Why I don’t get it, probably never did and certainly never will
I decided to visit a couple of exhibitions which were due to close at the end of the bank holiday weekend – the Japanese Manga at the British Museum and the Frank Bowling retrospective at Tate Britain. I arrived promptly at opening time at the BM to avoid the crowds but still found myself stepping carefully around a gaggle of enthusiasts of all ages at every tiniest exhibit. I moved on to Tate Britain at midday and enjoyed an unimpeded stroll through the spacious rooms, sharing each large canvas with one or at most two fellow visitors.
Interest in the Japanese Manga was widely spread across the cultural as well as demographic range. There was a fair smattering of Japanese visitors naturally but if anything the Asian presence was less pronounced within the exhibition itself than throughout the rest of the BM. More continental than Asian voices could be heard in the gentle hum of observations and conversation. This was clearly an exhibition to attract keen followers from all walks of life, thus fulfilling the objective of demystifying our galleries and widening their appeal. The central “library” area of the exhibition inviting visitors to participate via mobile link in viewing a wider range of Manga was a hive of activity.
The visual éclat of the Manga, especially those with sweeping social themes or dynamic action, was clear even to my stilted visual imagination. But I struggled to see much beyond a superior version of Dan Dare Meets Disney in (To A Degree) Asiatic Form. Much was made of the links to 12th and 13th century Japanese art but there was no hiding the historic reality that the earliest precursor to Manga art did not appear until the late nineteenth century as Japan moved at lightning pace to shake off its isolated traditions and embrace internationalism. And Manga in its present form only took off after the Second World War in response to the influence of American cartoon and film culture.
Reading the cartoons from right to left and from bottom to top does lend the Manga a distinctive oriental character. But otherwise their subject matter and narrative lines are identical to popular western story-telling, whilst their cartoon form is indistinguishable from the Beano and the Dandy with a bit of Matt and Private Eye thrown in. There may well have been some subtle hints of Japanese political satire which I missed but most of the Manga cartoons on display revolved around romance and derring-do and fairy tales. I was particularly underwhelmed by a large cartoon commissioned from Japan’s leading sports Manga practitioner for the Rugby World Cup being hosted by Japan in September 2019. It featured a vast black player dominating centre stage as he bears down on a much smaller would-be tackler in the Japanese national team colours. David and Goliath. The theme is pure action man drama as seen in the opening credits to any TV sports programme the world over. With rather less wit and subtlety than is often to be found in that genre. And the No 5 on David’s shirt betrayed a lack of simple research into the codes of the game itself.
No such popular pretensions in the large canvases at Tate Britain displaying sixty years of Frank Bowling’s intense daily engagement with acrylic paint, colour and light. Confession – I had never heard of him before this exhibition. Shame on me. Why is he not talked about alongside Hockney, Auerbach, Freud and Kitaj? Surely one of the great British painters of my life time. And yes, the fact that he is black makes his lack of high public profile all the more mystifying for the obvious reasons. The exhibition was perfectly curated for an ignoramus like myself as it took me chronologically through his development from the early 1960s in London to his New York period in the 1970s and 1980s and then back to London (where he still works in his studio in Pimlico) and a re-connection with the hazy light of his native Guyana.
An admirer of Gainsborough, Turner and Constable and assiduous student of form and paint, Bowling mastered the techniques of using a large canvas to display clear representational images before moving during his New York period towards more conceptual and abstract uses of stunning colours. Even I could see the way in which his technical command of the medium had enabled him to venture into the world of accident and serendipity through “pouring” paint without ever sacrificing the sense of a supremely skilled creative artist. No mention was made in the exhibition notes of any link to Jackson Pollock’s habit of laying the canvas across the floor to allow the paint to find its place, but surely it was no coincidence that Bowling developed his pouring technique after he went to New York in the late sixties.
This Bowling retrospective is the real thing. Japanese Manga is just action man (and occasional woman) cartoons with the odd quirkiness and political satire thrown in. Should we celebrate the triumph of cultural accessibility achieved by the British Museum? Or regret the oddly sparse attendance (perhaps it was just a quiet day) at Bowling’s breathtaking display of creative genius and visual imagination? To which I have done scant justice and feel impertinent to be even trying. I felt as awestruck in front of those great Bowling canvases (especially his mid-life New York period of using faint but clearly structured images behind the subtly changing wall of colour to impart almost subliminal messages about the geography of colonialism) as I recall feeling at the recent Hockney exhibitions and the Matisse/Picasso and Kandinsky exhibitions in Tate Modern a few years back.
25th August 2019
View from the Clapham Omnibus 