Sunday, November 4, 2012

Hubert Vos: Painter of China's Dowager Empress Cixi

The Dutch born painter Hubert Vos, who attended the 1893 Chicago World's Fair as a Deputy Commissioner for the Netherlands, had an epiphany at the event which would change the course of his artistic career. He later wrote:
It was during the World’s Fair in Chicago, where the officials had brought together the greatest collection of the different people of the Globe ever reuninted in one spot at tremendous expense, that I began to study the works I could get hold of on Ethnology and was shocked to see what poor specimens the principal authors had, to illustrate their very superior works. I thought it might be possible to establish a type of beauty of the different aboriginal races before they became much too mixed or extinct and soon got to work. works. I thought it might be possible to establish a type of beauty of the different original aboriginal races before they became too much mixed or extinct and soon got to work.
 Although Vos continued to support himself with portrait commissions after the fair, he became increasingly known as a painter of ethnic types. In 1897 he spent eight months at Fort Totten, North Dakota, painting Native Americans. After that, travels to Hawaii, Korea, Japan, and Hong Kong followed. In 1899, a few months before the outbreak of the Boxer Rebellion, he was in China where he painted a variety of figures including a young man who would later become the first president of China. Vos asked to paint China's empress dowager, but his request was turned down and he returned to the U.S.


 Hubert Vos: Self-Portrait, 1922

About 40 of the ethnic portraits made by Vos during his travels in Asia were exhibited at the Union League Club in New York and the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, as well as at the Paris International Exposition of 1900. Perhaps because of his background in painting society portraits, Vos' portraits of Asian subjects tended to endow them with a certain glamor and dignity. One critic described his portraits as "delicate, smooth, and accomplished.”

Through the efforts of Sarah Conger, the wife of the American envoy to Beijing, the American artist Katherine Carl was invited to Beijing in 1903 to produce a portrait of Empress Cixi for the upcoming 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition. Carl spent many months created a flattering life-size portrait that measured over nine feet tall. The finished work was shipped to St. Louis accompanied by a large retinue of Manchu officials where it had a prominent place in the exhibition.

Katherine Carl: Portrait of the Empress Cixi, 1903-4

In 1905 Vos, now an American citizen, returned to China and was given the opportunity to become the second American to paint the dowager empress. Cixi, who had been on the throne for 40 years when Vos arrived, was a notorious figure who had been much gossiped about in the west. It was whispered, for example, that she had poisoned her nephew and had his favorite concubine thrown down a well. Vos had to appear at court at 5 a.m. to meet her, and was given only four brief sessions in a studio on the top floor of a Beijing hotel. In his letters he later related his impressions of his subject:
Erect, with a tremendous will power, more than I have ever seen in a human being. Hard, firm will and thinking lines, and with a brow full of kindness and a love for the beautiful. I fell straight in love with her.

 Hubert Vos: The Dowager Empress Cixi (Tzu Hsi), 1906 
On display at the Summer Palace, Beijing

Vos ultimately painted two portraits of the Empress, who was 71 years old. In Vos' portraits she looks considerably younger, and the artist reportedly enlarged her eyes and plumped her lips at Cixi's request. One of the portraits is in the collection of Harvard University while the other, larger image has remained in China. That version was severely damaged in the 1950s, and was recently restored by a group of experts from the Dutch province of Limburg. It was put back on public display at the Summer Palace in November of 2008.

In August of 2011, Hubert Vos' grandson -- Hubert D. Vos -- donated six Vos portraits of Chinese subjects to Beijing's Capital Museum. They depict statesman Li Hongzhang, warlord Yuan Shikai, Prince Yi Kuang, a Manchu boy, the daughter of an official of the Fujian navy, and a Suzhou girl from an aristocratic family.

Mr. Vos told a Chinese news reporter that although he cherished the pictures very much "I think they should return to their birthplace."

Links:


Hubert Vos: The Empress Dowager of China, Cixi (1835-1908) Harvard Collections





Tuesday, October 23, 2012

ManilART is a Growing Event

 In the New York based art blog Hyperallergic, blogger Carren Jao reports on the growth and diversity of the Manilla based annual art fair "ManilART," which ran took place earlier this month.

Chao notes that:
The event has grown tremendously, with 43 participating galleries and 11,700 people passing through the halls this year (compared to 6,000 last year). From a modest tent area it has now transferred to the sprawling SMX Convention Center (the largest trade venue in the country).
Learn more about ManilArt by reading the Chao's complete blog here.

Monday, October 1, 2012

Remembering Anita Magsaysay-Ho (1914-2012)

From the Geringer Art biography archive, a biography of the late Anita Magsaysay-Ho: 



Above Painting by Anita Magsaysay-Ho

ANITA CORPUS MAGSAYSAY-HO (Philippine, b. May 25, 1914, d. May 5, 2012)

aka Anita Magsaysay, Anita Magsaysay Ho 

Styles: Philippine Modern, Neo-Realism

Subjects: Philippine genre scenes, landscapes, harvest and market scenes, female nudes

Anita Magsaysay-Ho was a Philippine painter, considered by many to be one of the most important and gifted Philippine modernists. In 1958, a panel of experts assembled by the Manila Chronicle named her one of the 6 most outstanding painters in Philippine history.  Magsaysay-Ho’s best known canvases, which often have both realist and stylized aspects, celebrate the beauty of Philippine women engaged in everyday tasks. 

Magsaysay-Ho was born in Manila in May, 1914, the daughter of Ambrosio Magsaysay, an engineer, and Armilla Corpus. Anita’s first cousin, Ramon Magsaysay, served as President of the Philippines from December of 1953 until his death in a 1957 plane crash. Beginning her studies at the University of the Philippines School of Fine Arts at the age of 13 -- accompanied by a nanny -- she studied with Fabian de la Rosa, Vicente Rivera y Mir and also Fernando and Pablo Amorsolo. Fernando Amorsolo was her landscape teacher, while Pablo Amorsolo taught her drawing. 

She also received private tutoring from the noted cartoonist Ireneo Miranda. She recieved additional instruction at the UP’s School of Design where her instructors included Victorio Edades and Enrique Ruiz, and at the "Atelier of Modern Art" founded by Edades. 

In the 1930s Anita Magsaysay travelled to the United States where she continued her studies at the Cranbrook Academy in Michigan. Anita also took courses in oil painting, and drawing at the Art Student’s League in New York City. While in New York, Anita met her future husband, Robert Ho, who was also a student. After their marriage, he bought postwar ships in the United States and brought them to China where he established a shipping business: Magsaysay Inc. Because of her husband’s work, the Hos and moved frequently, living in Brazil, Canada, Hong Kong and Japan. Anita, who has moved over 40 times in her lifetime, was soon raising 5 children. Anita was painting whenever possible, and always had a home studio where her children would sketch, play the piano and listen to music while she painted. 

During the early 1940s Magsaysay - Ho's works showed the influence of Fernando Amorsolo both in their subject matter and their luminosity. Gradually, her paintings evolved towards modernism as they moved towards cubist distortion and evolved stylized visual rhythms. She was included on a list of “Thirteen Moderns” compiled by artist Victor Edades, and was at one point known as the "female Amorsolo." 

In the 1950s Magsaysay-Ho exhibited at the important Philippine Art Gallery (PAG) which brought her public attention and acclaim. Her work was grouped with that of other Neo-Realists including Lydia Arguilla and Nena Saguil. Anita’s paintings of this period featured women at work: harvesting fruit, gathering and sheaving grain, or selling fish in the marketplace. Her works were formally activated by bold brushwork and strong contrasts of dark and light tones. 

 In the 1960s the space of Magsaysay-Ho’s paintings opened up and the resulting images were more relaxed, with clearly articulated and separated figures. The lines in her work softened, and her modeling became more consistent. These paintings have the feeling of being choreographed, and are very graceful in their effect. 

In the 1970s Magsaysay-Ho explored a new style influenced by Chinese calligraphy. Her paintings were often decorated with delicately controlled ink blots that suggested rock formations, vegetation or waves. At their best, they balanced human gestures with the calligraphic interest provided by the ink blots.
In the late 1980’s the artist had a “Green Period.”  Green-hued fruit and vegetables mingle with female figures that seem to resemble plants or fruits themselves. The women in these paintings feature oval faces with high cheekbones and narrow eyes. 

Another series that followed the green paintings featured half figures surrounded by baskets, fruit and birds. These figures are solid and highly refined, rendered in an Asian palette that counter-balanced stark contrasts between colors such as burnt sienna and yellow-green. 

In her nineties Magsaysay-Ho became the subject of a biography by Alfredo Roces, “In Praise of Women,” published in 2005. She states, in the text; “In my works I always celebrate the women of the Philippines. I regard them with deep admiration and they continue to inspire me—their movements and gestures, their expressions of happiness and frustration; their diligence and shortcomings; their joy of living. I know very well the strength, hard work and quiet dignity of Philippine women, for I am one of them.”

After suffering a stroke in 2009 Magsaysay-Ho stopped talking. One day, regaining her speech, she called her husband and told him "Robert, you are the only man I ever loved in my life."

Awards:
2nd Prize: The Manila Grand Opera House Exhibition, 1950, for “Five Senses”
1st Prize: The Philippine Art Association (PAG), 1952, for “The Cooks”
2nd Prize: The Philippine Art Association (PAG), 1953, for “Fruit Vendors”
1st Prize: The Philippine Art Association (PAG), 1959, for “Mending the Nets”
1st Prize: The Philippine Art Association (PAG), 1960, for “Two Women”
2nd Prize: The Philippine Art Association (PAG), 1962, for “Trio”

Collections:
The Ateneo Art Museum, Ateneo de Manila University, The Philippines
The Lopez Memorial Museum and Library, Pasig City, The Philippines
The Metropolitan Museum of Manila, The Philippines
The Yuchengo Museum, Makati City, The Philippines

Saturday, September 22, 2012

Fabián De La Rosa and His Times

Part one of a 14 minute video, produced by Filipiniana.net, in cooperation with the UP Vargas Museum, which traces the life and career of the internationally-acclaimed 20th century Filipino master Fabián De La Rosa. De La Rosa's rightful place in Philippine art history has often been obscured by his more illustrious predecessors, Juan Luna and Felix Resurreccion Hidalgo, and his famous protégé and nephew, Fernando Amorsolo.

Sunday, September 2, 2012

Ambeth R. Ocampo on Fernando Amorsolo


On September 8th at 3PM, Professor Ambeth R. Ocampo of Ateneo de Manila University will present "Fernando Amorsolo: Portrait of the Artist as Historian." Professor Ocampo is known for his unique blend of academic rigor and wit.

Each lecture is P300 for adults and P200 for students, senior citizens, and Ayala Museum members. The cost includes a copy of an Ambeth Ocampo book and full admission to all museum galleries.

Ayala Museum is at the corner of Makati Ave. and De la Rosa St. in Greenbelt Park, Makati City. For information on this series, call 757-7117 to 21 local 29, e-mail education@ayalamuseum.org, or visit www.ayalamuseum.org.

Tuesday, August 14, 2012

China's Art Market and Fraud

In a recently posted article on Forbes.com, writer Abagail R. Esman asserts that China's art market -- the world's largest -- is rife with fraud and deception.

Among Esman's assertions:

- Many major purchases at China's auction houses are defaulted on, and never completed.

- Artificially inflated purchase prices and manipulated sales have distorted the market

- Sellers are covertly allowed to bid, often in a process designed as a bribe

If Esman is correct that over 80% of the prices paid at Chinese art and auction sales are tainted, it is likely that price estimates across the globe have been altered as a result. Add to this the problem of fakes and forgeries -- always an issue in the Chinese market -- and you have some idea of the complications found in the market for both antique and contemporary Chinese works.

For the complete text of Esman's article, click here. 

Monday, August 13, 2012

Arman Manookian: Fragile Paradise

Originally published in Honolulu Magazine. 

Posted here with the permission of the author, John Seed


A. T. Manookian, "Hawaiian Boy and Girl"
One of a series of mural paintings originally installed in the "Green Mill Grill."

From the Honolulu Advertiser, May 12, 1931:

Brilliant Young Artist is Suicide Arman T. Manookian Takes Poison During Social Affair


"Inquest into the death of Arman T. Manookian, 27, well-known in Honolulu and certain Mainland circles as an artist of distinction will be held some time this week, according to Deputy Sheriff William Hoopai, coroner. Death, according to Dr. Robert Faus, was due to poison.

Manookian died at 10:15 o'clock Sunday evening at the Queen's Hospital where he had been removed after he had taken poison at the house of Mr. and Mrs. Cyril Lemmon, ...Black Point Road, where he had been living for several months.

The artist had refused to take part in games being played by a group of guests at the home, and had gone to his room...

No reason for the artist could be offered by his friends. He was said to have been despondent for several days prior to his taking poison."


Arman Manookian

When Arman Tateos Manookian died he was more than 8,000 miles from his birthplace of Constantinople (Istanbul), Turkey. Why Manookian chose to die in a place that he found to be a paradise is a secret that he took with him to his grave. What he left instead was a dazzling public legacy: his art. In the five years and eleven months that he lived in Honolulu he produced paintings, magazine illustrations and, most impressively, murals that in the words of Art Historian David Forbes "were completely unlike anything that Honolulu audiences had previously seen."

Manookian was a complex man, a hero of Hawai'i modernism, who himself objected to his work being called "modern." The best way -- indeed the only way -- of understanding him as a man is to consider the fragments of his life, and set them against the background of history. The rediscovery of a cache of lost Manookian drawings from the estate of Maj. Edwin North McClellan, the man who brought Manookian to Hawai'i, has helped bring his development into focus.

Manookian, the eldest of three children, was born on May 15, 1904 in Constantinople, the troubled heart of the collapsed former Ottoman Empire. His given name, which he used until joining the U.S. Marine Corps was Tateos (Tady to his family), which is Armenian for the Apostle Thaddeus, one of the two Apostles credited with bringing Christianity to Armenia. Manookian came from a family of Armenian Apostolic Christians, and his father, Arshag, was a printer and the publisher of an Armenian newspaper.

The Manookian family was one of the Europeanized Armenian families that had held on to their status and affluence despite crippling taxation and the political dominance of the Islamic Turkish Pashas. They were the cultural elite of the Armenian nation, learned, prosperous and proud of their 3,000 year old culture.

The Armenians, the first nation to convert en masse to Christianity in 301 A.D. , were a religious and ethnic minority in Turkey, trying to preserve their language and culture in a hostile environment. For centuries, their Turkish overlords had subjected them to relentless oppression and violence. In 1912, British writer W. Llewellyn Williams recalled that:

"Even at the beginning of the 19th Century, at Constantinople, a Mussulman could very well stop a Christian in the street, and calmly behead him, in order to test that his sword was in good condition."

This random violence, however, was a token compared to the terror that would shatter the lives of Armenians from 1915 to 1918. One million or more Armenians would be murdered during a genodical rampage systematically planned by a group of nationalistic leaders known as the "Young Turks", with German military advisers looking on. Henry Morgenthau, the American ambassador to Turkey from 1913 to 1916, tried unsuccessfully to intervene on the side of the Armenians. He was later to write:

"I am confident that the whole history of the human race contains no such horrible episode as this. The greatest massacres and persecutions of the past seem almost insignificant when compared with the sufferings of the Armenian race in 1915."

The Armenian genocide remains one of the most chilling moments of the early 20th century, a prototype for other horrors to follow.

The terror came to Constantinople on April 24, 1915, just shy of Manookian's 11th birthday. On that day, 600 Armenian intellectuals, writers, poets, politicians and others were gathered up and murdered. Manookian's father managed to hide himself and his brother-in-law in the family print shop and survived. Within weeks, perhaps 5,000 more men were dead, some killed in death marches into the desert.

At the time of the terror, Tateos was a student at the school of St. Gregory the Illuminator, a branch of the Armenian Mekhitarist Brotherhood of Venice. The 31-year old principal of his school, Daniel Varoujan, was a leader in the Mehian movement, which was an attempt to generate an Armenian cultural renaissance. In late April, 1915, he was arrested and tortured, later to be executed in prison. The death of their school principal must have been one of the countless losses that shattered the lives of Tateos and his classmates that April.




Daniel Varoujan


The next years in Constantinople were a hell of whispered threats and public executions, set against the spectacle of destitute Armenians streaming in from the countryside. The Manookians held on in Turkey as long as they could, and Tateos later told friends that he had spent some of this time in Egypt. His father, Arshag, was forced to leave the family and make his way to safety in France.

Ironically, Arshag Manookian escaped the genocide in Armenia only to die in France. In 1917, he caught the Spanish flu, one more victim in an epidemic spread by returning soldiers, that killed more than 20 million people worldwide. Tateos, a strong-minded teenager whose relationship with his mother was strained by grief, felt the heavy weight of taking over his father's place in the family business resting on his shoulders. His mother, who managed to sell the family business, made the extraordinary gesture of giving her eldest teenage son a large amount of money, allowing him the chance to live out his dream of leaving for the United States.



The Re d'Italia


When he arrived on April 20th, 1920, disembarking from the Re d'Italia at Ellis Island, Manookian's sense of being foreign and lost in a Diaspora may have been intense. In 1918 alone, more than 50,000 Armenians had flooded into Ellis Island, many of them orphans. The sufferings of the Armenians were well known in the United States. President Herbert Hoover wrote in his memoirs:

"Probably Armenia was known to the American school child in 1919 only a little less than England ... of the staunch Christians who were massacred periodically by the Mohammedian Turk, and the Sunday School collections of over fifty years for alleviating their miseries. . . ."

Tateos went to live with a relative of his mother's, an umbrella repairman named Leo Stepanian who had a shop at 456 Washington Street in West Providence, Rhode Island. Providence at that time had a population of nearly 8,000 Armenians, many of them working under hazardous conditions at local foundries and the Hood Rubber Plant. Tateos had arrived during a post-war economic slump that lasted from 1919 to 1924 and Armenians were competing for jobs against a the background of a general resentment of immigrants.




The Rhode Island School of Design


"Tateos Manookian" appears as a night student at the Rhode Island College of Design in September of 1920, and he continued as student through the 1921-22 term. Manookian's talent must have been already apparent, as his tuition to take classes in "Freehand Drawing" was paid by a state scholarship. During his second year at RISD he took instruction in "Commercial Illustration" passing with high marks. By 1923 he had moved out (his address in the 1923 Providence Directory is the address of the YMCA) and was advertising his skills as a lithographer.

On October 8, 1923 he enlisted in the Marine Corps as "Arman Theodore Manookian" claiming U.S. citizenship which he did not in fact have. Although he did write to his sister that he had joined the "Army of the Navy." At just under five and a half feet tall, 132 pounds, with a newly shaved head that accentuated his ears, Manookian was not an imposing new Marine, but he had achieved a new identity as an American.



Private A. T. Manookian, from a Boot Camp photo, c. 1923



Major Edwin N. McClellan, Marine Historian, drawn by A. T. Manookian

Published in "Paradise of the Pacific" Magazine, December, 1927


On Nov 7, 1924 Private A. T. Manookian was assigned as a clerk to the office of Edwin North McClellan, an active Marine historian. When Private Manookian entered his office, McClellan, aged 43, had already served nearly seventeen years in the Marine Corps. For the past five years he had worked in the Historical Division of the Marine Corps, preparing a history of the Corps during World War I. The young illustrator had walked into the life of a man would publish more than 100 articles on Marine history, and, eventually, complete an epic history of the Corps, with 1,063 pages of text, (not to mention 836 pages of notes) and over a hundred illustrations, all carrying Manookian's monogram "ATM" .

As a young man, McClellan's military assignments had taken him all over the world, including a remarkable tour on the USS Wisconsin as part of the "Great White Fleet" that Teddy Roosevelt used to display American Naval prestige from 1908 to 1909. During that tour, McClellan got his first glimpse of Honolulu, along with ports in Australia, Japan, the Philippines, China and Egypt, traveling more than 29,000 nautical miles. His writing talents emerged in an unlikely context. While juggling military service and his studies at George Washington University Law School, McClellan wrote for both the "Index-Digest of Court Martial Orders" and the "Naval Digest".

Called to serve on the USS Arizona in February of 1917, McClellan was awarded the rank of Major and finished his World War I service on the USS Minnesota, briefly visiting France to begin collecting historical data on the War. Upon his return to Washington, McClellan completed and published his first "concise history" of the Marines in World War I, remarkably short on illustrations, at just about the same time that Tateos Manookian began his drawing classes in Rhode Island.

Manookian showed McClellan recent sketches he had made during a military exercise on the Puerto Rican Island of Culebra. McClellan must have appreciated those sketches as several of them remained in his estate at the time of his death. Perhaps McClellan, needing an illustrator, had also seen the decorative sketches that Manookian had contributed to the August 1924 issue of "Leatherneck" magazine, in which McClellan had first published an article titled "With the Marines in China" on January 30th.

For Manookian, it was a lucky break to have a military assignment that would let him use his artistic skills. McClellan, with his literary and historical interests, would also prove to be a mentor and father figure for the young Armenian.

Manookian was busy right away, developing pen and ink sketches for his superior's historical articles. Many of these survive at the Marine Historical Center in Washington D.C. They are penned on Royal-Crest Illustration board, touched up with white corrections, and labeled "sketched by PFC Arman Theodore Manookian".

Soon Manookian's work was appearing on the cover of "Leatherneck", first on October 18, 1924, and again for the May 16, 1925 issue, for which he created a multi-paneled design of graphics and historical vignettes. Around the same time, he painted an oil portrait of McClellan's young son Donald (now lost) and sketched an ink portrait of McClellan from a photo.



Manookian decorations from Leatherneck, August 1924




Manookian Self-Portrait Sketch from Leatherneck, October 1924



"Men in an Outrigger Canoe Headed for Shore"

48 x 68 inches

Mural from the Green Mill Grill", circa 1928


"The Water! Bright Blue! Deep purple! Varying Green! The suddy fringe draped over the reef's dark teeth-virgin white like the peeking lace on milady's lingerie. The reef's sharp fangs-the guardian bulwark of Waikiki. Fair, for as it bares its tusks up flares the warning white froth and foam."

From "Waikiki at Noon" by Edwin Mc Clellan, Published in "Leatherneck", October 1926


When McClellan was dispatched to Pearl Harbor, Hawai'i , on June 1, 1925, he took his talented clerk/illustrator with him. As Manookian prepared to leave the East Coast for Pearl Harbor, he was conscious of just how far he was about to travel from his past and from his Armenian friends and identity. He ended a May 23, 1925 letter to Menou Tufankjian, a childhood friend who was now also in the U.S:

" Who knows, perhaps I'll never see you again. Yours, A. T. Manookian"

It was a prophecy that would come true.

Manookian and McClellan may have been from tremendously different backgrounds, but the paradise of Hawai'i fired the creativity in both. Hawai'i was a long voyage from anywhere, and the ambience was magical. It was in Hawai'i that Manookian would transform himself from an illustrator to an artist, and McClellan the historian would be inspired to poeticize and mysticize his writing.

To be stationed at exotic Pearl Harbor must have been a dream, both artistically and socially. In describing Marine life there, McClellan told Leatherneck in 1926 that:

"...it is but a short trip to Honolulu, with its show-houses, its beaches, its well lighted streets with their cosmopolitan throngs...the worst grouch of all cannot but succumb to the soothing magic of a few hours spent with congenial companions under the glory of Hawaii's wondrous moon."

For young Marines like Manookian, there was more than the moon to appeal to the senses. Despite prohibition, there was sake being served in Japanese "teahouses" and Hawaii's own homebrew, Okolehao, made from ti leaves and compared by some to the best French brandy, was a prohibition era staple. Prostitution was officially illegal, but the red light district on Honolulu's River Street flourished, and the Army made health inspections. The young Armenian was in a landscape he found fantastic, living near a city bustling with growth and vice.



Manookian's cover for "Pearl Harbor Weekly," December 1926


Madge Tennent, the doyenne of Hawaiian art, once stated that she envisioned the Hawaiian kings and queens as "having descended from gods of heroic proportion, intelligent and brave, bearing a strong affinity to the Greeks in their legends and persons." This statement also perfectly expresses Manookian's approach to Hawaiian culture. This lofty idealization soon became apparent in the historical and mythological images of Hawai'i that he created to accompany McClellan's pieces, which were soon being published in Paradise of the Pacific.




Maui Snaring the Sun, pen and ink, circa 1927


In a stunning illustration commissioned by McClellan, but never published, the Hawaiian myth of "Maui Snaring the Sun" is presented in these ideal terms. The almost Grecian figure of Maui, set against a vista of Olympian clouds, reflects a new artistic grace that Manookian would characterize his Hawaiian paintings.

In a short profile of the artist, published in "Paradise of the Pacific" Magazine in 1927, Manookian states grandly that "in all his travels he has come upon no more intriguing artists' paradise than these mid-Pacific gardens of the Gods". Identifying himself as having come from "Byzantium... the eastern capital of the Roman Empire", Manookian states that he "fails to understand why the beaches of the Hawaiian Islands are not thick with the easels...of at least half the artists or would-be artists of the world."

By the time Manookian was discharged from the Marines in 1927, he had made up his mind to stay in Honolulu. He had not been given a recommended promotion to Sargent that had been dangled in January of 1927, but he did leave the service as a Corporal, and the recipient of a "Medal of Good Conduct." On September 5 he filed a Waiver of Transportation stating that would not be returning to the Mainland. In his waiver application he referred to a "lucrative" job as an illustrator that he had taken with the Honolulu Star-Bulletin, whose art director at the time was the artist John M. Kelly.

As Manookian settled into his new life as a civilian, several changes took place. His mentor, Edwin Mc Clellan was called to the Pacific Coast in November of 1927, and then to Nicaragua. He managed to keep up his duties as Editor of "Paradise", even though it would be nearly ten years before he actually returned to Hawai'i as its editor.

As McClellan and the Marines faded as influences in Manookian's life, tremendous new ideas and opportunities were appearing. In April of 1927 The Honolulu Academy of the Arts opened, and with its opening came lectures and programs. Did Manookian hear Madge Tennant give her series of November 1927 lectures on art, drawing and the use of color? If he didn't, its hard to believe, given his next artistic projects, that he would have missed a lecture by Madame Claude Riviere from Tahiti on the work of Gaugain, held the same month.

By 1928 he had moved to Makiki, less than a mile from the Academy. Becoming a member of the Honolulu Artist's Association, he attended meetings with Madge Tennent, Lionel Walden, D. Howard Hitchcock and other important Hawaiian painters.

Socially, Manookian may have found Honolulu similar to Constantinople: both were port cities where immigrant groups clustered with people of their own culture, hanging on to familiar lanuage and customs as best they could. In the islands, Manookian became friends with a Greek, George Geracimos, who owned the "Green Mill Grill" on Bethel Street, across from the Hawai'i Theatre. Bethel Street at the time was a kind of Bohemian transition between the bustle of Chinatown to the west and the dignity of the Iolani Palace district to the east. Restaurants like the "Green Mill", and its neighbors "Chez Parisien" and the "Monte Carlo" modeled themselves on Parisien brasseries, even if the alcohol had to be kept under the counter.

Trading work for meals and booze, it was for the "Green Mill" that Manookian made some of his most famous works, a series of oils that depicted Hawaii in the era of Captain Cook. Many of the restaurants patrons came in late after leaving the Hawaii theater. They would have just watched a show beneath Hawaii's most ambitious mural, the 35 foot wide "Glorification of Drama" completed by Lionel Walden in 1922.

What a shock the Manookian paintings must have been when compared with the pastel, Neo-Classical composure of Walden's work. In fact, the eventual buyers of the Green Mill Grill paintings were two Honolulu society women who first saw them when they dropped in after leaving the theater.



A. T. Manookian, "Red Sails", Collection of John and Patsy Dilks


The five Manookian canvasses presented a world of striking color. In "Red Sails", for example, scarlet sails are set against lapis blue skies. Hawai'i had unleashed the artist's perfect pitch as a colorist. Equally striking was the way that Manookian, who previously had used mainly tempera paint to apply color, employed oil paint in bold, flat areas, without the use of varnish or subtle gradations. Although the vivid hues struck most viewers as Modern, Manookian's color sense actually reflected a Byzantine world of color re-emerging from his adolescent and childhood memories. He was also trying out ideas about form, color and design that would later cause him to be called "Hawai'i's most scientific artist."

Those who first viewed Manookian's new colored works were struck not only by the use of color, but by the emotions that his work could stir up. Artist/Writer Don Blanding, reviewing the 1928 Academy show, told readers of the Star-Bulletin:

"If I were away from Hawaii and I chanced to see the exhibition of paintings which I have just finished viewing, I know that I should be overwhelmed with homesickness."

Anna Balakian, an Armenian American art critic who was also a survivor of the genocide, once described the "mythological concept of Byzantium" as "a place of beauty and impending downfall." To the Honolulu public, the Marine from Turkey had remade himself as an exotic and a true island artist. Hawai'i had become his Byzantium.

It has often been said that Modernism was the creation of exiles, and Manookian's life sadly fits this profile. His intantaneous and miraculous bond with Hawa'ii suggests a deep longing to be connected to a place and culture, perhaps as a replacement for what had been lost. Ultimately, Manookian's portrayal of Hawaii, like Gaugain's of Tahiti, is an idealized fantasy of a place that had never existed except in the Colonial imagination. That of course, was a fantasy of Eden that the world and its travel agents needed badly in the in the late 20's, and which it still needs now.

The glowing colors of Manookian's work reflected the ecstatic vision of an artist who was also coming to know dreadful lows. Manookian, whose closest friends often found him a "puzzle" often kept to himself. The Armenian writer Zarian, who had also grown up in Constantinople, may help explain Manookian's reserve with his statement, "Our generation has more friends in the next world than in this one."

The Stock Market Crash of 1929 took its toll on the Hawaiian economy as tourism began to decline, and building began to slow down. Manookian's last employment was to create mural decorations for the Waipahu Theater, which opened on December 21, 1930. The Waipahu, now the "City of Refuge" Church, was designed by Louis Davis and had a lavish building budget of over $100,000.00. In addition to Manookian's artwork, it featured painted Art Deco ceilings and a screen set in "a series of receding concentric planes covered in silver leaf." There are no photos in existence of the theater's original interior, and the murals apparently vanished long before the Waipahu became an adult theater in the 1960's.

Around this same time, Manookian met Cyril Lemmon, a young architect who was dabbling in painting. They began to paint together, and by late 1930 Arman was living downstairs in Lemmon's Black Point home. Anne Simms Stubenberg, the daughter of next door neighbor Arthur Simms, still remembers taking an art lesson from Manookian as a seven year old. He patiently spent hours assisting her with a painting of a red blossomed tree, and gave her a tin painting box. He also, on another occasion, picked her up by the hair, something that even a child could understand as a hint that something was wrong with the artist.

The Lemmon's living room was filled with paintings, salon style, including a Diego Rivera. At Black Point, in the last months of his life, Manookian was experimenting with a more modern style of painting, adding hints of cubist distortion borrowed from Rivera. It didn't always go well, and he apparently destroyed a number of his own artworks along the way. A meticulous artist, he still planned each work on a grid, but he was blending his paint more, softening colors, and attempting to emulate the greater distortions of Modernism. He also attempted, in a 1930 painting of a woman weaving a mat, to move away from the world of myth into the depiction of the contemporary.




A. T. Manookian, "Untitled (Hawaiian Genre Scene)", 1930, The Honolulu Academy


As Arman struggled in Hawai'i, his brother, Vahe, had become a student in a seminary in Geneva, learning French. Two years younger, he had taken on the responsibility of earning enough money to bring his mother and sister out of Turkey. Eight thousand miles away, Arman was unable to help.

His sister Adrienne wrote to a friend in a 1975 letter recounting Manookian's fate: "He did not write too often and we worried a lot."

She was right to worry, as her brother was emotionally fragile. His obituary in the Star-Bulletin reported that:

"On one occasion he took down a group of paintings that were on exhibition, tore them across and threw them into a waste basket."



A. T. Manookian, "Hawaiian Figure", 1930, private collection

Torn in half by the artist.


He also apparently once turned down a mural commission because he was busy and "could not be bothered."

He delivered his last painting, "Flamingos in Flight," on Thursday, May 7, 1931, to the home of Charles Mackintosh. Three days later he was dead.


A. T. Manookian, "Flamingos in Flight", 1931, private collection

The artist's last painting.

On the evening of Sunday, May 10, the Lemmons and a few friends were playing the parlor game "Murder," while Manookian, who had been depressed for days, sulked in his room. It is hard to believe that the artist had told his friends many of the details of his early life, or they might never have played "Murder" so lightly.

Members of the Lemmon family have stated that he was in love with Belinda, the flirtatious first wife of his friend Cyril. It will never be known for certain if this was true, or whether there were any other personal complications that drove him over the edge. Admirers of his Hawaiian figures have noticed his sensual treatment of men's bodies and suggested that he might have been gay or bisexual, but there are no anecdotes to substantiate this idea. The records of a police inquest into the death by Detective John Cluney vanished years ago.

While the game went on in the living room, the distraught artist drank poison. He may have taken arsenic, but more likely he took cyanide. Cyanide had been in the news a few months before, as the agent of death in the suicide of Lewers and Cooke heir Will Lewers. Manookian's friends heard him cry out as he stumbled into Lemmon's kitchen, never to regain consciousness.


The last known photo of Manookian

Manookian's art had celebrated adventure and heroic myths, yet he killed himself pointlessly and created a world of pain for those he left in the present.

A simple way of explaining Manookian today would be to say he was manic-depressive. That would be too simple, as it ignores the terror that Tateos had to comprehend as a boy. Perhaps the words of the Armenian poet Daniel Varoujan, the martyred principal of Manookian's boyhood school echoed in Arman's soul:

"The Armenian nation wept and roared in me."

In April of 1931, Manookian's mother, sister and brother were shocked when they received letters of condolence from artists Verna Tallman and Cyril Lemmon. They read and re-read copies of the headlines about his death, which his brother Vahe, a photoengraver, carefully copied onto plates in his grief. They petitioned the American Embassy to retrieve his belongings, but were told that Arman had left nothing behind.

Their main consolation, since they could not afford to go to Honolulu, was a visit by Manookian's friend Cyril Lemmon who came to Paris in 1932, separated from his wife, and making a stab at being a painter. They also received a painting and a few drawings sent by Verna Tallman which his sister-in-law Andree still treasures. The family did not have the financial means to attend the Memorial Exhibit for Manookian which was held at the Honolulu Academy in the Fall of 1933.

Mc Clellan was away from Hawaii at the time of his friend's death, and no article or mention of Manookian's death was ever to appear in "Leatherneck" where his career had started. Had Manookian lived he would have had to cope with the disappointment of knowing that the massive history he illustrated for McClellan was never published. The Depression made publication of such a large book unfeasible, and McClellan resorted to mimeographing sections, chapter by chapter. The only complete record of the "History of U. S. Marines and Origin of Sea Soldiers" by Edwin North McClellan, illustrated by A. T. Manookian, exists on microfilm as recorded by the New York Public Library in 1954.

Mc Clellan retired from the Marines in 1936, continuing to edit "Paradise of the Pacific" until his departure from Hawaii not long before the attack on Pearl Harbor. It must have been wrenching for him to hear of the carnage at Pearl Harbor and the sinking of the Arizona on which he had served as a young man. Like all Americans, at the War's end he must have also been stunned by the emerging details of the Holocaust. Had Manookian lived, he, like all Armenians would have known that his family had lived through the rehearsal for the genocide in Germany.

While Manookian never lived to know the full impact of his work, McClellan was able to have his achievements recognized during his lifetime. In 1968 he was honored at a ceremony at the Philadelphia Naval Base where General Leonard Chapman called his history "the essential starting point for any meaningful research into our past."

One has to wonder if Major McClellan ever looked through the box of Manookian illustrations in his office and remembered the young clerk with big ears he had met in 1924. When Mc Clellan died in 1971 at the age of eighty-nine, it had been decades since the proud young artist who had blossomed in Hawaii told a reporter, in a 1928 interview, that the underlying principles of his work were "those adapted by every earnest painter since (Michel)Angelo and Rubens."

Manookian, when he gave that interview in 1928, had only three years left to live. He was already carefully aligning himself with the past and its rose-colored myths. His broken childhood had taught him not to trust the future, even in paradise.


From "Paradise of the Pacific": "A fancy of ancient Hawaii, decorative of the tale of some noble warrior's shell being borne afloat to sanctified repository" by A. T. Manookian


Wednesday, August 8, 2012

Fernando Zóbel de Ayala Brief life of a peripatetic man of arts: 1924-1984

 by John Seed

Having fled the Spanish Civil War as a boy and endured the Japanese occupation of the Philippines in his teens, Fernando Zóbel ’49 kept his most valuable possessions portable. He once showed his Harvard classmate Ralph Graves an album containing small drawings and prints by master artists. Commenting on one precious image—an anatomical study of a man’s shoulder and arm—Zóbel dryly told Graves, “There wasn’t much left to collect, so all I got were the armpits.”

Remarks like that were a Zóbel trademark; their purpose was to help people forget his background. The name on his Harvard application was Enrique Francisco Fernando Zóbel de Ayala y Montojo Torrentegui Zambrano, but he was “Ferdie” to his friends.

The son of an industrialist father and an aristocratic mother, Zóbel grew up in Manila and then Madrid, until his politically conservative parents retreated to the Philippines in 1936. During his next five years, at an international school north of Manila, he avidly doodled images of knights and gained a new perspective on the conflict in Spain from Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls.

He returned home the day after Pearl Harbor and spent most of 1942 in a torturous orthopedic bed, trying to recover from the neck and spinal problems that had been his bane since childhood. In 1943, his father died from lack of treatment for an infection. Zóbel coped by studying and by reading intensely. In 1945, after liberation, an American family friend urged him to apply to Harvard.

In Cambridge in 1946, Zóbel stood out as a well-to-do Spaniard among veterans attending on the GI Bill. But becoming a regular at the private Fox Club did not interfere with his art studies or hard work in history and literature. He wrote a senior thesis on the plays of Federico García Lorca (then banned in Spain) and graduated magna cum laude in three years. But he loved Harvard so much, he couldn’t leave. After a short, miserable summer in Manila, he returned to try law school briefly and then spent two years as an assistant curator in the graphic-arts section of Houghton Library, developing a lifelong interest in rare books and manuscripts.

In August 1951, Zóbel finally returned to Manila to take a job with a token salary at Ayala y Compañia, his family’s real-estate and development corporation. For the next nine years, he lived a kind of double life, devoting every moment outside work to his passions: painting, writing and lecturing on art and archaeology, traveling, exhibiting, and collecting.

While visiting Boston in 1954, he studied briefly at the Rhode Island School of Design, where he saw an exhibition of Mark Rothko paintings that committed him to modernism as an artist. The result was his Saetas series—the word means both “darts” (a reference to his use of hypodermic syringes to paint) and also a traditional kind of Spanish devotional song that has links to flamenco. In Manila, he promoted other Philippine artists the best way he knew how, by buying their work when few others did. Finally, in late 1960, suffering from depression and illness, he left his collection of Philippine modern art to the Ateneo de Manila University and departed for Spain, where he had been cultivating friendships with other modern artists.

Spain was, in many ways, the love of his life. (He once said that, when it came to resisting matrimony, he was immovable “like a pyramid.”) He and his friends felt the country needed a major collection devoted to its modern artists, despite the rigid Franco regime, and spent several years seeking a suitable site. In 1963, they visited the ancient hill town of Cuenca, southeast of Madrid, and Zóbel reported himself “quickly entranced by the mood, the style, and the charm of the city and its inhabitants.” Living in a succession of medieval towers, he painted in the morning, sketched in the afternoon, and met friends at Pepe’s restaurant in the evening—they had their own room, where they discussed modern art over the best pollo al ajillo in town. By 1966, Zóbel had taken over more than a dining room: at considerable personal expense, he had installed his growing collection of works by Spanish modernists in Cuenca’s historic casas colgadas, a set of medieval houses perched on a cliff above the Huécar River. Thanks partly, perhaps, to his name and family connections, the Museum of Abstract Spanish Art was born.



In a 1966 image taken in the Museum of Abstract Spanish Art in Cuenca, Zóbel holds one of his sketches; his painting Ornitóptero hangs behind him. At left is Homenaje a Vasarely II, a sculpture by Amadeo Gabino; the painting at far right is Barrera con rojo y ocre, by José Guerrero. Photo courtesy the Ayala Museum, Manila

Eventually, Zóbel had nearly identical studios in Cuenca, Seville, and Madrid, where he also kept an elegant apartment filled with precious objects and works of art. But his fragile health—he suffered a series of strokes in his fifties—prompted him to give the Cuenca museum to the much larger Juan March Foundation in 1980. (He reported that it was “harder to give away a museum than it was to establish one.”) To Harvard he donated 138 drawings by Spanish masters, and a selection of Asian works; in the Philippines, he was also the force behind the creation of Manila’s Ayala Museum, to which he donated art and ethnographic items. By the time he died of a heart attack during a visit to Rome, he had also vitalized the career of many contemporary artists: the painter Simeón Saiz Ruiz, for example, has recalled how Zóbel had a knack of challenging him to greater effort in a supportive way.

Zóbel himself left behind a legacy of late abstract paintings that project an immense sense of calm. “Critics have asked me,” he once said, “what I did with the anguish in my life. My answer is that I leave it at home where it belongs, since it has nothing to do with my painting.”
Originally published in Harvard Magazine, March/April 2009
This post appears in the GeringerArt blog courtesy of its author, John Seed

Sunday, July 22, 2012

At the Ayala Museum: Victorio Edades

The exhibition "Victorio Edades: Birth of a Nation" is on view at Manila's Ayala Museum through July 29th.

At the 1976 National Artist awarding ceremony, Edades’ formal citation read, “He is the original iconoclast of Philippine art. He changed the direction of Philippine painting decisively… he infused new life into art, opening windows to permit access of ideas from the outside world."

To learn more, read the complete biography of Edades on the Geringerart website. 

Tuesday, July 17, 2012

Miguel Covarrubias: A Caricaturist Par Excellence


MIGUEL COVARRUBIAS (Mexican, 1904-1957).

Miguel Covarrubias was a Mexican painter and caricaturist, ethnologist and art historian. Unsatisfied with the start of his career in Mexico, he moved to New York City in 1924, and drew for several top magazines.

In the 1930s Covarrubias and his wife Rose made two trips to Bali where he made numerous works of art. Covarrubias also co-authored a book on Bali with artist Walter Spies.

During his later career, Covarrubias' artwork and celebrity caricatures were featured in The New Yorker and Vanity Fair magazines. The linear nature of his drawing style influenced other caricaturists such as Al Hirschfeld. Covarrubias also did illustrations for The Heritage Press including Uncle Tom's Cabin, Green Mansions, and Pearl Buck's All Men Are Brothers.

Above: Miguel Covarrubias speaks with a Balinese woman in the 1930s. 

 Geringer Art is seeking original works by Miguel Covarrubias: geringerart@yahoo.com


Monday, July 9, 2012

Le Pho: A Vietnamese Master

 An oil painting by Le Pho

LE PHO (Vietnamese, 1907-2001).

Le Pho was born in Viet Nam on August 2, 1907. He was tenth child in a family of twenty fathered by the senior mandarin Le Hoan. Because of his father's status he received a cultured education, including training in brush painting. 

Le Hoan was suspected for many years to have been a front man for the French Colonialists, and may have taken part in suppressing a peasant uprising led by De Tham. Although recent records appear to vindicate Le Hoan, Le Pho's early life was colored by these events. 

Le Pho, at age 18 became a member of the first class of students to attend the French sponsored Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Hanoi in 1925. The Hanoi ecole was directed by Victor Tardieu who had been a classmate of Henri Matisse in the Atelier Moreau. 

In 1930 Le Pho left for Paris, where he studied painting for two years. During the 30's and early 40's he painted with long, thin brushes using watercolor on silk. His subjects, including bamboo, birds and lotus flowers were traditionally Asian. 

Upon returing to Hanoi in 1933 he was made a professor at theEcole des Beaux-Arts, a position that he held from 1933 to 1936. His students from that era remember him as a thin, polite, and well-kept gentleman.
He returned to Paris in 1937 to serve as a delegate to the International Exposition, and also as a jury member. Pho remained in France, and had his first one man show there in 1938. He became an advisor to the Vietnamese Embassy in Paris and regularly exhibited at the Salon des Independants. In 1946, together with Tran Duc Thao and Tran Huu Tuoc, he provided assistance to President Ho Chi Minh and Pharn Van Dong during their stay in Paris. 

In the 1950's after Le Pho absorbed the influence of Pierre Bonnard and Odilon Redon, his subjects included sensual female figures, often portrayed in interior settings. 

His best paintings, on silk and canvas, are gentle, poetic and Asian in their aesthetic approach. Because of his exquisite skill and his influence as a teacher, Le Pho's paintings are considered extremely desireable. 

Le Pho died in Paris in 2001, after donating 20 of his works to the Viet Nam Museum of Fine Arts. 

Do you have a work by Le Pho? Contact GeringerArt for a price evaluation. 

Thursday, June 28, 2012

Charles Bartlett: Hawaii's Master Printmaker




CHARLES W. BARTLETT (British, 1860-1940 in Hawaii).

Charles Bartlett was born in Bridgeport, Dorsetshire, Enland. After enrolling in the Royal Academy in London he studied painting and etching. He then entered the private studio school Académie Julian in Paris.

After his return to England in 1889 he married, but both his wife and infant son died in childbirth. He found solace in travel, and spent time in both Venice and Holland, where he discovered Japanese prints.

Bartlett remarried in 1898, and with financial assistance from his wife's family he travelled to Pakistan, Ceylon, Indonesia, China and Japan. Returning from Japan in 1917, where Charles executed woodblock prints, the Bartletts stopped in Hawaii and never left. Befriending Anna Rice Cooke, the founder of the Honolulu Academy of the Arts, Bartlett found a patron who advanced his career. Before his death in 1940 he helped found the Honolulu printmakers group along with John Melville Kelly and Huc-Mazelet Luquiens.

 Contact geringerart@yahoo.com if you own works by Charles Bartlett

Friday, June 22, 2012

Affandi: A Modern Indonesian Master



An Affandi oil painting, sold by GeringerArt

AFFANDI (Javanese, 1907- May 23, 1990).

The painter Affandi has been called a “towering figure in the history of Indonesian modern art.” Affandi’s paintings often display his emotional responses to the lives of a people struggling to move out of poverty towards dignity.

Affandi was born in Cierbon, West Java in 1907, the son of a surveyor at a local sugar factory. After finishing his secondary education he found himself increasingly interested in painting, and in his mid-twenties he emerged as a self-taught artist. During his early years he taught school, collected tickets at a movie theater and worked as a house painter, saving leftover paint for his canvases.

In 1933, at the age of 26, Affandi married Maryati, a girl from Bogor who was also an artist. Their daughter Kartika would later become a painter who followed in her parent’s artistic footsteps. His early works included images of people, animals, the sun, and also numerous self-portraits. Affandi once stated that “…the motif I know and like best is that of my own face; ugly and reminiscent of the dwarf Sukrasana.”

In the 1930s Affandi became affiliated with an artist’s group called “Lima Bandung.” The other artists in the group were Hendra Gunawan, Barli, Sudarso, and Wahdi. The “Lima Bandung” went on to become highly influential in the development of Indonesian modern art.

In 1943, during the Japanese occupation of Indonesia, Affandi held his first solo exhibition in Djakarta. After the proclamation of Indonesian independence on August 17, 1945, Affandi became involved in making posters that evoked the struggle of the Indonesian people against Dutch colonialism. Other artists active in the creation of political posters included S. Soedjojono, Dullah, Trubus, and Chairil Anwar.

In late 1945 Affandi moved to Yogyakarta to establish a society of artist’s communities. This society eventually became the "Indonesian Young Artists Society.” In 1947, Affandi founded the "People's Painters" with Hendra Gunawan and Kusnadi, to provide learning opportunities to a younger generation is of artists hungry for artistic education. Then in 1948, Affandi moved back to Jakarta and co-founded association "Indonesian Painters Association." These groups were originally connected to the Indonesian Communist Party, which Affandi later cut his ties with.

In 1949 Affandi received a grant from the government of India where he then lived for 2 years. There, Affandi painted actively and held exhibitions in major cities in India through 1951. An artistic breakthrough occurred in his work of the early 1950s when he began to squeeze paint directly from the tube. The resulting paintings, which have an affinity with the works of Van Gogh, are distinctly expressionistic and emotionally resonant. Affandi’s spontaneous squeezed paint method soon became essential to his signature style.

In the January 12, 1953 issue of TIME Magazine, Affandi's working method is described as follows:

Affandi never learned to use a palette, dislikes brushes. Instead, he squeezes paint on to his thumb, then smears it around the canvas. He will often spend a week studying a subject, but the actual painting seldom takes longer than 90 furious minutes. 'After about an hour,' he says, 'I usually feel my emotions declining. It's better to stop then. The painting is finished.'

A traveling exhibition of Affandi’s works from this era visited European cities including London, Amsterdam, Brussels, Paris and Rome. Upon his return to Indonesia, Affandi was appointed by the Indonesian government to represent Indonesia in international Biennales exhibitions in Sao Paulo (1953), Venice (1954), and Sao Paulo (1956).

Beginning in 1955 Affandi taught at the Indonesian Academy of Fine Arts in Yogyakarta. After participating in international exhibitions in Brazil and Italy, Affandi received a 1957 scholarship from the U. S. government to study arts education. He was made an Honorary Professor of Painting by Ohio State University, and in 1974 was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Singapore. He also received the Peace Award from the Dag Hammarskjoeld Foundation in 1977, and the title of Grand Maestro in Florence, Italy.

Affandi once told one of his collectors that "If the color is good then it's okay." He told the same man to look at paintings with his eyes and heart rather than his brain. Even after he became internationally famous Affandi remained a man of simple habits who normally wore a sarong and a white t-shirt, and smoked a pipe. Before dying, Affandi spent a lot of time sitting around in his own museum, observing his paintings. He said once, “I want to die in simplicity without giving anyone unnecessary trouble, so I could go home to Him in peace.”

By the time of his death it is estimated that Affandi had created over 2,000 oil paintings. He also left sculptures in both cement and clay.

Affandi's unique home, which features a banana shaped roof sits on the bank of the Gajah Wong River in Yogyakarta. It is now a museum displaying over 300 of the artist’s paintings. Upon his death in 1990, Affandi was buried in the museum complex.

Collections:

The Affandi Museum, Yogyakarta, Java

The Singapore Art Museum, Singapore

Museum Pasifika, Bali

Contact GeringerArt at geringerart@yahoo.com if you have Affandi works for sale

Friday, June 15, 2012

A Biography of Indonesian Master Jean Le Mayeur


Above: From the "Sold" archives of GeringerArt, a painting by Jean Le Mayeur

From Geringer Art's collection of artist biographies:
  ADRIEN JEAN LE MAYEUR DE MERPRES 
 (Belgian, b. Feb. 9th, 1880 – d. May 31, 1958)

Styles: Impressionism, Orientalism Subjects: Belgian Landscapes, Scenes of Asia and Africa, Balinese Genre, Figures and Nudes

 Jean Le Mayeur is a painter best known for his sensual images of Balinese women, including his beautiful Balinese wife, the dancer Ni Pollok. According to art historians Dr. Job Ubbens and Cathinka Huizing, Jean Le Mayeur was “… an exponent of late European Impressionism, which favors a gentle, earthy palette of yellow, brown, beige and soft blue which is contrasted to red, pink, orange and purple accents.”

 Le Mayeur was the youngest of 2 brothers born in Ixelles, Brussels, to Andrien Le Mayeur De Merpres, a painter, and his wife Louise Di Bosch. Young Jean studied painting with Ernest Blanc-Garin (1843-1916) and also with his father. At his father’s insistence he attended the Polytechnic College of The Université Libre de Bruxeles, where he majored in Architecture and Civil Engineering. After graduation, to the consternation of his family, Jean began to further develop his interest in painting.

 After painting Belgian landscapes for more than a decade, he served as an army painter during WW I and also took battlefield photographs. After the war, seeking solace in travel, he made trips to the south of France, Morocco, Tunisia, Madagascar, India, and Cambodia. Le Mayeur’s works from this period already display a tendency towards Orientalist and exotic subject matter. He then visited Tahiti and French Polynesia with the intention of being like Paul Gauguin; a European exploring and capturing the primitive beauty of Polynesian culture. After being generally disappointed by Polynesia -- which he found in decline and tainted by colonialism -- he moved on.

 Le Mayeur was 52 years old in 1933 when he arrived in north of Bali at Singaraja in the Buleleng province. Since the 1920s Bali had gained a reputation as a destination for avant-garde artists including the German Walter Spies and the Dutchman Rudolf Bonnet. The island’s stunning landscapes, relaxed lifestyle and liberal sexual mores made it a paradise for European expatriates.

 After his arrival in Bali, Le Mayeur travelled south, eventually arriving at Banjar Kelandis, near the border of Bali’s capital, Denpasar. There, he found himself fascinated by the vibrant remnants of traditional Balinese culture including temple rituals and local dances. Le Mayeur was also struck by the color and beauty of the surroundings which he found unspoiled. After renting a house at Banjar Kelandis, he met a 15 year old Legong dancer, Ni Nyoman Pollok, who became his muse and model.

 An exhibition of paintings featuring Ni Pollok held at the Singapore YMCA in 1933 was a commercial success: all the paintings were sold. After the exhibition Le Mayeur bought land at Sanur beach where he built a home and studio. There he continued to execute paintings of Ni Pollok and 2 of her female friends, and decided to make Bali his permanent home. He declared to friends: “This time I shall live exclusively for my art and nothing shall distract me.” Le Mayeur and Pollok married in 1935 in a Balinese ceremony. Since Legong dancers are said to be too old to dance after age 16, Pollok had officially retired from ritual dancing to serve her new husband as a model.

 Exhibitions in Singapore in 1937, and in both Singapore and Kuala Lumpur in 1941, helped bring Le Mayeur attention and acclaim. A visitor to Le Mayeur’s 1937 show recalled that Pollok appeared alongside the paintings dressed in traditional Balinese costumes. She also offered herself bare breasted for photos, creating a sensation.

 In the late 1930s tourists arriving at Sanur from cruise ships would be served drinks and snacks by Le Mayeur’s topless wife and her servants. As a result, the artist was warned by the Colonial government that this “immoral behavior” must stop. Using his family connections, Le Mayeur wrote to his cousin, the King of Belguim, who in turn wrote to Queen Wilhelmina of Holland who told her Governor General to leave the artist alone.

 During the difficult years of the Japanese Occupation (1942-45) Le Mayeur was kept under house arrest by the Japanese authorities. He continued painting, using rice sack cloth and other available surfaces to paint on. Although his home was ransacked, he managed to keep most of his paintings.

 In the fall of 1945 photos of Ni Pollok dancing for American GIs appeared in “Life” Magazine, bringing international attention to Le Mayeur’s emergence from the difficulties of the war. “Except for a few journeys to the Far East, I never left the island,” he told a reporter. “Why should I? Sir, I am an Impressionist. There are three things in life that I love: beauty, sunlight and silence. Now could you tell me where to find these in a more perfect state than in Bali?”

 In the postwar period, tourism grew and Le Mayeur’s house remained an attraction. A 1951 issue of National Geographic noted that "Though people wander in and out their house all day, Le Mayeurs's hospitality is unending." Tourists bought Le Mayeur’s paintings, which were gradually entering collections across the world, including those of Indonesian President Soekarno and Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru.

 In 1958 Le Mayeur returned to Brussels where he was treated for ear cancer. He died on May 21, 1958 and was buried in the Ixelles cemetery. After his death Ni Pollok married an Italian Doctor who was forced to leave Indonesia not long afterwards. She lived alone in the Le Mayeur villa at Samur until her death at age 70 on July 27, 1985.

 The Villa Le Mayeur, a courtyard house featuring a garden filled with frangipani flowers, Balinese statues and palm trees is now a museum run by the government of Indonesia. It can be found on the beach between Jalan Hang Tuah and Inna Grand Bali Beach hotel, one of the largest hotels in Sanur. It is open every day from 8AM to 2PM on Sunday through Thursday, 8AM to 11AM on Fridays and 8AM to 12:30PM on Saturdays.

 Below: The le Mayeur Museum, Sanur Bali, Photo by Ronrad

The le Mayeur Museum, Sanur Bali 

 Collections: The Agung Rai Museum of Art, Bali The Museum Pasifika, Bali The Le Mayeur Museum, Bali

Saturday, June 9, 2012

Raden Saleh and the Beginning of Modern Indonesian Painting

The Galeri Nasional Indonesia (The National Gallery of Indonesia) is presenting the exhibition "Raden Saleh and the Beginning of Modern Indonesian Painting" from June 3rd to June 17th, 2012.

Raden Saleh, a Javanese nobleman, was the first native of Java to master European painting methods. He was first trained, in Bogor, by the Belgian artist A. J. Payen. Payen persuaded the Dutch colonial government to send Raden to the Netherlands for further study in art. He arrived in Europe in 1829 where he continued his studies under Cornelius Kruseman and Andries Schelfhout.

Kruseman helped train the young artist in portraiture, and he later worked in various European countries. In 1839 he began a five year stay in the court of Ernst I, Grand Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, and it was there that he gained in status. 

Working with the artist Schelfhout, Raden studied scenic painting, and visited major European cities and also Algeria. In the Hague, a lion tamer allowed Raden Saleh to study his lion, and the resulting paintings brought the artist fame. Raden Saleh's works -- including many of his animal paintings -- were exhibited in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, but most of these works were later lost in a 1931 fire at the Dutch Pavilion of a Paris exhibition. 

Raden Saleh returned to Indonesia in 1851, and remained there for twenty years, building a Neogothic palace in Batavia. He worked as a conservator for the colonial government's art collection, and he also continued executing portraits of Javanese aristrocracy and Javanese landscapes. He died in Bogor on April 23, 1880 after returning from a four year stay in Germany, Italy and France.

Please email us at geringerart@yahoo.com if you have a work by Raden Saleh that you would like to offer for sale.

Below: A video trailer from the Raden Saleh exhibition:

Saturday, June 2, 2012

Amorsolo the Illustrator

Fernando C. Amorsolo was a very versatile artist who had considerable skills as an illustrator and commercial artist. Amorsolo's ability to make money as a working artist appeared early. As a boy he sold hand-made post cards, and then as a university student he earned extra funds by illustrating several novels and also provided religious images for "Passion" books.

Here are some examples of Amorsolo's graphic skills. 

A series of lithographs made during a 7-month stay in New York in 1919 display Amorsolo's rapidly maturing confidence as a draftsman, and his mastery of the female form.

Amorsolo's 1919 lithograph "Maple Leaves"
Amorsolo was a nimble comic artist, and is widely credited as being the author of the first newspaper cartoon strip to be published in the Philippines, the satirical "Kiko at Angge."

A panel from the 1922 comic strip "Kiko at Angge."

Amorsolo's fame grew as his fine art art images were published in the form of posters and brochure images. The tourist brochure below features a stylized Amorsolo image used to lure tourists to the Philippines.

A Philippine tourist brochure features an Amorsolo image

"Miss Philippines" appears on an Amorsolo style brochure
Above:  Amorsolo's distinctive and alluring images of women were widely copied in the pre-war period. 

Even Philippine schoolchildren were familiar with Amorsolo's skill as an illustrator. Below, a copy of the "Philippine Reader" features an Amorsolo illustration:

Amorsolo's illustration of a clever monkey
To learn more about Amorsolo's career, you can read his complete biography on the Geringerart website.