The roots of our art

Using the diagrammatic representation of a tree, how would we correctly represent Philippine art history? Would it be grafted to the trunk of the Western art history tree, growing out like a branch from the European High Renaissance? Or do we have a tree of our own with roots that reach back longer than we can remember?

It is true we can trace our history all the way to our own stone age. We have many examples of Philippine stone age artifacts. The book “Barangay: Sixteenth Century Philippine Culture and Society” by William Henry Scott gives us a good view of how we were before the Spanish came.

Cebu even then was an active trading center with a long tradition of commerce with foreigners.

And while we did not have an exact single word for “art”, as we still don’t, we forged metal for tools that we used for farming and carving wood. We built excellent boats, carved our own deities, wove cloth, inlaid gold into our teeth, and otherwise had our bodies tattooed to advertise our proudest feats. In other words, but for the absence of the word itself, we had a healthy living “art” culture.

Magellan’s chronicler, Antonio Pigafetta, drew a list of Bisayan words from his travels here. One discovers from this list how most of the words survive to this day. Which must be interpreted to show how the culture itself has survived through the colonial experience.

But still, one must worry if we have not become irrevocably Westernized. The first question that immediately comes to mind is why “kinutil” itself is written using one of the languages of the colonizers.

A note might be made here how both colonial languages, Spanish and English, are derived from the Latin of the Romans. The answer can only be this: Eventually, in a more enlightened time, these words, will be translated into Bisaya and will thus be enjoyed by more of our people to their greater pleasure.

But for now, they have to be written in the language that works quickest for these times; for better or worse, English.

But certainly the story itself would gain much from being written in Bisaya. And then we could read this as final proof of how our culture will survive well into the future.

And it would be easier for us to understand that the tree of Philippine art has a root system dating back to precolonial times. This root system represents the island cultures, each with its own strain of the local languages.

That these languages are still spoken tells us how much of our pre-colonial past has been conserved.

That we can speak English well only tells us how well we are adapted to the requirements of a more global post-colonial time.

Since the 16th century, the line of our history became a single trunk of Philippine history. The story of how this came about is described well by the history books we read in school. These narrate how we lived for 400 years under Spain. This period ended with the Katipunan revolt in the late 1800s, precisely around the same time that Modernism came to Europe.

But it was in the 16th century when the Western conception meaning “art” began to percolate inside the local culture, translating itself into the production of religious icons which the Spanish themselves found useful.

The production of religious art describes the first stages of local colonial art history.

Some of the best and earliest examples of visual arts from these times come from Bohol in the form of religious paintings on wood panels. There is a charming primitivism about the works which best defines their beauty.

But even so, we must understand these “Western-derived arts” with a note that the early stages of colonization did not end indigenous art practice. The Philippine crafts of metal working, weaving, terra cotta, jewelry making, etc. continued on into the present day.

There might have been periods when there were temporary interruptions and transformations resulting especially from the introduction of new technologies, machineries and material. But all considered there is a clear continuity in the history of these artistic practices.

This fact moves us to consider if we must disabuse ourselves of the notion that the crafts are inferior to art. This bias is only colonial thinking that we must now carefully qualify in our minds if we are ever going to develop for ourselves a viable post-colonial manner of thinking. And then perhaps we would realize how we are not entirely the consequence of colonizing cultures.

Our sense of what is of value and what is beautiful is uniquely our own and it has grown with us since time immemorial.