Pride from the and the case of the Other
EVER since King Philip II of Spain conferred the title of Insigne Y Siempre Leal Ciudad (Distinguished and Ever Loyal City) on Manila in 1574 and made it the capital of the Philippines in 1575, people from outside the city have had the aspiration to go to the big city. Manila is like America’s New York: everyone wants to be a part of it and everyone wants to make it there. This desire only grew and became more fervent when Metro Manila was created in 1975, expanding Manila’s footprint. Now, everything seems to converge and thrive at the heart of the Metro, from our education and transportation systems to national landmarks like the National Museum and the Cultural Center of the Philippines. Here enters the perennial discussions on the “Other-ing” of our own people and the regions where they come from.
But to generalize that the “Other” regions in the Philippines have been left behind is politically incorrect — after all, Cebu, Davao, and Iloilo, to name just a few, are producing worldclass talents and products of their own. It’s just a matter of highlighting them and giving them equal attention, which is one of the motivations behind the ongoing exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Manila ( MET) called Distinct Refinements: Painting from the Provinces which is on view until Oct. 28.
The exhibition features 40 artworks from the collections of the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas, the MET, the University of the Philippines’ Jorge B. Vargas Museum and Filipiniana Research Center, and private collections.
The show was curated by UP professor Santiago Albano Pilar — a history professor, the author of the book Juan Luna: the Filipino as a Painter, and associate editor of CCP’s Encyclopedia of Philippine Art, based on his scholarly research. He was unable to attend the exhibit’s opening night on June 22. The aim of the exhibit is to show the idiosyncratic characters of the artworks and their provenance. The exhibition curation story said the artworks “intimate the various peculiarities and artistic tendencies that developed in the different parts of the country.”
A survey of the exhibit shows common topics among the paintings: the provincial settings of rice fields and hillsides and the usual appearances of nipa huts and men and women in their baro’t saya, and the lifestyles in the outskirts of towns like people chatting in their neighborhood, a woman breast-feeding her child, and some men enjoying their siesta. The paintings were created from the 19th century until the early 1990s.
The painters hail from the different parts of Luzon, Visayas, and Mindanao but they are, unfortunately, not familiar and under- researched. ( When asked for a description or background details for the artists, this writer was told there were none.) Among them are Pedro Salazar of Batangas, Tomas Diores of Cebu, Pedro Respall of Iloilo, Gregorio Moneda of Laguna, and Ramon Faustino of Cavite. The painters are said to have lacked formal academic training, but they thrived in their field. Perhaps the most well- known among them is Pedro Ardeña, whose undated painting of a rural view of Roxas City in Capiz is at the forefront of the exhibition. Previously unacknowledged, Mr. Ardeña, according to the painting’s caption, had exhibited in the St. Louis Universal Exposition in 1904, but did not mention what art work it was that was shown.
While the exhibition wants to show the “distinct refinements” of provincial life, it, however, magnifies the stark differences and demarcations between the opportunities and the lifestyles of the rural and the urban. There is no doubt about the skills of the painters on exhibit, but it could not be helped, however, to compare them against their betterresearched counterparts who have had more education and more opportunities just because they were able to go to the City, or even abroad, and made it there.