Figure 7.5.

Maria Taniguchi, Echo Studies, detail, 2011

In Untitled (Mirrors) by Maria Taniguchi – an artist born in Dumaguete and

now living and practicing in Manila, she uses the traditional medium of acrylic on
canvas and the traditional modern style of abstraction, one of the hallmarks of
20th century Modern Art. However, she gives these elements a contemporary twist
that turns painting into a meditation on form. Instead of being an object or artifact
that is exclusively “pictorial,” the painting process itself also becomes an important
aspect of both creation and reception. The viewer imagines the artist painting grid
by grid meditatively, with careful and diligent brushwork. The painting and viewing
process stresses the concept and the performance of painting as meditation. The
work can then be best described as a Conceptual Performance that is site-specific,
sculptural, and environmental. This work is part of an installation—Echo Studies,
2011 at the Vargas Museum. Another painting from this installation interacts with
the space. It is deceptively simple; all we see up close are grids of brick that are
almost invisible from afar. The panel is propped against the wall of the West Wing
of Vargas Museum, creating a positive ground to the negative space of the door
that leads to another area. It is at the same time, a painting, and a sculptural object
that interacts with the environment of the museum.

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 Figure 7.6. Felix Bacolor, Waiting

Felix Bacolor’s Waiting, 2012 transformed an independent space in the

Museum of Contemporary Art and Design to a simulacrum (a “fake” real, a
simulation that is not actually “real” but simulated or copied) of a terminal waiting
room, complete with metallic, immovable chairs, and digital clocks that torturously
register the passing of time. Site-specific and interactive, the installation combines
the environmental, the dramatic and the narrative, with viewers weaving their
own stories into the space of travel, caught in-between mobility and immobility.
Medium and technique in contemporary art have become more and more
integrated, such that the works have crossed boundaries between art and science,
and between mediums and techniques. The works are also using contemporary
mediums and techniques based on digital and electronic technology, as well as
reformulated traditional methods.

Figure 7.7. (left) Golabulos Magnetic Drive Shaft, 2014

Acrylic, Metal and Motor, Variable Dimensions;
(right) Golabulos Tissue Controller, 2014
Custom Microcontroller, Ferrofluid and Glass, Variable Dimensions;
(http://www.1335mabini.com/artist_ianjaucian.html)

96 Contemporary Philippine Arts from the Regions

 For example, the work of Ian Carlo Jaucian draws his inspiration from
science, and explores its relationship with the visual arts through artworks
that range from paintings, sculptures, interactive and kinetic installations. In
a series of works that make use of the principles of robotics, he has a “liquid
robot” that that is triggered by music. Documentation of this work may be
viewed at http://vimeo. There is also a “drawing robot”-https://www.facebook.
com/video.php?v=10152648457390801&set=vb.664080800&type=3&theater;
and a robot that constantly follows the light (https://www.facebook.com/video.
php?v=10152648457390801&set=vb.664080800&type=3&theater) which was
an experiment and was not part of any show. Combining mechanical, computer-
based, and traditional media and techniques, these works pose the question:
“What is it to be human?”

Figure 7.8. Anonymous Animals, screengrab of blog

The exhibition Anonymous Animals, 2013 held in Mariyah Gallery in

Dumaguete City consisted of a Conceptual Performance piece by Dumaguete-
based artists who posed as excavators of strange animals they formed out of
terracotta sourced from outlying areas. The artists, Cristina Taniguchi, Michael Teves,
Danilo Sollesta, Mark Valenzuela, and Benjie Ranada, provided the animals they
“excavated” (which they actually made) with matching scientific data including
the animals’ scientific and common names, taxonomy, morphology, history, etc.
The artists exhibited the terracotta animals as specimens, with documentation
from an “embedded journalist”, the photographer Hersley Ven Casero. The curator
–Flaudette May Datuin –invented stories about the artists, and wrote the fiction
in the form of a diary or notes from the field. Aside from being works in an actual
exhibition, the project is also a Performance and Conceptual piece –which is
inspired by the work of Joan Fontcuberta and Pere Formiguera and their book
Fauna (1999, Arte y Proyektos Editoriales, SL, Seville, Spain). However, while Fauna,
the inspiration is in book form, Anonymous Animals is also exhibited virtually at
http://anonymousanimals.wordpress.com/.

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 The piece crosses boundaries between art (terracotta sculpture) and science
(natural and social sciences), literature, drama, and photojournalism. It is another
simulacrum –a “fake” real –that creates a world that looks real (hyperreal) and has
its own virtual and “actual” reality, but actually has no counterpart in real life.

Not only do projects like Anonymous Animals cross disciplines, they also challenge to ask
questions like: “What is real?,”“Is it real,” and “Is art a reflection of the real?”

It also crosses boundaries between mediums and defies classification, being

simultaneously narrative, dramatic, pictorial, and environmental. The exhibition of
anonymous terracotta animals is experienced as an exhibit of artifacts, is recorded,
documented, and performed. The virtual life, the fiction that masquerades as
real, and authoritative (borrowing from the language of science) are all crucial
to the meaning of the work which revolves around the challenge to reality and
knowledge systems, such as archaeology and biology.

In sum, to know the full meaning of a work, it is also necessary to study the
material from which it is made and how it is made. In the next lesson, we will learn
about how the artist puts together a work of art by making use of formal elements
and principles of composition available to him or her.
TMLSS

Let us review the group activities in Lesson 1.

1. Group Discussion
a. Discuss among yourselves the materials you used for the music, dance,
props and story.
D-I-Y b. Discuss among yourselves how you used these materials.
2. Class Discussion
a. Share your discussion to the whole class, taking note of how your
groups’ mediums and techniques became integrated into a whole
theater production, and how it evolved through Lessons 2 to 5.
3. Go back to your groups and brainstorm on how you can create a documentary
of your process. You can choose between:
a. a photo essay (not more than 10 photos) ; or
b. a video documentary of not more than three minutes.
4. After the class, post this documentary on your group journal or blog. You will
present this in class for the next meeting

98 Contemporary Philippine Arts from the Regions

 Make a list of examples of contemporary art pieces from lessons of Unit 1 up
to this lesson. Choose one that combines several mediums and techniques.
1. Classify the whole project and each of the art works used in the project
according to medium and experience. Create a table by following this
example on the Anonymous Animals.
PIN IT
Anonymous Animals
Art Forms medium how it is experienced Meaning and context
sculptures terracotta, spatial direct experience, simulacrum
through an exhibit creating and performing
virtual (Internet) a fiction but making it
photographs of the photography, direct experience seem real, framed by
animals pictorial, spatial (exhibit) the language of science
(archaeology, biology).
recorded Makes us ask the question:
virtual (Internet) What is Real? What is
Truth?
fiction words, texts recorded. virtual
Conceptual combined arts virtual and actual
Performance
2. Using your table as guide, explain how your understanding and
experience of the work or project changed your concept of art.
3. How are these new insights and experiences relevant to your own life?
What new insights about art and science can you apply to your own
life after viewing and interacting with contemporary art works like the
Anonymous Animals project?

1. How does an artist convey his or her meaning through materials and
techniques? Go back to your Cultural Map and look for a Rizal Monument in
your community and describe it to illustrate your answer. Write that answer in
a 300–500 word essay that describes the process of making the monument,
LEVEL UP what it is made of, and how it is made. You may need to interview the local
government and other people who had it made, assuming they are still
available, along with the artist or artists who made it.
2. Create your own Rizal Monument by using contemporary mediums and
techniques. What makes your artwork “contemporary”? You can be inspired
by the examples above. You can also create:
• a photographic recreation of Amorsolo’s Planting Rice or Luna’s
Spoliarium, but with you and members of your group as subjects or
actors;
• a concept for a game;
• a conceptual art piece using found objects (performance art or
installation or a combination) ; or
• a music video.

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 3. What is it like to interact with an artwork by a contemporary artist? You can
create your own blog on Jose Rizal and try to imagine what it would feel like
to converse with a national hero through a story, a poem, a photoshopped
or retouched photo, a comic strip, or a combination. You can integrate this
process with Guide questions 1 and 2.

Guillermo, Alice. 1997. “The Text of Art.”Art and Society, Datuin, Flaudette May, et
al., University of the Philippines.
Ramon F. Velasquez (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/
licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
TL; DR Sturken, Marita, and Lisa Cartwright. 2009. Practices of Looking: An Introduction
to Visual Culture, Oxford University Press.

100 Contemporary Philippine Arts from the Regions

 LESSON 8: ELEMENTS OF ART AND PRINCIPLES OF COMPOSITION

At the end of this lesson, you are expected to:

• understand how contemporary artists use the elements of art to convey
ideas, values and feelings through diligent observation and attention to the
works;
QUEST • explain the close connection and dynamic interaction between the elements
of art and the cultural, social, historical, and personal factors within particular
societies through a written and oral report ; and
• create an integrative artwork that will demonstrate the interrelationship
between the arts and their elements.

FLAG

theme
CHAT ROOM line
texture
color
value or tone
shape
composition in space
movement
chiaroscuro
representational
non-representational
figurative
non-figurative
expressionist
abstract
stylized
collage

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 In Lesson 7 we have learned that the meaning and our experience of a work
of art is shaped by the artists’ particular use of mediums and the way they put these
mediums together. In this lesson, we pay close attention to the formal elements,
which are rooted in the person’s psychophysical experiences and the social and
artistic conventions of a particular culture, its history, and traditions.
THREAD

FAQ: What are the elements of art?

The elements of art, like mediums and technique in the previous lesson,
are aspects of form. However, these elements do not exist in a vacuum. They
convey meaning, and express ideas and feelings. They are firmly rooted in
psychophysical experiences in particular cultures, their values, their priorities, and
their conventions. For this section, we invite you to pay close attention to these
elements, and their characteristics, as follows:
A. Line is associated with the body’s axis as it moves toward different
directions and adjusts to a point of reference through various positions
and actions, such as walking, running, standing, sitting, reclining, etc.
In the visual arts, it also refers to the quality of the line, whether thin,
broken, thick, or blended, among others. When several lines come
together, they create texture, which can be very thin, washed or very
thick, rough or fine.
For example, those entering the UP Diliman campus from the
University Avenue will be welcomed halfway through by the diagonal
lines of the “waiting sheds” of the University Gateway, ca. 1960
sculpture of National Artist Napoleon Abueva. The long approach
through University Avenue emphasizes the distinction of zones - the
busy main highway being left behind, but not really completely cut off
(the “town”), and the sprawling flagship campus of the country’s premier
university (the “gown”). At the end of that portal, one is greeted by the
outstretched arms of Guillermo Tolentino’s Oblation. The horizontal
lines of the sculpture are in turn echoed by the Quezon Hall building
behind it. The straight, diagonal lines of the modernist waiting shed
connote dynamism and movement, while the vertical and horizontal
lines of the Neoclassic Quezon Hall and Oblation convey balance,
symmetry, formality, grace and serenity, in keeping with the University
as a zone of contemplation and learning.
In contrast, the Church of the Holy Sacrifice, 1955 by National
Artist Leandro Locsin is circular and stays close to the earth, instead
of soaring upwards as seen in the traditional basilica structure of the
Spanish colonial period we learned about in Unit 1. The altar is at
the center instead of the opposite end of the entrance and can be
approached and seen from different angles and positions. With its open
walls, the church is well lit and ventilated.
In a similar way, in dance, the body in classical ballet moves upward,
defying gravity. In traditional dance, the feet are firmly planted on the
ground, instead of rising on toes. In the pangalay, a dance in Mindanao,

102 Contemporary Philippine Arts from the Regions

 the dancer moves slowly and gracefully, mostly following curvilinear,
sculptural directions.
Voices in chants also flow in curves, with each note fusing one into
the other. In western classical music, the notes are mostly discrete; one
note follows another in separate and distinct sequence, with a clear
beginning, middle, and end.
Contemporary performers usually fuse east and west, as well as
the traditional and the new. Bagong Lumad by Joey Ayala, KontraGapi
by Edru Abraham, Tau Music by Grace Nono, and Bullet Dumas (well
known for his song Ninuno) are fusion performers. Their music are also
known as “World Music,” examples of which can be found all over the
world, such as the music by Yothu Yindi, a band of Australian aboriginal
musicians who integrate rock instruments with indigenous instruments
using the idiom of rock music.
B. Color is associated with our experiences of cold and warmth, and the
quality of light in our tropical environment, the cycles of night and day,
of darkness and light. One of its aspects is hue, which has to do with
how light waves of various lengths and rapidity of vibrations bounce off
objects and enter our eyes. A hue is said to be warm when it has longer
wavelengths and is more distinct and easily discernible, for example
red, orange, and yellow. Cool hues such as blue or violet have shorter
wavelengths, and seem to merge into each other. Warm colors seem to
advance toward us; cool colors appear to recede.
Blue, yellow, and red are primary colors. When they are mixed, they
produce secondary colors: yellow and red make orange; red and blue
make violet; blue and yellow make green. When they are placed opposite
each other in the color wheel, they are said to be complementary: red
and green, yellow and violet, orange, and blue.
Hues vary in saturation, intensity, or brilliance—another aspect
of color. When we mix a brilliant blue with a neutral hue, such as gray, its
hue or blueness does not change; it just becomes less intense or duller.
Another aspect, value or tone, refers to the hue’s brightness or
darkness. When a hue is mixed with black, it becomes more dim or
heavy; when it is mixed with white or gray, it lightens.
Artists make use of these aspects of color and combine them into
different color schemes. Some artists prefer a polychromatic scheme,
meaning it is made up of many colors, as opposed to others who prefer
a monochromatic scheme, using only one color, blue for example, and
mixing it with white or gray to achieve its many tones. Others use no
color, preferring black, a color that absorbs all colors, or white, which
reflects all of them.
The School of Design and Art (SDA) building of the La Salle
College of St. Benilde on Vito Cruz, Manila built by Architect Lor Calma
is achromatic, with white concrete walls interspersed with glass.
Combined with its unique floor plan and structure, the color scheme

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 gives the building a futuristic look, reflecting its cutting edge, industry-
driven curricular programs.
Visual artists use colors in different ways, depending on their styles
and preferences. Some artists use color as a representational element,
intending to depict the world as accurately as possible. Portraits
approximate skin tone and color; landscape and still life depict actual
conditions of the environment through shading, play of light and dark,
or chiaroscuro.
Amorsolo’s use of color in his portraits is representational, hewing
as closely as possible to skin tone and color of dress and surroundings.
His landscapes are said to capture the colors of the earth, sky and sea,
and that of the Philippine sunlight.
Most contemporary and Modern artists are more personal and
expressionist in their use of color, taking liberties with color schemes
to convey mood, atmosphere, and symbolic potential, as opposed to
conveying literal, meaning. In the River of Life, 1954, Modern artist Galo
Ocampo colored the bodies, the trees, and the earth very differently
and intensely, creating a desolate, nightmarish landscape that conveys
his idea of extreme suffering in a depleted world. General Santos-born
Leeroy New, a graduate of the Philippine High School for the Arts in
Makiling, Los Baños creates fantasy landscapes with an intense, often
polychromatic color scheme in his painting, costume, set design,
sculpture, installation often paired with performance art as a means
of expressing a personal cosmology. On the other hand, the Tausug
artist Rameer Tawasil echoes the color scheme of Mindanao’s material
culture, such as in the vinta, which he renders in abstract and stylized
shapes. Nestor Vinluan’s abstract paintings are mostly muted, making
us focus on the form and elements of the painting itself, in aid of quiet,
inward-looking reflection, rather than emphasizing an exterior world.

Figure 8.1. Installations from Leeroy New

104 Contemporary Philippine Arts from the Regions

 Color schemes also depend, not just on the artist’s personal styles
but on materials available and regional variations. The earth hues of
T’nalak of the T’bolis and the dagmay of the Bagobos are handwoven
textiles made from abaca. Sulu mats from Laminosa employ different
hues from those of Samar mats.

If you live near communities that make mats or banig, can you tell what materials they are
made of by looking at the colors and textures?

C. Value refers to gradations of tone from light to dark, which can be

an aspect of color as discussed above, but could also specifically
refer to the play of light on an object or a scene. In representational
paintings, it is shading, blending, and chiaroscuro, or the play of light
and dark that lend the flat surface an illusion of depth and perspective.
Non-representational use of value is also useful in black-and-white
photography, where images are given unique character and meaning in
artistic photography, but can also be useful in documentations, as in black
and white I.D. photos or in reportage practices like photojournalism.
D. Texture refers to how objects and surfaces feel, and is most associated
with the sense of touch or tactility. Textures are created, as previously
discussed, when several lines combine. The combination may be
described as smooth, translucent, fine, silky, satiny, velvety, sandy, furry,
feathery, slimy, gritty, rough, rugged, coarse, porous, irregular, jagged,
thick, thin, and so on. For example, the barong and baro’t saya fabrics
are translucent and delicate, while the crocheted dresses of Aze Ong
are soft, yet thick. As Filipino formal dress, the former are appropriate for
important occasions usually done in air-conditioned spaces, and are not
for everyday wear.
In representational works, textures can be simulated or imitated.
However, textures can also be actual, as can be found in collage, where
actual objects are glued on a surface. For example, Imelda Cajipe-Endaya
integrates sawali panes, crocheted lace, fabrics and rope to make more
concrete and more immediate her works’ social and political themes
such as feminism, export labor, and anti-imperialism.
The textures of folk art, products of century-old traditions are
derived from the materials from the immediate environment, including
baskets and mats.
E. Shape refers to forms that are two-dimensional or three-dimensional.
Two-dimensional shapes exist as planes having length and width.
Three-dimensional shapes possess length, width and volume. Shapes
can either be geometric (rectilinear or curvilinear), biomorphic, or free
inventions.
Stylized and abstract shapes can be seen in local textiles. The
geometric shapes of the binakol by the Tinggians of Abra, Northern
Philippines are executed with such mathematical precision they achieve
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