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The Great Wall of China in Mutianyu

The Great Wall of China is referred to in Mandarin as Wanli Changcheng (10,000-Li Long Wall or simply very long wall) BEIJING, CHINA- S...

Sunday, September 23, 2012

Metropolitan Museum Presents Claudio Bravo: Sojourn in Manila Circa 1968


Metropolitan Museum Presents Claudio Bravo: Sojourn in Manila Circa 1968.

Upon the invitation of Miss Janette Torral, I went to the Metropolitan Museum in Manila last Saturday, September 22, 2012. It was raining hard that afternoon. It took me more than three hours to reach the place. I had to leave behind my brother in the car to take the LRT. Because of heavy traffic some areas leading to the designated place are flooded. I felt like crying and almost gave up while walking in a semi-formal dress and heels. Inside my mind, I was thinking, I should have wore a more comfortable shoes, pants and shirt instead. It was a long commute, shame on me it was my first time to reach that part of Manila. Some people and guards in the street at Vito Cruz station at LRT1 don't have the slightest idea where Metropolitan Museum is.
 
Having been born and raised in the province, (promdi) it was only this year that I was able to reach the different parts of Manila. ( Thanks to some good people and PR companies who invited me to different events.) Even if my neurosurgeon prohibits me from long-haul air travel at least I was given the freedom to roam around the Metro by foot or by car as long as I have a companion which sometimes I disobey, because of ethics. If the one who invited me doesn't permit a plus 1 then I attend by my lonesome. The strength and good health that God had blessed me with, made me manage to travel  by car or by foot around the Metro and nearby places. After intently searching for the Metropolitan Museum entrance, I finally found it. At the entrance, I asked the receptionist for Miss Janet and while waiting at the lobby, I chance upon His Excellency Ambassador Roberto Mayorga of the Embassy of Chile together with visitors from Chilean newspaper El Mercurio covering the exhibit. I excused myself because I am a little wet because of the rain. After I dried my hair, I was ushered to where the action is. I researched about Claudio Bravo and was so impressed with his paintings that I saw on the net, that I was really looking forward ( really excited) to see Claudio Bravo's art works with my own two eyes. Geez! Filipinos ought to go visit the museum all over the Metro every weekend.

The Embassy of Chile and the Energy Development Corporation (EDC) are the sponsors for Claudio Bravo: Sojourn in Manila, a landmark exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Manila.

The exhibit commemorates the late artist on the 202nd anniversary of the Independence of Chile.The paintings of Claudio Bravo in the exhibit are those produced during his stay in Manila in 1968. These artworks are the last body of portraits Bravo would ever produce before being catapulted into the international contemporary art scene for the hyper-realist still life that eventually define his career.

Claudio Bravo looked back at his work in the Philippines as his “most lucid paintings, because it was a different race –beautiful! ...a different vision of the world and of light."

Claudio Nelson Bravo Camus was born in Valparaiso, Chile in 1936 and passed away last year in Taroudant, Morocco. He was a world-renowned hyper-realist painter. Though he was known mainly for his paintings of still life, portraits and packages, I am happy to note that according to Mrs. Tats Manahan he had also done engraving, lithographs,drawings and figural bronze sculptures. He was mainly a self-taught artist though he had taken some private art classes with academic painter Miguel Venegas Cifuentes. Claudio Bravo had his first exhibition at the age of seventeen in his hometown of Valparaíso at the prestigious Salón 13. When Claudio Bravo moved to Concepción, he ultimately became a well sought-after portrait painter after a sojourn dancing with Compañia de Ballet de Chile and acting at the Teatro Ensayo of the Catholic University of Chile.

Claudio Bravo (November 8, 1936 – June 4, 2011)
For the first time in 44 years, the portraits done by the dime-God in the world of hyper-realist painting, Claudio Bravo are shown to the public. All of the 29 portraits were lent by Manila's luminaries to make the exhibit a reality. Inside the gallery, I was astoundingly amazed at the clarity and the vivid color of Bravo's art. Though he was invited by Imelda Marcos in 1965, it was only in 1968 that the young and impressionable Chilean painter came to Manila, to attend the extravagant 40th wedding anniversary of Eugenio & Pacita Lopez. Bravo eventually settled in the Philippines for almost six months to capture and immortalize Manila's prominent alta sociedad clientele and other leading personalities.

One of my favorite portrait in the exhibit is this 1968 graphite, charcoal, conte crayon and pastel on paper impression of Claudio Bravo of Margarita "Tingting" De Los Reyes Cojuangco.  Tingting wore “a Filipina lavandera’s or washer woman’s dress” provided by her mother Lita De Los Reyes and her friend Villa Brille. Claudio Bravo asked Tingting to just let her hair down and sit comfortably by the windowsill to get available natural light. In the final portrait, the simplicity of the sheer kimona top in piña and the woven striped patadyong brought a kind of pastoral innocence to complement her lovely face, another timeless look achieved by the artist.This is how beautiful she is in the eyes of Claudio Bravo. In the artist mind, Tingting possesses not only a beautiful face and body but powerful mind as well, you can see it on how Claudio Bravo drawn her. She exudes confidence.

According to the curator, Claudio Bravo never use a photograph. Claudio Bravo work on his subjects for periods of time, even over weeks. For example, for this portrait, Mrs. Manahan said that Tingting's stand in is the yaya.
 
There was also this painting we saw inside the exhibit with a subject sitting beside his favorite dog. Mrs. Manahan told us the story behind that painting. She said that Claudio Bravo painted the person in this particular portrait for only a week but because the elegant subject's favorite dog, cannot be still for an hour or less he had to paint the dog for two weeks and the subject had to sit in with his dog for that additional two weeks. I find this story humorous and at the same time, I appreciate the love nd patience that the subject had for his favorite dog.

Mrs.Tats Manahan dispelled the rumor that Bravo charged an exorbitant rate for his work. The nasty rumor that circulated was that the painter charged for his subjects here in Manila.over US$ 5,000.00 (approximately US $ 25,000-30,000 today). Mrs. Manahan confides that the fee was roughly about US$ 1,500-2,000 at that time, nevertheless still a high and princely fee that only the Filipino wealthy can afford.
 
 Regina Dee by Claudio Bravo
Image from the Metropolitan Museum of Manila

According to Mrs. Tats Manahan, Claudio Bravo conceptualized in his mind a"Chinese lady" even before meeting Regina Dee. So when Claudio Bravo met Regina Dee, he knew she was perfect. He asked her to have a white gown with a black opera coat made and asked her to sit with the coat gathered around her as she adjusted her long white gloves. To complete the picture, he painted ominous clouds billowing in the background.

 It is said that the painter asked his dutiful subject again "to be dramatic". Bravo, as Manahan points out, had an instinctive flair for "styling". He personally select their clothing and tell them what pose to make.
The exhibit's curator, Mrs. Tats Manahan, told us that in 1961, Claudio Bravo moved to Madrid and continued to work as a portraitist to high society.  During the following decade, he painted many famous and powerful people, including the daughter of General Francisco Franco while in Spain, and the Lopezez, Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos during a trip to the Philippines.
Claudio Bravo painting Conchita Lopez-Taylor (1968)
Image from the Metropolitan Museum of Manila

"I don't want to betray myself. I have a very special talent to copy the reality, and I have tried many times to do another kinds of painting, but my friends - great painters - told me "don't be mad, you have a gift from Heaven which nobody else has."  I copy a different reality, I re-invent it, just follow my gifts. Why would I betray myself by doing another kind of painting and following the others? I like being myself, not being like anyone else, so the only way is following the gifts that God gave me.  I paint reality, and as it's full of mistakes that I don't like, I correct it."
 
Imelda Romualdez Marcos by Claudio Bravo
Image from the Metropolitan Museum of Manila

On a visit to Tangier in 1972, Bravo fell in love with Morocco.  Bravo was "fascinated by the composition of things in the country," and was "mesmerized by the use of color in every day life."  He adopted Morocco as his new home. Because he got so inspired by his new surroundings he began expanding his subject matter from portraits he devoted more time to allegories, landscapes, and the usage of a brighter color palette.

The popularity of Claudio Bravo's particular paintings made him extremely prosperous.

"The success of my pictures exceeds all my dreams," said Bravo.

 "I never thought that I was going to be so famous, so expensive. I never thought that I was going to have presidents, kings and ministers knocking at my door."

His financial success freed Claudio Bravo to choose his own subject matter, and only take the commissions which interested him.  It also enabled the artist to live like the royalty he painted, maintaining an apartment in New York City and three palaces in Morocco. 

Works by Claudio Bravo are included in the collections of the following:
  • El Museo del Barrio, New York
  • The Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, Maryland
  • The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, New York
  • Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Santiago, Chile
  • Museo Rufino Tamayo, Mexico City, Mexico
  • Museum Boymans-van Beuningen, Rotterdam, The Netherlands
  • Museum of Modern Art, New York, New York
  • Museum Ludwig, Cologne, Germany
  • The Palmer Museum of Art, State College, Pennsylvania
  • The Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Claudio Bravo lived and worked in Tangier, Morocco from 1972 onward. 

Oscar M. Lopez, Chairman Emeritus of EDC says, “In those portraits, in the glamour and spirit of the personalities he depicted, one cannot but sense the optimism, confidence, vitality and sense of pride, but also the innocence, that characterized the Philippines, and the Manila, of the 1960s.”
According to the exhibit curator Mrs.Tats Manahan, prior to Claudio's visit in the Philippines he doesn't use color in all his paintings. Mrs. Tats Manahan was happy to note that Claudio Bravo started experimenting the usage of color palette only in the Philippines.
 
Luis Araneta
Image from the Metropolitan Museum of Manila
Conchita Lopez Taylor as painted by Claudio Bravo. 
Image from the Metropolitan Museum of Manila.

 "Venus pudica" pose by Baby Araneta Fores in Claudio Bravo's eyes. This is a pose of shame. But in Claudio's interpretation this is a proud pose. With her chin up and Red dress the usual pose of shame become a pose of a person in power and control.
Chona Recto Kasten
Image from the Metropolitan Museum of Manila
Elvira Manahan was the only one captured by Claudio Bravo smiling among all the portraits he had done in Manila circa 1968. For Elvira Manahan’s pose, her fingers can be seen playfully gesturing very typical of her bubbly personality. Elvira was so animated, in fact, that Bravo never completed her portrait because she kept talking and moving about during the sittings according to Mrs. Tats Manahan.
 
Dr. Constantino Manahan by Claudio Bravo
Image from the Metropolitan Museum of Manila
 
Evelyn Lim Forbes
Graphite, charcoal, conte crayon and pastel on paper 
1968, Manila
 
Dona Pacita Lopez by Claudio Bravo
Image from the Metropolitan Museum of Manila

The exhibit will be accompanied by weekly activities on Saturdays, including a curator’s talk, portraiture lecture and a drawing session.

Schedule of Saturday activities:

1. September 22 - Portraits of Distinction. (2 sessions) 9:30am-12nn; 1-5pm at the Upper Level Bridge. Two contemporary Filipino artists spearhead a portrait sketching for artists with distinguished or accomplished Filipinos as sitters. William Gaudinez conducts the first session in the morning while Rafael del Casal facilitates in the afternoon.

2. September 29 - A ‘Still’ Life talk by Cid Reyes. 10:30am at the White Cube Gallery. Art historian Cid Reyes talks about still life painting tradition in the Philippines. His survey on the subject and still life painters in the Philippines will be followed by a still life drawing/painting session involving objects often used by Bravo in his drawings.

3. October 2 - Fashion Portraits: inspired by Claudio Bravo. (2 sessions) 9:30am-12nn; 1-5pm at the Upper Level Bridge. Drapery sketches have been one of the most exquisite creations of Bravo. ‘Draped’, in cooperation with Summit Media, features the leading stylists in the country on a draping exercise which will be followed by a sketching session of the styled models.

4. October 6 - Bravo Claudio: Curator’s Talk by Tats Manhan. 10:00 am at the White Cube Gallery. Tats Manahan will discuss the life and art of Claudio Bravo with emphasis on his connection to the Philippines in 1968. This will be followed by the curator’s walk through of the exhibit.

Source: Lopez Group Press Release 

https://www.facebook.com/lopezlinkonline
http://lopezlink.ph/special-feature/3028-bravo-claudio-bravo.html


CLAUDIO BRAVO: MANILA SOJOURN
Metropolitan Museum of Manila
Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas Complex Roxas Blvd. 1004 Manila, Philippines
Museum Exhibit: September 18-October 20, 2012
*Please note that the museum is close on Holidays and Mondays
Telephone #: (+632) 708-7829
Email: marketing@metmuseum.ph
Entrance fee: Php100 (applies to all ).


Friday, August 3, 2012

DOREEN G. FERNANDEZ: Food for Thought: A Celebration of Good Taste


DOREEN G. FERNANDEZ: Food for Thought: A Celebration of Good Taste
 
Doreen G. Fernandez.
 
The Museum at De La Salle University (DLSU) in partnership with the DLSU Office for Strategic Communications organized a special viewing of its current exhibit entitled “Food for Thought: A Celebration of Good Taste,” organized to honor Doreen G. Fernandez as writer, teacher, friend, and benefactor. The exhibition is also a commemoration of the 10th anniversary of her death.

Curator Ms. Lalyn Buncab opened the program with a brief history of how DLSU became the custodian of the Wili and Doreen Fernandez private collection. She also talked about the different works of art that comprised the collection.

The sister of the late Doreen G. Fernandez, Ms. Della Besa, graced the press viewing, held last July 27, 2012. Before the program ended, Besa shared her message to the guests on behalf of Doreen’s family.
Buncab said that the exhibit represents Doreen’s life and work. Her good taste in food,in writing, in art and in education, highlighting what is good in Filipino culture.
Items in the exhibit includes memorabilia of Doreen such as:
  •  books
  •  art works
  •  trophies
  •  photographs
  •  plaques that carry the theme of food.
The exhibit will run at The Museum at DLSU until August. 
For more information on The Museum, please visit www.themuseum.dlsu.edu.ph or call 524-4611 loc 368.


Saturday, May 26, 2012

DANCING TO THE BEAT AT LOPEZ MUSEUM


DANCING TO THE BEAT AT LOPEZ MUSEUM
My brother and I visited the Beat Art Exhibit at Lopez Memorial Museum in Pasig for the first time.
The Beat Art Exhibit at Lopez Memorial Museum pamphlet that was given to us has Ofelia by Hidalgo on the cover.

Beat exhibit curatorial note by Eileen Legaspi-Ramirez :

There is a deliberately forlorn and somber tone to this outing. Images of the prostrate and crestfallen easily evoke a stance of defeat, a succumbing to odds. But Beat also linguistically traverses a more mobile positionality, possibly one that suggests a desire to plod on in sheer resilience or blind resolve. By staying on in the present tense rather than as the more definitive ‘beaten’, this exhibition also conscripts the energies of artists Nikki Luna and Ernest Concepcion to effect stagings of confrontation with the difficult, the resistant, and even the impossible.
As I entered the Lopez Memorial Museum, I couldn't help but feel nervous and giddy at the same time. Visiting art galleries and art exhibits never fails to excites me. You see, I was one of the lucky bloggers who were invited to the current art exhibit at the Lopez Memorial Museum called Beat, which is about the intersections of the colonial and recent past alongside contemporary issues. Young artists Nikki Luna and Ernest Concepcion were commissioned by the Lopez Memorial Museum to contemplate the multiple meanings of the word Beat such as defeat and rhythm.

First stop is Ernest Concepcion's Beat interpretation.
 
The author with the artist Ernest Concepcion at Beat Art Exhibit, Lopez Museum.
 
Ernest Concepcion's Hidalgo, the super multi-dimensional time bandit 2012 in acetate sheets. I so love this! Felix Hidalgo through Ernest Concepcion's mind. He's so playful and uses modern art. Ernest has a great mind. The confrontation on his art pieces goes back to childhood, he discussed with me how he loves duels, confrontations and video games.  His series started with squirrels vs. ants in New York. He made do of what was available at hand and got his inspiration from the ants and squirrels outside his apartment. It was a liberating moment for him.
If you look closely on Ernest Concepcion's interpretation of Hidalgo you will realize that Felix Hidalgo was portrayed as a robot by Ernest Concepcion. Hidalgo was plug in the electrical outlet inside the museum. Can you see where I am pointing to? That is the main plug of Hidalgo. Ha ha ha!
Ernest Concepcion is very creative. His works are interconnected with his previous works from other galleries. Because of the colors that he used on his art interpretation, the curator decided to put Alfonso Osorio Faineants (Loafers) in watercolor/ink on paper (34.2 x 55 cm) done in 1945. This can be found on the rightmost corner of the picture above and Danilo Dalena's Jai-Alai series: Talo which is an oil on canvas (83.8 x 61 cm.) done in 1989 on the leftmost corner. Ernest art is confrontational. He believes their should always be an interaction and collaboration between art pieces. Yes, you got it right, a hand-in-hand connectivity.
Actress Angel Aquino is intently looking at Felix Resurreccion Hidalgo's The Assasination of Governor General Bustamante with Ernest Concepcion's response.



He can't get enough of his art that he decided to make his own skin as a canvass to visualize his ideas. Oh, he is not a tattoo artist though. He hired a professional artist to execute his ideas on his arms.
Ernest Concepcion is a Patriotic Pinoy. He had a Darna Tattoo.
 
 Space Battleship Yamato of Anime Star Blazers
The author with J. Elizalde Navarro's Flying Machine for Icarus
 Ernest Concepcion's wall painting, I love it!
Ernest Concepcion will be having a solo exhibit at the Manila Peninsula Blanc Gallery on May 26, 2012.
 
Who is Ernest Concepcion?

He grew on a family of doctors but he seriously took up art, inspired by his older brother who’s gifted with artistic hands too and by his friends.

He believes in painting moving images as a powerful way of connecting communities.
Next stop is Nikki Luna's installation. When I entered Gallery 2 and saw Nikki Luna’s installation, I got startled. The sight and sound of Luna's art was eerie. I can hear bullets from the background. This is the first time that I get to see an installation done by Nikki Luna up close and personal. The artist was very effective in her attempt to move her audience through her installations and sounds. Everyone who entered the gallery reacted and asked questions. Her installation reminds me of a not so distant past. The martial law, when demonstrations were rampant, where riots and political unrest was so common. Bone China are the material used in China to make ceramic tea and coffee cups which only the rich could afford. They are easy to break just like a person's head that can easily break when beaten by sticks.
 
 Nikki Luna's 2012 Precious and Fertile installation. 

I got a chance to talk to Nikki Luna. She said that she is an activist artist. And her interpretation of Beat is about the value of land, a continuation of her installation "Sa Ngalan ng Tubo". Nikki Luna put up hanging bone china to represent picket line fences and sticks that are used to hit people in rallies or demonstrations during dispersal. There's an idea of chaos as represented by the chaotic shadows on the screen. People who are beaten or tired of their situations. The victims of human rights violations beaten to the ground. She said that her installation symbolizes indigenous people community in Mindanao, or a group of people who fight for their cause, not necessarily the farmers of Hacienda Luisita, but especially on land disputes, mining, and against human rights violations.
Lopez Memorial Museum
Nikki said that the soil on the floor represents her belief on the value of land and her support to farmers against land grabbing and mining. The video background is taken from a farm where you could hear from the background the sounds of guns being fired. These are the actual gunshots that claimed the lives of the farmer demonstrators in that area. The sound was recorded by Nikki's friend.
Lopez Memorial Museum
On display too are Nikki's sugar diamonds. Aptly called Azucacera.
Lopez Memorial Museum  Lopez Memorial Museum
Azucacera are composed of seven white sugar diamonds and seven brown sugar diamonds. She made use of resin and sugar to mold the sugar diamonds.

She also molded Palay and Monggo out of 14 karat gold. Both precious and fertile.
Lopez Memorial Museum
Monggo
Lopez Memorial Museum
Palay

Embellished Earth (Rice and Monggo topped with 14k Gold)
Lopez Memorial Museum
At gallery 3 you will find this on display:
Lopez Memorial Museum
7 Lupa 2012 (Soils from Kibawe-Bukidnon, Maramag-Bukidnon, Opol-Misamis Oriental, San Fernano-Bukidnon, Ramain-Lanao Sur, Dalwangan-Malaybalay, Balingasag and Misamis Oriental) One (1) cup of soil per display case.
Lopez Memorial Museum 
The author together with Tintin Bersola-Babao, Julius Babao, and Nikki Luna.
Lopez Memorial Museum, Tintin Bersola-Babao, Julius Babao, Nikki Luna
Who is Nikki Luna?

Nikki Luna is an artist and the founder of StartArtproject, a non-profit organization aimed at providing art workshops to women and youth victims of armed conflict and human rights violations in the Philippines. Her works have been shown locally and abroad Milan Italy and Singapore. Her women advocacy is an endeavor she is currently studying in-depth in her Masters in Women and Development Studies in UP.
Lopez Memorial Museum 
Liz Uy, Nikki Luna, Julius Babao and Tintin Bersola-Babao
 Lopez Memorial Museum
The art exhibit of Ernest Concepcion and Nikki Luna is so intimate. One will not feel deprived looking at their artworks, up close and personal. Nikki Luna invoked intense emotions emanating from personal and collective trauma. While Concepcion, in these recent years of re-establishing his art practice in the East Coast of the United States, has taken to staging art duels starting from the squirrel vs. ants. Nikki Luna and Ernest Concepcion’s artworks has made me realized that art is not only about making a statement but it is also a tool on advocating something worthy to give back to the society in general.
Lopez Memorial Museum
Beat registers as ultimate defeat and/or surrender, relational terms that could easily be associated with such pieces as Felix Resurreccion Hidalgo’s The Assassination of Governor General Bustamante, Ofelia or La derota de Limahong; Juan Arellano’s Christ Down from the Cross; Galo Ocampo’s Cruxifixion, Ang Kiukok’s Seated Figure; Jeremias Navarro’s Flying Machine for Icarus, and, Danilo Dalena’s Talo. It may also indicate rhythm and movement as in the ribaldry of Juvenal Sanso’s Carnival, La Fete, Mardi gras, Joyride, or retreat as in Onib Olmedo’s The Prey or Bar Scene, and Pacita Abad’s Recluse.
Lopez Memorial Museum
Lopez Memorial Museum
As I roamed around The Lopez Museum, I discovered that the museum has an extensive collection of books in their library as well as an amazing collection of Filipino artworks and historical artifacts.
Lopez Memorial Museum
I got so excited when I saw Juvenal Sanso's work entitled Mardi Gras, Carnival and La Fete a' Guillaume way back in 1929 and his Joyride Oil on Canvas in 1957. I couldn't believe that Sanso has a very different art style way back then.
Lopez Memorial Museum 
Curated by Eileen Legaspi-Ramirez and with artistic direction provided by Claro Ramirez Jr.
The exhibit formally opened last Saturday, May 19, 2012 and will run until October 13, 2012. 
Lopez Memorial Museum
The Lopez Memorial Museum is located at the ground floor of Benpres Building, Exchange Road corner Meralco Avenue, Pasig City. Museum days and hours are Mondays to Saturdays, except holidays, from 8am-5pm. For more information, call 631-2417. 
Lopez Memorial Museum
Bring your children at Lopez Museum because it is not only educational but also teach your children about the history of our country.


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