Of princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme;
But you shall shine more bright in these contents
Than unswept stone, besmear’d with sluttish time.
When wasteful war shall statues overturn,
And broils root out the work of masonry,
Nor Mars his sword nor war’s quick fire shall burn
The living record of your memory. – William Shakespeare
When William Shakespeare and many other literary artists used media for sculptures to achieve a figurative expression, they had in their hearts the respect for purity of marble, wood, bronze, and many other possibilities for gilded expressions.
Beyond the colors of the rainbow so valuable in the Filipino fiesta tendency, these media have the natural ability to represent what it takes to have human qualities.
The current viewer of an old work in marble or the gilded version of it should respect the sublime essence of its natural white glory. But this unwritten rule in the world of culture was recently disrespected in our City.
I was so embarrassed while touring Larissa Gutsch, art historian from Germany, at the Quezon Park of Dumaguete last weekend. The Jose Rizal monument was painted to imitate the human skin, with black coat, and other details.
Who in this University Town, loaded with the brilliance of academia, could make the uneducated decision to paint a gilded white statue with such cheap colors? Let me borrow the line of novelist Johann Wolfgang von Goethe as a reaction, “There is nothing more frightful than ignorance in action.”
I have seen the same painted versions in other towns but even if it was painful to see the ignorance in our own islands, I have forgiven the doers for probably no one taught them the rules.
But in a city like Dumaguete, it’s just so unforgivable to see “ignorance in action”.
I had previously reacted to a similar mistake when we spotted the nuns-on-a-boat along the boulevard, about to celebrate a point in history.
May I bring you back to my Fine Arts 51 classroom at Silliman and recall this lesson on a medium in Sculpture: the organic nature and warmth of a material should be kept “alive” by the artist as its texture and color are part of the beauty spirit that must be preserved. This is the reason why cheaply-painted terracottas made by the local artists don’t get the nod of the critics during art festivals.
Although it is now widely accepted to have a point of divergence, but never to the extent of destroying the natural essence of the material.
A figurative sculpture must stand in glory with the well-defined potential of the medium. The artists’ job is to flesh out the figure, not by force, but in the way form is achieved with the medium, by allowing the medium to shape the desired expression. The total vitality of the art must include the element of color with its natural beauty as point of departure.
I just hope the culture leaders of Dumaguete City will take a closer look at an old picture (above) of the City landmark, and bring back its glory in pure white.
Let the coming fiesta celebration on this 150th year of the birth of Jose Rizal, himself a brilliant sculptor, be spotless by an immediate action: Save the Rizal monument in Dumaguete from the hands of the unknown force behind the stupid manicure!
