{"status":true,"msg":{"data":{"id":47268,"auction_id":95,"set_id":125,"lot_number":"20","artist":"Hernando R. Ocampo (1911 - 1978)","title":"Homage to Margot Fonteyn","starting_price":4600000,"signed_dated":"signed and dated 1974 (lower right)","medium":"acrylic on masonite board","size":"36” x 36” (91 cm x 91 cm)","property":null,"coa":null,"provenance":"Acquired directly from the artist  Private collection, Japan","exhibited":null,"literature":"De Jesus, Angel G. H.R. Ocampo: The Artist as Filipino. Manila: Heritage Publishing, 1979. Black-and-white photograph on page 62 and painting description on page 63.","write_up":"Ode to a Prima Ballerina From the Alpha Neo-Realist<br /><br />When H.R. Ocampo made this loving homage to the legendary English ballerina Dame Margot Fonteyn (born Margaret Evelyn de Arias), the artist was at his most powerful in terms of visual language characterized by a sublime poetic lyricism and injecting evocative imagery and recollections.<br /><br />The work at hand belongs to the final period of Ocampo’s painting career: the “Visual Melody Period” of 1968 to 1978, which he described in a May 1972 interview with Cid Reyes and published in Conversations on Philippine Art as “approximating the properties of music,” approaching his paintings “as if they were chamber music, which, I suppose, one can consider “pure music.”<br /><br />This period also saw the creation of what is perhaps Ocampo’s magnum opus: the 1969 oil painting Genesis, which he deemed as the “full-flowering” of his Visual Melody and would eventually be transformed into a monumental tapestry for the main stage curtain of the CCP Main Theater (Tanghalang Nicanor Abelardo). Ocampo’s “Visual Melody Period” also coincided with a string of venerable honors bestowed upon the artist: the 1969 “Patnubay ng Sining,” Araw ng Maynila Award, the 1976 “Diwa ng Lahi,” the highest cultural award of the Araw ng Maynila festivities, and the 1977 Caloocan City “Outstanding Citizen Award.”<br /><br />Homage to Margot Fonteyn also shows Ocampo in one of his earliest experimentations in acrylic. Eminent art critic Rod. Paras-Perez writes in his article “Ocampo: A New Vision,” dated August 12, 1974: “At 63, when most painters of the same generation have settled down to the use of one medium, Hernando R. Ocampo, post-war patriarch of modern art in the Philippines, takes to acrylic—likes it, and finds in the process, renewal.”<br /><br />In the same article, Ocampo even says that he approached an artist-friend for much-needed advice, who instructed him to use boards instead of canvas (the work at hand is painted on masonite board).<br /><br />Back to the painting’s subject, Dame Margot Fonteyn was among the most prominent international performers ever to grace the stage of the then-newly inaugurated Cultural Center of the Philippines. She was the “Prima Ballerina Assoluta” of the acclaimed British classical ballet company, the Royal Ballet (The title was accorded to her by Queen Elizabeth II, Patron of the Royal Ballet Company, in 1979 in honor of her 60th birthday.). Due to her numerous appearances at the CCP in the 1970s, Fonteyn became Manila’s “ballet darling” and was bestowed the International Artist Award in 1976.<br /><br />Ocampo was inspired to paint Fonteyn when he had the opportunity to watch the dame in one of her performances at the CCP in the early 1970s. The colors vary from earthy browns to ochres, seemingly evoking the stage floor of the Main Theater, which is made of Philippine mahogany. Ocampo’s senses harmoniously collide into each other like the melodious concordance of string, woodwind, and brass instruments that likely accompanied Fonteyn’s performance. The artist uses flat yet inherently and incessantly vibrant colors that metamorphose into each other seamlessly, in as much as those instruments resonated throughout the theater. One can imagine Ocampo’s Genesis tapestry serving as a majestic backdrop to the evocative gracefulness of Fonteyn’s ballerina virtuoso, as sublime melodies ranging from adagio to allegro accompany her enrapturing theatricality.<br /><br />Thus, Homage to Margot Fonteyn depicts a revitalized sense of environment where music becomes a visually dynamic and lush experience through the act of painting, with both art forms exalting a sensitive awakening to one’s lived experiences. (Adrian Maranan)","lot_group":"Painting","lot_details_html":null,"alias":null,"hp":7000000,"bp":0.2016,"isWithdrawn":0,"accounting_hp":7000000,"userBid":5926,"isPaid":0,"userId":22,"lot_status":"SOLD","isDone":1,"bid_history_id":null,"reserve_price":null,"hammer_price":8411200,"fav":0},"image":[{"id":46960,"img_url":"https://leongallery.sgp1.digitaloceanspaces.com/v2/auction/95/125/lot/20.jpg","isFeatured":1}]},"increment":[5500000,6000000,6500000,7000000,7500000,8000000,8500000,9000000,9500000,10000000,11000000,12000000,13000000,14000000,15000000,16000000,17000000,18000000,19000000,20000000],"prev":19,"next":21,"count_bid":0,"bid_history":[],"tokenExpired":1}