{"status":true,"msg":{"data":{"id":45802,"auction_id":92,"set_id":121,"lot_number":"143","artist":"Manuel Rodriguez Sr. (1912 - 2017)","title":"Festival Boats","starting_price":800000,"signed_dated":"signed and titled (verso)
ca. 1963","medium":"oil on canvas","size":"40\" x 30\" (102 cm x 76 cm)","property":null,"coa":null,"provenance":null,"exhibited":null,"literature":null,"write_up":"Manuel Rodriguez, Sr. started formulating his \"River Festival\" / \"Festival Boats\" series in the early 1960s. During that time, Rodriguez Sr. had just studied printmaking under a Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship for Special Studies in Graphic Arts for two years at the Pratt Institute in New York City, earning his Diploma in 1962. Shortly after returning to the Philippines on February 28, 1962, he returned to managing his Manilabased Contemporary Graphic Arts Workshop (established in 1952 and formerly the Contemporary Arts Gallery before Rodriguez, Sr. left for New York). It was the first art institution in the Philippines to offer formal courses in graphic arts.
There, Rodriguez, Sr. taught graphic arts, freehand drawing, and oil painting and honed the talents of young printmakers; among them was Virgilio \"Pandy\" Aviado. It was a tender form of giving back to the Filipino art community what skills he acquired and honed abroad.
\"Rodriguez lost no time in embarking on his mission to teach and promote print in his studio, in schools, and in farflung provinces where he was welcomed with enthusiasm by the masses who were introduced to fine art.,\" writes Eva Florentino in her essay \"Struggles and Triumphs\" published in the monograph \"Manuel Rodriguez, Sr.: Into the Threshold.\"
Back to the subject of \"River Festival\" / \"Festival Boats\" series, Aviado, writing in his essay \"Me and My Sensei\" (pertaining to Rodriguez, Sr.), says that he was introduced to his mentor in 1963 and \"saw Mang Maning develop his \"River Festival\" / \"Festival Boats\" series from various media.\"
Festival boats, or pagoda in the Filipino lexicon, hold a distinct place in Philippine religious festivities and native culture as well. In Bulacan, there is the famous Bocaue River Festival/ Bocaue Pagoda Festival, held annually every first Sunday of July in honor of the Holy Cross of Wawa, a historic (and miraculous) 19th-century Catholic relic. There was also once a grand fluvial procession held every second Sunday of February in the town of Pateros in honor of its patroness, Santa Marta.
Other iconic pagoda festivals in the country include the one in Cardona, Rizal, celebrated every October 4 in honor of Saint Francis of Assisi, and the \"Pagoda-Caracol\" in Malabon every December 8, coinciding with the Feast of the Immaculate Conception.
In this work from the early 1960s, Rodriguez, Sr. depicts a flock of joyous devotees surrounding a towering threelayered pagoda carrying the sacred image of the Blessed Virgin Mary. There is a familial folk atmosphere that Rodriguez Sr. imbibes in the work: playfully quaint and flamboyant. Here, we can see Rodriguez Sr.'s early forays into his trademark \"color vibrations,\" which he would only formally introduce three decades later in his 1993 Soho exhibition in New York. These \"color vibrations\" seemingly mimic the repetition and progression of patterns present in Philippine folk art and, thus, exhibit a unique interplay between form and color that highlights a celebration of identity rooted in communal existence.
\"Art is prayer. It is silent worship. Art uses energy in a space we call love,\" Rodriguez, Sr. once said. Festival Boats, with its exuberant atmosphere, encapsulate a form of profound thanksgiving. And it is in this avenue that Manuel Rodriguez, Sr. steers this workâhis thanksgiving to his Creator for the gift of art and the eventual honor and privilege of doing and teaching art as both a form of reverence to Him and giving back to the land that first honed his virtuoso. (Adrian Maranan)","lot_group":"PAINTING","lot_details_html":null,"alias":null,"hp":800000,"bp":0.2016,"isWithdrawn":0,"accounting_hp":800000,"userBid":5926,"isPaid":0,"userId":22,"lot_status":"SOLD","isDone":1,"bid_history_id":null,"reserve_price":null,"hammer_price":961280,"fav":0},"image":[{"id":44884,"img_url":"https://leongallery.sgp1.digitaloceanspaces.com/v2/auction/92/121/lot/143.jpg","isFeatured":1}]},"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":142,"next":144,"count_bid":0,"bid_history":[],"tokenExpired":1}