Art Deco buildings contribute to Heritage Month

MANILA, Philippines – Emerging from the Paris Exposition of 1926 entitled Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes (International Exposition of Modern Industrial and Decorative Art), the Art Deco style merged together all the most popular motifs and images that shook the world in the aggressive years of the Roaring Twenties.

Electric power, jazz, the streamlined shapes of steamship liners, and even the discovery of the Pharaoh Tutankhamen, all lent flavor to the rich cacophony of forms that embraced Art Deco. After its decline in the reconstruction years of the 1950s, Art Deco was criticized as being too modern and gaudy.

The devil-may-care years of the 1920s and 1930s were its glory days, “when not even time, money and a world in depression could contain the need for an architectural expression of rich decorative style,” Professor Manuel Noche said.

Forming part of the National Heritage Month celebration is an Art Deco Buildings Stamp Launch and Exhibit that opened May 8 in Greenbelt 3, Makati, Noche, a professor in Architecture at the University of Santo Tomas, curated the exhibit.

A shining example of the Art Deco style is the Manila Metropolitan Theatre built in 1931. Filipino architect Juan de Guzman Arellano designed the structure to house Manila’s growing cultural and artistic life. World-famous stars of the opera and concert music drew huge audiences there until the war started.

Local architects trained in the US or Europe “used an imported template of jazzed up lines, streamlined shapes, and edges and curves” as the basis for architectural composition and articulation, according to Noche. “These standards were incorporated with Filipiniana motifs, which eventually resulted in Art Deco that is universal yet truly Filipino,” he explained.

Arellano’s most romantic effort was described as a modern expressionistic work, in collaboration with other noted artists, including Fernando Amorsolo who painted two murals: “The Story of Dance” and the “Story of Music.” Bas-reliefs and statues by Italian sculptor Francesco Riccardo Monti adorned the Met’s façade.

Awarded with a UNESCO Heritage Award in 2005 for being the only preserved and enduring Art Deco structure in the Philippines, the Far Eastern University Library Building propelled educational architecture into a new realm with an ultra-modern style, sleek lines, and progressive architectural form.

The university was successfully restored to its original Art Deco design, despite being totally damaged during World War II, when it was used as the Japanese Kempeitai headquarters.

The Filipino Heritage Festival, Inc., in cooperation with the National Commission for Culture and the Arts and the Department of Tourism, will also hold an Art Deco buildings tour around the city of Manila on May 17. “Few and far between are our last few remaining Art Deco structures. By depicting them on postage stamps, we hope to contribute to their longevity as heritage structures of great aesthetic value,” FHF president Armita Rufino said.

For more information, call 892-5865 or log on to: http://filheritagefest.fateback.com