Art as work

Cubism, that movement in painting founded by Pablo Picasso and George Braque at the dawn of the 20th century, sought to depict objects in nature in their most  basic form—as cylinder, pyramid, sphere or cube. As such, it brought art out of the box, which at that time meant a tradition of representation according to the rules of a single-point perspective, shading, anatomy, etc.

In breaking centuries-old habits, the cubist painter thus reflected the modern man’s belief in history being evolution and art being a prophetic vision of the industrial age. It was thus only logical that cubism would pave the way for other radical movements that aimed to portray future possibilities for art. The history of modern art was in fact like a montage of succeeding styles, some staying for a while and others disappearing in a flicker.

Cebu, always a little suspicious of change, never really had this   cinematic moment in recent art history. We were rather a late bloomer when it came  to modern art. In fact, while Manila’s artists were debating about cubism in the 1920s, our painters and sculptors held on to classical styles. You see it in our rather hesitant embrace of art deco that, far from being “streamlined,” incorporated classical forms, as can be seen today on the façade of Vision theater in Colon.

Cubism came rather late in the ’70s and the early ’80s, and it did so without the noise of discourse. The early practitioners no longer had the privilege of being iconoclasts. The late Edgar Mojares took up Picasso’s collage but used basket weave, coco fiber and other organic materials more telling of local texture. Boy Kiamko simplified into basic geometry his favorite subjects of native guitar, jeepneys, and shanties, and used crossing lines to suggest fragmented vision. Yet rarely is the single viewpoint totally destroyed in the overall effect.

The same hesitation is also seen in the appropriation of the cubist style by the Cebuano painter Celso Pepito, who recently had a major solo exhibition titled “Homage” in SM Megamall’s Art Center in Manila. Employing the more sculptural technique of analytical cubism, Celso used his brush like a chisel, chipping away details so that what remains on the surface are flat planes making the figures look like unfinished sculptures.

The artist uses distortion to maintain a coherent geometric look but again never to a point of disparaging the single viewpoint in the overall effect. Such rejection of the modern iconoclastic spirit is consistent with Celso’s preference for traditional subject matter: the family and ordinary folk doing daily chores.
In fact, Celso borrows the ancient method of the three-planar composition, to suggest a metaphysical sense of space. And emerging as a distinguishing mark of his later work is the omnipresent octagonal orb that signifies the eye of heaven.

This is no accident considering the artist’s conversion to  Opus Dei, an  organization in the Catholic Church that resisted the materialist notion of progress by insisting on the importance of God-given essences as criteria of perfection. Change is thus largely an illusion and we only have to look inward to rediscover and cultivate our potentiality for perfection. Such is our life’s “opus,” the work that gives meaning to existence.

So art can only reflect change in a half-hearted way. Modern art began as a search for rational form, the immutable basis of beauty that had also been the preoccupation of the ancient Greeks. But this spiritual search for universal form was soon overtaken by Modernism’s preoccupation with the contemporary.

The tension between the modern and tradition is the paradox implied in Celso’s art. The artist delights at the ease and playfulness of abstraction but also longs for the comfort of certainty and order provided by religion and traditional institutions, like the family. He has managed to harmonize these inclinations, conceiving a stylistic formula that others took as repetition.

But perhaps for Celso, who devoted 30 years of his life struggling as a full-time painter, the pursuit of the prophetic is not as important anymore as the search for the immutable spirit that permeates tradition. When they thought they discovered it, the ancient Greeks held on to their way of portraying the universal for centuries. Same goes with the ancient Egyptians and the Chinese.

Form, indeed, follows faith. And to paraphrase St. Augustine, in reaching a style inspired by belief, the restless artist may find his ultimate rest.