PROPERTY FROM THE DR. AND MRS. ROBERTO MACASAET COLLECTION

ABOUT THE WORK

When Transparent Cubism emancipated Vicente Manansala’s artistic vision and cemented his rightful place in Philippine art, the next logical step to take would be to push it beyond his creative innovation of rendering transparent planes to humanize and not fragment his beloved subjects—folk people and the urban poor. The groundwork of Manansala’s Transparent Cubism was first laid during his nine-month Parisian sojourn of 1950-51 under a scholarship from the French government to study at the University of Paris’ Ecole des Beaux-Arts, where he trained under the auspices of cubist master and Picasso’s contemporary Fernand Leger. Manansala crossed paths with his famed style during a fortuitous moment of leisure along the breezy Parisian streets. “Window shopping one day, [Manansala] noted the interplay of reflected images on the plate-glass and the objects inside the window displays,” writes Agnes Duval in her article “Manansala” in the April 1968 issue of Solidarity: Current Affairs, Ideas, and the Arts magazine. crystallize in the 1962 masterpiece Whirr (Roberto T. Villanueva Collection), depicting birds in flight. The piece would form part of a series of the same name, one that would also give birth to another series in which Manansala explores the Japanese concept of Shibui—the simplicity of beauty emphasized through subtle details. “In 1965, [Manansala] came across a special 1960 issue of the House and Garden on the idea of Shibui, the Japanese concept of beauty embodying restraint, suggestion, and surprise,” critic Rod. Paras-Perez writes in his book Manansala. “Thoroughly intrigued, he painted a Shibui Series. A new sense of expansiveness entered his works as he reduced his images to the barest of essentials, enveloping them with a palpable emptiness, mu in Chinese, meaning nothing: a core concept of Eastern philosophy. Where emptiness was previously a void to be filled, emptiness became a presence as tangible as objects. In pictorial terms, negative space was to be an assertive fullness.” Manansala began working on his Shibui Series in 1966. The work at hand, Candle Vendor, is one of the artist’s earliest musings on his newfound creative concept. A veiled woman is depicted selling candles, huddling on the ground, with her face solemn and body language earnestly evoking a life of indigency. Manansala exhibits the concept of Shibui through the religious icons (likely estampitas) and the imposing walls that suggest a church setting, recalling to mind the vendors and fortune tellers congregating outside Quiapo Church. A checkered floor can be seen leading towards an endless passage. It is a recurring image in Manansala’s Shibui Series, saying in the Paras-Perez book that it exists “to suggest depth.” Perspective is also achieved by shrouding it within “mystery.” Manansala provides an intimation of elements, resulting in more intimate engagement between the viewer and the subject. The artist significantly tones down his Baroque sensibilities to create a delicate tension between the main subject and the muted elements surrounding it. In doing so, Manansala imbibes the viewer with liberty, making them use their imaginative faculty to complete the composition. Employing muted colors that engender an oppressively gloomy atmosphere, Manansala projects a ubiquitous, real-life image of the urban folk. Hunched over her goods, the candle vendor becomes representative of a people forced to survive amid defenselessness from an unjust system that caters to only an elite few. The endless pathway on the left evokes an eternal cycle of poverty they cannot escape unless social change is enacted through their collective power as makers and movers of society. The vendor’s posture even evokes the Ifugao ancient bul’ul, suggesting an intersection of the Indigenous and Catholic religions and conveying the desperate pleas of an impoverished people to every possible deity, worldly or mystical. The concept of Shibui runs deep beyond the technical qualities of this work. As one who experienced stifling poverty in his younger years, Manansala endows enriched meanings that resonate with the Filipino experience, consequently giving his works a timeless quality. Dr. Roberto Macasaet—a gentleman doctor—may have been drawn to a beauty that lies in the people’s resilience, a people’s continuing yearning and struggle to reclaim their hopes and dreams, their dignity and rightful place in society. (Adrian Maranan)