Art as 'In' and 'Out'
Art as 'In' and 'Out'
By Cesare A.X. Syjuco
Published in: The Manila Times, February 25, 1987
BLAME it, if you will, on those annual "in" and "out" lists that lifestyle editors seem compelled to publish, but the fashionable in art is a seeming-blight that's here to stay. The dictates of a fickle art market, current trends abroad, overt manipulation of popular taste for personal profit, the changing socio-political order, and even critical and curatorial preferences for certain stylistic concerns, have made directions in recent local art as short-lived as the hemlines.
It is common banter in the local art-world, for instance, that today's overwhelming preference for figurative painting was influenced to a great extent by a handsome book on the subject by marketing wizard Manny Duldulao. Many local aficionados, in fact, like to blame this alleged manipulation of market trends for the sudden decline of interest in the abstract idiom. But whether local abstraction's present comatose state was the result of foul play, or whether it actually died a natural death by its own failure to renew its commitment to excellence and self-determination, the fact remains that artistic preferences in this country are as malleable and as whimsical as blades of grass in the wind.
In principle, it might safely be wagered that all forms of art are "in", provided of course that they emanate from the expressive and creative yearnings of the human spirit. This is the same unspoken law that dictates that no judge or jury in the world — no matter how influential or knowledgeable — has the power to disqualify creative works from the universal order of art. The author's professed intention to create art is enough to qualify that which he creates as art — be he gifted or inept, dabbler or impassioned veteran, scholar or fool. Certainly, there are prescribed norms by which our contemporary society attempts to assess the "worth" of artistic produce; but art, by its very nature, is all-inclusive in its determination to transcend the bonds of convention. The very criteria for judgment must be rewritten as soon as it is transcribed, if it is to retain even a semblance of credibility.
Of course, art as an investigative endeavor has always been characterized by popular movements generated by the excitement of perpetually newer and more substantial breakthroughs. Exciting developments are themselves notorious trend-setters. This can be confusing when viewed in retrospect. For example, it was not too long ago that the concerted effort to "concretize" the visual arts inspired a massive drive to purge painting of any and all references to objective reality. That extremist attitude was no sooner exhausted than a preference for the opposite extreme had become overwhelmingly popular — that of an art not only fiercely representational, but unabashedly inclined to literary devices. Art's movement, much like quantum particles in physics, behaves in an erratic and unpredictable manner.
It is this very eclecticism that renders art both energetic and dynamic. Art exhausts itself, renews itself, dies and is reborn in cyclical heroism, treading virtually the same ground with fresh insight. "In" today and "out" tomorrow, the proverbial fortunes of war sacrifice all, in turn, so that art's insatiable need for renewal through change may best be served.
* * *
Cesare A.X. Syjuco, “Art as 'In' and 'Out'” (page 1 of 1), The Manila Times, February 25, 1987
