Muted masterpieces
The modernist ethos has always been predicated on essentializing the form in its rudimentary components, without the distraction of perspective, even of color. Flat, unambiguous, and direct in its expressive faculties, a modern work of art flows quietly into space and even into the fabric of architecture itself. This is the reason why, no matter the theme or persuasion, an abstract piece easily blends with the surrounding environment—a choreography of lines and shapes confident in its breathtaking simplicity.
But the same cannot be generally said of the modern works in the Philippines, as evidenced by some select works on offer in this year’s León Gallery’s The Spectacular Mid-Year Auction, which takes place this coming Saturday, June 8, at its headquarters at Eurovilla 1 in Makati City. Save for the few artists who devoted themselves to color field abstraction, many Filipino modernist artists infused a sense of exuberance into their works, a lyricism that could be read as joyful and life-affirming, a vigor of spirit.
Emblematic of this idea is José Joya’s Morning Mist, Hangchow, which the artist painted in 1973 and exhibited the same year at the legendary Luz Gallery. For Hilario Francia, who would himself become a National Artist like Joya, this particular solo exhibition was a turning point in the artist’s career. For the critic, it marked Joya’s transition from experimentation to maturity, “characterized… by a mastery, restraint, and control over his materials and his tools, and without a doubt, also by undeniable power.”
The power of Morning Mist, Hangchow lies in its concatenation of curvilinear shapes, infused with earth tones and passages of blue. These shapes, with some enclosed and the others overlapping, evoke the ethereal feel of Hangzhou’s famed West Lake which, especially during mornings, is laden with mist—a real-life ink-wash painting. Not by any means descriptive, this Joya work, a definite highlight of the auction, generates a vision of orderliness and inevitability in the natural world, in which elements cohere together as if by design.
Not abstract but modern is Vicente Manansala’s rare black-and-white interpretation of his famed subjects of vendors painted in 1977. His mode of transparent cubism, so scintillating in works of color, becomes sculptural and granular in this masterpiece, with the shifts of tonalities in the cubist forms that constitute his subjects. This work, which was shown in the landmark retrospective exhibition of the National Artist at the Ayala Museum in 2010, exemplifies Manansala’s heart for the common folk, portraying them with dignity and elegance, all the more amplified by the monochromatic approach.
Himself a master of the monochrome, Lao Lianben, still very much active and deep into his practice is, hands-down, the foremost practitioner of the spare gesture of the brush. No other artist comes to mind who can match Lao’s virtuosic simplicity which, paradoxically, prompts a universe of access and interpretation. Many works by Lao are on offer in this auction, but one particularly important piece is from 1972, which Lao painted when he was all of 24. Titled Landscape, this work already presents Lao’s signature all-encompassing disc, but what is interesting is the tumble of shapes in the bottom-half of the canvas, evocative of the contours of mountains and even of a sun halved by a horizon line.
Indeed, a handful of contemporary artists have also chosen the elegance and subtlety of the monochrome, with its deep connections to modernism. Pongbayog and Arnold Lalongisip, whose works are part of The Spectacular Mid-Year Auction, are just two of the emergent names comfortably working in black and white, extending the palette to its hyperrealist possibilities. This time, what we are offered are snapshots of the visible world.