The gates of hell

There was a time in this country when people looked at modernism as the gates of hell. There are some who still think the same way. But modern is now globally a past event. We are all definitely in post-modern times. And so consequently, it may be said, there are some of us who were never there. By now, they might never be.

“What the hell is he talking about?” Some will ask. The Maker is sitting alone in a coffee shop as he thinks on this. Not quite so alone. Lino Venzal is sitting with him at Turtle’s Nest Book Cafe eating breakfast at his own table. Lino keeps “office” here. Lino is a portraitist. He waits for anyone to come along with a picture that they might want drawn in charcoal or lead pencil. The client chooses the medium. He also does pastel and watercolor. Lino is an old friend to the Maker. They sit here certain days of the week. The Maker to make his noon deadline for Kinutil, which comes out Wednesdays and Sundays, while Lino waits for clients to walk in. It’s a nice quiet place in the morning, and he likes to watch Lino go about his life.

Lino is a complete picture of the typical Cebuano artist although he is missing both arms up to his elbows. He struggles through his intrinsic limitations just like everyone else including the Maker. If you asked him how he is, he will most likely say, he is okay. Life is always as it has been. More or less. But the disinterested onlooker will most likely also say, “This person deserves better.”

If you sat Lino on a sidewalk in Hollywood, California, USA, he might possibly be a rich man by now or at least better off. Imagine him there, sitting on a chair behind a sketching easel with a sketchpad, his charcoal pencil attached to his elbow with a rubber band, making wonderful portrait drawings conquering over his obvious disability, smiling. You might think: How charming can you get? What a wonderful picture of a story? Or what a wonderful story of a picture? And then you might give him your picture to draw and pick up the next day. But he is in Cebu, in the Philippines, and so he struggles along just like everybody else. One is right to ask: Why?

Is it because people do not love art here? Is it because the art is too expensive? There is no market for art in Cebu?

Where art and most likely everything else is concerned, people here tend to operate by the appearances rather than the true meaning of things. If it is abstract, then it is modern. If it is weird looking or surrealist, then it is modern. If it is even weirder than that, then it must be contemporary, whatever the word “contemporary” means. People have no time to even wonder. What after all distinguishes between the “old,” the modern and the contemporary? Art is the thing we place inside our houses. But only if we are rich enough. Seldom do we think of art as pleasure-giving. Seldom do we think of it in the sense of what the old modernists called the beauty experience, the aesthetic. And that is why we might say with some amount of certainty: We missed the “modern” altogether. And now here we are in contemporary times and it might be too late for us.

It is not our fault entirely. It is half the artists’ fault, or so the Maker believes. As he goes through one exhibit after another he cannot help asking himself what the artworks are all about. He sees too much intellectualism there. Too much from the books. Too much from the academe. Too much darkness, too much sadness. And he cannot help asking himself if the sadness is altogether real. After all, the artists themselves do not seem at all sad or angry or even despondent. He cannot help wondering: Is it just a put-on to make the artworks seem “high art,” modern and/or similar to the art in Manila and the rest of the world? What do the artworks really say except to claim and demonstrate that the artists really understand art? The art is all about art. There is little there that is about life: Life in general, or if not that, then at least what life is to the artist.

But we all had been through colonial times. And back in those days the way to get better was to study the ways of colonial masters and then eventually to demonstrate the mastery of it much as what many contemporary artists do now. Artists would do well to liberate themselves from that sort of self-consciousness. They would do well to read the novels of Dr. Jose Rizal if only to understand what “modern” truly means. They were not about the novel nor about the Spanish language. They were not about art. They were about life. Real life. And so they were funny and were fun to read. They still are now as they will be for the rest of time. They stood on the gates of hell. And by them, the good doctor stuck out his tongue.