Dans: Radically Conventional
Dans: Radically Conventional
By Cesare A.X. Syjuco
Published in: The Manila Times, June 04, 1986
VIEWING Araceli Dans's ongoing exhibition of paintings at the controversial Museum of Philippine Art (MOPA), one cannot help but wonder about the impact of the exhibit itself on the current mob of cultural militants already beside themselves with hysterical grief over that facility's notoriously incoherent curatorial guidelines.
In the first place, Mrs. Dans herself is inextricably linked to the structural core of the past administration, at least by virtue of marriage to no less than a former cabinet minister. While this should have no bearing whatsoever on the merits of her artistic produce, the quality of thinking prevalent among today's cultural reformists is far from national and objective. And although we can only admire the artist's pluck and determination in the face of growing tension within the artistic community at large, it does little to diminish our own anxiety over the explosive possibilities that could arise from such fearless behavior.
In the second place, Mrs. Dans's well-known devotion to a sadly-belated artistic genre is so indefatigably apparent in this exhibition as to render it a prime candidate for critical barbs. While intelligent art shuns stylistic preferences in its aspiration to a wholistic perspective, it cannot be argued that preferential biases do exist. Art, from a popular standpoint, is curiously linear, almost like notes on a musical scale. Popular taste invariably defines the middle ground, delineating a range of concerns marked off by distinct boundaries on either side of the scale. To be sure, stylistic preoccupations that exist both to the left or to the right of this defined area are almost always apt to be controversial. Like its counterpart in the realm of the political, the overtly traditional is often as suspect as the radical. And Araceli Dans is a revivalist of the first order.
The artist's well-worked "Calado Series" is, in reality, only the highlight of a more comprehensive exhibit that includes a sizeable collection of early and recent work in conventional oil portraiture, assorted other still-life configurations, and a number of tentative attempts at surrealism. The entire body of work is impressively vast, occupying both first-level galleries of the MOPA, and ranging in quality from the masterfully competent to the sadly wanting. Where most of Dans's commissioned likenesses are skillfully worked, her more emotive canvases are sometimes clumsy and often contrived. Undoubtedly in this case, the artist's hand and eye are far more developed than her imagination and her creative passion both, at least insofar as can be determined from the compiled works. While one suspects the retrospective nature of the exhibition – with works spanning two decades of the artist's diverse produce – no such claims have been made in either the exhibition catalogue or the accompanying promotional fanfare, and an evaluation of the show on this basis would be less than fair to both the artist and her audience.
The "Calado Series", then, should occupy our attention here, as it emerges as the artist's crowning achievement to date. Certainly, it is rich in merit, not the least of which is its exquisite detailing and almost perverse devotion to the ambient qualities of light and ephemeral form. But Mrs. Dans's hyper-realistic renditions of lace mantles are clearly influenced by the visual idiosyncracies of the camera – perspective qualities akin to the photographic medium but otherwise alien to the human eye. This is most apparent in her generous use of "depth of field" techniques, with pronounced obscuring of detail beyond (or short) of a central point of focus. Dans's visual references are obviously derived from photographs, either lifted directly from composite snapshots, or possibly painted from life, but in deliberate deference to mass-image photographic distortion.
To say that this is inconsistent with the classical precepts that this artist professes to celebrate would most certainly qualify here as an understatement. Dans attempts to revive a painterly aesthetic rendered all but obsolete by the advent of photography, and yet she lavishes uniquely-photographic effects on the viewer in an obvious effort to appease his contemporary (and photo-derived) sense of visual perspective.
Such an approach is akin to those modern-day arrangement of Bach and Beethoven classics – "jazzing up the masters", so to speak. That Dans succeeds in forcing us to re-focus our attention on an otherwise discredited genre of painting may be the exhibition's own saving grace; but then again, towards what end?
Araceli Limcaco Dans at the MOPA is a major effort by a talented, if somewhat dated artist. But the significance of the work within the context of our contemporary visual arts will likely be its controversy.
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Cesare A.X. Syjuco, “Dans: Radically Conventional” (page 1 of 1), The Manila Times, June 04, 1986
