What goes up.......or Bubbles

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Bubbles

Where, once, thoughts of ‘art bubbles’ may have conjured visions of artist Sir John Everett Millais’ famous painting “A Child’s World” (used in 1890 for advertising Pears soap), or singer Michael Jackson’s chimpanzee companion, now the art world remains in ever tense alert at the mere mention of the term.

Bubbles appertaining to any form of finance are serious matters. Bubbles speak of, what used to be referred to as economic ‘boom and bust’; defined as “a situation in which a period of great prosperity or rapid economic growth is abruptly followed by one of economic decline”. 

In November 2013, Forbes was questioning “Contemporary Art: End Of A Bubble Or Already Bust?”. After speculating that the art market was slowing down, citing poor showings in both Christie’s and Sotheby’s in London that year, the conclusion was that people had left it too late. Perhaps Forbes had jumped the proverbial gun as American POP artist Jeff Koons, in November 2013, went on to break all records for art sales (by a living artist) for his "Balloon Dog(orange)“, which went for a record $58.4 million USD (approximately RM 202.764 m).

Yet, despite the obvious successes of art sales, early in 2014 there was still grave concern of an art bubble ripe for bursting. In February, Bloomberg Business Week was concerned with the practise of ‘art flipping’, the buying and selling of up-and-coming artists’ works for an obvious quick profit. Bloomberg considered this a “a sign there may be a bubble in the contemporary art market “. In May this year, The Guardian ran the headline “Christie's racks up $745m in one night – and the bubble keeps inflating”. The numbers were huge - $84.2m for a rare Barnett Newman abstraction, and $80.8m for a Francis Bacon triptych (at current exchange rates that’s approximately RM290m and RM276m respectively). Despite that initial slowdown in 2013, 2014 had proven to be a bumper year for art sales and the bubble, if there is one, continues to inflate yet.

While the art sales figures, in Malaysia, are nowhere near as astronomical as those in other countries, there are poignant signs here too of a rapid growth in the art economy. Abdul Latiff Mohidin, artist and poet, saw his “Seascape” (2013) realise RM572,000 at The Edge Auction 2014, of Southeast Asian Art. In November this year, Henry Butcher Art Auctioneers cited an accumulation of RM 2.98 million in its 9th November sale. Chong Siew Ying with “L’été” reached RM89,600, while it was estimated to reach only RM28,000 – RM40,000, and a record price (RM50,400) was set for Datuk Ibrahim Hussein’s “Somewhere Last Spring” (1965), for a work on paper.

The Wall Street Journal (in Malaysia’s Art Scene Is Changing With New Auction Houses, October 16 2014) reminds us that Malaysia now has four art auction houses; The Edge Auction, KLLifestyle Art Space Auction, Masterpiece Auctions and the Henry Butcher Art Auctions. The number of art galleries have grown exponentially, and continue to jostle for position amidst the stratification of Malaysia’s art world. Stories abound of unscrupulous art galleries marking up prices of Malaysian artists’ work, and of price hiking of popular Malaysian Abstract Expressionist works, while Malaysia rides high in the wake of a tsunami of Asian art buying, lead by China.

As well as a proliferation of art galleries and art auction house, Malaysia is host to a variety of art brokers. They come in all shapes and sizes. Some private galleryists double as art brokers, brokering high-end artists’ work, such as Andy Warhol’s “Unknown Woman” (1984) retailing at $1.7M USD, and Warhol’s “Liza Minelli“ retailing at $ 5.000 000 USD. Others, concentrating on Modern and Contemporary, are encouraging Malaysians to invest, not in Malaysian art, but in art from China. One art brokerage company will escort potential investors into their small office, then flood the unwary with ‘Art Market Reports’, ’Art and Finance Reports’ and the ‘Deloitte ArtTactic Art & Finance Report (2013)’. They will wave mid-career Chinese artist portfolios, such as the works of Niu An (Ann), before their faces until visitors start to waver. At that point the CEO is brought in to clinch the deal, quoting an 86% increase in the art market over 12 years and a 120% increase in the Asian art market over the previous 5 years, and how the artists they are promoting, at that moment, will not be available tomorrow. Better get in quick before the opportunity is lost!

The potential art bubble, if there is one, shows little sign of bursting during the year end of 2014. Art prices across the world increase at an astronomical rate, seemingly little effected by similar bubbles in housing, which have already burst. While China proves to be a strong market, the Malaysian art market continues its slow climb into respectability. 

Ivan Lam - communication lacuna

I was unsure if the orange ‘long A4’ piece of paper, printed with black and stuck haphazardly on the partially covered walkway door was, perhaps, a temporary traffic control sign - “warning trouble ahead”, “caution attention” or even “road closed ahead” maybe. It was none of them, as it turns out. It was the only indication that the Wei Ling Contemporary (art) gallery had moved to its new premises.

I pushed the door open. It was raining. Malaysia has decided to have a winter. With no other signs to follow, I trudged along the damp, leaf strewn, path past a three dimensional sign which read “ravity” (the “G” was missing) and scanned to see where the newly re-nascent contemporary arts gallery was hiding. It was all so very soto voce, minimalist, down played. I dashed through a door to avoid undue exposure to the chemical laced rain that now falls in some parts of South East Asia.

Wei Ling has gone for the gallery as “temple of art” approach. A large, and a largely unencumbered, space with white painted walls hushes the voice, encouraging reverence. You could almost hear the church organ playing somewhere off in the pew lined distance, only there were no pews, just space, and no audible organ only the melody of the rain.

I was prepared. I had come to see an array of works by Malaysian artist, and former student of Lim Kok Wing, Ivan Lam. The exhibition, extending from December 1st to March 1st at the Wei-Ling Contemporary (a brand new space) is titled “Twenty”, it is a retrospective of sorts. This faux winter does seem to be the season of artist retrospectives. A gigantic billboard had hailed the exhibition, literally from the rooftops but, inside, signage was distinctly lacking. It did seem that you needed to be among the cognoscenti to know of the exhibition’s existence, even upon entering its doors.

Many exhibitions now have a panel of some sorts, albeit on ridged plastic or exhibition ‘mounting board’, proclaiming what the exhibition is and who is the creator, and maybe curators are. In the brand new Wei-Ling gallery there was no such sign. Now you can take this many ways. Either the minimalism was to now include a lack of communication too, or that Ivan Lam is so ‘famous’ in his Warholian 15 minutes that he needs no introduction or, finally, the whole ensemble was all done in a bit of a rush - the move, the party and oops we are open to a public who need not necessarily know of our existence, need they?

Lack of visual communication is endemic in Malaysia but, on the whole, art galleries have been getting better, though there are still problems with badly cut, or badly positioned art object labels. But, at least, there are labels now. In the past, in Malaysia’s prime gallery, labels would fall to the floor, or be completely non-existent. The-times-they-are-a-changing however, some galleries still fail to recognise that poor display does effect audience’s perceptions. If art is communication, then what are art galleries? Are they simply a (in)convenient wall space, there simply to hang, or screw the works onto? If art is ‘language’ how are the translations made? Or is there an assumption that we all have Douglas Adams’ “Babel Fish” in our ears, and those who haven’t are not worth inviting anyway? 

To not have the name of the artist, Ivan Lam, at all prominent within, or without, the Wei-Ling gallery, was either an absurd arrogance on behalf of those hosting the ‘show’, or a complete failure in communication. One which, I for one, hope is rectified sooner rather than later. As a frequent visitor to the gallery when it was downstairs at the Gardens Mall, in its new incarnation I was made acutely aware that this gallery was now demonstrating all those overt signs of eliteness, and residence of the cognoscenti that ‘Contemporary’ art exudes in buckets.

We cannot continue to decry the lack of interest in art, not just in Malaysia, but in the world at large, when we make no attempt to even adequately communicate to the public what we have, who it is that is making it, the when and the why. The lack of adequate signage is a problem, at this moment, for the Wei-Ling Contemporary gallery. While I might be able to comprehend the haste in which everything has been done, that haste should not have communicated itself to the gallery’s visitors.

Finally, it is an irony, is it not, that the one artist who has concerned himself with communicating, in an Esquire magazine (Malaysia) interview with Rachel Jena said - “You take that [the commercial side of things] out, and you’re an idiot.”

Imagination's Catalyst

Umbaizurah Mahir @ Ismail’s ‘Toys’ (Gerabak)

It wasn't Jim Morrison’s Love Street, but Jalan Duta Kiara, and “this store where the creatures meet” was The Edge Galerie and an exhibition of fascinating sculptures from the Pakhruddin and Fatimah Sulaiman Collection. But creatures there were. In that intriguing show contemporaneousness rubbed shoulders with surreality, three, or was that four, dimensional expressions and a monstrously darkened cubicle, enlightened only by torchlight.

If you were to ever spare a thought for Malaysian sculpture, and there is every reason why you should, the tortured metal ‘warriors’ of Raja Shariman might spring quickly to mind, but little else. A casual observer of the Malaysian art scene might be forgiven for thinking sculpture just did not fit in with the proliferation of Abstract Expressionist canvases, twee kampong scenes and seemingly endless paintings of fishing boats. But they would be wrong.

Certainly since Independence, sculpture has been an emerging part of Malaysian art making. Anthony Lau’s Spirit of Fire (1960) and Syed Amad Jamal’s The link (1963) being but two fine examples. The beauty of “For the Imaginary Space; selected sculptures & installations from the Pakhruddin & Fatimah Sulaiman Collection” is not just in the works put on show, but for the idea of demonstrating that Malaysian artists, inclusive of Raja Shariman (Raja Shahriman Bin Raja Aziddin), do produce meaningful dialogues in more than two static dimensions.

The first impression of the Edge Galerie, having sauntered through those magnificent doors, is of some radiantly white Jentayu (mythic bird), with its wings spread in perpetual welcome. Enmeshed in those outspread wings are the Sulaiman sculptures. In the Edge Galerie’s central space, its red brick walls is the Calder-like ‘mobile’ Centrifugal (by Abdul Multhalib Musa), hanging by five early steel sculptures from Zulkifli Yusoff (Yang Arif, Pemerhati, Sherif Masuk Penjara, Milang and Kebodohan). Perhaps those sculptures are a prelude to those by Raja Shariman. The scene becomes stage-set for our imagination, and the sculptures its catalyst.

Initially I had to fight some Pavlovian, or was that foraging, inclination to turn into the righthand gallery, and nudged myself into the equally valid lefthand gallery space. The left gallery is the slightly smaller of the two and, like its twin wing, painted a white which enables visitors to reflect upon its many presented objects.

Azman Ismail’s, primarily brilliant red, Ku Genggam Merdeka (Hold me Independence), nestled on the white tiled floor of that left hand gallery as an introduction, perhaps, to the various dialogues and narratives explicit or implicit in the works there. In my line of sight was Ramlan Abdullah’s Monument of Freedom, spiking up towards the gallery ceiling. Like many of the sculptures in those two galleries there was an abruptness of steel/iron, which, like the aforementioned Monument of Freedom, made me check my sensitivities. I experienced an uncanny viciousness from the metal sculptures, an unease akin to an extreme Dadaist experience, an unsettling power relationship in which I was the subjugated. Didn’t Matisse say “The essential thing is to spring forth, to express the bolt of lightning one senses upon contact with a thing. The function of the artist is not to translate an observation but to express the shock of the object on his nature; the shock, with the original reaction.” (Jack Flam; Matisse on Art)

From unnervingly spiky steel (and glass) to Ahmad Shukri Mohamed’s glass-fibre eggs (Incubator Series: Muse) and back to Umibaizurah Mahir @ Ismail’s The Sky House, ceramic and mixed media (very reminiscent of the American surreal artist Joseph Cornell’s assemblage boxes), there was a healthy variety in that left hand gallery collection. But even more so in the next.

For me, the most striking exhibit was the wooden display shelves, rooted by blocks of concrete, which formed the ‘case’ for Umbaizurah Mahir @ Ismail’s ‘Toys’ (Gerabak). Why intriguing, because of the incipient humour of those pieces. I was reminded both of the Spanish Surrealist Miro, and the English Surrealist Desmond Morris in their playfulness, only made tangible, ceramic with wheels and metal flowers. And so to the creatures….

Throughout the exhibition there was an undercurrent of risqué politics, but none more so than in the installation created to house Sharon Chin’s ‘Monsters’. Entering into a cubicle draped with black fabric makes you reach for the variety of torchlights, to hand, just outside. Seemingly, the ‘Monsters’ are a ghoul, a headless ghost, a gargoyle, a unicorn and a manticore. Or that is what we are encouraged to believe until, that is, we read the list of Malaysia’s banned books printed behind silhouette figures in what appear to be open books, and realise just who the real monsters are.

The whole exhibition of sculptures from the Pakhruddin and Fatimah Sulaiman Collection, is both visually intriguing and encouragingly thought provoking. In fact, it is just what any good exhibition should be.

Whither Nanyang Style

The Edge, Malaysia, this week

While the “Nanyang Style” in fine art seems anachronistic in Malaysia today, the Singaporeans still embrace the spirit of it as part of their national identity.

The concept “Nanyang Style” sends art galleries all aquiver, and auction houses aflutter, therein is quality, recognition and ownership. Art historians nod in sagely awe, auction house operators rub gleeful hands and art gallerists smile all the way to the bank.

‘Nanyang Style’ is traced to 1979, to a catalogue documenting a retrospective show of the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts in Singapore (NAFA). The late Malaysian artist and writer Redza Piyadasa and Singaporean art historian T.K. Sabapathy jointly concluded that a trip by four Chinese immigrant artists, in 1952, was the catalyst for a new style of art, namely, the “Nanyang Style”.

Three of the four Chinese artists, Cheong Soo Pieng, Chen Chong Swee and Chen Wen Hsi lectured in NAFA, founded by Chinese educationist Lim Hak Tai, while the fourth, Liu Kang, was a fellow Chinese artist, living in Singapore, a friend and compatriot of Cheong Soo Pieng, Chen Chong Swee and Chen Wen Hsi, Liu Kang and Lim Hak Tai from the Xin Hua Academy of Fine Arts in Shanghai. That trip was to Bali.

According to Piyadasa and Sabapathy, the alluring haven of Bali so invigorated those four Chinese artists that it unwittingly empowered them to fuse Chinese and Parisian art styles with nuances gained from the indigenous Southeast Asian environment, creating a new style of art - the “Nanyang Style”. 

It is a fitting tale, a monomyth hero story worthy of Odysseus/Ulysses or Jason and the Argonauts who, having travelled far and wide, returned with a much needed golden fleece, to bolster a fledgling nation’s fine art.

According to Piyadasa and Sabapathy, the “Nanyang Style” had revealed itself through six art contemporaries working in Singapore. Included in this number were the four from the Bali trip, plus Lim and Georgette Chen. Yet, the reality is, that the essence of a “Nanyang Style” was long in place before the famed Bali trip. From the outset NAFA, founded in 1938, had upheld a credo of incorporating Chinese art styles (ink and brush) plus Parisian art styles (oils) plus influence from the Southeast Asian region itself (Nan Yang, or “South Seas” in Mandarin). The intent was to bolster a new style of art, influenced by locale, as set out by Lim, an art educationist from the Xiamen School of Art in Fujian Province, China, at the very beginning of the academy he was instrumental in founding.

In an academy celebratory catalogue of 1955, Lim had written that a new art should include the fusion of the culture of the different races. Namely, the communication of Oriental and Western art; the diffusion of the scientific spirit and social thinking of the 20th century; the reflection of the needs of the local people; the expression of local tropical flavour and the educational and social functions of fine art.

“Nanyang Style” has been bandied about ever since its establishment. In time, like Roger Fry’s “Post-Impressionist” (1910), Guillaume Apollinaire’s “Surrealism” (1917) and Richard Hamilton’s “Pop Art” (1956), “Nanyang Style” has become a catchall, a convenient brand to indicate standard. One auctioneer even hinted at “guilt by association”. If an artist had once studied at NAFA, or was taught by an artist who had, there was an assumption of quality, a benchmark as it were. “Nanyang Style”, as a brand, resembles the popular American drink Coca Cola in which, originally, were both cocaine and kola nuts, but as society changed both essential ingredients became non-essential, and were excluded. The use of “Nanyang Style” becomes debatable.

In reality, there was no one “Nanyang Style”. It always was ‘styles’, plural. Teachers at NAFA, and their graduates, painted in various styles, some preferring oil on canvas, others pastels, ink and brush or watercolour, some were proficient in all. Chinese Literati painting was practised, as were neo-Impressionist, Expressionist and Cubist styles either fused or “unfused” and incorporating local elements. Without the vague umbrella term, “Nanyang Style”, would it now be difficult to ground disparate Malaysian and Singaporean approaches to the art of modernity?

While “Nanyang Style” continues to reverberate through Malaysian and Singaporean auction houses, and exhibitions like Nanyang Touch (Kuala Lumpur, 2014) and Nanyang Visionaries (Singapore, 2014) there comes a stray thought that, once again (as with Impressionism, Expressionism and Surrealism) we are really looking keenly to the past, and not to other, possible, futures.

Further, can “Nanyang Style” now ever be used authentically? May it be applied to up-and-coming professional artists, or is that label to be assigned solely to works of a certain era and, if it is, what is there to replace it? My feeling is that “Nanyang Style” has served Malaysian and Singaporean fine art well, but like the other “isms” I have mentioned, are resigned to the past. Art history will sort the rest out.