Dear friends and colleagues
Apropos last week’s letter in which I talked about the lack of an extended audience for culture, and specifically contemporary art in Singapore an old friend the New York artist Stephen Ellis responded, ‘That’s quite interesting, Tony. The Asian percentage of students at SVA [Studio of Visual Arts, New York] these days is about 40%, some classes are entirely or almost entirely Asian—Chinese and Korean. It’s not a problem, but it’s very specific kind of cultural situation.’
The first thing I want to say in response is that one thing that strikes me when I go to openings in Singapore, the Philippines and especially Indonesia is that it is a very young audience.
Jakarta Biennial. 2009. Work by Tintin Wulia
ArtJog. 2012.
In terms of a growing art world that is a very big plus. But where are the people aged 30 plus? If I recall the long queue waiting to see Anish Kapoor’s show at Hamburger Bahnhof the last time I was in Berlin or the queues waiting to be pleasantly perplexed by Carsten’s Holler’s show at the Hayward more recently, there were many more people aged 30 or more. Going to the museum at the weekend is something many middle class or professional people do. I would like to use the word “intellectual” rather than a class-based term, but it has such odd associations.
Having taught a lot of Asian students for NYU 1985-1990 and then at Sotheby’s Institute (London, New York and Singapore) 1989-2012 as well as more recently assorted universities and art schools in Singapore, China and The Philippines I know what Stephen means by “a very specific kind of cultural situation.” Firstly, let me say, before I get mistaken for spouting essentialist generalisations, that things change: the Japanese students I taught in 2009 were very different from those I taught in 1989: they had much better English, they didn’t bow to me anymore and they had far more self-confidence. But they still didn’t ask a lot of questions.
Questions? Any questions? My son, who is obviously English, is studying at a Singapore university and reckons he asks more question than the rest of the class. Teaching in Asia is clearly, on the whole, far less interactive. Students are expected to listen and learn. Or as one Singaporean friend said, with melancholy, “we are not programmed to think laterally.” Which is maybe one reason why art is so appealing to an upcoming generation. It can be a zone for free thought. One of the nice things of working with Asian students in the UK was seeing how they would get freer and more imaginative over the course of a year.
When I did a lecture in the art school in Xian, as the students were too shy to ask questions the staff got them to submit their questions on slips of paper. Actually, I think that is a really good idea as it cuts out those long, rambling, not very coherent questions that, err, never seem to have a question anyway… err.
Students in Asia are much more polite. There is still a traditional respect for your teacher. In Indonesia students will ask their tutors to bless them, holding hands to foreheads as a sign of respect, before entering an exam.
In a foreign environment where white students are being louder and more assertive this politeness and shyness can be difficult to overcome. When I ran a programme with a lot of Asian students I made everyone do a short oral presentation on the first day. It was traumatic for them, but it broke the silence.
The other sweeping generalisation one inevitably makes is that Asian students, Chinese especially, work very hard. I once had a Korean student who found a library where you could sleep overnight, thereby maximising study hours. A few years ago I wandered into the State Library of New South Wales in Sydney and noticed that most of the people studying there were Chinese. “Ah,” I thought, “they may not be running the country in twenty years time, but they will probably be running a lot of the businesses.”
And probably a lot of the artworld too.
Have a fruitful Tuesday
Tony