{"status":true,"msg":{"data":{"id":60825,"auction_id":203,"set_id":236,"lot_number":"114","artist":"José Joya (1931 - 1995)","title":"Nilad","starting_price":4000000,"signed_dated":"signed, titled and dated \"May 17, 1970\" (verso)","medium":"oil on wood","size":"32\" x 24\" (81 cm x 61 cm)","property":null,"coa":"Accompanied by a certificate issued by Mr. Alexander Richard Joya Baldovino confirming the authenticity of this lot","provenance":"The Luz Gallery","exhibited":"The Luz Gallery, Joya: 13th One-Man Exhibition, Makati, 1 - 13 December 1970","literature":null,"write_up":"Joya's Triumphant Homecoming: From New York to Manila
In September 1969, Jose Joya marked his much-awaited homecoming to the Philippines after almost two years in the United States, where he became the first Filipino painter recipient of the John D. Rockefeller III scholarship grant and the Ford Foundation assistance, studying painting and printmaking in New York. Joya exhibited his works in several shows, most notably the US traveling exhibition, \"Artists Abroad,\" in which he was personally handpicked by Rene D'Harnoncourt, former Director of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA).
When Joya returned to the Philippines, he immediately mounted an exhibition that earned rave reviews and drew a huge crowd on opening night.
Wrote The Manila Bulletin on the occasion of the press preview on Joya's exhibition: \"Joya's new pieces bear a marked departure from his familiar abstract expressionistic style, often repeated in series. This serial style has been practiced by several Oriental artists in their art. Joya… was preoccupied with primitive symbolic graffiti recalling ancient Filipino drawings found in burial pottery.\"
Continues the article, \"The exhibition, his first major show in the country in three years, coincides with his rediscovery of Philippine history, a new enthusiasm to explore the pre-Hispanic Philippine visual symbols. There are titles denoting ancient Philippine names like \"Ibalon,\" \"Tandaya\", \"Luconia,\" and \"Madya-as.\"
Wrote Maria Luisa Reyes-Llamado in her article \"The New Joya Returns\" in Philippine Panorama, \"Jose Joya is back after an absence of almost two years in New York. His opening night for his 13th one-man show had the usual glittering crowd, and the Luz Gallery crawled with people.\" Continued Reyes-Llamado, \"We met old friends and got some of their views on the 'new' Joya. Hernando Ocampo was admiring 'Psychedelic Voyage,' one of the first pictures that were quickly sold. When asked to comment, Ocampo said, \"It is a very satisfying synthesis of his old abstract lyricism and his more recent circular zodiac works.\"
Poet-critic Larry Francia praised Joya's paintings, remarking that the artist \"has reached a level of sophistication and self-confidence.\" Eminent artist-critic Alfredo Roces declared in his Manila Times column on 3 January 1971 that Joya's was the \"best one-man show\" and \"one of the most significant cultural events of the [past] year.\" Prominent gallery owners also declared Joya's comeback show one of 1970's most profitable, earning Joya a spot in the list of the country's best-selling artists, alongside Bencab, Sanso, Roces, Elizalde Navarro, and Zalameda.
Joya’s metamorphosis
Beyond the blockbuster and the praises, Joya's new works signaled a metamorphosis, with critic Leo Benesa saying that Joya's creative evolution was indicative of \"a shift towards social commitment,\" echoing the artist's sentiments about his new style. It was during Joya's \"New York Period\" that he discovered through extensive research and study the rich pre-colonial history of the Philippines. Joya began amassing an extensive collection of rare books on Philippine history, writing in his book of drawings (1973), \"Digging into rare sources, I came across materials that gave light to facets of Philippine history.\"
Joya became fascinated with Philippine pre-colonial arts and crafts, particularly Moro and Lumad brass works, Igorot burial jars, and anthropomorphic burial jars in South Cotabato. Joya was engrossed with the discovery of the Manunggul burial jar in Palawan in 1964, which became a landmark event in Philippine archaeology. The cover notes of the December 1971 issue of The Philippines Quarterly, which featured Joya's oil painting titled Manunggul Vessel, wrote that he was \"so struck by the originality of the design of these ancient relics\" that he \"adumbrated [their designs] into a series of paintings.\" Joya also delved into the news of his time regarding Late Neolithic to Metal Age earthenware excavated in the Tabon Caves in Palawan (surveyed and excavated from 1962 to 1966), where the Manunggul Jar was also discovered, and 14th to 15th century Thai and Ming Dynasty trade ceramics in Calatagan, Batangas (1958). Both excavations were helmed by anthropologist and pioneer of modern Philippine archaeology Dr. Robert Fox.
Furthermore, archaeological excavations in Santa Ana, Manila, during the late 1960s that unearthed artifacts such as Chinese pottery and iron slags, and burial sites dating from the 12th to 14th centuries underscored a wealth of cultural sophistication in the location of present-day Manila even before the arrival of the Spaniards.
\"Excavations in the Philippines are paving new avenues for national identity and pride and possibly, vigorous new art forms,\" wrote Joya in his annotations to his book of drawings.
The Nilad Plant
One of the more interesting and intriguing paintings in the homecoming show was this piece titled Nilad, painted in May 1970, just before Joya became the 8th Dean of the UP School of Fine Arts in August that same year. It was the perfect painting to mark Joya's Manila homecoming, an homage to the origins of the country's preeminent city.
Nilad features Joya's recognizable geometric forms in his serial style, inspired by and evoking flake tools and pottery shards, the latter the most ubiquitous artifacts in archaeological excavations and noted to be in use in the islands since the Neolithic Period by Dr. Fox. Rendered in thick impastos of colors, ranging from muted and lagoon blues to fern greens, applied intuitively using a palette knife, Nilad refers to the eponymous plant that once grew along the banks of the Pasig River and the mangrove forests of Manila Bay. A mangrove species, the nilad (Scyphiphora hydrophylacea) possesses dark brown wood, with small, tubular flowers in dense clusters, leaves that are glossy and deep green in color in the upper part and paler in the lower portion, and fruits that are light brown when ripe, features that are symbolically presented in this work through colors, with the blues representing the waters of the Pasig.
One can imagine the nilad flourishing on the shores of the Pasig River, Manila’s birthplace, whose banks once teemed with mangroves. The nilad witnessed the prospering of the wealthy maritime chiefdoms of Tondo and Maynila; how these two dominated commerce, with the former monopolizing trade with two to three Chinese junks per year and the latter selling the goods throughout the islands by utilizing their vessels known to the Visayans as “sinina” or “Chinese.” Even neighboring Namayan, which now encompasses current Manila districts, including Santa Ana, Paco, Pandacan, and Quiapo, thrived with industries, such as agriculture, earthenware, masonry, carpentry, and piña embroidery. Manila, particularly Intramuros, which was the city's original core and the location of the old Kingdom of Maynila, famously ruled by Rajah Matanda and Rajah Sulayman at the advent of Spanish colonization, was a swampland that was most suitable for the nilad's thriving. The natives had been calling their settlement \"Maynilad\" since time immemorial, which, over time, became \"Maynila\" due to changes in pronunciation, as is common in the Tagalog language, a natural process of its evolution.
One of the earliest mentions of the \"nilad – Maynilad\" etymology can be found in the three-volume Historia Plantarum (published between 1686 and 1704) by the English botanist and naturalist John Ray, who published the Jesuit naturalist Georg Joseph Kamel’s Historia stirpium insula Luzonis et reliquarum Philippinarum (London, 1704) in the appendix of the Historia Plantarum's third volume. Fr. Kamel wrote:
\"Nilad, a plant of average height and oftentimes curved. Its wood is compact and dense, like molavin (molave) wood. In places where mangle or mangroves abound, the place is called \"Manglar;\" that is why if nilad abounds in one area, the place is called \"Maynilad.\" Over time, the place became known as \"Manila,\" as it was corrupted [by the Spanish]. The fruit of the nilad is green, fleshy, and has three small, crooked horns.\"
Joya's Nilad and his search for an indigenous and personal idiom
The depiction of old \"Maynilad\" was only one of Joya's ventures into seriality and geometric expressionism, and his abandonment of abstract expressionism, borne of his profound exposure to our country's pre-colonial past while pursuing higher studies abroad. Was it a result of homesickness? Or a profound realization of a decolonized past that ran in parallel with the resurgence of nationalism and a nationalist historiography, particularly in the late 1960s, as spearheaded by Teodoro Agoncillo and Renato Constantino?
Joya wrote in his book of drawings, \"Serial designs, basically oriental in concept, have become much of an obsession among occidental modern painters.\" For Joya, seriality is not a novel concept that only became more dominant with the rise of Pop Art in the West but is inherently Oriental; it is ubiquitous in ancient Chinese handscroll paintings and Philippine indigenous art, most notably burial jars, pottery, weaving, embroidery, metalcraft, and the mystical antinganting (amulet).
Seriality is omnipresent in nature through patterns, and nature was paramount to our pre-colonial ancestors' daily lives. Our forebears believed in diwatas, the spiritual beings residing in nature and the guardians of harmony and balance—the sky deities, mountain spirits, river guardians, animal spirits —and the anitos or ancestral spirits who, in many indigenous cultures, journeyed into the spirit world through a voyage across the waters, a most important element for an archipelagic people.
Up to now, our indigenous peoples, who safeguard the traditions of our ancestors, are the custodians and defenders of our natural wealth against exploitation.
Joya's venture into this language of abstraction is therefore rooted in the indigenous and the paramount importance of nature, which is an artist’s best teacher. It is a creative introspection that looks inward rather than outward. Like the nilad plant, whose flowers are densely clustered, and the collectivist, tight-knit character of our cultures, Joya's geometric abstraction consolidates ideas and concepts. In contrast, in his action paintings, each stroke demands attention and individuality.
Joya's Nilad can be likened to an excavated artifact that intrigued the eminent artist, one that ingeniously tells the story of a rich, indigenous past. For Joya, seriality, manifested through art, offers and symbolizes a unifying aspect for the presentday Filipino people who have always been diverse yet always connected through a shared history of reverence for nature. It is also a way to reclaim one's indigenous identity and history, a reflection of our collective pride, our constant and protracted struggles and triumphs in reexploring and redefining what it truly means to be a Filipino, that is, honoring the diversity of our native past and the role our indigenous countrymen play in preserving and defending these identities.
By also painting pictures of a pre-colonial past, Joya shows an inherent preference for landscapes and, therefore, a predisposition towards nature, to which our pre-colonial ancestors gave much reverence, deeming it the \"alpha\" and the \"omega\" of life. In this way, Joya reconnects with them in spirit and art.","lot_group":"PAINTING","lot_details_html":null,"alias":null,"hp":6500000,"bp":0.2016,"isWithdrawn":0,"accounting_hp":6500000,"userBid":34,"isPaid":0,"userId":34,"lot_status":"SOLD","isDone":1,"bid_history_id":19798,"reserve_price":0,"hammer_price":7810400,"fav":0},"image":[{"id":66840,"img_url":"https://leongallery.sgp1.digitaloceanspaces.com/v2/auction/203/236/lot/114.jpg","isFeatured":1},{"id":67278,"img_url":"https://leongallery.sgp1.digitaloceanspaces.com/v2/auction/203/236/lot/114a.jpg","isFeatured":0}]},"increment":[5500000,6000000,6500000,7000000,7500000,8000000,8500000,9000000,9500000,10000000,11000000,12000000,13000000,14000000,15000000,16000000,17000000,18000000,19000000,20000000],"prev":113,"next":115,"count_bid":0,"bid_history":[],"tokenExpired":1}