7 Years of the Philippine Art Gallery. Manila: Philippine Art Gallery, 1958. Listed as “No. 647. Fifty-Three “J”” on page AP - 12 (Appendix - 12) of the General Catalogue of the works exhibited at the PAG from 1951 to 1957.
\nKalaw-Ledesma, Purita. The Biggest Little Room: A History of The Philippine Art Gallery. Manila: Kalaw-Ledesma Art Foundation, 1987. Listed as “Fifty-Three “J”” on page 155 as part of Hernando R. Ocampo’s works exhibited at the PAG.
","write_up":"Fifty-Three “J” was one of Hernando R. Ocampo’s two entries to the second anniversary exhibition of the Philippine Art Gallery held from July 4 to 18, 1953. Fellow Neo-Realist and non-objectivist Victor Oteyza wrote a review published in Weekly Women’s Magazine for Ocampo’s other entry, which also rings true for Fifty-Three “J.”
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Oteyza praises Ocampo’s work, saying it “evokes truths that cannot be expressed in mathematics, sound, motion, or words. What the painting says can only be said in the plastic vocabulary of paint, which is how all good paintings should be expressed.”
Fifty-Three “J” would find its way into the venerable collection of Alfredo Roces, whose name was particularly included in the “List of H.R. Ocampo Collectors,” found in the appendix pages of Ocampo’s De Jesus-authored monograph and culled from the artist’s personal register. Fifty-Three “J” was unsold when it was first exhibited at the PAG, based on the “General Catalogue” (published in the book 7 Years of the Philippine Art Gallery, 1951 – 1957) of the list of works exhibited at the modernist space. It remained in Ocampo’s storage until he gifted it to Roces as a token of their friendship. “We gave them away to friends,” said Ocampo in a 1972 interview with Cid Reyes when asked what he did with unsold paintings. “You had to, otherwise you’d run out of storage space.
But what does Fifty-Three “J” stand for in Ocampo’s career?
After the rise of Neo-Realism signaled the final echoes of the downfall of the conservative school’s supremacy, non-objectivism became the natural progression it would take, even heralding its arrival as the “climax” of the entire modernist movement by the writer-critic Aurelio Alvero, aka Magtanggul Asa.
In the aftermath of the smoke and amid the ruins of the war, non-objectivism was a visual idiom inseparable from Neo-Realism’s entity and essence. The protagonization of plastic forms and the inherent flexibility of these elements in accordance with the painter’s vision align with the Neo-Realist manifesto of completely destroying reality and letting the fragments “draw together again,” thus eliminating the need for a subject’s recognizable representation in favor of its soul and essence.
What bound the neo-realists and the non-objectivists was the emphasis on the soul—particularly the Filipino collective humanity and urbanity—as the war’s most tragic casualty and rediscovering and reclaiming its fragments to once again arrive at a totality of our shared being. Indeed, what cannot be instantly recognized by the eyes, as with the practice of non-objectivism, is forthrightly felt by the soul through the dynamic yet ever-mystifying harmony of the plastic forms. It is an appreciation for the aesthetics of the fundamentals necessary for healing and catharsis.
Hernando R. Ocampo would rise as Philippine non-objective art’s foremost exponent. He was christened by Asa as the “Father of Non-Objective Art,” with him writing: “Ocampo’s energy and prolificness have proved most vital to the cause of non-objective art in this country.” Ocampo led the cultural milestone that was the “First Exhibition of Non-Objective Art in Tagala” in December 1953. The exhibition demonstrated Filipino modernism at its most avant-garde, eschewing the need for objective and cognizable representation and elevating the merit of the plastic elements of painting, which are essentially the nucleus of the modernist’s continuing strive to liberate Philippine art from the shackles of classicism.
Non-objectivism and the emphasis on plastic elements found favor in Ocampo beginning in the mid-1940s. Asa noted, “As early as 1947, [HR had] started working with free plastic forms. The first public exhibition of his non-objective work did not occur, however, until 1949 when his “Angel’s Kiss” (now at the National Museum) won a major prize at the Manila Club Art Exhibition and Competition.”
Ocampo’s dive into the non-objective was a result of his being influenced by the paintings and writings of the Western non-objectivists—Piet Mondrian, Wassily Kandinsky, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, and Paul Klee—and his fascination with the organic forms of the country’s flora and fauna, which he deemed as having “the strongest influence on my paintings.” Furthermore, the traumatic experience of his eight-month incarceration at the New Bilibid Prison by the American Counter-Intelligence Corps due to suspicions of being a Japanese collaborator was weaved into his maximalist, tension-filled compositions.
Ocampo’s exploration of non-objectivism was also natural for him as a literary blue-blood, being more interested in articulating the essence of things rather than their physicality. The work at hand, titled Fifty-Three “J,” belongs to what Ocampo’s biographer, Angel G. de Jesus, wrote in the artist’s monograph as his “Transition Period” of 1945 to 1963. It followed his earlier “Proletarian Period,” in which he depicted faceless figures as symbolic of the Filipino masses’ struggle in the face of centuries-long colonialism. De Jesus described the “Transition Period” as follows:
“Non-objective painting became his main interest. His figures and natural objects became his main interest. His figures and natural objects became simplified. He eliminated details of the human anatomy, disregarded perspective, and his forms became increasingly distorted. His objective was to flatten planes and achieve unity of composition and design through a combination of hues, tonal values, and textures. The painting became a living, organic, logical unit.”
The result are works brimming with horror vacui. Tension is injected, creating an exciting interplay between the plastic elements. Ocampo’s preference for warm, tropical colors is showcased, providing sheer pleasure for the senses. He breathes life into his compositions by emphasizing both the individuality of the plastic elements—luxurious colors, expressive lines, and organic forms that exude richness in tactility—and their vibrant coherence that resoundingly speaks and manifests itself into the depths of our subconscious, a dream-like world simply throbbing with pure fascination. (Adrian Maranan)