Art and nation

The Metro Bank Foundation’s Yvette Macayan asked me recently to speak before cultural workers and art students as part of the Foundation’s continuing program to promote Philippine culture. This is what I told them.

You perhaps know me as a novelist. Literature is one of the arts — in fact, the noblest of the arts. That is not my opinion; it was first expressed by the ancients. As art, literature has many similarities with the other art forms. First, it requires great skill, honed by constant work, imagination. The writer works with words, with ideas and in its depiction of reality, literature is history that is lived.

After this talk, you may even condemn me for being an old, stuck-in-the-mud conservative because I have very strong views on art in general — how it impinges on society, its function other than to entertain, how it ennobles us.

I agree with the dictum that there are new ways of seeing things, just as there are new ways of telling stories. I am not opposed to abstract or non-figurative art. There is a lot of it in Asia, in Zen Buddhism. What I detest is the anarchy, the pseudo art hoisted today by pseudo artists.

Just remember this: the classics written hundreds of years ago are appreciated even today because the final arbiter of art is time. Will your work now be enshrined by time? If you want it to last, better think about it. And this is what I propose to do — to help you think.

First, we are a very young nation without the august history and civilizations of our neighbors. Our very youth could both be an advantage as well as a hindrance to growth — our advantage in the sense that we are not encumbered by history. There is such a thing as worship of a past long dead that induces paralysis.

Our youth is an advantage. If we are imaginative and industrious enough, aware of the ruthless demands of art and in tune with this time and place, we will create that marmoreal foundation of the future, for amongst us are Rembrandts and Homers.

We don’t have the ancient art forms that were brought to continental and archipelagic Southeast Asia by the two great religions, Hinduism and Buddhism. Some of the classical dances in India, Thailand, even in Indonesia, take at least six years to learn; our folk dances take just a few hours to master.

We must recognize this basic difference between folk and classical culture.

When the Portuguese came here ahead of the Spaniards, in the 15th century, they found the cannons forged in the foundries of Sulu bigger than theirs; so, too, our boats that ranged the seas, for we always have had an enduring maritime tradition. Even before the Portuguese came, we had commercial ties with the Chinese who were literate when Europe was still inhabited by primitive food gatherers.

At the Newberry Library in Chicago is a cherished document about us — a book of drawings by a Chinese traveler depicting the people of Mai (that is what our group of islands was called by them). The painter, being Chinese, made us look like Chinese. The upper classes wore elegant clothes, jewelry and footwear. The lower classes, the peasants, were barefoot, but they had clothes.

At the Central Bank is a collection of gold jewelry as fashioned before the Spaniards came — rings, bangles, headwear, belts of exquisite design that attest not just to our scientific culture, but to our artistry.

In Hawaii in 1981, an exhibition of Philippine colonial art showed the elegant craftsmanship of our forbears in their metal work, their woodcarvings — all these no longer exist; the kris of the Moros has long been replaced by the 45-caliber pistol.

I am not denigrating our folk culture. It is from it that we will draw inspiration for the creation of Filipino art. It is for this reason why, in 1967, I set up Solidaridad Galleries — it lasted 10 years. My purpose was — to state it simply — to give a Filipino and Asian face to our art.

We must now define our terms. What is Filipino art? Or even the most basic of questions, what is art and of what use is it? These are ancient questions with as many answers to them as, perhaps, there are artists. What is an artist? He is a particularly gifted individual because he is born with talent. First and foremost, he is a craftsman who then transcends craftsmanship with originality, and creativity.

We recognize the distinctness of Asian art when we turn to its traditional forms, recognize it as Japanese, Chinese and Indian, even Balinese or Thai.

Can we see the Filipino in our art? Art, of course, is an aesthetic expression so we must now go to its very core —aesthetics, our sense of the beautiful.

A group of senior architecture students visited me recently and surprised me when they said they had no course on Filipino aesthetics. Can Filipino aesthetics be recognized in our architecture? In the first place, what is Filipino architecture? Japanese, Chinese, even Indian architecture certainly are recognizable. To me, Filipino architecture should bear the elements of the nipa hut, not in the sense that it is made of the flimsiest materials, but that it is airy, segmented, the Intramuros houses of stone introduced by the Spaniards. An excellent example of a beautiful Filipino structure is the Metropolitan Theater in Plaza Lawton, which, alas, is now decrepit and unused. There you have it — our flamboyance, our rococo flair. Certainly not the Cultural Center complex which I described long ago as fascist — huge blocks of cement, cold and forbidding, denying our warmth, our yabang nature as a people.

Having been colonized, we are led to believe that modern architecture is epitomized by great names like Frank Lloyd Wright. I had lunch in his Imperial Hotel in Tokyo in the ‘50s. I was appalled by how dark it was, the ceiling was low, the structure so formidable-looking because much of it was solid stone.

The Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao by Frank Gehry is massive, too, and ugly — a monument to anarchy. There is nothing lifting or ennobling about it like the Sydney Opera House for instance, or the new museums in New York, Paris and Tokyo.

In the visual arts, particularly painting, I distrust all those abstractions, those artificial constructions. I have a very simple way of judging them: if I can do them, they are not art.

When I ran Solidaridad Galleries from 1967 to 1977, and some young artist came to me with his portfolio of abstracts, I would give him a pencil then ask him to draw my clenched fist. Art, whatever from it takes, requires hard work, craftsmanship and creativity. As a writer, I know my grammar, cadence, the music of prose, and the art of the narrative. I can write a sonnet in an hour, perhaps even less — it may not be of Shakespearean quality, but it will be a sonnet.

It is for this reason why I do not think American artists like Rothko, Jackson Pollock and certainly Andy Warhol with his Campbell Soup tin cans will last. They are just too simple.

An American collector showed me an array of paintings, a panel of four black squares. They were by Joseph Albers, and the paintings were said to be explorations of color; Albers should have just written about it because I could have done those squares in a much more creative way. In a printer’s shop is a color guide that shows the gradation of the basic colors.

Art is how we express our concept of beauty which, through the years, developed from our basic sensibilities. The principle is also expressed in gardens. Japanese aesthetics could be considered minimalism; the Japanese house is built to conform with the environment, nature. With this principle, you have the unique Japanese garden, just as you have the Italian, the English, the Chinese gardens, all of them with their specific recognizable attributes. And the Filipino garden — a riot of plants, as is the Luneta, for this is how we define space — we fill it up. Our living rooms burst with our precious acquisitions. The old caretelas in the past, they were decorated lavishly. That tradition was transferred to the jeepney. It is not unique — in Afghanistan or Pakistan, the trucks are adorned similarly.

A French anthropologist came to Manila in the ‘70s and he wondered if the loud music in our jeepneys was an effort of the drivers to drown out their worries. Spoken like a French anthropologist. I told him it wasn’t that way; Filipinos feel that if it’s very quiet, the atmosphere is sad, hence all that noise.

We have no critical tradition; build it. Never, never let go of your intellectual freedom, the intelligence and courage to make judgments contrary to the widespread hype of hucksters, of pseudo critics, and, perhaps, even by your teachers conditioned to confirm their textbooks. Real artists know how difficult it is to create, that you compete and struggle with your own self because you are only as good as your latest creation.

A new way of seeing things — I agree with this aesthetic formulation but not with the way it is corrupted. Think of the ancients, the sculptors who worked with the most primitive cutting tools and look at their marble statues, the busts that adorned their public space, which still exist today.

At the University of Hawaii campus in Manoa, two huge pipes were cut and joined. That’s contemporary American sculpture. A novice steel worker, guided by a grade school kid could do better. Visit the ancient masters who had to mix their own oils without the aid of modern chemistry or photography — the portraits, the scenes they painted. And compare these with the silly abstractions made by artists now, even with the aid of computer programs which enable the amateur to look professional.

Many of our painters lack imagination; in so many instances, they merely copy from western painters. Sometime back in the ‘60s when our gallery was exhibiting our young artists, one of them — the late Ibarra dela Rosa — came to me gushing, saying he had found a new way of expressing himself. He showed me an exquisitely painted scene. Then I told him that the technique was used about 100 years ago —Pointillism, pioneered by the French painter Seurat.

Our artists are incapable of symbolism, of allegory — all fairly common even in traditional Asian art. At the museum in Taipei, for instance, is this painting in the traditional Chinese style, a beautiful, regal woman standing, and at her feet, a tiger. What did the artist want to say? In reality, it may never happen — is the tiger real or does it stand for something else?

At a recent exhibit, an artist painted a very faithful reproduction of three apples. It was so realistic — it could have been a photograph. Three apples — what could they possibly signify? I couldn’t find any allegorical meaning. Had the artist been imaginative, he would have cut one of the apples in half, one half as plain as a cut apple would look, but the other half left very dark. Then the viewer could start thinking, imagining.

At a museum in Paris some time back, a Paris friend took me to a museum that exhibited the paper cuttings of Matisse — they were his last effort. They were huge — almost 10 feet high. I said my seven-year-old son could have done them. My friend reminded me that “these were by Matisse.” I concluded in his old age. Matisse must have been suffering from dementia, or was in his second childhood. I brought to mind the classical work of the paper cutter artists in China. They would laugh if they saw the Matisse exhibition.

The great Filipino novel in whatever language has already been written by Rizal. It is contextual; Filipino art is therefore about our very lives, our environment, water buffalos, palm trees, our slums, our bursting cities, our religious festivals, war and revolution. It is also more than all of these; it is our sweat, our blood, our joys and tragedies as portrayed by our own people rooted in native soil.

Filipino aesthetics is also expressed in our person, women who are over-coiffed, bejeweled, our men with manicured fingernails and jewelry, yabang — that’s aesthetics, too.

And now, the final question: Why must we create this unique identity at all?

The world has shrunk; so why bother?

A clichéd question; the Japanese, Koreans, Chinese, even the Thais don’t bother with it. We must, because this identity could unite us, make us not just an amalgam of disparate ethnic groups, but a nation.

The Japanese realized a long time ago that they must accept Western technology, develop it for their advantage and become modern and prosperous — this without abandoning their culture, its spirit.

But where is our spirit, our patriotism, which is the most important ingredient in the development of any people? This spirit is so needed now more than any time in the past. We cannot stop globalism, the conquest of McDonald’s, of Toyota, the multinationals, for it is these giants that are the new imperialists. They dictate world prices, enforce consumerist habits. These new imperialists produce those shiny baubles that attract and corrode human dignity. This globalization is motivated by greed alone. It ushers climate change with its irresponsibility, it plunders the resources of poor countries, and hypnotizes the poor with the shiny gewgaws of consumerism. The limits to growth must be imposed — and such limits can only be achieved by nations secure in their identities. Woe to the country without a national will. It will be plowed under, homogenized as we are now being homogenized. But not those countries with firm cultural moorings, institutions that strengthen their identity.

Indeed, since most of us are Christians, so much of our tradition is Western. But art belongs to universal man. It is important then to locate where we are, to understand that our tradition includes our own history, our being colonized by the West. Our tradition includes the many gallant men and women who resisted this colonization.

We can progress, and satiated with affluence we will be surrounded by the artifacts of consumerism, but we would be animals, pigs who feed from the trough, who copulate to perpetuate our species. It is our art in all its forms that distinguishes us from animals, which feeds the soul, which humanizes and civilizes us.

This is one real reason for the urgency of cultural workers. With art, we define ourselves, our unhappy country. We are a talented people; it is also art as created by us that will make us endure. It is art as we create it that will form the foundation, the sinews of our nationhood.