Lot 63: Annie Cabigting (b. 1971) Riders On A Beach, A Passing Grey Garden At Fundacion Bayeler

Annie Cabigting (b. 1971)
Riders On A Beach, A Passing Grey Garden At Fundacion Bayeler
dated 2017
oil on canvas
52" x 48" (132 cm x 122 cm)

PROVENANCE Christie's, Asian Contemporary Art, Hong Kong, 26 November 2017, Lot 241




Revered and acclaimed for her recognizable imagery and conceptual depth, Annie Cabigting is among the best contemporary Filipino art has to offer. Her works subverts the genre of painting by displacing the focus from primarily the work itself, to the very act of viewing, as emphasized by her depictions of museum and gallery goers viewing and experiencing iconic works of art. Cabigting’s practice allows her to map and explore the connection between the viewer and the art and the eventual meaning created by the act of looking, seeing, and experiencing. Among her oeuvres, Riders On A Beach, A Passing Grey Garden At Fundacion Bayeler, is arguably one of her most intriguing works. The sizable oil on canvas piece depicts a woman viewing a painting by Paul Gauguin titled Riders on the Beach II. Gauguin is considered a pillar of Modern Art, and pioneer of the Synthetism movement. His early works featured scenes and circumstances from his homeland of France, specifically in the city of Paris and in the northwestern commune of Pont-Aven, depicted in a two-dimensional flat pattern. Though he was inspired by the works of the Impressionists, Gauguin emphasized emotion rather than observation. He advised his students: “Art is an abstraction: extract from nature while dreaming before it and concentrate more on creating than on the final result.” This philosophy did not only shape the core tenets of Synthetism, but eventually guided his later and much more iconic works which primarily focused on his time in French Polynesia. These works were often imbued with a sense of mysticism and spirituality sourced from Gauguin’s observations of the locals’ indigenous practices. Gauguin also left a decoder of sorts through texts, such as the Noa Noa and Letters to His Wife and Friends that documented both his thoughts and symbolisms surrounding his works. Yet it was Gauguin’s emphasis on emotion that eventually led artists, scholars, and critics to critique his works beyond his canvases. Despite the seemingly spiritual and frank nature of his latter works, Gauguin was anything but anthropological in his approach. The exoticism of French Polynesia that led Gauguin to the former French colony no longer existed; spoiled by influence of colonialism and missionary work.“It was the Tahiti of former times which I loved,” he wrote in the Noa Noa “That of the present filled me with horror.” In Riders on the Beach II, a work depicting a beach on the Marquesas Island, Hiva-Oa, near Tahiti, it can be assumed that much like most of his latter works, that the noble and astute indegenous Polynesian riders were nothing more than fictitious characters born out of Gauguin’s own mind. Rather than celebrating a people and a society, Gauguin constructed for himself a myth that emphasized and idealized the noble savage in a way that treats those beyond the cultural West as mere manifestations of an exotic aesthetic. But is it not the case that one can still appreciate works of art regardless of its background? Both Gauguin’s and Cabigting’s works are, on the surface, free from the inherent contexts attached to them. One can still, through the act of looking and experiencing the work, appreciate and engage with the harmonious combination of color and form in Gauguin’s work. While one can also still appreciate the level of detail found within Cabigting’s work without knowing it’s nuances. Thus Cabigting’s neutral treatment that emphasizes the act of viewing, and consequently, and consequently the act of viewing as well, is seemingly in contention with the context surrounding Gauguin’s work and practice. This juxtaposition begs the question on whether or not Cabigting’s work is a commentary on the role of art as a primarily visual and experiential medium sans its context or intention, or as a critique of Gauguin's highly individualistic philosophy often attributed to Gauguin’s works; or maybe a synthesis of both? Either way, the multitude of discourse surrounding Gauguin and A Passing Grey Garden At Fundacion Bayeler, undoubtedly solidifies this piece as one of Cabigting’s most engaging, if not intriguing, works yet.