Two days ago I received a premonition of death, which I thought referred to my own. I was sitting on a hillock in Central Park, basting in a warm slow sun watching birds and some sailboats at the Conservatory of Water when it happened. I thought of my grandfather and my father - both had died before they were 60 (55 in fact) - and made the logical conclusion that their descendant (meaning, me) is drawn a similar fate. I always have these thoughts of death whenever I feel the advent of something new. something changing.
Today I heard of the passing of Roberto Chabet, 76, a pioneering conceptual artist, who while childless, through his mentorship and dedication to his students, is a father to young generations of likeminded mavericks. Many of these artists-children are my peers, classmates and friends. Yet he was not my teacher; I have deliberately chose not to, in 1996. I shifted to another course, in Art History, just to evade being "educated" in what I thought back then was a faddish fascination for second-hand Art in America and ArtNews gospels of "what art should be". I was during that period studying under another great mentor, also another Roberto, the curator Bobi Valenzuela, and with him I was critical of anything of art that didn't consider being "Filipino" first, and foremost.
In an essay I wrote for a workshop in Jakarta in 2006 I compared the styles and values of these two Robertos-as-curators. Bobi had told me that while people had pitted him with Chabet he said he had no quarrel with "Bobby". He was a curator he really admired since his methodology was charged as a provocateur, tossing ideas and letting his students and then his artists to figure out how to respond. I was so pleased when this essay was in fact, copy-pasted by Sir Chabet in his Facebook account, some years ago. It was an event that punctuated many years of recovering from a misunderstanding of the man and the artist.
The first episode of realization came when Sir Chabet, during an exhibit opening, described a project he was thinking of, a film or a video art piece that would be about Chiquito, a FIlipino comedian popular in the 70's. Then he spoke at length, even with relished enjoyment, about Chiquito, which was to my surprise uncannily uncharacteristic of someone accused of dragging Warhol and Duchamp into the halls of UP Diliman, and forcing conceptual art to its starving, fishball-and-buko juice fed fine arts students. This man was misunderstood; I misunderstood him. He knew his roots, but was not constrained by the need to assert it. Instead he found routes into creative practice that was beyond the canvas, the figure, the palette and the brush, and even the constructs of nationality and locality. Chabet had provoked innovative ways to think of ideas that were not "theatrical", nor just "symbolic". In other words, he made his students and his viewers think out of the confines of their own baggages, and out into the freest of creative ether: into humor, sly, rebellious sardonic humor. Art that was even unconstrained by market forces, although his younger students would become one day prove quite financially successful.
Thus inasmuch as my current practice was forged in a different persuasion - one that affirmed the primacy of craft over concept, and the authenticity of vernacular identity over cosmopolitan homogeneity - I also credit Sir Chabet of having shaped my aesthetics, all so indirectly, a dialectic presence that tested my faith and my nerves. In the end what defines an artist's resolve and mettle is not the differences of aesthetic values, the valences of commitment to causes and concerns outside art, nor the clique where one can identify his blood-brothers, comrades, fellows and peers. It is the sense of being enamored to the creative life and vision, and the persistence of living within this sentiment, often to use one's existence as a means for the re-enchantment of the everyday, the banal and the ordinary...so that they can attain the nature of the extraordinary. Sir Chabet did that in his art and in his generous mentorship. I hope to find the same relentless fire that he had. A fire that can be passed on, a Promethean fire, a clarifying flame.
Provoke the heavens, Sir. It would be unlike you to rest and be still. Impart your spirit to the universe: so we can find irony and humor in every molecule.
Today I heard of the passing of Roberto Chabet, 76, a pioneering conceptual artist, who while childless, through his mentorship and dedication to his students, is a father to young generations of likeminded mavericks. Many of these artists-children are my peers, classmates and friends. Yet he was not my teacher; I have deliberately chose not to, in 1996. I shifted to another course, in Art History, just to evade being "educated" in what I thought back then was a faddish fascination for second-hand Art in America and ArtNews gospels of "what art should be". I was during that period studying under another great mentor, also another Roberto, the curator Bobi Valenzuela, and with him I was critical of anything of art that didn't consider being "Filipino" first, and foremost.
In an essay I wrote for a workshop in Jakarta in 2006 I compared the styles and values of these two Robertos-as-curators. Bobi had told me that while people had pitted him with Chabet he said he had no quarrel with "Bobby". He was a curator he really admired since his methodology was charged as a provocateur, tossing ideas and letting his students and then his artists to figure out how to respond. I was so pleased when this essay was in fact, copy-pasted by Sir Chabet in his Facebook account, some years ago. It was an event that punctuated many years of recovering from a misunderstanding of the man and the artist.
The first episode of realization came when Sir Chabet, during an exhibit opening, described a project he was thinking of, a film or a video art piece that would be about Chiquito, a FIlipino comedian popular in the 70's. Then he spoke at length, even with relished enjoyment, about Chiquito, which was to my surprise uncannily uncharacteristic of someone accused of dragging Warhol and Duchamp into the halls of UP Diliman, and forcing conceptual art to its starving, fishball-and-buko juice fed fine arts students. This man was misunderstood; I misunderstood him. He knew his roots, but was not constrained by the need to assert it. Instead he found routes into creative practice that was beyond the canvas, the figure, the palette and the brush, and even the constructs of nationality and locality. Chabet had provoked innovative ways to think of ideas that were not "theatrical", nor just "symbolic". In other words, he made his students and his viewers think out of the confines of their own baggages, and out into the freest of creative ether: into humor, sly, rebellious sardonic humor. Art that was even unconstrained by market forces, although his younger students would become one day prove quite financially successful.
Thus inasmuch as my current practice was forged in a different persuasion - one that affirmed the primacy of craft over concept, and the authenticity of vernacular identity over cosmopolitan homogeneity - I also credit Sir Chabet of having shaped my aesthetics, all so indirectly, a dialectic presence that tested my faith and my nerves. In the end what defines an artist's resolve and mettle is not the differences of aesthetic values, the valences of commitment to causes and concerns outside art, nor the clique where one can identify his blood-brothers, comrades, fellows and peers. It is the sense of being enamored to the creative life and vision, and the persistence of living within this sentiment, often to use one's existence as a means for the re-enchantment of the everyday, the banal and the ordinary...so that they can attain the nature of the extraordinary. Sir Chabet did that in his art and in his generous mentorship. I hope to find the same relentless fire that he had. A fire that can be passed on, a Promethean fire, a clarifying flame.
Provoke the heavens, Sir. It would be unlike you to rest and be still. Impart your spirit to the universe: so we can find irony and humor in every molecule.
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