Collection Piphitmaya: Thai Contemporaries in View
Interview with Jean-Michel Beurdeley, 2013. In your long career as a collector, you began with Asian antiques, then became interested in Asian modern art, and since 2000 have focused on work by Thai contemporary artists. Since beginning as an art dealer at the age of 19 until now, I have had to collect something to appreciate how to live with art
objects. So maybe it was my way of surviving. Artists survive because they create. For me, collecting is my way to create. When I had the gallery in Paris, I would create a group of objects, then make a catalog and exhibit and sell them. Besides the pleasure it gives you, does your collection serve other purposes? I strongly believe that an art collection that is kept in a drawer and not exhibited is nonsense. You would do better to buy a gold bar, and put it in the bank. So I hope Piphitmaya encourages other people to collect. I was fortunate to be in a niche, with Thai modern art, to have access to something no one else understood yet. I’ve always been interested to discover new things, but I want to share them with people. Collectors should participate fully in the art world. Look--if the artists still had the pieced in their hands, they would loan them to a museum exhibition if asked. So you have to act the same way. Do collectors like you worry when loaning out valuable works? It’s a headache, but in my antique business in Paris I used to send porcelain to Japan, or other Japanese works to France, and it travelled very well. So why worry with painting? That’s always my policy, and in the meantime, if it is exhibited and published in a catalog it’s good for the art. It gives the object a curriculum vita, a provenance. Why did you decide to publish your collection online? I don’t want to advertise myself, but the art works. Maybe people are researching Thai art or Lalan, and they can look at this. Maybe someone heard about the collection but did not have a chance to see it. What about perceptions of the collection by other people, comments you have heard or read? I get a lot of encouragement from foreigners, foreign museums, but mostly abroad, to tell the truth. There are not that many people here in Thailand who are interested, because there are not enough museums, not enough Thai collectors. When you began collecting Thai contemporary art, how did you go about it? It was very difficult to select Thai artists at first, but I was helped by several people. In 2000, Khun Jeab, Krittaya Kaweewong, the curator who founded Project 304, and who now heads the Jim Thompson Art Center, introduced me to this world. So did Eric Bunnag Booth. I also got encouragement from Dr. Apinan Poshyananda, of the Thai Ministry of Culture, as well as from the cultural attaches of the French Embassy in Thailand. Soon the problem of space arose. I had one space of 200 square meters, and then it became full and I had to double the space, with a second level. It’s still not enough, so 20 percent of the work is in storage. Why did you focus on Thai contemporary art and not, say, Chinese, which was already attracting a lot of attention in 2000? Well, I did collect the 20th century Chinese-French artist Lalan (Xie Jinglan 1921-1995) since the 1980s. Her work was a real discovery for me. And yes, contemporary Chinese art was already going very strong when I still had my gallery in Paris. But I wanted to do something different, which is what I’ve done throughout my career. Not to jump on to something that is already famous. And I was living here in Thailand, so the opportunity to collect Thai art was better. What about Thai contemporary works that you have sold? No, since I began collecting Thai contemporary art, I have not sold even one piece. The reason? The supply is not that easy! Pieces by Montien Boonma, who died in 2000, are very rare. Pinaree Sanpitak is working hard, but she doesn’t have huge stock. Navin Rawanchaikul doesn’t have that much. Nor does Thawan Duchanee. Chartchai Puipia – very little in stock. Natee Utarit? Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook? No stock. They sell what they produce, the people I collect. How did you choose which pieces to acquire? I don’t buy for decoration, but because I feel something. I need emotion when I buy, something that shows emotion. And sometimes you need a key to come into someone’s work. You need a historian, someone like Khun Jeab or Dr. Apinan, to explain what the artist is trying to do. You can’t just go by yourself. Has your taste changed since you first started buying Thai contemporary art in 2000? Enormously, but it was an evolution. At first I bought neo-traditional art, which is rather conservative. But a few years ago, for example, Araya showed me a photo, and I thought it looked like a landscape by Turner. And it turned out to be a dead body, but you could hardly see that unless you were told. Before long I was buying work like the videos she did with corpses, where she reads poetry to the dead. I don’t think 20 years ago I would have been able to stand that, and I see it now as one of the most beautiful things. Her work has changed my perception of death. Even Navin Rawanchaikul. At first glance, his work might look like a cartoon. But if you like the creativity of traditional Thai cinema posters, and then recognize the imagination and research in his work, you will love it. So you learn a lot from artists. When you enter into their world, it’s fascinating. Sometimes, with some of them, you can enter, but sometimes you cannot. Your father was an expert on Asian antiques who worked for a Paris auction house, and your great-grandfather was a collector. How did this background influence you? Since the age of ten, I went to auctions, and visited museums. I was never good at school. I studied by working in a shop that sold antique Chinese porcelain, then in galleries, including a gallery of African art. African art especially gave me a different view of art objects. When did you become an art dealer? I started in 1965 when I was 19. Most of the dealers were in their 50s or older, and they had started in the business in the 1920s, 1930s, 1940s. My father started before World War II. At first I was interested in classical art – Greek, Egyptian, Roman. But I moved quickly into Chinese antiquities, five-color ceramics, Ming dynasty work, Sung dynasty, certain objects for the tea ceremony. And then Southeast Asian. There was abundant supply in the market. Because I was familiar with African art, and also because I was young and therefore influenced by modern art, so I could see something a bit different when I chose an antique. I went to Japan buying mingei, folk art. I would buy a massive wooden pot-hook, or jizai gaki, which is used to hang a kettle over a hearth. I would mount one upside down on top of a stand, and it looked like a Brancusi! At that time, calligraphy was a source of inspiration for some European and American modern artists, like Hans Hartung, Jackson Pollack, and so I became interested in Japanese calligraphy. So I showed these Asian works in my gallery. It was a different approach in how to show antiques, a taste that was more abstract, which finally came to interest the new generation collecting in France and the United States. And I learned a lot from the art collectors and dealers from Asia. They would show me what interested them. In the old days, the European art dealers who travelled to Asia were looking for things like Japanese screens that showed Portuguese and Dutch figures. They were not so interested in calligraphy. But I could see the beauty of the calligraphic gesture from the beauty of the modern French art inspired by it. I was not buying just what I could sell to Europeans. I wanted to sell to Japanese dealers and collectors. Japanese tastes were quite different, and often I could find things in Europe appealing to them. I could bring back Japanese or Chinese art that they liked. Japanese were big buyers, even buying Renoir 30 or 40 years ago. So you bought Asian antiques in Europe to sell in Asia. How did these things get to Europe in the first place? They came in the 19th century or even before. In porcelain for example, we had export porcelain from China in the 17th, 18th centuries. Europeans were not interested in imperial wares, they were just interested in Chinese porcelain made for Europe, for palaces. People saw only their own interests. They didn’t go abroad. Europeans and Americans thought they were the center of the world. But, bit-by-bit, people became interested in something else. European collectors brought prints from Japan, things like Hokusai. Even Van Gogh got very interested. In 1879 came the Guimet Museum of Asian Art, founded by a French industrialist who collected around the world. Then much later, in the 1960s, when Japan’s economy started to boom, Japanese art exhibitions began to be sent around Europe and the world, and some people collected. When did you first visit Asia, and how has art collecting progressed in Asia since then? In 1964. Japan’s economy was starting to boom, and I could see that this would create collectors. That was what had happened among Europeans and Americans in the 19th century. Then, after the Japanese boom, there was a boom in Taiwan. Then people from Hong Kong, China, and Indonesia. And then in Thailand I saw the boom. Singapore is the latest art boom. The government wants to jump into the modern art of Southeast Asia. They are opening doors to Southeast Asian art that no one has touched. There are no great contemporary art museums in Southeast Asia yet. And so they want to become the cultural center of Southeast Asia. It’s a very interesting position that they are in. And the timing is right for them to collect Southeast Asian artists. They will be the biggest cultural center of Southeast Asia. They’re already the financial center. My point of view is not to buy art to make money. But I am not a philanthropist either. When you buy art and you are not rich, you want to be sure that you can sell it if you have to do so in order to survive. It’s very important not to make collecting a waste of money. Yet many people believe that what I am doing is just wasting money, pursuing a hobby. I don’t think so. Any comment about Thai contemporary art in general? I think Thailand’s best artists are up to international standards, but with their own specificity. Most of them have not forgotten their roots. I like people who keep their roots, maybe because I was an antique dealer. Thailand has opened to the outside world in these last 20 years, because of the economy. If you were an artist before now, you were locked up here, because how could you travel? You had to be from a rich family. There were a few pioneers like Thawan Duchanee. He went to every museum in the world to study in the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s. It’s unbelievable, his knowledge! In quite another style was Inson Wongsam, who went by Lambretta scooter around world in 1961. This was quite extraordinary. Then Montien Boonma, who studied in France in the 1980s, and went to Italy, and brought back knowledge that he expressed in his work. Europeans, probably Americans as well, helped open the eyes of Thai artists to what could be contemporary in this country. What about some of the artists whose works you have collected? Let’s start with Thawan Duchanee. The strength in his work is its strong connection to the past – the Thai past, Khmer. It bridges what I have been doing with antiques, pairing old work and new Thai art. Work from the middle of his career is especially interesting. The aesthetic value is very high. His styles and sensibility are amazing. Montien Boonma was close to Buddhist philosophy, translating it onto paper, into sculpture. It took an amazing imagination to translate philosophy into works like that. And he was also sensitive to ecology, in his use of herbs, or turning street trash into sculpture, like “The Venus of Bangkok.”
Pinaree Sanpitak’s work is very poetic, about the body of a woman. As for Navin Rawanchaikul, he has an unbelievable imagination. Each time I see his work, I wonder, what was he looking for. His incredibly imaginative graphics, like ads you see painted on buses, or old movie posters. That is where it all started. These graphics here – in Thai posters, advertisements – have always fascinated me. Araya Rasdjarnrearnsook’s work has the emotion of bringing you the beauty of death, helping you to accept life. And talent in opening discussion comparing the aesthetic values of east and west. Chartchai Puipia is laughing at life with a certain aggressivity, smiling in a critical way. Vasan Sitthiket’s work is very political, yet he has a very artistic touch. Expressing annoyance with politics in such an aesthetic way is very great. Prasong Luemuang’s work is sometimes very graphical. Very nice. Like Thawan, he is influenced by the antique period of Thai art. Niti Wattuya’s work is beautiful. It goes beyond the surface. There is some spirit in it. Kwanchai Lichaikul has great imagination, offering a critique of society. I am more shy with photography, but I do collect the work of Manit Sriwanichpoom. He has a great sense of composition and social relevance.
