Dalena’s devotions

Only fitting that Danny Dalena’s grand retrospective exhibit billed as “Last Full Show” opened at the Cultural Center of the Philippines on Dec. 10, Human Rights Day.

Of the staggering output on display on three floors, representing half-a-century of inspired creativity and full-fledged personal commitment, a section on a corridor wall shows political cartoons that Danny had done for the storied Philippines Free Press magazine and other publications.

It was at the cafeteria of the Free Press building on the old Pasong Tamo Ave. off EDSA where we first met Danny in the late 1960s, when a group of us aspiring writers from UP benefited from Nick Joaquin’s fabled generosity. We trooped there on Wednesdays for the weekly “novena” of free beers and pulutan at the end of office hours.

It wasn’t just Nick who would gift us with illustrious company, since PFP then gloried in the journalistic and literary services of an exemplary band of stalwarts that included Greg Brillantes, Wilfrido “Ding” Nolledo, and Jose “Pete” Lacaba, the last more of our contemporary in years.

Then there was Danny Dalena, already turning legendary in his own right, as the artist whose visual work often honored a writer’s short story when Nick as literary editor accepted it for publication. Slightly built and soft-spoken, Danny could hardly get a word in edgewise, what with the welter of voices that competed with the booming bon mots of Joaquin, also known as Quijano de Manila for his inimitable journalism. 

But continuing camaraderie among the younger writers such as Erwin Castillo, Willy Sanchez, Jolicco Cuadra, Frankie Ossorio and eventually Recah Trinidad, together with Pete and Eman Lacaba, established Danny’s essential role in the group — as yet another rugged individualist of fierce loyalties and principles often masked by a wry sense of humor that went well with his impish look. 

To complement the Manileños’ attempts at rough urbanity and cosmopolitanism sourced to a growing familiarity with world literature, Danny quietly unleashed rustic charm and wisdom, with curt verbiage honed in his hometown of Pakil, coupled with Sampaloc streetcorner lingo when he took up Fine Arts in UST.

In subsequent decades, whether it was in his ancestral house in Pakil, the Lacabas’ riverside abode in Pateros, Recah’s “Little Boracay” in Mandaluyong, at public drinking places and art gallery openings, “Danny Boy” strode tall in his bakya and buntal hat, waxing eloquent with his down-home wit.

Meanwhile, his reputation as an artist grew by leaps and bounds as he contributed by-now classic series to Philippine art: the “Jai Alai” and “Alibangbang” narratives, the geriatrology grotesquerie, erotic sculpture, portraiture and cartoons.

Danny Dalena’s art has always been personal. He drew friends and intimates, lampooned political figures, made statements with his choice of found objects (such as plastic dolls and plates for torching together). He revealed satiric use even for condoms.

And what he selected as scenes of social reality — the Pinoy male’s penchant for abject loss whether he bet wrong on fronton heroics or fancied a naked dancer at a cheap bar in Cubao — was also personalized, made private as part of the unique cosmology he was industriously encoding.

Native religiosity wasn’t spared his searing eye. Dogs were documented as they splayed out supine in the middle of the church aisle if they weren’t coupling on Pakil’s streets.

Danny eschewed landscapes devoid of human presence. Heroic to him was the human form, either single, in all its crassness of flab or disability, or en masse as a faceless unit in varied worship. These he rendered with signature stark lines that defined robust rather than refined figures, sometimes as faceless blobs, obese or emaciated, disfigured yet arresting.   

An exception to this documentation of human conduct is his “Toilet” series, in some works of which it is man’s extension that is posterized, as graffiti on tiled walls. Danny is loyal to a fault, to his recognition of his fellowmen as vessels of commonplace or rude habits that can also be endearing. 

At the CCP’s necrological rites for National Artist Nick Joaquin, Danny delivered a heartfelt eulogy before pulling out a hankie on which he blew his nose, in mimicry of his great friend, before he waved it toward someone’s imaginary face.   

In recent years, his generosity has been expressed on his birthday early in January, when he gifts friends with a choice of a signed ink-on-paper work, often of senior forms that could seem repulsive to some, much like the depictions in his girlie-bar and toilet series, but which, again, dispatches a charmingly effusive acceptance of the less pleasant side of life.    

Dalena’s generosity is currently displayed in the CCP walls in another form, that is, in the variety of art he has executed with aplomb for half a century. The retrospective celebrates both longevity and evolution, the encompassing sweep of an artist’s engagement with his muses and daemons. And the CCP pulls out all the stops for this display that ends over 25 years of abstinence from the gallery scene, since the last survey exhibition that had also been mounted at the CCP. 

 Over 500 works, most of which have been lent by collectors, are now assembled and grouped judiciously in all of five areas spread out over three floors: at the Main Gallery, the 3F Hallway Gallery, Small Gallery, 4F Hallway Gallery and 4F Atrium.

At the Main Gallery, a jukebox stands past the doors, signaling the jaunty music of Dalena’s procession from private to universal. In collaboration with the artist, curators Claro Ramirez Jr. and Eileen Legaspi Ramirez have fashioned partitioned spaces that simulate Dalena’s own home cum workspace, with all its idiosyncrasies and iterations.

A barber’s chair is placed in the radius of appreciation for the iconic “Asong Simbahan.” Also nearby is Nick Joaquin’s oil portrait, standing low but dramatically lit up by a spotlight. Chabet’s is hung askew and high near a corner. It repeats a private joke that is yet another intriguing masterwork, titled “Isabit si Chabet sa Banyo,” which shows the portrait being carried off by a couple of men from a corner of the Pakil house’s ground floor. On the background is a grand staircase, alongside which are various other paintings, and beneath it, the exact same painting we are looking at, rendered much smaller, a diminutive echo reverberating in layered reality.

On a passageway are Dalena’s early 13 Artists installation piece of 1972, a crib with a mobile hanging above, both featuring an assortment of broken plastic dolls. On the wall and floor are entries from his Condom series of terracotta and cement, including the riot of pink boobs arranged in a partitioned box, titled “Condominium.”

At the end of the Main Gallery, almost unnoticeable, is a peephole on a black painted panel that allows a tiny view of a toilet bowl, beside which a lady’s bust stands on the corner floor. Friends will recognize it as a recreation of a washroom in Danny’s Kamuning home, where the subject’s familiar bouffant has conceivably received spurts of pee from not exactly aimless guests.

The Main Gallery also features the “Alibangbang,” “Jai Alai,” and “Tatanda Ka Rin” series — writhing figures, society’s supposed dregs, dejected losers, old men who drop their pants before urinals, a cornucopia of flab, sagging breasts, love handles gone berserk — in earth tones that seemingly set the subjects in social-realist amber. At the end of this section are his small terracotta sculpture of naked men and women, part of the “Alibangbang” series.

  Elsewhere, in the other venues, are early sketches of the artist’s three daughters, Sari, Aba and Kiri, an illustration of the Ali-Frazier fight among other cartoons, motley portraits, among which are of many writer-friends, including a precious ink-and-watercolor of National Artist Franz Arcellana, plus self-portraits, one of which shows the artist in 1995, an arm stretched out, with a small hand-held mirror allowing the painter a view of himself. At first glance, it’s as if that early, Danny Dalena was posing for and taking a selfie.

Well, it might as well have been. So intimate has this genius of an artist been with himself and his world expanded from that self, in a guttural language of devotion.

The retrospective is entirely breathtaking. It remains on display till March 4. This week the galleries will be closed. But with the new year, everyone can delight in Danny Dalena’s devotion to human rights, private privileges, foibles, warts, street smarts and all.