Papelismo

Paper Power – But The Medium Is Not The Message

by Filipina Lippi
Manila Bulletin – Mon, Sep 24, 2012

Five Filipino artists try to resurrect the value of paper as a medium in "Papelismo", a two-week exhibit that began on Sept. 4 at the Crucible Gallery in SM EDSA in suburban Mandaluyong.

Paper has been with us since ancient times and its versatility seems to make it an ideal medium for the modern age. But Renato Habulan, curator of the show, says in the Philippines, galleries shun art works (done) on paper because of their lack of commercial viability. "Despite the long history of printmaking dating back to the early '60s, paper as a medium has to be nurtured -- like a child," he says.

Instead of carving paper into complicated and intricate designs, the participating artists in "Papelismo" reverted to what after all are paper's pragmatic uses: printmaking, water color, editorial cartoon, book design, and preliminary mural studies. The artists seem to be saying that the medium is, precisely, not the message.

"Papelismo" expands paper power not with form but with content.

The show's title, "Papelismo," is a word-play on the various conceptual ismos (like kapitalismo, komunismo) that have crept into the Filipino language. It also suggests the question: Ano ang papel mo? The artists in this show do not belong to the art-for-art's-sake clique, but are inheritors of a 40-year old social-realist theme that requires art to serve social interests.

"We agreed to come out with old works done on paper -- circa '70s to the '90s," said Habulan, referring to two decades of socio-political and historical unrest in the Philippines. Plus the show's timing, in September, is also a reflection of the social realists' remembrance of the declaration of martial law period in 1972.

Habulan's pieces in the show include studies in pencil for a mural that depicts the massacre of 16 La Sallite brothers and 25 civilians, by retreating Japanese soldiers inside the chapel of De la Salle College on Taft Avenue, in Manila on February 12, 1945. These sketches center on La Sallite brothers who are administering the last rites before they are cut down with bayonets. A recount of the gruesome scene says that a Japanese officer and 20 Japanese soldiers tried to rape the dying women before they set the chapel on fire. Only 10 survived this particular incident, according to records.

World War II's violence mirrors, "in spirit," the terrifying political upheavals in the Philippines from the '70s to the '90s, says Habulan who was commissioned in 1986, to make a mural for St. Joseph Institution, a school run by the De La Salle Christian Brothers in Singapore.

On the other hand, Fred Liongoren injected editorial images in his two watercolor paintings, where one work shows President Benigno Aquino, a speech bubble above his head, saying, "Ano ba ang dapat... (what should be done)?" Facing him is a large portrait of Jose Rizal, the country's national hero. In the same painting is an iconic portrait of Senator Benigno Aquino, the president's father, whose assassination at Manila's international airport in August 1983 sparked a military mutiny that ousted a dictator in 1986.

Liongoren's other piece entitled, "Montero (expensive car) ni Juan," depicts an overloaded motorcycle with extended backseat or side-saddle, locally known as habal-habal or Skylab, -- common conveyance for poor people in the provinces.

These two new paintings symbolize how serious the renowned abstract painter is at adopting the comic strip and the editorial cartoon as relevant forms of expression - for the masa.

A third artist, Benjamin Torrado Cabrera, says "I am part of this show because I use paper as a printmaker, and I don't ask for a high price for my works. I believe that printmaking democratizes art". Cabrera is one of the country's sensitive and expressive print-makers.

"My prints have angst, but they don't seethe with anger," says the artist who distinguishes his style from other social realists. "My philosophy is introspective, hindi ako galit sa mundo. The natural fusion of representational and abstract images in my works comes from my innate sense of the real and the metaphysical."

Forty editorial cartoons drawn by Jose Pinggot Zulueta provide majority of the show's angry images, a collection of his almost daily output for the tabloid newspaper Abante from 1986 to 1991. Zulueta started sketching them from the time Nationalist Artist Virgilio Almario was the paper's editor. He continued doing editorial cartoon from 1988 to 1991 after the paper was sold to Malaya and came under the editorship of Noel Abano. Zulueta claims kinship with the late Nonoy Marcelo with whom he worked as illustrator-cartoonist of the Manila Chronicle.

"I turned to photography when I got tired criticizing government officials and powerful people," says the artist who abandoned his pen for the camera when he worked as a photojournalist, initially, for Daily Globe, and later, for the lifestyle section of the Manila Bulletin.

"Papelismo" also includes seven illustrations for children's books done by multi-awarded Arnaldo "Arnel" Mirasol, the artist behind the colorful images of "Tamales Day" (by Didith Tan); "Long Ago and Faraway: (Grimms' fairy tales retold)" by Fran Ng; and "First Man Around the Globe," an ode to a Filipino slave believed to have circumnavigated the world ahead of Ferdinand Magellan.

His illustrations for "The Origin of the Frog" (by Liwayway Arceo) bagged the runner-up prize at Japan's Noma Concourse in 2000; his drawings for "Brothers Wu and the Good Luck Eel"(by Fran Ng) was on the honorable mention list of the International Foreign Books for Young people in Basel Switzerland in 2000

Future Plans

"Papelismo"'s participants see divergent paths ahead of them. With the exception of abstract painter Liongoren who has the heart of a social realist, the rest seem happy to say good bye to social realism.
"Ang daming dapat punahin. When we did that in the past, we just said 'ehem.' It's now time to say, 'aha,"' says Liongoren. His frustration about inequalities and greed have been pushing him to create a "dagger-like art" - one that is easily understood by the masa -- to intensify anger and indignation against the lack of delicadeza among powerful politicos who hold on to power while remaining inept at solving the country's problems.

"After Pablo Picasso painted "Guernica" (the bombing of the Basque village by German and Italian warplanes during the Spanish Civil War in 1937), he says, a painting can no longer be tolerated as merely showing the penthouse of the rich," says Liongoren, adding, "I still value (stirring up) indignation against the prevailing status quo in the Philippines."

When he was barely out of college in the '60s, Liongoren was already being cited by critics as one of the most promising abstract painters of his generation. His serene landscapes in watercolor (circa '80) have reaped praises for their sheer poetry.

Habulan, a powerful social realist from the '70s to 2000, has recently been engaged in portraying images of folk religion. He believes in the authenticity of pre-Hispanic religious sentiment that animates some of the current cultic folk practices. For Habulan, the idea of "transcendence" supersedes violence and anger (or revolution).

Zulueta, on the other hand, has decided to move on as an abstract painter. "I don't think I can go back to editorial cartoons. For me, abstract art is pure emotion," said the former peripatetic editorial cartoonist. Zulueta's three art shows in the past, coincided with major stages in his life. In 1985, he painted, in representational style, marine life for a show entitled "Tilamsik"; In 2002, he printed enhanced photo images on watercolor paper, for a show entitled "Asinta: Images and Imageries"; In 2005, his travails as a migrant in New Zealand (together with his wife Vanessa and daughter Paula in 2002) translated into surreal images of a man with clipped wings -- part of his exhibit entitled "Aotearoa Series" in New York's Philippine Consular office in 2005.

Meanwhile, Torrado Cabrera says his plan is to create huge canvases before he retires from his teaching job at St.Scholastica's College. "I believe that social problems are due to man's weakness and bottomless desire; that man's real enemy is himself (not the oppressors and cruel rulers); that social transformation should begin with oneself (not with society)," he explains. His future work - he has been trying to print images in plexiglass -- will attempt to reflect this philosophy.

The illustrator Mirasol says he wants to embark on making modern images: "distorted, experimental, pop, and surreal". He can no longer go back to images of social realism because "(this idea) is no longer a relevant topic since very few are oppressed and frustrated (about life in the Philippines)".