Picture this, I sit on a crowded 13C jeepney on the way to Colon and I use “sit” very generously because three quarters of my rear end are sat upon nothing but air molecules. The anachronistic hands of my tablet’s clock app read 2:00PM, the horizon remained to be tinted blue with orange bronze hues a few hours from engulfing the sky. The museum closes at 4:30PM, forty minutes had passed and the jeep had only just now passed Country Mall, this is bad.
I never liked Colon, to many the concentrated essence of Cebu City and while I do legitimately love Metro Cebu, I avoid the oldest street in the Philippines as much as I can. Weirdly enough any time where I’m forced to be in Colon I find it quite enjoyable actually, but any second spent outside of Colon any desire to return is completely absent within me. I’d have to be forced to go because I can’t possibly be compelled, which is exactly where I found myself when I hopped off in front of Colonnade.
In those aforementioned times where I had no choice but to go, a few fragments of the labyrinth of Colon had engraved itself on my brain. Its turns and intersections that serve as the urban intestinal tract of Central Visayas have manifested themselves into a blurry imaginary map in my mind’s eye. As much as I dislike the place, I have undeniable pride that this grid I used to see as a nightmarish maze of Metro supermarkets at love motels at every corner, has become somewhat familiar to me. Miraculously after passing Country Mall, 13C got me to the dizzying smoggy concrete web of Colon in half an hour, I was consoled that my journey could now be a stroll instead of a marathon.
Upon reaching the renovated former Malacañang sa Sugbo, the security officer at the gate explained to me that visitors come in batches and that until the group of people in front of me who are sitting underneath a white tent go inside, red metal bars will continue to come between me and the museum. Luckily I didn’t have to wait that long and it was soon my turn to sit amongst the students on a field trip eagerly anticipating. The guard played an audio recording of proper conduct when inside the museum… on loop, honest to god it was probably less than 10 minutes but the ceaseless reminders of allowed bag sizes and prohibited liquids blaring on the speakers over and over again, I could’ve sworn I’d be witness to the coming of Christ while perched on that cheap plastic chair. Time marched on monotonously as it may be, but it continued forth and I got in by the last hour of the museum’s schedule and headed straight to the art exhi- okay they told us AGAIN the conduct and guidelines that had already clogged up our drums more than ear wax at that point but after that I was on my way.
I didn’t have a cellphone, it broke a month and a half ago and despite being one of HALANGDON’s two photographers, a camera is not within my repertoire. Instead I lug around a tablet everywhere I go like a ten-year-old boy whose parents can’t be bothered to deal with him. Tapping on it to capture a picture shakes the whole device and results in the blurry photographs of expensive artworks that lie in this article.
Wooden caricature busts
The first pieces of art that caught my attention as I ascended to the second story of the museum were three wooden sculptures. Carved by the hands of Cebuano sculpture Fidel T. Araneta, the busts are that of caricatures of significant political figures of mid-20th century Philippines and America. Former president of the United States Dwight Eisenhower, and former presidents of our country Ramon Magsaysay and Sergio Osmeña are the subjects. As someone who loves making caricatures (having actually drawn these three in particular before) who often feels insecure that my drawings were a “lesser” art, seeing these in a national museum brought solace. Araneta’s Cebuano heritage is clear with how he sculpted the Cebuano president Osmeña compared to Eisenhower and Magsaysay. Unlike the other two whose grinning faces and shiny varnish may echo the stereotypical sleazy politician, Osmeña bears a more somber facial expression. His face has more notches and grooves for his wrinkles making him resemble a grandfather figure, a wise elderly man. Compounding this more humble depiction is how the bust is enveloped by the chunk of wood it was birthed from, almost as if it’s being given an embrace from nature. The Cebuano people have always been fond of Sergio Osmeña, and here Fidel Araneta cements him as the humble kind manong many citizens of Cebu remember him by.
The metal woman statue
Walking into the main gallery room yet another sculpture catches my attention, one of metal this time instead of wood. Shreds of metal clump together into a spikey image of a hollow feminine figure kneeling down, in her hand is what appears to be a bowl with liquid pouring out onto her jagged hair. I know absolutely nothing about making metal sculptures, I don’t have the slightest idea on how one goes about constructing them and this work in particular, Solomon Saprid’s Aquarius, has baffled me the most. Just staring at it I had no earthly idea how this was made, the visual of a fluid pouring down someone’s head reminded me of Rhaegar Targaeryan from Game of Thrones, and the molten crown of his untimely fate. Maybe that’s why the only possible explanation my mind can conjure up is that of dripping molten metal, it would explain it being hollow and why where feet are supposed to be a welded steel pancake instead takes its place. In actuality Solomon Saprid welds together shards of metal to form the jagged look his pieces are famous for, and the liquid mid-pour is a reference to the myth the statue is named after, Aquarius meaning water-carrier.
A Three Dimensional Country in One Dimension
These next four are probably my favorite. A selection of illustrations I’ve lumped together because they all depict mundane aspects of Filipino life in such a vivid and wonderfully angular manner, simplifying the three dimensions of reality into a flat yet lively single plane. All four were made in 1974, three of them are oil paintings while Serenade by Manuel Rodriguez Sr. is via etching. Both Serenade and Carromata by Hugo Yonzon have me ogling at the precision of the craft, seeing this art style I’ve been conditioned to automatically assume it was a digital art piece, and so being able to make out strokes and carvings makes me appreciate it all the more. The meticulous shapes and shades of the crimson kalesa in front of the pale white chapel and the curvy scene of a serenading man atop a carabao with a house on hills behind, the latter having a textured finish that beckons the hand to break the glass and feel its scratchy surface. The final two, Magmamais and Planchadora both by Angelito Antonio go further by foregoing any sense of tactile geometry whatsoever. Showcasing scenes of eating grilled corn-on-the-cob and ironing of clothes, Antonio takes clear inspiration from Pablo Picasso as he paints splotches of misty fuzzy blues and yellows on reality-breaking spatial lines and shapes, echoing a dream of simpler times. I have no further commentary to add other than that I think they look aesthetically great.
A Palpitating Painting
Writing about these works of art has been tough, I am well aware of how pretentious I am but undeniably museum culture has always eluded me. I recall watching several videos and reading essays made by creative people I look up to going on and on about paintings and sculptures in galleries and all the intricate emotional and intellectual musings that it brings, and then the work in question is a canvas composed of solid colored blobs. I’ve always been on the side of “modern art” and I believe anyone passionately against it is problematic at best and dangerous at worst, but I’d be lying if I didn’t say the extent of my appreciation towards the more abstract of art extends only to “That looks cool!” I have been both confused and envious of those who feel profound things when looking at paintings whose value I only comprehend as interesting wall patterns. I have never felt a deep emotion when seeing arranged squares, that is until now. I don’t want to put you all under the impression that my life had been forever altered by Visual Creation by Roberto Barbadillo Jr. but I did feel… something. In short it was pulsating, I don’t know what to tell you but when I stopped in front of the canvas my eyes zeroed in and it was beating like a heart. This transfixed me, it also freaked me out a bit and as my vision locked in a simulated vertigo took effect. I felt an unease but for the first time in my life I looked at art like this and had an opinion beyond thinking it would be a nice splash of color in the living room.
Thoroughly enjoying my adventure I found myself back at the wooden bust of Ramon Magsaysay, I’d gone full circle. I had completely forgotten why I came to the museum in the first place. There were no Martino Tinong artworks on display, they had taken them down sometime before apparently. My feet marched around the gallery a few more times to make sure my vision hadn’t failed me. I’d explored the science portion and even tried to go to the third story that the infographic signage spoke about but was still blocked off from the public. The Dean of Cebuano Painters was nowhere to be seen.
A Writer's Legacy
Left with nothing else to do I exited the museum and made my way back home, passing by skateboarders and lato-lato vendors before seeing one final work of art that caught my attention. Beside City Hall was a white statue of Jose Rizal sitting on his desk and writing. There is a discussion to be had with how much we glorify figures, and that includes erecting statues of their likeness and there is no other person more revered with the amount of monuments of his face than Dr. Jose Rizal. The reluctant revolutionary is what many label him as, a brilliant artist whose life of love and passion for the written word was cut short by the politics his intellect refused to ignore. He cried freedom for our people but his cries of love for his language were louder, all he wanted to do was write. The man had an ego, there’s this probably apocryphal story by his sisters wherein the late hero proclaimed as a child that he will one day be made into statues, so I wouldn’t expect he’d be objecting any time soon. But amongst all the sculptures of him standing defiantly or being shot, I have a feeling the one he’d like the most is the one where he’s just sitting at his table and writing.
I went home after for real this time to lambast my editor-in-chief.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Breathless from your sight and also my pneumonia.