The shock of the new, the strain on the back
Literal is the new conceptual. – Jerome Gomez
Despite my ignorance of contemporary art or perhaps because of it, I go to quite a few exhibitions. I have great faith in the power of observation (Is that a contradiction?): I figure that if I look at enough new art, I will have an epiphany and bang! I’ll know what the hell I’m looking at.
Last Saturday I went to the opening of Here Be Dragons: Topology of Allegory, a group show at Manila Contemporary at Whitespace on Chino Roces Avenue (Pasong Tamo Extension) in Makati (beside Cantinetta and Terry’s). Yeah, I like an exhibition that sounds like the title of a math paper written after a couple of comparative lit electives.
I know crap about contemporary art, but I know that a topological group is a mathematical group which is also a topological space, whose multiplicative operation is continuous such that given any neighborhood of a product there exist neighborhoods of the elements composing the product with the property that any pair of elements representing each of these neighborhoods form a product belonging to the given neighborhood, and whose operation of taking inverses is continuous such that for any neighborhood of the inverse of an element there exists a neighborhood of the element itself in which every element has its inverse in the other neighborhood. Okay I copied that from a book, but I’m not having this headache alone.
Some of the featured works I did not get, such as this pile of rolled-up army maps.
Art by Felix Bacolor
Some of the works made me want to seek out the artists and swat them over the head with a rolled-up catalogue. In the words of Noel, “I can do that too, but why would I?”
But some of the works I found quite elegant, like mathematical proofs.
Art by Poklong Anading
So now I’m trying to figure this stuff out by reading art criticism. I’m lugging Robert Hughes’ The Shock Of The New, reissued this year in an edition of 1,500 copies for the 60th anniversary of Thames & Hudson the publishers.
Books in their dust covers.
The Thames & Hudson books are available at National Bookstores (found my copies at the Rockwell branch). They’re heavy, and I mean literally. The Hughes weighs more than my Macbook, but it’s worth the back strain—it’s witty, incisive, and accessible. (And useful in case Carlo J. Caparas starts a debate on Art and I am stupid enough to take the bait: I could hurl it at him.) Before this all I knew of Hughes was that he got the clap from Led Zeppelin because his wife was a groupie. I read that in a review of his memoir.
Haven’t read The Renaissance yet, but I’ve looked at the pictures.
Answers to questions you might be asking, unless you wandered onto this site purely by accident >>>
August 18th, 2009 at 06:54
Now I know what to do with my small pile of rolled up movie posters.
August 18th, 2009 at 08:47
Ano ba yan!! Kaya nga ngiting-aso si Carlo J ay dahil sa mga artsy-fartsy thingies na yan. Ang hindi ko talaga maintindihan ay ang mga titles ng mga exhibits, paintings and installations. Ibig bang sabihin “title pa lang, ulam na”? Kailangan pa ba ang Ph. D. degree para maintindihan? Tsk tsk tsk.
August 18th, 2009 at 08:51
rather than hitting the artists with a rolled-up catalogue, why not conk their heads with rolled-up army maps.
August 18th, 2009 at 12:49
Thought about that, but they were too heavy.
August 18th, 2009 at 12:50
I love Poklong ;-)
August 18th, 2009 at 13:15
I agree with alan. And I always look at some installations and tell myself that I can probably do better. Most things going around the “scene” confuses me. Where’s the skill in these? And sure, found objects are acceptable, but please don’t make them substitutes for laziness.
I don’t get things in art past art brut and pop-art. They all branched out and formed their own philosophies, and we’re left with this “huh?” feeling if we don’t get to read their briefs/write-ups. Does the book help in any way?
This is why I like studying design more. Its study is linear and boring, but it makes more sense than these, and more in touch with people.
August 18th, 2009 at 16:55
Hay. What a relief. Di pala ako nag-iisa. I’ve been going to these artsy fartsy exhibitions and have attempted to comprehend what the artists have been trying to convey but alas, di ko talaga ma-gets. Baka naman dinadaan na lang tayo sa high-falluting expressions to pass off as ‘art’. I can fell the onset of migraine here…
August 19th, 2009 at 11:15
i like the gulo-gulo of art today. i am, now and forever, of the school of thought that, the more the messier. sa dami ba naman ng galleries, they gotta fill up the space. so hala, fill ’em up and let us, art’s less rarefied minions, scratch our heads and go figure. para rin yang digital films (or the bloggorhea of the interwebs), ang dami dami (at ang dami dami din crap) pero the fact that the, uh, “scene” is so alive engenders an exuberance of possibilities, of “aba pwede din ako.” that trumps the fail and gives the truly gifted (ma medyo timorous, beset by doubt) the playground on which to start (and continue) playing.
August 20th, 2009 at 19:57
a lot of fine art is part bullshit. as my professor in art school once explained. a lot of it doesn’t satisfy me either. but to be fair, lot of these wtf artworks play around with basic art elements and that’s all they really are about. so although an artwork can have a subject rooted in real life, a lot of impenetrable stuff just revolves around formal concerns like, space, repetition, scale, dominance, line, shape and form.
so wala naman talaga silang ibig sabihin. in the literal sense of the word. An artwork can just be something that talks about space and texture. Is still self-indulgent? Well, yeah. :P