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| Mom and I in front of the Spoliarium |
"What is essential in a work of art is that it should rise far above the realm of personal life and speak to the spirit and heart of the poet as man to the spirit and heart of mankind." - Carl Jung
While Juan Luna y Novicio (1857-1899) and Felix Resurreccion Hidalgo (1855-1913) were definitely not known as poets in their time, their ouvres as an artists in the field of painting have largely achieved an immortality unparalleled in our nation's history. These days, to behold the spectacles of the Spoliarium and The Assassination of Governor Bustamante, is to be immersed in the richness of our heritage. To bear witness to the ferocious verve of each of their stories captured in medias res, is to be momentarily lost: thrown into the chaos of ecclesiastically-clad tyrannicides, into the dreary gallows of fallen gladiators.
In Roman Red, in Papal White, in the sullen and disinterested movement, in the sombre saturation of death, color is transfigured into life, and space is transformed into a living artery. In the ferocity of such a narrative, one becomes a spectator without a voice, a specter in the wings.
And yet one can't help but be moved.
One is moved by the history that seeps through the canvas. By the fiery drama of animalistic drive. By the sordid wheels of fortune. By the clash of divergence. By the protracted tale of a nation struggling to break free. By the realization that more than once in our history, we made believers out of a world that belittled our capacity to create art which not only were by all means aesthetically sound, but relevant and revolutionary.
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