us now from either ignoring or condescendingly smiling towards that very presence. These symbols do provide, after all, a rethink on the position of gallery art in our society, and might lead artists and academic critics to reform their aesthetic braggadocio.

CROSS-STITCHING is supposedly a trendy pastime that took over the role played by the crocheting of doilies. However, its continuing presence now seems  to have added itself into the roster of commodities threatening the art commodity, regardless of whether the galleries and the not-yet-established artists want to admit it or not. By the way, it would be the more affordable struggling artist who'd be most threatened by this unacknowledged competition. So what is this trendy folk art that's threatening to take over the wall space that’s supposedly better served by (and ought to be reserved for) the allegedly more intelligent or tasteful formats of painting and frieze-sculpture?

    Here is our cue. When we talk about the service of art to present society, we seldom inquire about art’s function---beyond its claim---in reality. But let’s do it conversely, examining instead the function of the framed cross-stitched work, so to arrive at the allegedly opposite function of its "high art" space bully.

    The cross-stitched work actually provides one function it shares with painting art, and that is in entertaining the empathy a buyer or viewer feels toward the implied artistic labor or action upon a piece---cross-stitch-work viewers often talk about the difficulty of certain combinations, of certain crosses, so similar to discussions about the difficulty of superimpositions of color in an oil glaze or watercolor masterpiece or the artist's patience over a hyperrealist bottle. Perhaps not so similar, if we are to be snobbish, and here is where we should nudge ourselves to now begin to talk about our beloved art’s other function and the popular knowledge about that function.

    The decline of popular appreciation for the studio arts can be likened to the alienation the common Filipino feels toward the elements of the ballet. Painting has become so esoteric (painting has become the painted word to Tom Wolfe, to conceptual literary-manifesto illustrators, and---above all---to knowing critics) that it can now be safely borne in our minds as an upper-class (or educated class) art. And even among the upper classes, how certain are we about the value they are placing upon an artist’s celebrated work? Are the popularly-purchased art of an artist, the way GSIS President Winston Garcia defended the institution’s art acquisitions, being purchased more for the love of resale investing than for the love of the purchased art? If so, then we could say that cross-stitching has become the more real art of the real people, appreciated for their postcard and almost-decontextualized (Western or Southern American or English or European) beauty and for their implied "action" (remember action painting?). How is the common man (or woman-wife) expected to approach the distortions upon reality of Ben Cabrera’s drawing lines? Unless somebody gifted him (or her) an expensive coffeetable book published by the Cultural Center of the Philippines discoursing on the BenCabs’ academic worth, we shouldn't expect much enthusiasm from a "correct" academic approach espoused by traditional art criticism! Cross-stitched work appreciation, on the other hand, has created a sort of people’s art, a new Moravian Church against Rome's elitism. And even if this art may fail the test that would give it license to call itself art or even a sport, it has become a nasty bit of paradox in the industry of creating wall pictures. 

    And don’t tell me that most framed cross-stitched works are just decorative, implying that paintings in the prestigious galleries are mostly not. Even pieces that pretend to be in the service of some theater or poetry (on canvas) necessarily function in the age of the interior designer as mere interior design-friendly colored objects, no matter how "ugly" or "bad" an artist tries to make his paintings look (the act of framing alone already elevates any intended ugliness to the level of glamour, like placing real-punk fashion in the hands of Paul McCartney’s daughter).

    Don’t tell me, too, that the paintings in the galleries are the more serious products. I doubt that the buyer of the skull paintings of Ronald Ventura would be more interested in the artist’s mental activism than in the fact that one of the paintings’ skull echoes the buyer’s father’s dental mini-skulls collection on a narra antique cabinet inside that father's home clinic. I doubt that the buyer of a dreamy Chagallian composition in a recent Marcel Antonio is more interested in the artist’s visual song than in the way his coloration echoes the buyer’s curtain-and-sofa-and-rug combine. I say paintings have actually become the expensive tools for the charlatan "interior designers" in the painting-acquiring class---ever heard how artistas and other celebrities talk about their homes and the way their paintings fit into their personality groove? Like buying a Horowitz CD to softly background a party noise.

    I have no doubt that many artists in our country deserve more recognition than what they’re getting from the buying class. I would doubt, however, the claim that the buyers of what may be great or good Filipino art have already given their artists ample recognition. Beyond the sole fact that celebrity artists have been given the capacity to continue to paint via the mercenary support of their clientele, I also have no doubt that others in this roster do not deserve the recognition they're getting from the art world, at least as regards some of their works or periods, although it can indeed be a world mostly dictated by equally ignorant purchasers and corrupt dealers. 

    In the cross-stitching field, in contrast, cross-stitching "artworks" have had the same effect on their customers as our galleries' great or good paintings on their critics. This effect, which I may academically and snobbishly term "correct appreciation," may even be more "real" with the cross-stitches than with some sold gallery paintings, if only because the purchase of a cross-stitched work almost always have no regard for resale value or an elite market's approval.

SO WHAT'S a serious artist to do? First, he should stop laughing at the cross-stitched-art buyer. The buyer of this sort of "art" could be one of those "real people" from the working class who sometimes walk into high-art galleries, likely armed with the knowledge that the pieces here are grossly expensive, entering these nonetheless for the sake of breathing in the actions implied in the art there as well as the drama espoused by those art. No, resale value's not going to be in his/her mind, and rugs and sofas most likely only secondarily in his/her mind. The cross-stitched "painting," therefore, in its buyer's eyes, is respected for itself and not as semiotic interactive material for what may be the pretentious artist-eye in the buyer.

    Otherwise, assuming that the buyers of serious gallery art are an "academicized" lot, that is, well-armed by art-historical readings for an art-historical valuation of their purchased art, then the cross-stitched work’s buyer can be appreciated as a product of a culture alienated from the complex significances of this European art called oil/acrylic painting, alienated from an education system that distributes such knowledge within levels of privilege and underprivilege. That’s not even saying anything yet about the economics of the art, how painting was transferred from the patronage of a royalty or a papacy to the patronage of the wealthy merchant class starting with the guilds and the Medicis, on to a patronage by a wealthy few who are making sure the art remains inaccessible to the masses both financially and intellectually. Such a reality would thus put into question the validity of a Marxist direction in, say, an Antipas Delotavo social realist commodity. Did the patrons of the Mexican Marxist painter Diego Rivera share a certain amount of Marxism with the artist’s celebrated and purchased works? Were they purchased from positions of opportunism in opposition to the existing Mexican regime of the time, or with sheer decorative intents?

    A more radical question would be this: does the bad context of a purchase of an art make the art less of an art? And so, therefore, can we say that art buying is a practice external to the art, itself an art, and that the art of layman appreciation exists on a different field or plane separate from the galleries' marketing activities and movements in auction shops? For it would seem that even the valuation of a van Gogh within academic and critical circles are drastically different from the valuation placed upon it by an auction with coverage by Bloomberg TV. So that we may safely say that the passionate affair between art and the critical art appreciation of art magazines is a necessary affair that has also yet to coexist with the one-way marriage between artworks and their investor-purchasers (who are nonetheless happy about the complexity placed on their patronized art).

    If such is the typical arrangement, then we can say that the relationship between the cross-stitched work’s buyer and the cross-stitch work is no different from the relationship between a gallery painting and an everyday-you-or-I-who-can't-afford-paintings but have the critical eye to fall in love with it. Between them and their art could be unadulterated, real love. This is not the sort of relationship that occurs between a Christian artwork and a corrupt medieval church imposing an art valuation by fear; this is the sort of relationship that occurs between that work and the parish’s God-fearing populace far removed from the strict dogmas of religiosity. So, to paraphrase, this sort of relationship's approach to all sorts of art and "art" can be the big cultural difference between the expensive painting's real appreciator (those who can't afford the painting but can sentimentally love the painting and those who can academically appreciate the painting) and that same painting's market-value appreciator (whose appreciation is likely contaminated).

    Ergo sum, our laughter towards the cross-stitched work’s buyer may have been misplaced, considering the possibility that such a buyer may both have a real appreciator's as well as a market-value appreciator's approach to that kind of art. The buyer probably values his/her purchased cross-stitched piece as art and as a precious gift item, the reason being, most likely, that he/she does not belong to the merchant class or a similar class that could use such an investment qua resale investment. So that the small cultural difference between the cross-stitched work’s buyer’s approach and ours in the art-critical niche laughing at him/her, then, is only that---cultural. It would be a cultural difference devoid of a hierarchical difference. It's not even the difference between the painting fan who loves a painting for its colors and the painting fan who loves the same painting for its meanings. The meanings a cross-stitched work buyer attaches to his/her new purchase can be as complex as that in the well-read buyer of a new and allusion-rich pseudo-narrative Marcel Antonio oeuvre.

    Therefore, to repeat, it might do us a lot of good to henceforth take a diplomatic stance and bridge that gap between the cross-stitched work’s buyer and us, the snobbish culturati, considering that the difference between him/her and us is small. We can perhaps to easily share our culture with her, hers with us, which latter culture we could "elevate" by our snobbishness to fit into our masturbatory intellections.

HOWEVER, might such enhancements on artists’ and critics’ affairs with the cross-stitched work buyer endanger the necessary loveless marriage between serious artists and their market-value buyers and turn these buyers into fits of jealousy? And would art (and its artists) die (the way Poetry died) without that marriage? I doubt it. For I believe the marriage has been aware of the affair with the real appreciators, and has in fact been using this affair to put a premium on the marriage. The market-value buyer (husband) has actually been putting his wife (the artist) on sale. The pimp pimping art like cross-stitched work and supplies to fellow pimps are part and parcel of the sustenance of the gratified wives' tales that surround our cross-stitched artistic criticalities. Such is the economic reality in the art industry involving worshippers, loveless Pharisees, dilettantes and buy-and-sell merchants that is no more sacrosanct than the reality happening in the cross-stitched-work shops. And both of these scenes would be deemed respectable in the merchant-capitalist centuries.

    And so, if the cross-stitched shop business pimping cross-stitched work and supplies is no less respectable than your friendly neighborhood doughnut shop as well as your friendly neighborhood high-art gallery, then the cross-stitched work buyer is no more laughable than the respectable high-brow passionate element of the minority that subscribes to Artforum, visits the Art he can't afford at galleries, and forces himself to swoon to Art's delights in the coffeetable book in his living room. He is also no more laughable than the respectable high-end passionate element of the buying class that subscribes to Artforum issues that he barely reads, buys Art, and forces himself to swoon to Art's delights in his living room. The cross-stitched work is no more of a wife honestly pimped to an itchy cross-stitched-art consumer market than the high-art painter (who studied art theory and art history and sold taho on weekends just to finish college) who's now being contrived and peddled as genius by the economic science (and art) of art valuation. [END]