Following the saga of the Aquino family, yellow is the day for all Filipinos, if not most Filipinos, who have grown proud of the color as they are of the flag. Never has any color left such a lasting mark on our social and political life, associated likewise with the L hand sign. Blue has come and gone (although it is showing signs of sneaking around the corner) and red is always somewhere in the background, never completely expunged.
Yellow is dominant at this point in time, as the exhibit Yellow Paintings shows at the Tower Club, 33rd floor of the Philamlife Building on Paseo de Roxas. And, of course, the viewer will expect its political significations, covert or overt, with its paeans to the ruling Aquino family: father, wife, and now son—what family could have it better! Of course, they constituted the principal opposition to the Marcos dictatorship, particularly Ninoy Aquino, who paid with his life. But with Marcos packed off to Hawaii, what then was the opposition that Cory faced? It is a question that begs to be asked. Was it the US? Indeed not. The peasants marching from Central Luzon to Malacañang within a few months of her inauguration, followed by the declaration of total war in the countryside? Do these now belong to the annals of secret history buried in the national archives? After her, of course, and then Erap, we were swamped by a great monstrosity that some forgetting may be excused.
For most people, Cory is the pretty and kindly looking widow of Ninoy dressed in her signature yellow embroidered dress, very much of the elite and de buena familia in her Catholic school refinement, possessing all the visual requirements of an icon. But in this show, only two paintings directly refer to Cory. These works in oil on canvas, of predominant yellow tones, are by Amador Barquilla.
Undoubtedly, their common subject is Mrs. Aquino in Paalam Tita Cory and Face of the People. The first shows her yellow-covered funeral cortege amid a sea of mourners with several big limousines accompanying the procession, large vehicles that affirm her privileged status.
The other work, also by Barquilla, shows many children dancing against a yellow background, possibly a street as they form the smiling face of Cory, thus emphasizing her role as mother of the country, a modern-day Inang Bayan. Both done in oil on canvas, there seems to be some discrepancy between style and medium, because the mourners or the children playing on the street are drawn like linear stick figures in a way that they cannot demonstrate the particular dense and lustrous quality of the oil medium. Perhaps, they could have been better as pen-and-ink illustrations for a more incisive and dynamic character. As they are, the works are naïve and without the exciting flair of excellent comic-strip art. Also tangentially belonging to the theme is Lupang Hinirang by Jomar Delluba with the Philippine flag for background. The artist focuses on the figure of a young boy, his eyes upraised and seeking the light, his lips sensitive and expectant, his nostrils flared to receive the air, and his ears fully open to the sounds around. His entire face bears the entire message of the work as his body is a trifle too small in proportion. This work is on the didactic side which may please people who search for “verities” in our time.
Only one other painting refers to the present times. This is Juvenal Sansó’s work, As Optimism Approaches. Done in acrylic on paper, it features the color yellow with ink dots and rhythmic lines. The human figures are indeterminate and hazy but they come together with a sense of design. The work is marked by spontaneity of feeling that overshadows all realistic detail.
In the rest of the works, yellow is only incidental and has no relation with political connotations. To an extent, they demonstrate the effects of yellow as it acts on the environment, or on the emotions of individuals or a group of people. Such works aptly bring out the entire gamut of the color, its semantic role with its many variations regarding mood, temper, whether open and fully bright, tinged with green, or sourish like a lemon.
In Yellow Interlude, the work of Lydia Velasco, yellow serves only as background sky above the mountains and forest foliage. It casts a soft, radiant glow over the figures of the conversing and interacting women, who are like beautiful geese, with sensitive skin and sensory antennae all over the surface
Karlo Magno has built a distinctive abstract style over the years, as his inventions become more attractive and intriguing. He basically works with a few geometric figures, mainly circles, against a contrasting background of texture or color. Against these bigger articulations of form, he forms sections of design, such as grids made up of embossed dots. The artist has developed an increasingly wider range of contrasting textures and patterns which lend the work its richness and sonority.
Two competing figurative artists are Jovan Benito with his works of good cheer and Dominic Rubio. The works of Benito are saturated with bright colors and the highly stylized figures of men and women in an original kind of genre engaged in communal activities. Rubio’s figures are not so much genre as portraits of Filipinos against a village setting. They are model types, mostly of the illustrado class that give the artist the opportunity to dwell meticulously on their exquisite accessories. They all exhibit a distinctive characteristic: they hold themselves regally upon their spindly necks, like stems to exotic flowers. We have not yet fully explored the meaning of this manneristic device. It could be the sign of utmost refinement which sets itself up above the thick-necked hoi polloi. Would it insinuate the contrast between the high and the low? In many works, meanings are not always articulated clearly and sharply, but may favor ambiguity and comfortable vagueness.
This show implies the links between art and politics, but often does so only incidentally and accidentally.
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