Modernism is an aesthetic sensibility that Filipinos have imbibed and expanded upon as a stylistic practice for the last eighty years. Suffused with the idea of progressive change and the reflection of technological advancement that typifies Modernity, Modern Art in the Philippines developed as a consequence of the search of a modernizing aesthetic, as well as a suitable form of expression that best represents a national movement in art attuned and allied to the internationalist sensibility of the 20th Century. It is thus no surprise that Philippine Modernism also traces the outlines of Philippine national becoming from the 1930s onwards. Perhaps the first such school of Modernism to be found in Southeast Asia, Philippine Modernists have expertly adapted the idioms of Expressionism, Cubism, Surrealism, Abstraction and the more recent trends in Contemporary Art to produce a unique fusion of Western style and Eastern sensibility. Perhaps no Filipino Modernist better exemplifies this fusion than Hernando Ruiz (or H.R.) Ocampo, whose series of abstract paintings from the Fifties to the Seventies utilized an interconnected Cubistic pattern, but "Asianizes" this with sinuous curvilinear shapes, and strong chromatic contrasts of yellow, red, orange, black, blue, and green. "Mother and Child" (1976) typifies this combination, utilizing the traditional theme of a Madonna and Child to produce a flame-like composition, whose curvilinear and ovaloid patterns cue us to the Daoist sensibilities that makes Cubism a possible bridge that links tradition and transformation. 

A recipient of the Philippine National Artists Award (NAA), Ocampo and fellow awardees Arturo Luz and Federico Aguilar Alcuaz are among the celebrated Filipino artists whose works have also found increasing resonance to the international art public through the various art exhibitions held in Singapore during the past ten years, through the constant efforts of such organizations as Galerie Joaquin. "Celebration: A Showcase of Modern and Contemporary Philippine Masters" is the most recent of these efforts. Gathered in the splendid Performance Motors Showroom in BMW Singapore, this exhibition in a way parallels the pioneering efforts of the Art Association of the Philippines (AAP) in championing Philippine Modern Art during the late Forties and Fifties in another auto showroom, the Northern Motors Showroom in Manila. 

"Celebration" also provides a suitable perspective to view the diversity of Philippine Modernism: the spare geometric linearity and earthen chromaticity of Luz, with its allusions to Die Blau Reiter and Dau al Set interwoven with Zen Ensho Art; or Alcuaz's prolific adaptation of Barcelona's La PuÒalada aesthetic, and fusing this with the figural traditions of the Philippine Conservative movement. The generation of Alcuaz and Luz is also represented by Juvenal Sanso, the Spanish Modernist whose joint Manilan-Parisian art education has refined his early figurative Expressionist work with a melancholic baroque richness of textures and colors, set in a brilliant landscape or backdrop. This generation of Post-War Filipino Modern masters are joined by the next generation of Modernists who came of age in the Sixties, such as Ramon Orlina, whose cubistic glass sculptures extend the spare minimalist elegance of International Modernism into three transparent dimensions. Another is Mario Parial, whose own aesthetic sensibility is affiliated by the brilliant, almost spiritual, coloration of Marc Chagall, but grounded in the rural genre subjects of 20th Century Philippine Art. 

The transition from Philippine Modern to Contemporary Art may be characterized by the work of Lydia Velasco, whose earthy depictions of feminine grace and powerful sensuality partakes of both classical as well as modern aesthetic transfusions, a sensibility located in the revolutionary changes sweeping Asian Modernism from the Seventies onward. This disruption and conflation of formerly singular "pure" styles may best be seen in the works of Marcel Antonio, whose intellectual and poetic renditions of romantic liaisons and ambivalent relationships raises the bar of semeiotic reading further into the global continuum of signifiers. The sculptures of Daniel dela Cruz follows this tangent, evoking the disintegration of national boundaries and epistemic certainties that post modernism elicits, with his use of voluptuous female bodies in deconstructed compositions that simulates the classical tradition of bronze casting. Perhaps what best illustrates this contemporaenity is Dominic Rubio's romantic allusions of the colonial visuality of the Southeast Asia of a century ago, in a poignant and yet natively defiant reiteration of ethnic identity and cultural pluralism. 

In a way, "Celebration" is also an apt depiction of the state of Philippine Modernism today. Its popularity and support among international audiences testifies to its aesthetic strength and uniquely multicultural vision, one that has been recognized by the Philippine State (Alcuaz, for example, having been the most recent recipient of the NAA last July 25) as a manifestation of the nation's own journey from colonial "tutelage" to equal membership in the international community. These paintings and sculptures tell of a peoples' desire to progress beyond the narrow boundaries of one tradition, and shows the world the unprecedented possibilities of integrating cultures, ideas, and practices of art that a real condition of Modernity eventually requires.