Dear friends and colleagues
Many apologies for the delay in writing this week
After a long period of writing in the hills I came up to Manila and am busying myself doing gallery and studio visits. Yesterday I went to the retrospective of the most famous, or certainly the most popular, artist in the Philippines Bencab at the Metropolitan Museum. Benedict Cabrera, as he is officially known, was born in Manila 1942, started exhibiting in 1965, mainly lived in London 1969-1985 then returned to The Philippines and set up his studio in Baguio where he now has his own museum for his and other artist’s work. (I’ll tell you about the museum another day.) This exhibition was meant to celebrate his fifty years as a professional artist.
The exhibition was hung not chronologically but thematically (or sort of). This probably seemed like a good idea at the time but in fact was a bad idea and very irritating. After all, what one wants most from a retrospective is that sense of moving from early to mature to, even eventually, a late style. There was no catalogue either which seemed mean – actually it seems a disgrace. This should be an opportunity to examine and discuss a considerable and varied career. That most of the press photos were of him (and Iza Calzado) tells us that this was a celebrity event first and foremost. What a missed opportunity!
Bencab with Iza Calzado
Late style. Now that is an interesting concept. I was brought up thinking of late style in Shakespeare, Beethoven, Rembrandt when an artist is at his most profound. Nearing the end of a life, no longer any need to show off or impress, pared down, saying like Yeats:
I must lie down where all the ladders start
In the foul rag and bone shop of the heart.
Sometimes in an artist it is accompanied by deteriorating eyesight and shaky hands: Monet, Titian, Louis Corinth.
But as I grew older I realised how rare this is. Most artists slacken off, repeat themselves or get stuck investigating a narrow range of formal issues. Someone like Philip Guston who rages against the setting sun remains very unusual.
Fifty seems like a dangerous year for an artist. It seems to be the landmark age after which invention slackens off. Perhaps because successful artists today are so rich by the time they get to that age they aren’t hungry anymore. The Turner prize in the UK is only for artists aged under fifty (or was – they seem to change the rules every year, so maybe it has changed again). Maybe it should just be for artists over fifty: it seems it is they who need the most encouragement – or else a big boot up the backside.
It was very much on my mind wandering around the Royal Academy summer show and seeing so many of my contemporaries exhibiting there. None of them are making bad art, but none of them seem to be doing anything very new. And last year it was desperately disappointing to visit the Anselm Kiefer show there and seeing how overblown and fatuous his late work is.
So how was it with Bencab?
The earliest work has a toughness to it, later on when he was living in London it has an edge, much to do with his rage at poverty in the Philippines and the corruption of the Marcos dictatorship. His work then was a bit like early R.B.Kitaj: flat and complex with lots of collage. He has always been a very good draughtsman: he can make things look so elegant and swishy – a bit like John Singer Sargent, but he has lost, it seems, that complexity. The most recent work is variable: some of the paintings and drawings are lively – they have great verve. But some recent sculptures seem vapid and empty – like shiny art deco ornaments.
Bencab with sculpture. 2013
Bencab. Oriental Fan – from Larawan series. 1982.
From 1965 onwards he drew and painted Sabel, a mad woman he saw in streets: “She died in 1972,’ he related. ‘I used to see her in the streets of Bambang, scavenging around garbage cans. I used to be fascinated by her; I did a lot of on-the-spot drawings and sketches of her. I also used to take photographs of her. I thought she made a terrific image visually. I thought she made a terrific subject matter for my paintings. She used to gather these plastic sheets and wrap them around her body. They made the most beautiful abstract shapes.”[1]
Bencab. Scavengers 1966.
Bencab. Sabel. 1973.
Much of this early work was seen as a protest against poverty but many feel squeamish at how subsequently Sabel has become a fashionista motif culminating in not just a painting of her with a swatch watch but an actual swatch watch design and a musical where Sabel is played by Iza Calzado. He obviously enjoys drawing and painting the beautiful women of the Philippines – and I have no problem with that. But I am queasy about the glamorisation of poverty – poverty chic.
Bencab. Commissioned painting of Sabel with swatch watch
Bencab. Swatch watch with Sabel design.
I remember friends coming back from Malawi and when I asked how it was, they said they were disappointed: poverty in Black Africa was not picturesque as it was in India. Ouch! Poverty in Manila can be picturesque, but it is also always disturbing.
But for today I feel frustrated as I want to find a proper discourse and debate about Bencab’s work which clearly has many virtues as well as some issues. But all I can find is press release type reviews in Philippines Tatler etc. The lack of a platform (magazine, club or whatever) to debate art in a serious way, coupled with the South-East Asian politeness – no one ever says any artist is crap in public – is a big problem.
Have a good Tuesday – sorry, Friday.
Tony
PS. One rule I have is only to use snaps I took myself, but as cameras were banned I have just trawled the internet instead.