Tuesday, October 14, 2008 The pop Pinoy By Ritchie Landis Doner Quijano
THE fun thing about art starts when we can find a part of ourselves in it. That when we begin to relate to an artwork.
When people identify to a common iconology because they understand certain meaning and special messages by the artists
who made them, their visual and graphic perception will define popular culture and pop art.
Pop art is usually executed in the graphic medium. Sometimes the art form is made as a critique or a statement for or against a particular issue.
Like in South America, the images of Che Guevarra and Simon Bolivar, both heroes and revolutionaries, are rendered in the graphic style of pop art to instill nationalistic and patriotic feelings.
Youths there wear designs of iconic figures as fashion statements. In the Philippines, we also have our own brand of popular culture.
In local pop art we see images of what we are used to seeing. That’s because pop art renews old identities to a more current depiction of a subject in order to reflect a contemporary feel.
The pop Pinoys have come to the fore. The mixed media painting “Pinoy’s Idol” by Rolando Venture, for example, utilizes the popular imagery of sorbetes, humorously referred to as dirty ice cream because they are sold in rickety carts on dusty streets. Despite its name, we will forever like its taste.
See, pop art becomes indicative of the taste of the populace. Who among us wouldn’t know what it is?
Ever since the computer became part of our daily lives, the technological immersion influenced a lot of artists.
Vince Darwin Jumalon’s mosaic made of stickers on canvas simulates a pixelized image from a computer. The “Mga Kwento Ng Bahay,” an acrylic on canvas work by Rodil Geraldo, becomes a recreation of probably the most popular of all Pinoy icons, the bahay kubo or nipa hut.
The storied humble abode literally has newspapers for walls and other parts in lieu of the usual traditional light and perishable material.
Pop art can be many things but for as long as it is based on popular imagery it is an effective tool for communication, like propaganda and other means of conveyance.
