'Masterstrokes' at the Pen Romancing the 70s
'Masterstrokes' at the Pen
Romancing the 70s
By Cesare A.X. Syjuco
Published in: The Manila Times, April 05, 1989
THE recent artworld extravaganza "Masterstrokes" can be digested in either one of two ways.
Those of us who are incorrigibly nostalgic about the gallery glitter of the '70s can take it to bed like a surrogate teddy-bear, comfy in the hope that a new art boom looms over the horizon like Great Caesar's ghost.
And the skeptics among us who invariably question the paranormal will doubtless spend sleepless nights fussing over the spectacle of it all, convinced that glitter is (and always has been) synonymous with decay.
Both revivalists and doom-sayers will be at least half-right. The cast of "Masterstrokes" does smack of a by-gone era rooted in creative sobriety, salesmanship and cocktail hors d'oeuvres. There is Legaspi, Kiukok, Malang, Sanso, Paras-Perez, Joya, Antonio Austria, Bencab, Olazo and Onib Olmedo. There is Manansala resurrected from the grave in work best buried, and Nanding Ocampo like a scented memory in the esprit de corps. The setting may not be Chito Madrigal's Hyatt Regency Gallery, nor Arturo Luz's temple to Concrete Art on Edsa; but the well-heeled surroundings of the Manila Peninsula Hotel do just as nicely, thank you.
On the other hand, this moveable feast of a reunion could give us all a bad case of heartburn, being so much fatty food at best. As surely as the swallows return to Capistrano, grizzled artworld veterans have long displayed a flocking instinct whenever the pockets of the elite begin to bulge, and it is said that more money is being spent on art today than at any other time in the last10 years.
What manner of licensure controls the dispensation of titles like ‘art master’? Talent? Expertise? Community standing? Here, age and age alone seems the deciding factor.
Is this a good sign or what? I, for one, am neither skeptical nor hopeful. The dumb stare is the occupational disease of the critic, and to him the questions are always more interesting than the resolution in a partisan debate.
Indulge me yet again. What manner of licensure controls the dispensation of titles like "art master"? Is it talent, expertise or community standing? In this country at least, age and age alone seems to be the deciding factor - although seniority can be acquired, like AIDS, by intimate association with the qualified. This timely romancing of the ’70s, therefore, could be both rehearsal and political exercise, a reminder of that unwritten rule of succession that picks up from where we left off.
Come all ye and venerate; for now we know why the proverbial Muse is often depicted as a chameleon, straddling the human and the divine. In the world of reptiles, the dinosaur is king.
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Cesare A.X. Syjuco, “'Masterstrokes' at the Pen Romancing the 70s” (page 1 of 1), The Manila Times, April 05, 1989
