Hidalgo: Towards a History from Within

Project Abstract

The objective of this project is to problematize the positioning of Felix Resurreccion Hidalgo and to understand his perceived location(s) in a given ‘world.’ This ‘world’ broadly spans from the 19th century where it was ambushed by significant changes towards the turn of the century. These changes form the coordinates where the possibility of ‘finding Hidalgo in the world’ takes place. The coordinates I have plotted are developments in the realms of: Art History; Economy; Philosophy and Religion; and Revolution.

As part of the continuing expansion of the Vanishing Point project (since 2008), Hidalgo occupies the historical line of research that was started in Spoliarium (2013) towards the understanding of a period characterized as ‘the pinnacle of Philippine art.’ Such understanding is crucial in order to counter-illuminate the shadows casted by ‘the greatest Filipino painters.’

The task of positioning is carefully guided by a diagram that I am developing as Instructions on Viewing the Landscape (since 2014). This should lead us to ‘see the larger picture’ and to propose a recontextualization, if not a decentralization, of Hidalgo’s (proper) place beyond the narrow art world of the Salon-validated Philippine art.

From Flat Earth to Flat World

Where else to start decentralizing but in the center itself—Europe. Where it has presented itself as the embodiment of the universal way of life through colonization (more understood as globalization; marketing today), our acceptance comes handy with their own tools which we can use ‘freely’ to buy ourselves back.

I began with the thought exercise about the Flat Earth Theory and how the project of decentralization of man and earth from the center

of the universe came about. You see, when you are confronted by the horizon line five feet above the ground in your eye-level, you just see a straight line. When you know you are just being told of a different reality aside from what’s experientially in front of you, you have to find ways to reconcile the facts with the ideas. Because so far it is impossible to experience the ‘roundness’ of the Earth, or its circular journey around the sun. Not that we have to start from scratch to prove it again but to learn to doubt and inquire again—things that modernity and central Europe has turned into readymades to relieve us the necessary task of making our own ‘tools.’

Not surprisingly, many still believed in a flat earth during Hidalgo’s time. I symbolically relate this to the dominating power of Catholicism in the Philippines when you don’t have the right tools to confront what’s bigger than you, you resort to faith and the impossible.

With the Industrial Revolution witnessing its latter phase in the 19th century and the maturation of the global economy, the world is now ready to become ‘flatter’ than the Earth. And this is the time when globalization is being marketed with notions of ‘progress,’ ‘freedom,’ and ‘democracy,’ among other things that characterize the illusory equality projected by the ‘flat world.’ In other words, from countries and governments often inspired by religion or imperialism or a combination of both, the world has advanced to allow multinational companies as a key agent of change, the dynamic force driving global integration.

These are the philosophical/religious and economic coordinates that I initially investigate in Parts 1 and 2 of this exhibition from where I want to situate Hidalgo in. Part 1 features works done by direct observation from nature as well as from photographs that obviously defines a ‘flat earth.’ Part 2 draws the making of the ‘grid’ where we turn our environment into abstract concept by translating it into lines, shapes, and the city. Mapping in the painting some recognizable structures such as the towers of University of Santo Tomas and the Manila City Hall and Torre de Manila across the Pasig river, the work highlights three superstructures in the Philippines—Religion, the Government, and the Corporation.

From the Academy to Modernism, and Back Again

We have never left the Academy. Like Felix, we are all timid academic painters, modernists, and conceptualists. Even our most radical pronouncements carefully follow Duchampian instructions on ‘how to get out of the box’ from the West. And this is of course expected from spoon-fed achievers. It is not at all wrong and doesn’t need to be rejected, however. It needs to be contested which will require inner capacity for acceptance, recognition, and genuine resistance—things that further requires ‘tools’ of our own making to realize.

In the advent of what will be a major change in art history, Hidalgo clings to the safe zone of Academism. As an ilustrado from a country that drags you into its political struggles, basic preoccupations tend to overrule experimentation. But we have to doubt if Felix can really break through Impressionism if he had the chance, or more appropriately, if he can afford. Because given his achievement-based Catholic upbringing and limited resources, what he can maximally achieve is the validation from the ‘motherland’ as a painter and nothing beyond that. That is why his validation stays only in the four corners of the Salon exhibition—Neoclassicism never reached the Philippines
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Impressionism, and later Post-Impressionism’s seemingly revolutionary attainment with regards to painting and ways of seeing colors has in fact helped to cultivate the ‘private taste,’ or the ‘bourgeois taste’ if you will. With the declining power of the art institutions, the validation system has been transferred to the art market. Artists liberated themselves from the traditional academic eye and from art commissions to embrace the bohemian lifestyle. But at the end of the day, remained attached to the bourgeois society because the avant-garde needed its money.

These economic and artistic changes has brought the future that we have now. This is imagined in Part 3 of this exhibition where I have done exercises in chiaroscuro—that is playing with light and dark, but ultimately finding the grey areas in between. And this is where the possibility of ‘finding Hidalgo’ takes place, by identifying the blacks and whites of the ‘world’ and going through darkness and lightness to find oneself in a balance. It may sound romantic but it has real implications in our current social condition. We still have to ask the right questions.

Furthermore, the rigid Academic training doesn’t allow Felix to make mistakes. This is evident in his numerous sketches done before doing the actual final work where supposedly all mistakes and trials have been eliminated—making the final work almost mechanically rendered, lacking its core organic emblem. To resolve this, I have strategically disclosed, whenever available, all notations and reference photos of my paintings to allow comparison and identify mistakes—finally rendering failures as the finishing touches needed to make the works unfinished again, bringing back its true potential for further growth and improvement.

Buen Calubayan

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DOCUMENTATION