The art of speaking out

Ina Api (Mistreated) pen and ink on paper, Iggy Rodriguez, Photo courtesy of Blanc Compound

In the art world where snobbery and elitism often permeates the very air that its denizens breathes in, it is a challenge for those on the margins to cross the very high threshold (both imagined and actual) that artifice has created.

Blanc Compound (Mandaluyong City, Philippines) is one venue in Metro Manila where one can find or encounter art in all shapes, sizes and conviction. Upon receiving the emailed invitation from Blanc last week on Iggy Rodriguez’s first solo exhibit “KIMI-IMIK” (from November 10 to 30, Shaw Boulevard), I immediately took notice for many reasons. Not only is Rodriguez in my artist-to-watch list after seeing, on-line, some of his earlier pen-and-ink works, but also the fact that it is his first solo (co-produced with Slash/Art Artist Initiatives) in a mainstream art venue.

Kimi is “timid” in Filipino, a trait often attributed by Western observers to many Filipinos. Whether the observation is correct or not, assertiveness is a social trait determined by one’s cultural genes in the Philippines where the politics of class, stature and money dominates or is the red line that crosses many social narratives. In Rodriguez’s chosen title the flipside of “Kimi” is “Imik” which in Filipino means “to speak out.” Not exactly a palindrome, the show’s title is a clever twist on the palindrome. More intriguing is the implicit suggestion: is the Filipino’s ‘timidity-assertiveness’ actually a Janus-face attribute?

"Hindi Laging Ganito," oil on canvas, Photo courtesy of Blanc Compound

Three works in Rodriguez’s Blanc show engage my attention. I consider the piece on the invitation titled Ina Api as a personal favourite in the whole 10-piece collection, a pen-and-ink work that impresses with the density of its lines and subtlety of technique. The gnarled, wood-like hands of this mother alone is worth the price of admission, so to speak. Ina Api and two other pieces provided proof why Rodriquez was granted one of the 13 Artists Awards given this year by the Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP). Ina Api (again a play on the words Ina or Mother and Api, mistreated) or persecuted (in Filipino) draws on iconic images and associative meanings, conveying both religious piety and the machinations of blind faith.

“Hindi Laging Ganito,” (Not Always Like This) is a sharp commentary on capitalism, where the fruits of a capitalistic society is literally rooted or made on the bent backs of the working class. Rodriquez’s burnt reds and nearly frenetic lines and brush strokes eloquently convey this urgent message of social inequality, a powerful work depicting the ‘powerless.’ 

“Sa Dulo ng Papel,” (At Paper’s End) underscores the absurdity in bureaucracy, one of the most pervasive social ills, even outside the developing world, where a paper chase occupies higher ground than what it suppose to originally serve. In Rodriquez’s work the paper chase is ‘high water’ that drowns all those that fall in its ridiculous trail.

"Sa Dulo ng Papel," oil on canvas, Photo courtesy of Blanc Compound

In socially engaged art it is easy to slide into pamphletry and sloganeering and the pitfalls are many even for the skilled artist. And, perhaps, for many Filipinos, the art of speaking out remains a skill that has yet to be fully mastered and expressed particularly in the face of blatant corruption shown by those who are in power. Thus, the posited query: which part of the Janus-face should the Filipino show in these dog days of  rampant power abuse? 

In this debut solo show, and among his peers, Rodriguez has shown that an artist can eloquently speak out on the country’s ills without straying from or abandoning his own artistic vision.   

In his foreword to the Blanc exhibit, the Filipino social-realist writer Jun Cruz Reyes wrote that Rodriguez obviously still has a lot to say on the social ills that continue to plague Philippine society, adding that it would be a fitting gesture if the art world open the gates to welcome this young artist.

If not for the 3,000 miles that separate me from the Blanc Compound,  I wouldn’t miss the chance to find out for myself and experience the works of yet another distinct and authentic voice in Philippine comtemporary art, a voice of an artist that did not track the usual and heavily trodden path of so-called ‘elitist’ art.

Flaming June

Flaming June (1895) Frederic Leighton, displayed at the GEM, The Hague

For the last few weeks the trees and autumn foliage in my Nijmegen neighbourhood are quickly turning into a riot of orange, reds, deep browns, accompanied by the first chilly winds of the season. Some trees have already bared their branches as if in total surrender to the coming wintry months.

It is autumn’s deep hues of orange that reminds me of Frederic Leighton’s sumptuous Flaming June,  a masterful oil painting I saw in September this year at the GEM in the Hague. This could be the second time the painting has touched Dutch soil after it left an Amsterdam gallery in the mid-1960s when it was bought by Luis Ferre, a Puerto Rican industrialist and politician who also collected for and founded the Museo de Arte de Ponce in Puerto Rico.

Reports said that Leighton’s masterful painting was left unsold in Amsterdam in the early 1960s when it was auctioned with a reserve price of US $140! In those years, Victorian and pre-Raphaelite paintings were considered old-fashioned and their prices dropped to all-time lows just when prices for modernist and avant-garde art were on the rise. Obviously Leighton’s Flaming June was deemed too outdated in those days. Ferre sealed a $10,000 deal with the Amsterdam gallery and since then the painting has stayed in Puerto Rican hands.

Detail of 'Flaming June'

For a few weeks in August and September, the GEM displayed a handful of paintings by pre-Raphaelites such as Leighton and Dante Gabriel Rosetti. I caught the tail end of the exhibit, when visitors are few and one could have unrestricted views of even small paintings such as Flaming June. The GEM exhibit of Leighton’s Flaming June was amongst the very few small retrospectives on Leighton’s work.

Leighton and his pre-Raphaelites colleagues were known not only for their romanticism but also for the strictly formalists concerns they espoused. In Flaming June, Leighton was obviously not concerned with conveying a message or did he make any references to literature or morality. His masterpiece was strictly l’art pour l’art. Flaming June simply evokes the heat of summer, giving the viewer a sensation of sultry heat.

The striking palette of Flaming June is dominated by the reddish orange of the sleeping woman’s flowing robe. Daydreaming or sleeping women were favourite subjects of Leighton and his colleagues, and viewing Flaming June gives the viewer an almost voyeuristic feeling as if one has just stepped into a private world. The theme of sleeping beauties also have associations with the motif of death and, less negatively, with the subconscious or timelessness.

Standing before the painting, I simply enjoyed and relished the visual spectacle, the exaggerated proportions (of the woman) and the subtlety of the palette that effectively draw in the eye (and the viewer). This is one hue of orange that I wouldn’t mind hanging in my house. 

Too bad I wasn’t around in Amsterdam in the early 1960s when Flaming June was cast aside in the dim corners of a gallery, neglected and abandoned amidst the fickle tastes and changing winds in the art world!

The GEM exhibit on Pre-Raphaelites paintings

Marshmallow shoes and marinated dentures

It is amazing what people are searching for in the Internet.

I discovered that one of the (secret) joys of keeping a blog is to get a glimpse of the cooky, whacky and most puzzling, brain-breaking search terms that Internet users bombard search engines with.

If there is a next life I certainly wouldn’t want to be reincarnated as a Google search machine or any of those super-efficient search engines that hum with amazing speed and dexterity somewhere in a cyber-spastic universe.

Whenever I perform routine housekeeping tasks for this blog on rainy days, tweaking around HTML codes while humming some innocuous long forgotten 1960’s pop song in my head, I often stumble on to the most whacky search terms that lead visitors, both errant and the determined, to this blog.

I am listing below some of the most zany search terms automatically landing or listed in the administration page of 18th Moon. Some are intriguingly obscure, either packed with humour or carrying a load or lump of logic that only their searchers would know. In any case, they amuse and prompted me to make a double-take and some head scratching.

Dear reader, note that this is an abbreviated list, shortened and trimmed to keep things lucid and decent, and annotated with my own comments:

 “Marshmallow shoes”  

Never seen them together. If I do, I would rather eat than wear them.

 “History of baboons on Gibraltar” 

Believe me these terms added more hits to my previous blog on Gibraltar last year. And a combination of these terms still come on a daily basis.

 “A house in Mexico with blue doors” 

Hmmm…vaguely mysterious

“Washing Dutch” 

I know that the Dutch can be fixated on cleanliness. But I didn’t know that one would want specific information on how to wash them.

“Bandage materials” 

The nearest pharmacy would know.

“Antiques modernism”  

This baffles me no end. It’s one or the other.

“Square dome of semi-circular section”  

Wow…! Another mystery contained in an enigma.

“Mens hair on hide shoes”    

 Huh?! 

“False teeth in a glass.” 

Yucks! This one wins, hands down, the Gross-Image-of-the-Day Award.