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Tuesday, September 19, 2006
Power of Two
By Ritchie Landis Doner Quijano
Numbers play a significant role in the high art of both professional photography and painting.
Taking individual mugshot pictures are always avoided so the imagery will not appear to be like those in identification cards. Shooting pictures without artistry will make it low art.
Low art is equivalent to low brow.
High art has to have flair in presentation. Photographers will as well often refrain from taking pictures with people in groups of three for it’s unlucky numerology.
But how about when a family of three wants to have their portraits made. Well then superstition will just have to be nullified.
In the case of the visual art of painting, the craft of portraiture is like the bread and butter of painters much like photographers. Most common of group pictures are family portraits.
Filipino painters are generally inclined to paint figures in groups rather than a singular subject when painting non-commissioned works. They seem to have the horror-vaqui syndrome otherwise known as the fear of empty spaces.
Our sensibilities are so apart from legendary American painters like James whistler and Andrew Wyeth whose pictures gather weight and momentum in the eerie solitude of their subjects. The Pinoy identity in art is western baroque over oriental minimalism. The popular mindset is that painting figures in groups provides dynamic activity that will signify and define movement of the subjects hence resulting in a lively picture. Painters will usually steer clear of solo figures to avoid a lonely character and the stillness of atmosphere in a painting.
The overused mother and child concept or any group of two or more figures demonstrates the phobia of quiet solitude.
Most evident is the deeply ingrained need for company in our collective psyche.
Filipinos are social in behavior as reflected through art. This is the closest thing we’ll ever get to be minimal. The unwritten rule seems to be “there can only be two not one”, thereby more is better. Indeed there is strength in numbers. That’s right one isn’t enough and two is a must. Two doesn’t overcrowd the composition. The artists who made the paintings that appear on this page all subscribe to that rule.
For Bisaya stories from Cebu. Click here. (September 19, 2006 issue)
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