Filipino
struggled for independence, first in the revolution against Spain, and later
in the war against the United States. While they succeeded in ridding themselves
of the first colonizers in 1898, the new colonizers would set their govornment
in place in 1901.
Related
to social realism is the historical theme mingled with folk imagery which has
found striking interpretations in the works of painter-printmakers. Working
in varying styles and constructing an iconogrraphy of symbols, they dealt on
such protest themes as agrrarian problems, foreign economic domination, export
labor, exploitation of women and children, and ecological damage, while they
expressed their aspirations for genuine freedom.
Furthermore,
they have worked in variety of popular forms, such as comics, editorial cartoons,
ilustrations, posters, and portable murals for rallies to be able to reach a
larger number of viewers. Art of sociopolitical significations, as in the work
of first-generation social realists Pablo Bean Santos, Edgar Fernandez, Orlando
Catillio, Antipas Delotavo, Jose Tence Ruiz, and Renato Habulan, remains an
important trend among younger artists, like Charlie Co, Peewee Roland, and Nunlucio
Alvarado of Negros Occidental, and Aster Tecson of Sagada and Mindoro. Sociopolitical
themes are also expressed in the sculptures of Juresalino Araos and Pey Paz
Conteras.
Published 1988. Author, Alice G. Guillermo. Manila: Asphodel Books.
The Book is about Social Realism in the visual arts. Divided into two parts, the book first gives an overview of Social Realism, and then studies the works of nine artists representing the movement: Pablo Bean Santos, Orlando Castillo, Papo de Asis, Antipas Delotavo, Neil Doloricon, Edgar Fernandez, Renato Habulan, Al Manrique, and Jose Tence Ruiz.
In the opening chapter, Guillermo identifies Social Realism as an Extemsion of the nationalist struggle that began in the 19th century with Rizal and other ilustrado expatriates, continued in the prewar proletarian literature of Manuel Arguilla, Carlos Bulosan and Hernando R. Ocampo, and the postwar PAG modernist movement, the agitprop of the First Quarter Storm (unang sigwa), and the birth of Kaisahan in 1977, a group of young artists that coined the name "social realism."
The next Chapter "Arts and Society The Aesthetics of Committed Art," Guillerrmo expounds on two opposing views about art: the art-for-art's-sake Ivory Tower versus the Ideological School. Her stance on the matter is obvious. Quoting Arnold Hauser, she says that, overtly or covertly, all art is political, that artists cannot express themselves except "through an ideology, in reaction to an ideology, and in conformity [to] or in rebellion against an ideology."
The next chapter explains the key concepts of "realism" and "social realism," tracing how the latter grew from the former. Guillermo describes the varieties of social realism in France, the United States, Mexico, and Russia. She then explains how realism in France started as a reaction against aristocratic idealized ways of painting in favor of more empirical, scientific, and democratic ones. The social realists chose for their subjects the everyday world, current events, social relationships, and the way the social classes lived. They emphasized a direct, detached perception of life and truthfulness in rendering reality as a means of disclosinf a different, more rational, kind of pictorial order. The philosophy of "commited art" encouraged the artists to realize that they were as much a part of history-in-the-making as the politician, the what they painted was a means of effecting social change.
In "The Philippine Context," Guillermo takes up the content, form, and style of social realists in the 1970s and the 1980s. The themes of Philippine protest art, the effects of the evils of semifuedal, semicolonial systems in the Third World, are discussed fully enough. Comments on form and style are made, however briefly.
The point that the social realists are artists creating political art, not ideologues trying to be artists, is made abundantly clear in the second half of the book. In all nine essays, she combines a keenly attentive eye with interpretative ingenuity. She clearly demonstrates how style and technique precisely work to realize the artist's intention.
-- Eric Torres
REFERENCE
_________________. CCP ENCYCLOPEDIA OF PHILIPPINE ART Vol. 4 Philippine Visual Arts. Manila: CCP Special Publication Office CCP Complex, Roxas Boulevard Manila, Philippines, 1994.
_________________. CCP ENCYCLOPEDIA OF PHILIPPINE ART Vol. 9 Philippine Literature. Manila: CCP Special Publication Office CCP Complex, Roxas Boulevard Manila, Philippines, 1994.
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Last revised: January 27, 2000.
