Dear friends and colleagues
I have returned to that pile of books I spoke of two weeks ago and have been reading Art after War 1948-1969 by Patrick Flores. It is part of a series of five books that he is writing collectively entitled Philippine Artscape dealing with art in the Philippines from 1928 to the present.
In the publicity for the series overall we are told that, ‘The Artscape series is an indispensable part of any library by any collector or any institution who[sic] believes in the significance of knowing the artists and artworks that helped define our culture. The iconic works by each artist included as images contribute to a vast visual timeline that is appealing to both sight and mind. As for the bibliophile, the series is also a groundbreaking feat in the design of coffee-table books.’ We are also told that the series will be, ‘marked by its readability and accessibility, for experts and novices alike.’
It is a large format book with 252 pages and close on 200 images – 139 of them full page or double page. The design is pleasing, the colour seems good. How about ‘readability’? When I talk to Patrick he is always very clear but when he writes about art his English becomes very dense and complex. Even I have trouble understanding the wall panels he contributes to exhibitions in the Manila commercial galleries. Here he has made a great effort to make this accessible and although often somewhat mandarin in tone it is
Does he write about the right artists? Although Patrick is very much respected by other writers and curators in the region he is not universally so regarded in Manila. He has written negatively about the impact of Chabet and that has enraged the “Chabetees”. Talking to some of them, they, perhaps predictably, feel he has under-rated Chabet and left other people out. I must decline from any personal comment: I don’t know the field well enough to judge. If anyone wrote a book on English art in that period I would be sure to find several people who should have been included but weren’t. Any book like this must be a blend of a general consensus and personal taste, or judgement. All I can note is that major figures such as Fernando Zobel, Vicente Manansala or Lee Aguinaldo are treated extensively as they should be. I learned a lot from reading the book and got a far better sense of how the artists related to each other. I really enjoyed looking at the many documentary photographs. I hope future volumes have more.
My main query is about the term “coffee table book”. It is rare to see it used by the makers of art books themselves. I cringe when the term is used even though I know I have written books that are bought to go on the ubiquitous coffee table. I am very aware of how artbooks are bought as much for their pictures as text – indeed, if not more so. You don’t write four books for Phaidon as I have without realising that! But, every book is a balance between text and images, between the needs and desires of readers and viewer. There are 63 pages of text – or to be more exact, given the generous use of blank paper 63 half pages of text. I make that amounting to about 25,000 words, which is very short for a book of this scale, ambition and price. I would have liked a lot more words, a lot more detail, both on the scene and the individual artists, not only because I would have learned more, but because it would have been so engrossing to follow the major artists at greater length.
Of course, it will be useful to have all five books when published. Any decent art library should get one. They are handsome productions, but it will be an expensive package. When I first came to the Philippines I spent a lot of time looking for a good introduction to the country’s art. It is needed, but preferably it should be one that is as compact and inexpensive as a Thames and Hudson World of Art book or a Phaidon Art and Ideas book.
So now I turn, as promised, to the other book in my pile, on “Contemporary Southeast Asian Art”, but within the first few pages I find sentences like this: “My own approach seeks to reconfigure the usual trajectories for perceiving modern and contemporary Southeast Asian art, beyond the grouping of discrete national frames of reference or essentializing currents of sameness across the region in favour of other discursive and aesthetic (formalist and affective) grounds of comparison. In reworlding our usual encounters with contemporary Southeast Asian art itself, I am foregrounding the concurrent localisms and globalisms at work in contemporary Southeast Asian art practice and in its related art histories.” Ugh, I feel as if I am wading through heavy, sticky mud. It is a very long book too: 600 pages: maybe I will read it next week, or maybe the week after that. For now, there is a nice cool breeze blowing, I’m taking the dogs for a walk.
See you next week, happy reading!
Tony
See http://themodernreader.com/#shop for details on purchase. ISBN 978-621-95234-0-0. Price: PHP5,000 (approx. $107.50)