I'm Clarissa Chikyamko, a curator at the National Gallery Singapore. In today's episode of Cultural Cash Online, I will be talking about a work by Victoria Adadis in the Cultural Center of the Philippines 21AM collection titled The Builder. I have seen the builders before hanging at the cultural center of the Philippines in the same room where art talks are usually held.
The talks at CCP meant to generate thinking and discussion and Philippine art. We're taking place in the presence of this painting. which also provoked thinking and discussion on art during its first exhibition in Manila in 1928. This painting is one of the most seminal works in Philippine art history, so much so that you cannot tell the story of Philippine art without its inclusion.
It was painted by Adadis, who is a giant of Philippine modern art. In this work on Philippine labor, you can see men in different states of lifting and moving heavy boulders. Adadis painted them naked, exposing the form of the human body as it is being pushed to its limits. The men have bulbulwus muscles, which Adadis exaggerates in shape and accentuates through the use of lighter colored pigments highlighting the area. It is evident that the men Edadus is portraying are not juveniles who have just started working.
They are seasoned laborers whose bodies have adapted over time to carry the heavy materials to use in construction. Despite their muscular features, they are still challenged in moving these massive boulders to build an unspecified structure. In one figure on the right, The man rests a rock on his thigh.
We can imagine it must have been so difficult to pick it up from the ground that he needs some respite before carrying on with his task. On the left, a man cradles a rock bigger than his head on his neck, shoulder, and arm. His head is forced to tilt to the side to make way for this heavy object.
In the foreground, there are two men attempting to lift a massive elongated stone together. Their heads are bent in intense concentration, like the figure on the right who is even fully bowed down. It is as if they are summoning all their strength and willpower for the task at hand. In contrast to them, there are two central figures with their heads raised, looking upwards.
Already carrying boulders, they seem desperate for some reprieve, like asking for mercy from their arduous exertions. In the background, We see these multiple dark figures who are leaning back, evidently trying to pull a cart full of these large rocks towards them. While the painting has contrasts of lightness and darkness, notice that the colors of the stones are painted in the same colors as the bodies which feel and handle them. Shades of brown, beige, and green.
Colors which evoke the earth. Boulders. Forms created by nature.
Meld with the human physique. which emulate their physicality. They are rendered with bold brushstrokes with impasto, which help to bring the picture into the viewer's space.
There is something primal Adadis conveys in this rendition of labor. Adadis, born in 1895, painted this artwork as his master's thesis during his studies abroad. After graduating from high school in the Philippines in 1919, Adadis journeyed to the United States.
taking up a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Architecture and Painting from the University of Washington in Seattle, followed by a Master of Fine Arts in Painting from the same school. During this time, he painted portraits, but he actually also continued to paint Philippine subject matter, such as the builders, because this is what he identified with. While it is well known he was a student in the U.S., what may surprise some is that for eight years, of nine summers. Edadus actually worked as a salmon cannery worker along with other Filipinos to earn money.
He even eventually rose to the position of foreman. He considered the work a strenuous job. He is quoted as saying, I learned technique in painting abroad, but my heart was with the Filipinos. I always thought of the Philippines.
As for the technique I learned, I used this in depicting the Filipino workers. My sympathies are for the workers because I was raised among them. And in Alaska, I lived and worked with laborers. Thus, The milieu, the environment of an artist, is reflected in his works, plus, of course, what he gained of universal truth. It might seem that his sentiments would have been well appreciated when he returned to the Philippines in 1928 and exhibited this work in his solo exhibition that same year.
Instead, the exhibition was considered controversial. From today's perspective, It is hard to imagine what could be so contentious about this work and Adadis exhibition. But we have to remember that at the time it was exhibited, the Philippine art scene was dominated by the art of Fernando Amorsolo.
Amorsolo was popular for his very idealistic scenes of Philippine life in the countryside. Country maidens are shown smiling and cheerful, imbued by the glow of tropical sunlight, with nary a sweat or grimace from their rural labor. So Adade's paintings provided quite a shocking contrast to the art the Philippine public were used to and what was also being taught in the Philippine Art Academ at that time.
Amar Solo had many followers and later became the director of the School of Fine Arts at the University of the Philippines. Edades, however, refused to give up. If he could not make a living as a painter, he would then teach.
He established himself at the University of Santo Tomas, growing the Department of Architecture into the College of Architecture and Fine Art. He recruited Carlos Boton Francisco and Gallo Ocampo, two artists who believed in his ideas of modern art, and the three of them collaborated together to create murals to reach the public. After the Second World War, Edadus famously debated with the sculptor Guillermo Tolentino, then a teacher of fine arts at the University of the Philippines, on the merits of modern art versus academic art. Their positions were published in a series of articles in 1948. While Tolentino privileged craftsmanship and beauty following realistic or ideal proportions, Edadus favored innovation.
particularly in self-expression, drawing from one's own experiences and surrounding. This could manifest in the liberal use of color, composition, and form, whatever means available to the artist, which goes beyond how we see the subject naturally in objective reality. The modern artist, to Edades, is a creative artist, one who presents a new way of seeing.
Edadis' persistent articulations and defense of modern art contributed to its appreciation and eventual acceptance. He was recognized for his efforts and given the National Artist Award for Painting in 1976 before he passed away in 1985. So, Edadis was a pioneer in Philippine art, not simply through his own artistic practice, but through his writings and teachings. He championed an art of expressiveness and originality to represent a new familiar subject matter and to find artistic stimulation in one's own environment and heritage.
The Builders is a reminder of how Edadis challenged Philippine art into a new direction. The art critic and curator Eric Torres called Edadis the man who opened the door of modern art for his countrymen. I think that is true.
Thank you for joining me in this episode of Cultural Cash Online.