The Restless Macario Vitalis
The Restless Macario Vitalis
By Cesare A.X. Syjuco
Published in: The Manila Times, August 30, 1986
IF, in the future, I am ever 88-years-old and world-renowned, I will think twice before taking my work home with me for a casual look-see. I would have learned from the experience of others that every hack and crank and cocky promenader in Manila can be expected to run me through the grater and make unkind remarks about my age and failing eyesight. They will almost certainly question my significance and worth, measure my wingspan, and visibly squint at my pictures. They will pass judgment on my work as though the judgment of time and that of the world were subservient to their whims and ignorant meanderings. And I'll be damned if I ever give them that chance.
The Filipino painter Macario Vitalis did not "invent" Impressionism, nor Cubism, nor freeform Abstraction, nor any other significant breakthrough in 20th Century Art. But even had he done so, our corps of perennial detractors here would undoubtedly find some way to make light of it as well. For Vitalis' works speak of something equally as precious -- if not as historically grandiose -- and that is the joy of restless painting for its own sake. This quality of creative honesty and single-mindedness is hardly seen anymore in recent contemporary art anywhere, and if only for this, is as rare as most things of genuine value.
Vitalis moved as the spirit moved him for over half a century of persistent artmaking, weaving steadfastly like a fish in water, in search of his own answers. But always he lived the life of a painter and not that of some maritime explorer, scaling conviction of purpose and not the right flank of Everest. He was never as much concerned with the acquisition of geography as with enlightenment, a clarity of vision he achieved in the distilling of form and color into a heightened sensuality for the vocabulary of the palette. And in this, Vitalis emerges as a painter supreme.
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He moved as the spirit moved him for over half a century of persistent artmaking
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Vitalis championed his muse above all else. He was dedicated to painting more than to its philosophical titillations, and yet he veered course more than once in midstream, unmindful of chronology and the prejudice of hindsight. He attempted always better, purer paintings, energetic and undying, wholistically in love with itself. He sought not so much to enlarge the scope of his vision as to nurture and gain mastery over it, speaking clearly from the spirit even when the lustre of his youthful dexterity had begun to show signs of waning.
I remember the lessons learned in school. One teacher's answer to our query about the degree of clarity to be attempted in our work has never left me. "Into white," he said, "Always into white." When he is himself a hundred years old and has returned to us once again, Macario Vitalis -- native son and grand master of painting -- will very likely show us pictures as clear and as vibrant as the mountain air.
Thank you, Maestro. And Mabuhay!
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Cesare A.X. Syjuco, “The Restless Macario Vitalis” (page 1 of 1), The Manila Times, August 30, 1986
