Provenance: Private Collection, Manila

Literature: Roces, Alfredo, Kiukok: Deconstructing Despair, Finale Art File, Mandaluyong City, Philippines, p. 401 (illustrated); Finale Art File, "Via Dolorosa - Ang Kiukok", Makati City, Philippines, 2017, (illustrated)

ABOUT THE WORK

Jesus’ downward gaze cum profile does not directly engage the eye of the spectator, but adds to the holy pathos. Tradition has it that Jesus encountered a group of women while carrying the cross, but probably as a stylistic decision, Ang Kiukok depicts a singular kneeling woman. Writing on the subject Henry Clifford has said, “In the earliest crosses, the figure of Christ is straight and erect, placed symmetrically along the center line of the cross, with the eyes wide open and neither face nor body giving any indication of pain. As time goes on, the head gradually droops, and the body starts to bend slightly to the left, under the weight of suffering.” With all profundity and mystery, it is one of the more poetical and sublime pictures of Christ as depicted by Ang Kiukok. One of the most purely poetical pictures of sympathy he ever produced. Jesus’ encounter with the woman of Jerusalem is invested with so powerful an emotional reality. This emotional reality does not departing far from visual reality, a display of restraint for the expressionistic Ang Kiukok. Although Ang Kiukok reduces his images of Christ and the woman into basic shapes to bring out only the most elemental forms, his works nevertheless ably achieves emotional power within the context of a contemporary art idiom. The folds of the fabrics are reduced to geometric angles, adding to the emotional severity of the moment. Its Spartan design and intense, but quietly expressed feeling make this a powerful group image reminiscent of some of Medieval frescoes in the convents of Europe. The black, solidly built cross is monumental in itself. The blood red street is a foreboding of what is to come. The formal balance as brought by the vertical presence of the cross imbues a lofty spiritual restraint to an otherwise melancholy theme. This image has a more self contained, meditative feel about it. Artists such as Ang Kiukok adhered to the classical Cubism of Picasso and Braque and their early compatriots Juan Gris and Leger, but, as would be expected, the emphases diverged and diversified after the idea crossed the Pacific, becoming a hybrid of European aesthetics and Filipino secular or powerful religious themes.