Unpacking the Legacy of Legaspi
By Carlomar Arcangel Daoana
As National Artist Cesar Legaspi turns 100, the Cultural Center of the Philippines looks to celebrate
the life of one of the Thirteen Moderns in his centenary exhibit, Lying in State.
the life of one of the Thirteen Moderns in his centenary exhibit, Lying in State.
“Games For Three”, 1972, oil on wood
Exhibitions of artists considered as “masters,” especially in relation to a certain milestone – such as birth or death anniversary – are conceptualized, showcased, and perpetuated to be hagiographic. These artists, who have achieved canonical status and are part of the mainstream art history, are spotlit only with the most flattering glow, their reputation taken as a given, if not unassailable. The problem with this approach is that it brooks no meaningful discourse, much less dissent, and considers the audience as mere passive recipients of “this gift of greatness,” as if they don’t bear upon the works their own subjectivity, the intricate contradictions of their own time and place.
Curators Eileen Legaspi-Ramirez and Claro Ramirez, Jr. stunningly break away from this kind of myth-making with Lying in State, the birth centenary exhibition of Cesar F. Legaspi on view at the Cultural Center of the Philippines until June 4. They position the show not so much as a valedictory of the National Artist’s contributions and achievements (which are certainly immense and incontrovertible), but as a proposal for viewers to see his work and life as deeply imbricated in his milieu. They seek to prompt a conversation on the artist’s stand, complicity, and/or resistance in connection with the instruments of power. Even the title of the exhibition resists registering praise, preferring instead to foreground the real possibility of co-optation. “Lying in state,” after all, means situating a funeral of a public official within a state building as though, even in death, his person was still bound to and could not be severed from his office that putatively shaped, enabled, and sponsored him.
Curators Eileen Legaspi-Ramirez and Claro Ramirez, Jr. stunningly break away from this kind of myth-making with Lying in State, the birth centenary exhibition of Cesar F. Legaspi on view at the Cultural Center of the Philippines until June 4. They position the show not so much as a valedictory of the National Artist’s contributions and achievements (which are certainly immense and incontrovertible), but as a proposal for viewers to see his work and life as deeply imbricated in his milieu. They seek to prompt a conversation on the artist’s stand, complicity, and/or resistance in connection with the instruments of power. Even the title of the exhibition resists registering praise, preferring instead to foreground the real possibility of co-optation. “Lying in state,” after all, means situating a funeral of a public official within a state building as though, even in death, his person was still bound to and could not be severed from his office that putatively shaped, enabled, and sponsored him.
“Struggle”, 1978, oil on wood
“Terra Incognita”, 1979, oil on wood
“A straightforward tribute would have been appropriate for this occasion,” writes Legaspi-Ramirez, who also happens to be the granddaughter of the National Artist, in the catalog text, “but that would have been utterly predictable. We might think of how we dishonor our National Artists by merely mouthing tales of their laurels. That said, the much less palatable truth is that these artists’ narratives are just entangled in contradictions as the tales making up the clumsy script assigned our vaunted nation-state.”
Coming to his own artistic power and at his most productive during the Marcos regime (just like the majority of those who would become National Artists), Legaspi produced commissions for a variety of government agencies, whose fat purses were used to purchase art to deodorize the reputation of the Marcoses, whose list of abuses kept piling up by the day. “It was no secret that the Marcoses counted on culture as a tool to perpetuate its brand of political and economic development,” continues Legaspi-Ramirez. No other works were more laudatory to the then current dispensation than the portraits of First Lady Imelda Marcos. In two works, she is shown as an engkantada (deity) and possibly, as the mythical Maganda, thin-armed and graceful in her diaphanous baro (blouse), hair unbound, swaddled in the effulgent green of nature. No hint of anxiety mars these portraits.
In unpacking this legacy of Legaspi, “the exhibition wagers that perhaps the best way to honor a National Artist is to come clean about how, particularly in the case of this National Artist, his artistic life became enmeshed in the workings of state propaganda and the myth-making machinery upon which politicians continue to rely to keep a semblance of nation operative.” While Legaspi evidently benefitted from the Marcoses, it must also be noted that his relationship with the conjugal
dictatorship was more nuanced than it seemed. For one, it was President Corazon Aquino who bestowed upon Legaspi the title of the National Artist in 1990, stating in her citation that her government “do(es) not intend to use artists for our own ends. This was done by the dictatorship that was overthrown by EDSA.”
Coming to his own artistic power and at his most productive during the Marcos regime (just like the majority of those who would become National Artists), Legaspi produced commissions for a variety of government agencies, whose fat purses were used to purchase art to deodorize the reputation of the Marcoses, whose list of abuses kept piling up by the day. “It was no secret that the Marcoses counted on culture as a tool to perpetuate its brand of political and economic development,” continues Legaspi-Ramirez. No other works were more laudatory to the then current dispensation than the portraits of First Lady Imelda Marcos. In two works, she is shown as an engkantada (deity) and possibly, as the mythical Maganda, thin-armed and graceful in her diaphanous baro (blouse), hair unbound, swaddled in the effulgent green of nature. No hint of anxiety mars these portraits.
In unpacking this legacy of Legaspi, “the exhibition wagers that perhaps the best way to honor a National Artist is to come clean about how, particularly in the case of this National Artist, his artistic life became enmeshed in the workings of state propaganda and the myth-making machinery upon which politicians continue to rely to keep a semblance of nation operative.” While Legaspi evidently benefitted from the Marcoses, it must also be noted that his relationship with the conjugal
dictatorship was more nuanced than it seemed. For one, it was President Corazon Aquino who bestowed upon Legaspi the title of the National Artist in 1990, stating in her citation that her government “do(es) not intend to use artists for our own ends. This was done by the dictatorship that was overthrown by EDSA.”
And certainly, there is the body of work to reckon with which, at its best, is a Sisyphean engagement with the possibility of the medium to enact a visual language that may confidently speak about human yearning, struggle, and the pursuit of freedom. Though he may have shared the idiom of Cubism with some of his contemporaries, Legaspi resisted the seduction of collapsing it into a kind of a mannerist gesture, an identifiable style. His is the mottled, soiled kind – more granular than grandiose – whose concatenation of planes and shapes accrues into the fretwork of bone and muscle of human forms tensing against distinct and identifiable ground.
It’s pretty evident that Legaspi already had a firm grasp of his visual language early in his career, based on the two oil-on-wood works painted in 1952 that are shown side by side: “Mother and Child” and “The Memorial No. 2,” which has an abstract register. One could only surmise of the end product had Legaspi gone all the way into abstraction. “The Legend,” an oil on lawanit piece created in 1970, may give us access to Legaspi’s temperament, free of recognizable representation. But the impulse of narrative had never left Legaspi. The recurring subject matter of dynamic anatomy grounds his works into the sphere of the real. The form tempers expressiveness. And particularly with the large-scale works, repeating figures train the eye to look for a specific pattern of movement, passage of color combinations, development of an idea. Without this figural anchor, the painting would still be lyrical, yes, but with no discernible weight, tension, and propulsion.
It’s pretty evident that Legaspi already had a firm grasp of his visual language early in his career, based on the two oil-on-wood works painted in 1952 that are shown side by side: “Mother and Child” and “The Memorial No. 2,” which has an abstract register. One could only surmise of the end product had Legaspi gone all the way into abstraction. “The Legend,” an oil on lawanit piece created in 1970, may give us access to Legaspi’s temperament, free of recognizable representation. But the impulse of narrative had never left Legaspi. The recurring subject matter of dynamic anatomy grounds his works into the sphere of the real. The form tempers expressiveness. And particularly with the large-scale works, repeating figures train the eye to look for a specific pattern of movement, passage of color combinations, development of an idea. Without this figural anchor, the painting would still be lyrical, yes, but with no discernible weight, tension, and propulsion.
“Itlog na Maalat”, 1973, oil on wood
Hence, it is an inspired decision to group the works according to themes – no matter how tentative – and not chronology. The latter would have only underscored the progress of Legaspi’s contemplation of the medium; the former, on the other hand, makes prominent the subject matter that continued to haunt Legaspi throughout his life. While it is tempting to say that any great artist would eventually transcend his milieu as some kind of claim to universality, Lying in State underscores the fact that the artist, just like everybody else, is a troubled individual, subject to the conditions of his time, torn – if not tortured – by contradictions, but nonetheless continues to work towards a certain level of clarity, if not peace.
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