When there are many windows of reality and surreality, how are National Artists created now that the new picks are up for proclamation assuming there's no scam?
The artist previously known as Jerry (from Jeremias) Elizalde Navarro abandoned the moniker in exchange for the modish J Elizalde Navarro (1924-1999) to turn as the bellwether of pop art here.
The mall-mounted sculpture entitled "Is He The Man?" (dated as "circa 1960" by Salcedo Auctions) was the major stunner of Navarro's one-man show of pop assemblages that fused found object with shaped and pure-color painted canvas at Solidaridad Galleries. Exhibit date is under question as I viewed it in early 1970s, most likely in 1971.
A mod interpretation questioning the reality of identity and what it signifies, "Is He The Man?" shows the grieving Veronica who wiped off Christ's bloody face when he fell from weakness and the weight of the cross on his shoulder on the way to Calvary and left an image of his face on the cloth.
Navarro mounted her naked, termite-ridden and weather-beaten antique wood figure on a varnished wood background, her halo traced out in nails. She holds a rectangular board where Christ's face is represented by flat discs of monochromatic red over a red background.
A heart-shaped niche curved on the chest area is embedded with two "santo" heads each with a halo in rainbow formation. Embossed below their figures: YAW A.
It retains the santo's original silver patina shoulder padding, including a carved cloud over a sunburst symbol that gives an authentic look.
Above the assemblage, and curved in bold letters are the words "IS HE THE MAN?" Open-ended, the biblical story as summed up in the question is contemporized, allowing possible extensions to: Is he the true messiah? Is he the hot rock sensation? Is he the new President? Is he the next National Artist? Such a dramatic presentation with a pop sensibility, for sure, makes it an authentic Filipino masterpiece!
Navarro regarded himself as an abstractionist influenced by European pioneers Wassily Kandinsky and Piet Mondrian. He was enraptured by the sight of Kandinsky's works at the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) on his first visit to New York City. Navarro found spiritual affinity with the Russian artist's use of circle, which he would later turn into various adaptations of the sphere and modify as his own design element.
Navarro moved from figurative to abstraction and pop in the mid-'50s to became a proponent of the post-war modernists, the Neo-Realists. Producing works in varied range of styles, Navarro always flourish in no-regret opulence of colors and strokes that produced vigor all his own.
Producing a remarkably large body of contemporary art, representing the Philippines in various artistic events abroad, Navarro was posthumously declared National Artist for the Visual Arts in 1999.
To backtrack, the novelist F. Sionil Jose opened and managed Solidaridad Galleries in 1967 where Navarro exhibited "Is He The Man?"
A street-level gallery with clear glass frontage, it saw the bustle of South-bound jeepneys on one-way M.H. Del Pilar St., Ermita, Manila. It also housed Gilda Cordero Fernando's hole-in-the-wall display of exquisite folk art finds.
When it closed down in the '80s, a collateral damage of the economic instability brought about by Sen. Ninoy Aquino's assassination, Solidaridad Galleries was incorporated with Solidaridad Bookstore on Padre Faura St., also in Manila. It used to hold exhibits at the mezzanine level until it ceased operations as the art scene shifted westward of Manila -- to the new culture hubs of Makati, Quezon City, San Juan, Mandaluyong, and Pasig.
By then declared as National Artist for Literature, Jose condemned Mideo Cruz's controversial room-size instillation entitled "Poleteismo" at the jarring collective show of Dominican-educated artists at CCP's Main Gallery in August 2011. Among the multi-media artist's freewheeling expressions of freedom is putting a wooden penis on Christ's image and other images festooned with sexual objects and devices.
I saw this particular exhibit held at the same time as the 2011 Cinemalaya Film Festival and I found it an artistic extreme. I thought it was icon-bashing time at the CCP as a hallway exhibit took on Jose Rizal as a global womanizer. But I noted the mobile phone generation's new way of seeing when selfie was not yet a term. They wanted photo opportunities with the artworks, to the extent of posing to be slotted in the visual.
Jose lambasted Mideo Cruz's instillation as "an immature and juvenile attempt at caricature" lacking of "imagination, craftsmanship, and most important -- originality."
He must have forgotten that Solidaridad Galleries exhibited Navarro's sawed off antique Santo in "Is He the Man?" one of several using religious figures. Although "Is He the Man?" could be viewed as defacement of a religious image, it is more playful than puerile creativity with a stirring message.
But let's dredge up that in the early '70s, Filipinos were more Catholic than Christian, a period when not going to Sunday mass was mortal sin and religious images were sacred that they were covered in violet cloth on Holy Week.
"Is He the Man?" popped out as exhibit of Salcedo Auctions in Art Fair Philippines 2013 on Feb. 7 to 10 2013. It sold for a whopping P1 million, high-end by metropolis standards, making it the highest seller of the lots.
To be a National Artist is about breaking old icons and creating new insights.
Disqualified are visual artists who opted to change citizenship such as David Medalla to British and Anita Magsaysay-Ho. Filipino citizenship is a requirement to qualify which is an outdated requisite in the period of globalization.
Nobody knows why Juan M. Arellano who designed some to the Manila's iconic buildings and indigenized Art Noveau have not been declared a National Artist for Architecture,
Described as a "Filipino international artist," Medalla whose body of works ranges from sculpture and kinetic art to painting, installation and performance art that have been exhibited globally in art capitals London, New York City and Paris had to change his citizenship as a requirement of residency in a foreign country.
As the only female member of the Thirteen Moderns, a pioneering group of Filipino modernist artists, Magsaysay-Ho's contribution to Philippine visual art is solid and immense. She took the citizenship of husband Robert Ho from Hong Kong.
The buzz is Mauro Malang Santos, who was acknowledged for his unequalled depiction of the heart of Filipino zest for life does not qualify for the laughable reason he had a product endorsement.
History has also taught us that today's controversial artwork is tomorrow's great art. Users of the future variants or innovative proxy of Google will probably smile or smirk when they read that Cruz has been elevated a National Artist for Visual Arts, sharing the immortality with Navarro and Jose.