{"status":true,"msg":{"data":{"id":58380,"auction_id":121,"set_id":155,"lot_number":"15","artist":"José Joya (1931 - 1995)","title":"Pisces","starting_price":1000000,"signed_dated":"signed and dated 1968 (lower right)","medium":"oil on canvas","size":"23\" x 23\" (58 cm x 58 cm)","property":null,"coa":"Accompanied by a certificate issued by Mr. Alexander Richard Joya Baldovino confirming the authenticity of this lot","provenance":null,"exhibited":null,"literature":null,"write_up":"The Introspective Jose Joya Musings on the Zodiac, Oriental Cultures, and Indigenous Identity by ADRIAN MARANAN
The Two Joyas of the 1960s
In 1964, Jose Joya’s name became immortalized as he represented the Philippines in its landmark debut at the Venice Biennale. In Venice, Joya unleashed the climax of his abstract expressionist style, exemplified by the monumental work Hills of Nikko, now displayed in the National Museum of the Philippines.
But in the late 1960s, Joya's art showed a radical evolution, a reincarnation of all sorts. In 1967, Joya received the John D. Rockefeller III scholarship grant (now the Asian Cultural Council) to study and paint in New York. One can remember it was in New York where Joya wallowed in the abstract expressionist spirit during his first American sojourn (1956-57) under a Smith-Mundt-Fulbright study grant. Ten years later, Joya would shed off the abstract expressionist visual language in favor of geometric expressionism, producing works dominated by circles and grids that evoke the seriality of Pop Art, the dominant art style in America in the late '60s. A December 3, 1970 article published in The Manila Chronicle writes, “While in New York, Joya abandoned his now familiar abstract expressionist style in favor of a monochromatic, incised, and linear vocabulary inspired by prehistoric graffiti found in Philippine iron-age pottery.”
Joya’s second New York sojourn became a contradictory and full-circle experience. to the fast and furious world of poets, journalists and most, importantly, artists.
Joya’s Pisces: Exemplar of the Artist’s Creative Evolution
This 1968 work titled Pisces was among the works Joya produced during his artistry changing second “New York Period.” Here, the symbol of Pisces is incised in the center and enclosed in an inverted triangle. It is surrounded by several other incisions, with some referencing the different signs of the zodiac in relation to Pisces: Aries and Taurus (compatible signs) and Sagittarius and Aquarius (low compatibility). Pisces forms part of Joya’s series of works, which he made in 1968, centering on the twelve zodiac signs. Informally called the “Mandala Series,” Joya derives inspiration from the Oriental concept of the mandala (Sanskrit for “sacred circle”), symbolizing the universe and one’s meditative journey towards harmony and fullness. In Oriental religions, particularly Hinduism and Buddhism, the mandala is essentially an instrument for meditation; meditating in front of a mandala means “entering” the vast expanse of the cosmos, in which the mind becomes enlightened, spirituality is nourished, and truths and contradictions are revealed and realized.
More than the blockbuster popularity of Pop Art in New York, Joya’s exploration of serial art harks back more to the artist’s inward knowledge of its Oriental origins, as exemplified by the handscroll paintings of ancient China and the Tang Dynasty masterpiece Noble Ladies in Tang Dynasty.
In Joya’s work, which evokes the Hindu yantra, the arbitrarily placed incisions surrounding the center come off as allusions to worldly chaos. As one traverses through all the turmoil and disruption, one eventually arrives at the center, where Pisces—the two fish—resides and comes to a full realization of one’s place and purpose, letting the self revel in a dynamic and transformative kind of peace. Since every human falls under a specific zodiac sign, Joya serializing the astrological symbols into one oeuvre signifies an ideal of the harmonious unity of all humanity.
The Manunggul Jar and Joya: Wedding the Oriental and the Native
On another important note, Joya's venture into geometric expressionism came as a result of an inner reawakening of his native sensibility, which was due in part to homesickness and the resurgence of Filipino nationalism during the tumultuous ‘60s. Although immersed in American soil, Joya also found himself studying Philippine history. \"At this time, the study of Philippine history engaged me,\" says Joya in art critic Leonidas Benesa's Joya: Drawings. \"Digging into rare sources, I came across materials that gave light facets to Philippine history.\" By this time, Filipino historians Teodoro Agoncillo and Renato Constantino had been propagating a nationalist historiography aimed at decolonizing Philippine history.
The Joya of the late 1960s successfully cast away his Westerninfluenced abstract expressionism in favor of a profound expression of a Filipino identity in his art. A Manila Bulletin review of Joya’s new geometric works in his homecoming show at the Luz Gallery in late 1970 writes, “Joya’s new pieces bear a marked departure from his familiar abstract expressionist style, often repeated in series….Joya... was preoccupied with primitive symbolic graffiti recalling ancient Filipino drawings found in burial pottery….[It is] a new enthusiasm to explore the pre-Hispanic Philippine visual symbols.”
The review references “burial pottery,” likely the Manunggul Jar, excavated in 1964 in Lipuun Point, Palawan, in the Manunggul Cave that forms part of the archaeologically rich Tabon Cave Complex. The Manunggul Jar, hailed as a magnum opus of Philippine pre-colonial civilization, represents the soul’s entry into the afterlife and underscores the importance of water in our ancestors’ notions of life and death.
The archaeological significance of the jar intrigued the homesick, New York-based Joya. As a result, Joya began incorporating and referencing the jar’s curvilinear designs into his works, particularly in Virgo. “[Joya] adumbrated [the design of the Manunggul Jar] into a series of paintings,” writes in the cover notes December 1971 issue of The Philippines Quarterly. The magazine recounts that Joya was “so struck by the originality of the design of these ancient relics.”
Combined with the subject embodying the mysticism of the anting-anting (amulet) and the fact that seriality is ubiquitous in Philippine indigenous art (e.g., weaving, embroidery, ornamentation), Joya had now arrived at a creative idiom that is not only entirely his own but more so reflects the collective identity and indigenous pride of his people.
Unlike his abstract expressionist works that possess a “central core” from which the composition is anchored, or in the words of the artist, “the seat of energy,” Joya’s mandalas derive their energy from the entirety of the composition, possessing a logical balance of all elements. It is an artistic expression representative of a people whose shared identity and culture are rooted in a constant struggle towards exploring, redefining, and reclaiming our nationhood through the lens of meditating on our indigenous past.","lot_group":"PAINTING","lot_details_html":null,"alias":null,"hp":1300000,"bp":0.2016,"isWithdrawn":0,"accounting_hp":1300000,"userBid":null,"isPaid":0,"userId":22,"lot_status":"SOLD","isDone":1,"bid_history_id":null,"reserve_price":0,"hammer_price":1562080,"fav":0},"image":[{"id":63634,"img_url":"https://leongallery.sgp1.digitaloceanspaces.com/v2/auction/121/155/lot/15.jpg","isFeatured":1},{"id":64088,"img_url":"https://leongallery.sgp1.digitaloceanspaces.com/v2/auction/121/155/lot/15b.jpg","isFeatured":0},{"id":64087,"img_url":"https://leongallery.sgp1.digitaloceanspaces.com/v2/auction/121/155/lot/15c.jpg","isFeatured":0},{"id":64082,"img_url":"https://leongallery.sgp1.digitaloceanspaces.com/v2/auction/121/155/lot/15a.jpg","isFeatured":0}]},"increment":[900000,1000000,1100000,1200000,1300000,1400000,1500000,1600000,1700000,1800000,1900000,2000000,2200000,2400000,2600000,2800000,3000000,3200000,3400000,3600000,3800000,4000000,4200000,4400000,4600000,4800000,5000000,5500000,6000000,6500000,7000000,7500000,8000000,8500000,9000000,9500000,10000000,11000000,12000000,13000000,14000000,15000000,16000000,17000000,18000000,19000000,20000000],"prev":14,"next":16,"count_bid":0,"bid_history":[],"tokenExpired":1}