KAMUKHA: Portraits from the Jorge B. Vargas art collection
13 June – 30 July 2006
(Pictures available, please contact Maricel at the contact link above)
Kawilihan Gallery
UP Jorge B. Vargas Museum
UP Jorge B. Vargas Museum features “KAMUKHA: Portraits from the Jorge B. Vargas art collection” at the Kawilihan Gallery beginning 13 June.
The exhibition focuses on part of the portraits in the Vargas collection. The portraits, divided into four categories, Don Jorge B. Vargas, the Vargas family, state officials from the Commonwealth to the post-Japanese occupied Philippines, and studies of now anonymous individuals, tell different and varied stories of our country’s history, as well as on Philippine art and portraiture from 1890 to 1960.
Portraits are considered by many as the highest form of art. Philippine portraiture was introduced be the Spanish colonizers in the 16th century. Demands for it rose dramatically in the mid-19th century when painting became more secular and the rise of an upper middle class, when the country’s economy opened to world trade. These became the precursor to portrait photography where clients go to studios and would select backdrops and costumes to depict identities either close to or far from their everyday self. Anyone who has their grandparents’ old pictures evoke poses that vary in likeness to their actual identity.
KAMUKHA presents the concepts of likeness, representation and interpretation, as well as projection, conventions and patronage. Vargas is one person who liked to have painted his portrait but had little patience to pose. He would instead offer his photographs to painters like Amorsolo to reproduce in painting. Some photographs from which the portrait paintings were based will be featured.
Artists contributing to the collection are brothers Fernando and Pablo Amorsolo, Romeo Enriquez, Fabian De la Rosa, Fortunato Jervoso, Fermin Sanchez, Cesar Buenaventura, Jose Pereira, Ben Alano and Nestor Leynes.
Lectures and sessions on portraits and portraiture to be conducted by artists Romulo Galicano, Ed Lantin, and members of the Saturday Group of Artists will be held at the Vargas Museum, the schedule of which will be announced.
