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拍品专文
Tiangge (Market scene) is a perfect illustration of Vicente Silva Manansala's of his iconic transparent cubism, his sensitivity to realist details and his deftness in securing the point of perfect balance between representation and structure. Inspired by the local life around him, Manasala’s brand of cubism incorporated all aspects of the quotidian to great advantage. A prolific member of the pre-war Thirteen Moderns and of the post-war Neo-Realists, Manansala is respected as one of the most influential artists in the Filipino modern arts sphere, seizing the nation and its characters to shape a vision of Philippine modernism that is strongly anchored on social and folk themes.
A rare example of a large scale work by Manansala, Tiangge (Market scene) is composed of multiple smaller tableaux within an expansive mise en scène that perfectly encapsulates the aesthetic principle of “beauty as fullness”, which is considered to be one of the cornerstones of the Filipino aesthetics. As explained by Rodolfo Paras-Perez, “[d]uring town fiestas or other feastings, the sense of abundance and fullness gets displayed in all its dimensions. Food is served, in quantities if possible, which would make the table sag. Food is measured not in terms of plates but in the quantity of cattle, hogs, and fowls cooked.” (manansala, Plc Publications, Manila, 1980, p.196.)
One of Manansala’s favoured subjects were that of women in the domestic setting; they were celebrated by the artist who saw them as keepers of traditional values, bearing a solid spirit of resilience exuding quiet energy and presence: “The women in Manansala's world may walk and live in the city but their values remain pastoral. When the women are not rearing children, they are busy mending a net, threading flowers or rushing to the market in order to barter something. Or, during the leanest hours of World War II, queuing for rice and learning the latest gossip in town. They could be fish vendors patiently seated in some unspecified talipapa , if already grandmothers sitting by the door of Quiapo church selling candles.” (Rudolfo Paras- Perez, Manansala, Plc Publications, Manila, 1980, p. 38.) In Tiangge (Market scene) , they take on a central role both in the environment of the marketplace around them and Manansala’s work: to the right two women carry their produce to the market engaged in neighbourly courtesies, while the group huddled in the foreground engage in a bartering of exchanges and selecting their wares, and to the left a gathering of three women get together for a quick gossip session to share the community news. Each woman is depicted by Manansala with great virtuosity and individualism, their faces displaying a myriad of emotions.
In this work, Manansala’s deep knowledge of the Cubist pictorial language is greatly demonstrated through a perfect balance of representation and structure. Modelling is simplified into multifaceted geometric configurations that periodically dematerialise into transparency, constantly shifting and overlapping in a relationship of forms that nonetheless result in a wholly integrated composition. The work is highly detailed with fine planes intersecting one another in flurry of directions obscuring and revealing spatial depth in a way that frees him from reality, yet unlike his Western counterpart such as Piacasso and Braque, Manansala never loses sight of the figuration in the foreground. Colour plays a starring role in Tiangge (Market Scene) , the artist heightening the dynamic quality of the bustling marketplace with fragmented, dense interlocking planes of vermilion, cobalt and even shards of viridian. There is almost a Fauvist tendency to his work, much like the paintings of the modern French Fauvist masters Henri Émile- Benoît Matisse and André Derain. Although Manansala’s works are often associated with the Cubist movement – and indeed, Cubism freed him from the necessity of representing forms in the traditional realist genres of painting, offering him a new way in which to articulate classical Filipino images; there is also a strong affinity with the emotionalism of the Fauvist movement that sets him apart from traditional Cubism, rendering Tiangge (Market scene) more than just an execution of form. For Manansala, colour is a way to express an atmosphere and a mode of evoking the aesthetic of ‘abundance and fullness’, and its integral nature to the way of life in the Philippines.
The ability of Manansala to soulfully encapsulate the Philippine spirit is one of the reasons his works have captivated and inspired many through the years. When Manansala was still alive and living in Binangonan, the artist would give away a painting to the first visitor on his birthday. Devotees and admirers of his art would flock to his home at midnight to vie for his paintings. Eventually, a few of them, brought together by their shared love for his work, started a weekly social gathering and developed a warm and strong friendship with Manansala and his wife that lasted for several years. Today, Manansala’s work continues to be highly sought after and kept as family heirlooms passed down from one generation to another, rarely seen in the market. Tiangge (Market scene) is a masterpiece, perfectly balancing both artistic technique and emotional expression to capture the Filipino spirit through one of the artist’s most beloved subjects.
A rare example of a large scale work by Manansala, Tiangge (Market scene) is composed of multiple smaller tableaux within an expansive mise en scène that perfectly encapsulates the aesthetic principle of “beauty as fullness”, which is considered to be one of the cornerstones of the Filipino aesthetics. As explained by Rodolfo Paras-Perez, “[d]uring town fiestas or other feastings, the sense of abundance and fullness gets displayed in all its dimensions. Food is served, in quantities if possible, which would make the table sag. Food is measured not in terms of plates but in the quantity of cattle, hogs, and fowls cooked.” (manansala, Plc Publications, Manila, 1980, p.196.)
One of Manansala’s favoured subjects were that of women in the domestic setting; they were celebrated by the artist who saw them as keepers of traditional values, bearing a solid spirit of resilience exuding quiet energy and presence: “The women in Manansala's world may walk and live in the city but their values remain pastoral. When the women are not rearing children, they are busy mending a net, threading flowers or rushing to the market in order to barter something. Or, during the leanest hours of World War II, queuing for rice and learning the latest gossip in town. They could be fish vendors patiently seated in some unspecified talipapa , if already grandmothers sitting by the door of Quiapo church selling candles.” (Rudolfo Paras- Perez, Manansala, Plc Publications, Manila, 1980, p. 38.) In Tiangge (Market scene) , they take on a central role both in the environment of the marketplace around them and Manansala’s work: to the right two women carry their produce to the market engaged in neighbourly courtesies, while the group huddled in the foreground engage in a bartering of exchanges and selecting their wares, and to the left a gathering of three women get together for a quick gossip session to share the community news. Each woman is depicted by Manansala with great virtuosity and individualism, their faces displaying a myriad of emotions.
In this work, Manansala’s deep knowledge of the Cubist pictorial language is greatly demonstrated through a perfect balance of representation and structure. Modelling is simplified into multifaceted geometric configurations that periodically dematerialise into transparency, constantly shifting and overlapping in a relationship of forms that nonetheless result in a wholly integrated composition. The work is highly detailed with fine planes intersecting one another in flurry of directions obscuring and revealing spatial depth in a way that frees him from reality, yet unlike his Western counterpart such as Piacasso and Braque, Manansala never loses sight of the figuration in the foreground. Colour plays a starring role in Tiangge (Market Scene) , the artist heightening the dynamic quality of the bustling marketplace with fragmented, dense interlocking planes of vermilion, cobalt and even shards of viridian. There is almost a Fauvist tendency to his work, much like the paintings of the modern French Fauvist masters Henri Émile- Benoît Matisse and André Derain. Although Manansala’s works are often associated with the Cubist movement – and indeed, Cubism freed him from the necessity of representing forms in the traditional realist genres of painting, offering him a new way in which to articulate classical Filipino images; there is also a strong affinity with the emotionalism of the Fauvist movement that sets him apart from traditional Cubism, rendering Tiangge (Market scene) more than just an execution of form. For Manansala, colour is a way to express an atmosphere and a mode of evoking the aesthetic of ‘abundance and fullness’, and its integral nature to the way of life in the Philippines.
The ability of Manansala to soulfully encapsulate the Philippine spirit is one of the reasons his works have captivated and inspired many through the years. When Manansala was still alive and living in Binangonan, the artist would give away a painting to the first visitor on his birthday. Devotees and admirers of his art would flock to his home at midnight to vie for his paintings. Eventually, a few of them, brought together by their shared love for his work, started a weekly social gathering and developed a warm and strong friendship with Manansala and his wife that lasted for several years. Today, Manansala’s work continues to be highly sought after and kept as family heirlooms passed down from one generation to another, rarely seen in the market. Tiangge (Market scene) is a masterpiece, perfectly balancing both artistic technique and emotional expression to capture the Filipino spirit through one of the artist’s most beloved subjects.