|
Tuesday, June 06, 2006
Lost and found
Nothing is immune to change. However, things do get lost in time.
Very often advents of new developments will eclipse old methods, forcing them to settle into an obscure corner, buried in oblivion because their usefulness is rendered obsolete.
Culture moves by leaps and bounds: an old medium is directly challenged with newly-introduced media, threatening tradition with progressive philosophy. And a lot of things get lost along the way.
The art scene is a crowded arena, artists are gladiators while their artworks are weapons in the war of ideas. Hence styles and movements do get killed off, so to speak, while some are fortunate enough to have evolved. Some trends gain a strong following, surviving for decades, while others live very short lives as they are easily abandoned. Here, it is very noticeable that such changes are taking place.
There’s a significant happening in public art that should be mourned. The inevitable obsolescence of the raya technique, for example, which fell victim to technological advancement. The raya (meaning ray to automotive painters) is characterized by swift and continuous single stroke brushwork, employed in decorating public utility jeepneys, have given way to the more efficient airbrush painting.
Another area made extinct by modern technology is the laborious painting job of advertising and movie billboards, both are replaced by digitally-enhanced, large-format tarpaulin prints. A local university still clings to the age-old tradition of conservative oil paintings and atelier instruction. In contrast, another university has concentrated on conceptual concerns.
New artists are investigating the use of non-traditional mediums. Mixed media works and assemblage-type works have all contributed to a decline in painting. While styles and methods get killed off by a new and more contemporary trend, their demise often begets innovations.
Clashes result from these, and the modernists and the conservatives still aren’t done with it. Perhaps all the styles, forms and techniques out there have already been overused and recycled, enhanced and improvised by different groups and individuals.
It is highly unlikely that the contemporary artist will be able to invent another new movement. That’s unless some genius out there acquires the mental faculties of a scientist or mathematician and succeeds in inventing a new polygon.
But that’s hard to expect, since artists’ faculties are particularly poor when it comes to numbers and mum on scientific formulas. Contemporary art is an amalgam of complex ideas, and it has no definite shape and meaning. It is always temporary in state because there’s an openness in its character to change. This flexibility provides dynamism.
Perhaps the safest definition we can give to it as a school of thought is: art that is at pace with the present times, without necessarily being pictorially reflective. Because contemporary is about today. When you think that there is no excitement in Cebuano art today because nothing is new, then contemporary art is for you.
For Bisaya stories from Cebu. Click here. (June 6, 2006 issue)
Write letter to the editor.Click here.
Join the Sun.Star message board.Click here. |
|
[return to top]
[home]
[network page]
|
LOCAL NEWS
BUSINESS
OPINION
SPORTS
LIFESTYLE
FEATURE
SUPERBALITA
WEEKEND
|
