Watch those whiteners
August 18, 2003 | 12:00am
I had the pleasure of finally meeting the painter Araceli "Cheloy" Dans at a UP function over the weekend, and we had fun trading notes as artists in a gathering of alumni engineers. Cheloy, who was married to the late Jose Dans – a former secretary of transportation and communications – related how she would say "I’m an artist" when asked what she did, only to be told "Yes, but what do you really do?"
Indeed artists get very little respect, except when they happen to be fabulously famous, in which case matrons and money men trip all over themselves to buy their produce, sight unseen. (I gently kidded Cheloy by reminding her that among all artists, painters actually have it best, since, all things considered, just one painting could be monetarily worth more than all the royalties a Pinoy writer could earn from five or even 10 novels.)
But our conversation took a serious turn when the subject of forgeries came up. Cheloy had a very interesting story to tell, about a painting being sold to designer Pitoy Moreno, allegedly by Anita Magsaysay-Ho, for only P100,000 (for those of you who don’t know your Ho’s, that’s outrageously, unbelievably cheap). Feeling understandably suspicious, Pitoy took the painting to Mrs. Ho herself, who didn’t need a second glance to say "That’s not mine!" She showed Pitoy a picture of the real McCoy in a book, pointing out the differences. The designer and Cheloy went forthwith to the NBI, which – after some art education – helped them locate and nab the forger, who turned out to be the grandson of one of our most eminent painters. There’s more than a story of money there somewhere, a very sad story which might be told from behind bars.
Cheloy Dans herself has seen at least four forgeries of her paintings – not an easy thing to do, if you’ve seen the exquisitely rendered lacework that is her trademark. I was reminded of the stories I’d heard about the scandalously perfunctory authentication that many master works are subjected to by committees who seem to judge solely by gut feel, or by stylistic standards, rather than by the rigorously scientific, CSI-type testing available to foreign museums. One well-known conservator has been reported to do little more than touch a wet cotton swab to a painting to make a judgment on its authenticity.
At a time when Amorsolos and Lunas are beginning to figure in the international art market, we really shouldn’t be too surprised that racketeers and charlatans are coming out of the woodwork – and that, embarrassing as it will be, it will only be a matter of time before a fake Luna gets snapped up at Sotheby’s or Christie’s. Let’s just hope it isn’t the GSIS that does the snapping up, with another P43 million of our money!
Speaking of painters and poets, the arts community lost two good members last week, with the deaths of Alejandrino Hufana, 76, and Constancio Bernardo, 90. By some strange coincidence, Hufana was a poet who also painted, and Bernardo was a painter who also wrote poetry.
I had known and studied with Alex Hufana, who was, literally, a man of books, having trained as a librarian in Columbia. He wrote poetry in both English and Iluko. Poro Point, to him, was more than his physical hometown; it was the spiritual and cultural lodestar that guided him wherever he went – especially in the US, where he spent the last decades of his life and where he died. His poetry was by no means easy to understand, and Alex himself would often crack his jokes in an escalating hiccup of laughter that sent his shoulders bobbing and the joke slipping into oblivion. He was the second director of what was then the UP Creative Writing Center, after Franz Arcellana, who was likely to be on the other side of the table.
I was at the necrological services they held for him last Friday, before they brought him home to La Union. I would’ve said something for him (of course we called him "Sir" but I think he preferred to be just Alex, and later was), but the lights went out just before my turn to speak. No, I don’t believe in the spooky stuff, but it might as well have been a sign for us, his students and wards, to get out of the chapel and honor him the way he would’ve appreciated best – with a frothy mug of beer above our heads.
For this was, in fact, the Alex Hufana we knew, the genial kunsintidor who drank gin and beer with us and got merrier by the minute. As a professedly responsible university official today, I can’t tell you how and where this happened (don’t do it, boys and girls!) but it was a load of fun sneaking bayongs full of beer from Krus na Ligas past the guards and sharing the loot with the director. Our grand excuse was that it was all in the service of literature, to which we drank endless toasts, and which was occasionally discussed between even more impassioned conjectures about who was getting spoony over whom.
As a graduate student in the States, I would get phone calls and postcards from Alex, who was living and working in Carson City by then, and who seemed just as lonely as we transients were. But he was, as ever, urbane and collected, the smiling wit who refused to be ruffled by something as inconvenient as everyday reality and the compromises we all have to make to survive it. When we got word that Alex Hufana had died in the States, we raised a glass in his honor, and to the memory of his enjoyable company.
Another stalwart who died recently was the relatively unheralded because very quiet Constancio Bernardo, a painter who joined such figures as Hernando Ocampo, Arturo Luz, Jose Joya, and Napoleon Abueva at the vanguard of modernism in Philippine art. Bernardo, who graduated with his BFA from UP in 1948, went on to Yale for his MFA, and shared his excitement over colorism with his students when he returned. His output was prodigious – many thousands of paintings and sketches, to which he later added his poetry – but unlike many of his peers and contemporaries, he remained relatively unknown to his death because he preferred to work quietly, even obscurely.
In tribute to both Bernardo and Hufana, I noted that "The death of an artist is especially sad, because with each true artist dies his or her own unique vision, that inimitable signature of the artist’s imagination." Godspeed to these two gentlemen.
And now for something different. One of the surprising factoids I came out of my recent visits to Davao with was the revelation that Davao’s top export to Indonesia is skin whitener, which a Davao factory produces by the regular planeload. So why do we have to import skin whitener from China – not to mention, why do we use skin whitener at all?
Well, maybe not for skin whitening, if a discovery I made last week is to be believed. Actually, it was fictionist Jing Hidalgo who stumbled on it on a trip to Naga – a colorful box the size and shape of a large tube of toothpaste, which she promptly bought as a pasalubong for a UP friend, about whose needs we shall not speculate. Here’s what the box says, verbatim:
New Beauty Host
Clean Out Horniness Whitening
Glowing Skin Cream
One Minutes Dispel Horniness!
Prevent Iatrology Academy of China
Nominate Product
Specialty Hairdressing Authority
Efficacy: This product by use of natural plant Vitamin B3, Vc, and mulberry extraction distillate, availability wipe off face die cell, restrain melanin, strengthen cell renovate, restrain melanin and blemish, skin whitening, look brand-new. USE: Days for sub-two, first shall face wetness, and weild the product gently knead, then with cleanly water washing. Notice: avoid into eyeball, if immodesty, shortly washing for cleanly water.
I don’t know about you, but I’m not going to touch the stuff, thank you – I’m sure my cheeks are bright enough!
Send e-mail to Butch Dalisay at penmanila@yahoo.com.
Indeed artists get very little respect, except when they happen to be fabulously famous, in which case matrons and money men trip all over themselves to buy their produce, sight unseen. (I gently kidded Cheloy by reminding her that among all artists, painters actually have it best, since, all things considered, just one painting could be monetarily worth more than all the royalties a Pinoy writer could earn from five or even 10 novels.)
But our conversation took a serious turn when the subject of forgeries came up. Cheloy had a very interesting story to tell, about a painting being sold to designer Pitoy Moreno, allegedly by Anita Magsaysay-Ho, for only P100,000 (for those of you who don’t know your Ho’s, that’s outrageously, unbelievably cheap). Feeling understandably suspicious, Pitoy took the painting to Mrs. Ho herself, who didn’t need a second glance to say "That’s not mine!" She showed Pitoy a picture of the real McCoy in a book, pointing out the differences. The designer and Cheloy went forthwith to the NBI, which – after some art education – helped them locate and nab the forger, who turned out to be the grandson of one of our most eminent painters. There’s more than a story of money there somewhere, a very sad story which might be told from behind bars.
Cheloy Dans herself has seen at least four forgeries of her paintings – not an easy thing to do, if you’ve seen the exquisitely rendered lacework that is her trademark. I was reminded of the stories I’d heard about the scandalously perfunctory authentication that many master works are subjected to by committees who seem to judge solely by gut feel, or by stylistic standards, rather than by the rigorously scientific, CSI-type testing available to foreign museums. One well-known conservator has been reported to do little more than touch a wet cotton swab to a painting to make a judgment on its authenticity.
At a time when Amorsolos and Lunas are beginning to figure in the international art market, we really shouldn’t be too surprised that racketeers and charlatans are coming out of the woodwork – and that, embarrassing as it will be, it will only be a matter of time before a fake Luna gets snapped up at Sotheby’s or Christie’s. Let’s just hope it isn’t the GSIS that does the snapping up, with another P43 million of our money!
I had known and studied with Alex Hufana, who was, literally, a man of books, having trained as a librarian in Columbia. He wrote poetry in both English and Iluko. Poro Point, to him, was more than his physical hometown; it was the spiritual and cultural lodestar that guided him wherever he went – especially in the US, where he spent the last decades of his life and where he died. His poetry was by no means easy to understand, and Alex himself would often crack his jokes in an escalating hiccup of laughter that sent his shoulders bobbing and the joke slipping into oblivion. He was the second director of what was then the UP Creative Writing Center, after Franz Arcellana, who was likely to be on the other side of the table.
I was at the necrological services they held for him last Friday, before they brought him home to La Union. I would’ve said something for him (of course we called him "Sir" but I think he preferred to be just Alex, and later was), but the lights went out just before my turn to speak. No, I don’t believe in the spooky stuff, but it might as well have been a sign for us, his students and wards, to get out of the chapel and honor him the way he would’ve appreciated best – with a frothy mug of beer above our heads.
For this was, in fact, the Alex Hufana we knew, the genial kunsintidor who drank gin and beer with us and got merrier by the minute. As a professedly responsible university official today, I can’t tell you how and where this happened (don’t do it, boys and girls!) but it was a load of fun sneaking bayongs full of beer from Krus na Ligas past the guards and sharing the loot with the director. Our grand excuse was that it was all in the service of literature, to which we drank endless toasts, and which was occasionally discussed between even more impassioned conjectures about who was getting spoony over whom.
As a graduate student in the States, I would get phone calls and postcards from Alex, who was living and working in Carson City by then, and who seemed just as lonely as we transients were. But he was, as ever, urbane and collected, the smiling wit who refused to be ruffled by something as inconvenient as everyday reality and the compromises we all have to make to survive it. When we got word that Alex Hufana had died in the States, we raised a glass in his honor, and to the memory of his enjoyable company.
Another stalwart who died recently was the relatively unheralded because very quiet Constancio Bernardo, a painter who joined such figures as Hernando Ocampo, Arturo Luz, Jose Joya, and Napoleon Abueva at the vanguard of modernism in Philippine art. Bernardo, who graduated with his BFA from UP in 1948, went on to Yale for his MFA, and shared his excitement over colorism with his students when he returned. His output was prodigious – many thousands of paintings and sketches, to which he later added his poetry – but unlike many of his peers and contemporaries, he remained relatively unknown to his death because he preferred to work quietly, even obscurely.
In tribute to both Bernardo and Hufana, I noted that "The death of an artist is especially sad, because with each true artist dies his or her own unique vision, that inimitable signature of the artist’s imagination." Godspeed to these two gentlemen.
Well, maybe not for skin whitening, if a discovery I made last week is to be believed. Actually, it was fictionist Jing Hidalgo who stumbled on it on a trip to Naga – a colorful box the size and shape of a large tube of toothpaste, which she promptly bought as a pasalubong for a UP friend, about whose needs we shall not speculate. Here’s what the box says, verbatim:
New Beauty Host
Clean Out Horniness Whitening
Glowing Skin Cream
One Minutes Dispel Horniness!
Prevent Iatrology Academy of China
Nominate Product
Specialty Hairdressing Authority
Efficacy: This product by use of natural plant Vitamin B3, Vc, and mulberry extraction distillate, availability wipe off face die cell, restrain melanin, strengthen cell renovate, restrain melanin and blemish, skin whitening, look brand-new. USE: Days for sub-two, first shall face wetness, and weild the product gently knead, then with cleanly water washing. Notice: avoid into eyeball, if immodesty, shortly washing for cleanly water.
I don’t know about you, but I’m not going to touch the stuff, thank you – I’m sure my cheeks are bright enough!
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