CURRENTLY ON SHOW AT THE AYALA MUSEUM, the exhibit Pioneers of Philippine Art brings together three painters considered as trailblazers of Philippine art: Juan Luna, Fernando Amorsolo, and Fernando Zobel. Distinguished for being the "first" in their respective careers, their interesting juxtaposition is a history lesson in itself.
As we all know, Juan Luna y Novicio was the first Filipino artist to achieve international acclaim. At a banquet celebrating his and Felix Resurreccion Hidalgo's triumphs at the 1884 Exposicion Nacional de Bellas Artes in Madrid—a gold medal for Luna’s Spoliarium and a silver for Hidalgo's Virgenes Cristianas Expuestas al Populacho—Jose Rizal proposed a toast: "Luna and Hidalgo are Spanish as well as Philippine glories. They were born in the Philippines but they could have been born in Spain, because genius knows no country, genius sprouts everywhere, genius is like light, air, the patrimony of everybody, cosmopolitan like space, like life, like God." Coming from such an authority, one might well overlook the hyperbole and agree with its core contention: that the artist is that rare (yet everywhere sprouting) genius belonging to a god-like elite. Mutual admiration societies notwithstanding, this view of the artist has not held since time immemorial and, today, such liberal sprinkling of the word "genius" would be viewed askance as so much unhip gushing. Why so?
FROM DARKNESS, LIGHT
During our prolonged "Dark Ages"—thanks in no small part to Spanish colonialism—the Church was, to all intents and purposes, the sole patron of the arts of which the only recognized goal was ad majorem dei gloriam. One might say that there were no artists during this period, only artisans who were hired for their skill in decorating churches, painting religious images, and carving saints as per friar's instructions. It was only in the mid-19th century that the names of some of these cultural workers began to appear on the record.
By the second half of the century, with the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 and its attendant economic developments, a greater number of Filipinos became exposed to more cosmopolitan ideas and, among the ilustrados, the concept of the Romantic genius took hold. This is the context of Rizal's effusiveness. In the face of Luna's monumental Spoliarium, they all stood (if not so silently) upon a peak in Darien.
Today, a mere 126 years later, the Spoliarium still inspires the awe that gripped Luna's confrères and more. It is as monumental now as it was then but with the added value of being nothing less than a relic of a heroic past when giants supposedly walked the earth. Yet Luna did not pursue a career of painting scenes from antiquity as so many 19th century European painters did. In fact, his oeuvre spans several schools of painting: the classical-academic (as exemplified by the Spoliarium), the Impressionisms of Monet and Manet, and the Realism of Courbet.
Lady at the Racetrack (ca. 1880), one of the Ayala Museum's "crown jewels" shows Luna at his more relaxed. This large work shows an elegant European lady whose blocking in the picture frame—dominating the foreground and set apart from the other racegoers—bespeaks her confidence as a woman of and in the world. Her black jacket with white lapels contrasts dramatically with her lavender lace gown and she carries her parasol with an almost jaunty air. This, as well as Luna's other fashion plate work, Lady with Manton de Manila, portrays a world far from the sturm und drang of the Spoliarium.
Angst of a different kind would surface, however, in his so-called "Social Realist" works dealing with contemporary issues. Influenced by the political theories of the day, Luna became more and more drawn to the "humble and disinherited," which led to works such as Les Ignorés (1887). In a letter dated 1889, the artist practically disavows his earlier work, saying: "Yes! All historical pictures are false from the roots of their idea to the trappings. Those who think that good composition, correct drawing, brilliant colours, and a lot of trappings, make a good painting, have erred." His Ragamuffin, an oil sketch of a street urchin in cap and smock, chin resting on hand, has an expression less pensive than sournois. In this childhood, there is no sweetness and light.
AMORSOLO'S HEART
Sweetness and light, on the other hand, might be said to characterize the oeuvre of the next painter in the exhibit's triumvirate of pioneers. Fernando Amorsolo (born 1892, seven years before Luna's untimely death in 1899), moved in a different world altogether. Spain was on its ignominious way out while the United States of America, world-power in the making, was in some perplexity as to its new acquisition. Easily of a calmer temperament than Luna, Amorsolo is arguably the most popular if not the best-loved Filipino artist from his time to the present—as the tagline of his grand 2008 multi-venue retrospective, "His Art, Our Heart," asserts. In any case, the distinction of being the first National Artist for Painting is Amorsolo's.
If Luna's desire towards the end was to evoke Dante's Inferno, Amorsolo's was quite the opposite. His most famous works depict idyllic scenes set in the placid countryside where all men are muscular and all girls pretty. If Luna's Lady at the Racetrack seeks to portray the New Woman with all her contradictions, Amorsolo's damsels are preternaturally serene and undistressed. Planting rice, doing the laundry, and selling produce never looked so effortless.
And always, always that golden yellow light that never fails to hit just the right spots. His Maiden in a Flower Garden (1948) shows a girl whose Gibson Girl-ish charms rival those of the flowers that surround her, in a composition that would have worked as a promotional still for an LVN movie. It might have been their facile appeal that drove Francisco Arcellana to say that Amorsolo's paintings "have nothing to say" and that they were not hard to understand because "there is nothing to understand." Harsh words but not incomprehensible, considering that the country was still reeling from the ravages of war.
His earlier works are not as cloying, however, and his Palay Maiden (1920) shows strength of limb besides the near-requisite dimple. In fact, this painting may be read as not merely extolling Filipina pulchritude but also the virtue of honest labor. With very little of the coquette about her, Palay Maiden with her blue headscarf, sheer white shift and red skirt, holding a sheaf of palay and a sickle, might represent a hard-working Filipinas, and is the closest to an allegorical painting—intentional or otherwise—in Amorsolo's oeuvre.
In his career that peaked during the Commonwealth, Amorsolo became a victim of his own success. The demand for his signature was such that clients only had to leaf through an album, point out the desired article, and agree on some minor changes. This resulted in a body of work that is estimated at over 10,000 pieces. In fairness, however, Amorsolo was the first to take uncomplicatedly joyous pride in the local scene and his influence can still be seen in much contemporary art of a retrospective tendency.
A PAINTER OF AIR
If Amorsolo's weak point was his "safe-ness," the third artist in the pioneering triumvirate, Fernando Zobel de Ayala, strove for what might be taken for the opposite. A scion of Iberian immigrants who settled and made their fortune in the Philippines, Zobel’s parents were among Amorsolo's earliest and most distinguished patrons. Unlike Luna and Amorsolo, whose calling might be said to have found them at an early age, Zobel's entry into the art world was the result of a "deliberate decision" made as a young man.
While Luna and Amorsolo's influences were of the Old World, Zobel's was of the New. Sent to study in Harvard, he was soon exposed to the works of the American avant garde of the time. The works of abstract expressionist Mark Rothko struck him in particular and launched him into an experiment in form and technique that would last the rest of his life. His masterpiece, Icaro (1962), utilizing his patented syringe technique or Saeta, starkly evokes the desperate feathers of the poor boy who fell into the sea. The artist himself, however, spoke of the "abandonment of the need to represent" which might explain critic Eric Torres's assessment of Zobel as a "painter of atmospheres; he painted air."
Interestingly—although it is, perhaps, to be expected—Zobel takes up the greatest space in the Ayala Museum exhibit. Besides his paintings, there are also various memorabilia in the form of letters and photographs, as well as a dais enclosed by glass walls within which is an installation meant to "evoke" the artist's studio (one of several) in Spain. As the wall notes explain, all of Zobel's studios were "simple, well-organized, and pristine with white walls and floors that echo the spare lines, minimal color, and tight composition of his works." (If a workplace can only be of a piece with the work, one can only imagine what Luna's studio must have looked like while he was painting the Spoliarium and it might be considered a boon to the museum-going public to have been spared the sight of the mess.) Also not to be missed is a computer portal devoted to "Fernando Zobel: The Man, The Artist, The Thinker, The Educator, The Art Patron."
To his credit, Zobel channeled much of his resources into the cause of modernist art in the Philippines, and it was his munificence that nurtured the Philippine Art Gallery and founded the Ateneo Art Gallery. His patronage crossed continents and in an interview with James Michener he is more known as a staunch supporter of little-known modernist painters in Spain, where he settled from 1961 until his death in 1984. At his eulogy, the Spanish academic Correa lauded Zobel as "an enthusiastic promoter of disinterested, almost impossible, undertakings." Zobel was born in the Philippines but could have been born in Spain but, unlike Rizal's toast to Luna and Hidalgo, Correa's praise invokes not the divine but the quixotic. One can only hope that Zobel felt more satisfaction in his work than those words imply.
Offhand, it is difficult to say what Luna, Hidalgo, and Zobel have in common besides being artists in an exhibit together. Their works are mounted in separate areas when more interaction—say, between Luna’s ladies and Amorsolo’s maidens, or between Amorsolo’s and Zobel’s landscapes—would have suggested connections.
In terms of official recognition, there are no more Spanish academias to give Filipino painters their stamp of approval and the title of National Artist has, of late, lost its luster. One fact that the three do have in common is an art school, the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando in Madrid (founded 1744), where Luna and Amorsolo studied and which granted Zobel an honorary degree just before his death. No other art school has as illustrious a roll which includes the likes of Goya, Picasso, and Dali. It is an academic pedigree that may or may not be of significance but, as a tie that binds these three artists together, it pulls them willy-nilly back into the past—whereas it is in the future that the pioneer truly belongs. (Sofia Guillermo)