The Great Philippine Contemporary Art Bubble?
Ben Lewis’s very instructive documentary, The Great Contemporary Art Bubble.
There’s been a lot of talk about Philippine art.
Paintings by modern (Magsaysay-Ho, Zobel, etc) and contemporary (Ventura, Javier, etc) artists sell for millions of dollars at auction.
Art is today’s must-have luxury item. Art is the new It Bag.
So great is the demand for the work of some artists that buyers queue up for paintings that haven’t even been painted yet.
So great is the demand for contemporary Filipino art that forgers have stepped up to meet it.
So great is the demand that “authentication” often seems unrelated to “authentic”.
And where there’s money, there’s laundry.
Everyone is so busy raving about the astronomical prices paid for works of art, no one asks the most basic question: How good is it?
Fine, tastes differ, and what’s wonderful to some is total crap to others. So. Are you impressed by its qualities or its price tag?
Are you buying it on the dealer’s word that it’s good because you don’t know what is good? Are you looking at as investment that promises to double in time? Are you buying it as your ticket to the social subset also known as the art collectors?
Are you buying it because you want to look at it, or are you going to keep it in a warehouse where no one will see it because it’s too valuable to display?
Is this the great Philippine contemporary art bubble? If so, when will it burst?
Answers to questions you might be asking, unless you wandered onto this site purely by accident >>>
October 13th, 2013 at 17:39
I used to work in a family-owned company, and the owners are in the phase of buying expensive, “cultural” things like pianos and stuff. So we were surprised to see BenCab drawings hanging in the boardroom one day, beside works of the owners’ relatively unknown artist friends. Which is forgivable to most of the guests, I think, but we art nerds were complaining about how poorly-curated those were, “para lang masabing may BenCab yung may-ari.”
The one that breaks my heart was him hanging a now-browning HR Ocampo just right outside the employees’ bathrooms. I always point out to my officemates, “HR Ocampo ‘yan tapos ilalagay lang niya sa may banyo?!?” I am always suspicious of these kinds of collectors, using art as social climbing tool.
October 14th, 2013 at 15:08
I went to an art exhibit in Taguig yesterday. My friend and I were planning to have dinner in the vicinity so we decided to check it out. As aspiring social climbers, we surveyed the works on display, made artsy observations, and peppered our sentences with words like “Impressionist”, “Realism”, “Pop Art” and “Amorsolo”.
We were not alone.
As we circled the different corners of the exhibit, it seemed that everyone there was claiming to have been in the United States a couple of weeks ago or last month. Being naturally chismosa, I could not help but eavesdrop on very loud conversations.
I am no art expert but it seems to me the works on display were intended to be sold to a foreign market. There were four or five paintings that I liked and would probably buy if I was a gazillionaire. Pero, the rest were stereotypical – rural scenes, bowls of fruit, flowers, people carrying mangoes on their heads with rapt expressions on their faces. calesas, cows, children in the rain, indigenous peoples. I just thought that art works commanding such prices could show, well, more and not the usual.
On the upside, I discovered that art exhibits could be a place to meet attractive people. Half the time, my friend and I nudged at each other to point to a person and not a painting.
October 14th, 2013 at 15:39
the chronicler of boredom: Sounds good, but what if everyone in the place is also looking for…opportunity?
October 14th, 2013 at 15:48
jessicazafra: That has crossed my mind. People there were not afraid to make very direct eye contact. Or maybe they were just very PR. It was there that I realized that those movies and TV shows that had scenes in art exhibits were spot on. May factual basis! Sa mga aquariums kaya?