THE VARIOUS FACES OF SPIRITUALITY
By: Iris P. Concepcion
At the corner of Arkonsongkhroh Road in Yala, Thailand where wedding thrift shops and old Binondo-style restaurants are crossed like kidnapped lovers, an eatery is spotted where several faces of spiritual gurus are hanged.
There are pictures of monks and Thai royalty lineage that are draped in different frames. A contemplative man, sitting, is eyeing a huge cooking, frying pan (wok expanded four times) in an open firewood as if he is facing a gastronomic library. The various pictures of monks in one frame looked overtly serious; their protruding eyes open to competing gazes with wall pictures of graduation and celebratory, community-based events. Their calendar carries not dates nor years showing pictures of, normally in Manila, a bleeding Jesus with His heart adorned with thorns, but with fruits and vegetables meant to be consumed during these alloted months. This curious calendar is placed above the pictures of monks who, contrary to notions of lanky men walking in orange robes, are actually plump, robust and healthy.
The King's lineage is like a flag in paint, reminiscent of my father's own tableau of the previous Presidents of the Philippines (inclusive of years they had served the Republic). The man with formidable moustache is a member of this Royal Thai ancestry, the one whom I had acquianted in Phang-nga via the golden bus which served as my riding vehicle where I saw the travelling elephants by the road. He appears with the King. The way they are painted would put shame to ordinary still life sketches of stationary fruits and vegetables hung in upscale museums with their spray paints mistaken for Rembrandt; or their miniature clays hailed as the best of abstract painting. I know good facial contours when I see one and these painted faces are represented at their best angles, refined edges and all. These are clean works in oil. Put these in massive, wooden frames and they could cost a million. I dare not steal the thing I am writing after this paragraph.
This:
I am itemizing the loot of visual take here, with its Samsung television set having its share of Sto. Nino worship as it is surrounded with garlands, incense and chanting booklets, precisely to drive home a point of artistic symmetry.
Again, forget the television set; the real deal here are the future price tags of these works.
I long for our own museums back in the Philippines to showcase these kind of artworks. They deserve a space not in obscure restaurants but the Louvre.
I do wonder why in my sojourns, the ones that gave me the highest aesthetic pleasures are often the ones I just accidentally see off street racks. Our own cities in Metro Manila should bear witness to sculptural beauties with historical imprints that could make me weep, laugh and meditate. The lion bust spewing water in Singapore is massive as it is. Had it been colored with gigantic wings with various diorama of Singapore's best places in holograms, perhaps, I would sit down and have my lunch there too. Our own Ninoy Aquino landmark in Makati with two people holding him back could use a little more spruced imagery of the writing man. Maximo Soliven at Roxas Boulevard had it better, built as he was with his typewriter and newspapers. A weird guy with a berserk imagination had actually improved Ninoy Aquino's Makati sculpture with my own hometown's San Franscisco plants. It looked livelier.
Perhaps, our art patrons can start giving these outsiders a good headstart in embracing the tiled floors of these upscale art places. For fun or livewire theater, whatever the cause is, it could at least alter or improve our views about certain places and people.