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I NEVER
thought that a Saturday in our very own Metropolitan
Museum of Manila would dispel all my preconceived
notions about the history of arts in the Philippines,
the debates and quarrels that spawned a new direction in
depicting the realities. As myths would go, we heard
about how one day, a young artist from the continent,
Victorio Edades, came home in the 1930s, carrying with
him a new way of seeing, and a different way of
painting. In the huge canvas of this schism, on one
hand, there were the “Conservatives” of the University
of the
Philippines,
and on the other were those who became the Thirteen
Moderns of the Edades camp.
Did the
years blur their stories? How conservative were those
who were accused of merely echoing the styles of
Amorsolo and Fabian de la Rosa? How modern were those
who were charting a new map for a different topography
of Philippine arts?
The
answer seems to come from the humbling but dynamic
exhibit that gives a space for those who taught in the
early years of what was then Escuela de Bellas Artes.
The school was known during the Spanish period as
Escuela Superior de Pintura, Escultura y Grabado in the
Spanish period. By virtue of Act 1870 of the Philippine
Legislature, the school was reestablished and attached
to the University of the
Philippines.
These
artists—teachers and students alike—sowed the first
interest in the formal studies of arts in a period when
arts appreciation was in its infancy. They were
introducing the concept of beauty as captured by a group
of individuals entering a field heretofore unexplored
locally. The aesthetics and temperament available then
for the mentors were all sourced outside—Europe, in
particular—and there was not much space for the artists
then to create their own. Not that they were expected to
do so because in those years, they looked to the West.
The West was civilization and the Arts was Western.
Outside these categories, things were labeled artifacts
of ethnicity, and where the objects approached the level
of the refined and the beautiful, they merely qualified
for craft.
It is
thus a commendable effort that we are given a quick look
even at how the arts looked then, how they measured
against the “modern” approaches (which came, by the way,
also from the outside). More than that, by looking at
the works of the teachers and their pupils, we are able
to see how they measure against contemporary efforts.
The efforts are no less valiant and the works
astounding, if judged by the pure sentiment emanating
from even the tiny panels. The first teachers were all
coming from a generation reared under the colonial rule
of Spain, and seeing their works covering everything
from the historical to the everyday life is by itself an
introduction to how artists were developed them. Rafael
Enríquez, the school’s first director, misleads us into
classifying him as old-fashioned with his Neo-classical
take in the piece called The Assassination of Fr. Juan
C. Alcover and His Dominican Campaign in China. But look
again, the painting has the lightness of illustration
and the use of Chinese characters is charming: the
painter simulating the curve and swish of what he
thought could pass off as Chinese strokes. Jose María
Asunción, secretary of the school and professor of
Perspective, Art Theory and Art History, has a tiny
masterpiece of a river scene, with a banca and nipa hut
in gentle chiaroscuro.
Like old
cinema, the reason why some images look stilted now is
because they have been copied and recopied. The tragedy
is we are more exposed to the more common copies. In
this exhibit, we approach the wellspring of images that
later were linked to the so-called Mabini paintings:
ricefields with undulating yellow fields; mountains that
are green nearby and blue in the distance; boats being
towed away from the waves announcing the arrival of a
storm; and lonesome bridges above the darkening,
whispering streams. Dated, these sceneries become
convincing markers for memory and nostalgia.
Ireneo
Miranda’s contribution is in two works in watercolor on
paper. The first one is a lady, well-coiffed and looking
as if she is assuming the pose of the movie stars of the
era; the other is a waterfall scene. Interestingly, in
both pieces, the transparent quality of the medium is
lost in etched lines and broad, hard strokes, giving the
figure a cold appearance and the waterscape an
overwhelming density. Miranda would become one of the
premier illustrators working with Philippine Graphic.
Pleasant
to me are my personal discoveries (which I assume to
have been realized by other viewers, too): Fabian de la
Rosa’s use of light as opposed to that of the more
acknowledged master of Philippine light, Fernando
Amorsolo. In his Patio, Fabian de la Rosa, Amorsolo’s
mentor, mystifies the glorious light that falls upon the
space occupied by potted plants. The pale light could
have been coming from the moonlight, except that a gap
above the ceiling gives away a sliver of blue day sky.
The sunlight dapples on the red-brown floor. At the
rightmost edge of the frame stands a woman, her timidity
heightened by her marginal position in the painting, a
compositional mystery by itself.
Amorsolo
has two dalaga in the show: each basking in the sunlight
that the painter almost had a patent on. In an earlier
painting done in 1910, it is worth noting that the
painter at that age could command the sunlight. The
dalaga’s skirt, however, in the same painting, has
static folds that counter the lambent tone of the entire
work.
The
curatorship of Santiago Pilar is admirable for allowing
us the shock of recognition. At every turn, there is
something to ponder upon. I have my favorites. One is
Miguel Zaragoza’s Portrait of Pedro Paterno, one of the
three portraits of this 19th-century ilustrado poster
boy. Move down the hall, and in the permanent exhibit of
the museum, you will encounter Juan Luna’s other
portrait of Paterno. Nena Saguil’s early foray into
Impressionism, called Under the Shade, shows a village
landscape bisected by this huge tree with its shade of
thick blue and yellow impasto. Well referenced is
Vicente Rivera y Mir’s Woman With a Child in Quiapo, his
Stabat Mater, with the mother kneeling, her face
dolorously trained at the Figure on the Cross whose only
visible parts are the feet being touched by the
loneliest figure. Cradled by the woman is her child
whose upturned semiclenched hand is the only sign of
life.
Vicente
Alvarez Dizon’s Philippine Country Scene draws us to its
device of flattening the landscape and allowing the
piece to soar with the billowing clumps of bamboo and
the cumulus clouds that seem to drift to eternity. It is
a country scene disturbing in what it is not saying.
What we see is the farmer going home, the church at the
distance seemingly belonging to the clouds. Then there
is the naughty and sophisticated piece from Toribio
Herrera, called Rainy Day. Remove the woman in a tight
wet patadyong and leave the man in trench coat and you
have a scene somewhere perhaps in New York. What is the
painter telling us? What is it showing? Is it about the
rain, or is this the exposure of the woman, her supple
behind undisturbed by the rain. A comic relief is
provided by a third figure, a woman, her legs spread
apart for support, bracing herself from being blown away
by the wind. And we dared call them not modern?
The
exhibit is aptly titled Heroës Anónimos of the Brilliant
Struggle. Seeing the works, we know the struggle has
resulted in victory. The exhibit is on view until July
26. |
