It was one of the most formative moments in my life. I was sitting in a cold, drab Oxford lecture room in my first year of university waiting for my prof, Marxist thinker Erik Swyngedouw. He finally burst into the room with a cup of coffee in his hand and asked in his distinctive Belgian accent, “Can you see this coffee?” The obvious answer was, “Yes, of course I can see this cup.” What, I wondered, was this guy getting at?
But it soon became clear that this wasn’t going to be my usual dazed and drowsy experience wallowing at the back of the lecture theatre. “You can see the coffee, but can you see the fields of Guatemala? Can you see the EU tariffs? Can you see the coffee workers’ pay slips?” I soon realized what he was getting at. The world as it is didn’t just happen. It is the way it is because of people, because of laws, because of attitudes.
Luke Sherlock, Oxford UK, Adbusters Issue #85, Sep/Oct 2009
Luke Sherlock wrote a short but concise article in the latest issue of Adbuster which devotes itself to the subversion of economics – underpinned by the belief that the traditional and neoclassical models of economics which we are ruled by, fails to take into account the ecological cost of rapid urban development and will doom us all. Gloomy read I know but I thought the opening paragraphs made a suitable entry point to introduce A Story of the Image, exhibiting at the National Museum of Singapore.
The Marxist professor asked his class what were their attitudes towards economics by asking what can they see from a cup of coffee. A Story of the Image is an exhibition combining a collection of historical and contemporary artworks from Antwerp that asks what are our attitudes towards images by asking if we can see the invisible stories of the Image, beyond the visible. In today’s world where we are engulfed by advertisements, news, magazines and posters, not even to speak of the infinite digital images, if a picture is truly worth a thousand words then shouldn’t we be all reading them? Or is it that we have been overwhelmed by the images and their stories? The contemporary artists of today address these questions differently, some by delving straight in the thick of the mass media and imagery business, others by creating their own spaces and stories outside the mass media domain. A Story of the Image can be seen as a culminated response to these questions and yet potentially allows the spectator to subvert all these questions if he or she takes back control of the Image.
The exhibition title itself, A Story of the Image, not The Story of the Image, suggests many different stories so the way I see this exhibition is but one of many possible others. On a guided tour I had the pleasure of arranging and attending, Szan Tan, the curator from National Museum of Singapore responsible for bringing the show in, opened her tour by saying: “In Singapore we want choices. But when we are given many choices we don’t know what to do. We do not know what to choose.” In a statement that may be construed as hinting at the still-lacking, or still-developing, state of independent thought in Singapore, it gives reason to the importance of this exhibition.
Unavoidably, some importance will be attached to the market value of the artworks featured. Fortunately A Story of the Image holds its own with 150 pieces of artworks that were brought in from three museums – Old Masters paintings from the Royal Museum of Fine Arts of Antwerp (KMSKA), ancient prints and engravings from the Museum of Plantin-Moretus/Printroom, and contemporary works from the Museum of Contemporary Art, Antwerp (MuKHA).
It is not all that often for museums to loan out their collection for exhibiting alongside other museums due to logistical and occasionally, political, reasons. Because of this, the collaboration of three important museums from Antwerp to put together some very rare and some very interesting pieces – 17th, 18th century pieces such as original oil paintings by Flemish masters Peter Paul Rebens and Anthony van Dyck against works from contemporary artists like Hans op de Beeck and Luc Tuymans – underlines the fact that the exhibition and the curated artworks may well otherwise would have never been seen in Singapore.
While the opportunity of getting close to a rare and very expensive Rubens or van Dyck can justify spending time to visit the exhibition, that to me should not be the leading reason. The subtitle of the show is “Old and New Masters from Antwerp” and Antwerp is an important place in the study of the Image – it became the birth-ground of the commercialization of the Image in the 16th century. From then onwards, rich patrons can commission and buy art images without ever having the artists know them and the reverse is true. With the advent of industrial printers in Europe, reproduction of images became possible and both contributed to the globalised image culture of today. The bringing together of old and contemporary artworks from Antwerp is a highlight in elaborating the evolution process of how modern images have taken over us. But A Story of the Image is not just about Old and New Antwerp Masters.
It is about the Image – both at once about the Image and also not just about the Image. For to define the Image, we draw meaning from different narratives that make sense to us and use societal values to substantiate our points. Like social equality, gender issues, time, memories, – so the exhibition becomes one that is about the Image and social equality, the Image and gender, the Image and time, the Image and memory… and it goes on.
From a populist position, the task of having to “explain” what the exhibition is about appears to run counteract to a purist’s stand who would bring up Szan’s point that Singapore is still unable to form critical thinking for itself. Ah… the irony of telling me what the exhibition is about when that is what the exhibition ought to achieve by its own merits… Or perhaps the very discussion of this irony is an achievement on its own.
Let it be known that I preference some key themes and naturally have my favorites in a show spanning 22 gallery rooms. Here are the ones that I am drawn to, and you will note that I have not listed any of the old masterpieces. Valuable and rare as the hundred-years old prints and paintings are, I just derive more pleasure in discussing the following contemporary artworks.
Francis Alÿs – When Faith Moves Mountains (2002)
A personal favorite theme – the impossibility of the banal, the silliness and absurdity of using the time, strength, of 500 volunteers to “move a sand dune” in Lima, Peru by a few inches. It makes one think when Alÿs called for the volunteers, what went through the minds of those who responded and what of those who probably scoffed – and what do the different reactions tell us about the labeling of art as a hopeless effort and when is art deemed worthy. Bring this thought over to “work” as a theme – and I ask what is it that differentiates work that is deemed more “worthy” over another. As with the cup of coffee held up in the Oxford classroom asking how is it that the work of coffee workers is judged by the ones who have never spent a day harvesting coffee beans, what of the work that goes into visual art.
Luc Tuymans – Flemish Village (1995)
Luc Tuymans’ painting here depicts the difficulty of memory. He kept away from the scene of his work and painted from recollection. The houses in his painting have no windows or doors – an unusual sight. There is no person on the street, no activity going on, making the village a quiet place but the quietness evokes stirring tension because we have to ask why is there no one? Where is everyone? For Tuymans the deliberately blurred details exposes how our memories are incompletely and not reliable. But I see this work as highly representative in exposing our adherence and thus now obligation to always “correct” images – the proof-able, the always-updated, the complete picture. What does modern technology that allow us to take, store, transfer and display images anywhere and everywhere does to us? Must we always have the “correct” images – when and how did it become that we once “can” has been replaced by that we are now obliged to use and interact with images this way? Or were we always this way?
Berlinde de Bruyckere – In Flanders’ Fields (2000)
Because this is an installation that takes up a fairly large space, it has roused more interest and would have made more memories than some of the other works. Here de Bruyckere represents a World War I newspaper photograph of dead horses on a battlefield she came across during her residency. The substantial bodies of the horses suspended permanently in their writhing lifeless state is intended to evoke our responses. By not molding the horses their eyes, mouths, noses – sensory organs – de Bruyckere cuts off the channels of communication. She leaves the image of the horses’ bodies to say what is to be said about our relationship with them through history (hunting them for food, farming them, riding them for pleasure and prestige, and charging into war and death with them). If horses – strong, proud, magnificent creatures – are distorted into featureless carcasses what more can be said of the human body?
Hans op de Beeck – Location 1 (1998)
This is my favorite artwork from the exhibition. Hans de op Beeck installs a scene we are all familiar with, a deserted crossroad in the dark of night. The location is not explicitly named but just denoted as Location 1 – this could be anywhere. The little traffic lights conventionally goes from “go” to “stop” and back. But being located in a physical place so uninhabited does the action of obeying the lights make any sense? Comparing to how theorist Walter Benjamin describes the punctum of a photograph as the little detail in a picture that connects with us, the punctum is elevated only through the imagination of our being and interaction with op de Beeck’s Location. The traffic lights makes the entire scene meaningful and from a previously vacant space, possible connections are present again once meaning is established.
In an interview op de Beeck explained that when people resonate with either during or after viewing his installations, it’s an affirmation of the visual arts in that “you as a visual artist can highlight things that people normally don’t have attention for and you can ask for attention for parts of reality.”
A Story of the Image is an ambitious exhibition. It is one that asks something of the spectator but presents many possible routes to answer it. It is one that asks of the spectator overdue attention to the reality of living with and within images. Museums are spaces where you have to think, where you are made to make sense for yourself – and A Story of the Image is one such exhibition that, which while has the luxury of the backing of the priceless paintings of Flemish masters and the affecting works of contemporary artists still alive to defend and further develop their work, compounds the need to restore critical thinking of the roles of Images and our attitudes towards them.
A Story of the Image runs till 4 October 2009, at the National Museum of Singapore
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