Mad about Medalla

The Philippine visual art scene may have its rising stars, superstars, and its constellation of National Artists, but only one living Filipino visual artist has produced a body of work of such startling brilliance, in the process gaining international critical and institutional acclaim at the highest level, that he has been compared to an exploding galaxy.

I am speaking, of course, of David Medalla, whom I had the pleasure of not just meeting but spending a considerable amount of time with during my recent trip to Madrid.

It began with a chance encounter as we both filed into one of the stately salas inside Casa America (the former Palacio de Linares just off La Cibeles) for the Filipiniana lecture program. Medalla tapped me on the back, demurely inquiring if he was in the right place. Responding in the affirmative, I turned my back only to do a quick turnaround when I realized whom it was I was speaking to. Although he had grown bald and looked timeworn, his visage had hardly changed: brows arched like a bow setting off his piercing bug eyes, his lips thin as if they had been penciled in. Remembering photographs from the ’50s and ’60s of the enfant terrible of Philippine art, I could still see the reedy, languid androgyny of his youth underneath the paunch and the layers of clothing.

I greeted him: "Hello, you must be David Medalla," feigning nonchalance, as I shook his hand and introduced myself. "We have a number of your works at our museum. One of them is here in fact, on loan!" A smile broke through, and I could hear a lilting hum in his slightly Anglo-accented voice. He seemed delighted by the recognition, and the thought that a work of his from decades back had been brought all the way to Madrid.

I was gob-smacked by his modesty. Here I was in the presence of a man whose name has been included in books on the history of art, for having been a major exponent of land art, kinetic art, participatory art, and live art. I can never forget the time when I was working on my postgraduate degree in Sydney, and one of my professors, learning that I worked in a museum back home, inquired about the artists we had represented in our collection. The names of Amorsolo, Manansala, Legaspi, Ocampo, Kiukok, and Bencab streamed forth, none of which rang a bell. And then I mentioned "David Medalla." It was as if I had dropped an A-bomb on his head, as I leveled the quizzical furrow on his brow. "Oh yes, of course!" he riposted with obvious awe and deep respect, adding "I didn’t even know he was Filipino!"

Much has been written about Medalla’s accomplishments, foremost of which is "Exploding Galaxies: The Art of David Medalla," a monograph published by the Arts Council of England and authored by leading art critic Guy Brett, with a postscript by the even more impressive Harvard art history emeritus professor and critic Yves-Alain Bois. Perhaps the most effusive curriculum vitae/précis can be found on the website of the Center of Attention, a well-respected non-profit contemporary art center based in London which is renowned for "its experimental approach stem(ming) from an ongoing enquiry into the phenomenon of art production, presentation, consumption and heritage-ization."

If only to underscore the man’s über-status (and to shamlelessly bowl over local art aficionados, many of who know diddly-squat about the artist), I have taken the liberty of quoting their entry on the artist in full:

"He was born in 1942 in Manila, Philippines. At the age of 12, Medalla was admitted as a special student at Colombia University in New York upon the recommendation of American poet Mark van Doren. Medalla’s tutor at Colombia was Professor Moses Hadas under whom he studied ancient Greek drama. Medalla also attended the lectures on modern drama by Eric Bentley, modern literature by Lionel Trilling, modern philosophy by John Randall, and the poetry workshop by Leonie Adams. In New York City, David met the American actor James Dean and the Filipino poet José Garcia Villa who encouraged Medalla’s early interest in painting.

"When he returned to Manila in the late Fifties, he met Jaime Gil de Biedma (the Catalan poet) and the painter Fernando Zóbel de Ayala, who became the earliest patrons of Medalla’s art. In Paris in 1960, the French philosopher Gaston Bachelard introduced David’s first performance in France at the Academy of Raymond Duncan, the brother of the great American dancer Isadora Duncan. Years later in Paris, the French poet Louis Aragon (co-founder of surrealism with André Breton) introduced another performance by Medalla and hailed the Filipino artist as a genius. Marcel Duchamp made a medallic object for David."

"From 1964 to 1966, Medalla edited Signals news bulletin in London. In 1967 he initiated the Exploding Galaxy, an international confluence of multi-media artists. From 1974 to 1977, he was chairman of Artists for Democracy and director of the Fitzrovia Cultural Center in London. In 1994, he founded the Mondrian Fan Club in New York with Adam Nankervis as vice president, (and) in 2000 the London Biennale, the idea for which occurred to him while he was on a boat en route to Robben Island, off Cape Town, South Africa, during the second Johannesburg Biennale in 1998. David Medalla has given numerous exhibitions in many parts of the world. He was included by Harald Szeemann in the exhibitions ‘Weiss auf Weiss’ (1966) and ‘Live In Your Head: When Attitudes Become Form’ (1969) (both at the Kunsthalle in Bern) and in the ‘Documenta 5’ exhibition in 1972 in Kassel.

"Among solo and group shows David Medalla participated in are: ‘Travels II’ curated by Chris Dercon at the Clocktower Gallery in NY; ‘Art Lifts Berlin’ (1998) curated by Friedrich Meschede at the DAAD Galerie in Berlin (when David was in the Berliner Künstlerprogramm); ‘Pinaglabanan’ in Manila; ‘Micropolitiques’ curated by Paul Ardenne at Le Magasin in Grenoble, France; ‘Fluxattitudes’ at the New Museum of Contemporary Art in NY; ‘The Other Story’ (1989) curated by Rasheed Araeen at the Hayward Gallery, London; ‘Perfotijd’ (1984) curated by Wink van Kempen at the Theatre de Lantaren in Rotterdam; ‘Live In Your Head’ (2000) at the Whitechapel Gallery, London and the Museo de Chiado in Lisbon; ‘L’Informe’ (1996/97) curated by Yves-Alain Bois and Rosalind Krauss at the Centre Pompidou, Paris; ‘Transforming the Crown’ (1998) at the Haarlem Studio Museum, NY; ‘Live/Life’ (1996/97) curated by Hans-Ulrich Obrist at the Musée D’art Moderne De La Ville de Paris and at the Centro Cultural do Belem, Lisbon; ‘A Quality of Light’ (1997) at Tate St. Ives, Cornwall; ‘Century City’ (2001) at the Tate Modern, London; ‘Out of Actions’ (1998) at the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art and MAK in Vienna and Tokyo; 2nd Johannesburg Biennale (1998), South Africa; ‘Force Fields’ (2000) curated by Guy Brett at the Hayward Gallery in London; etcetera..."

"David Medalla has been a lecturer at the Slade School of Art, University College London, St. Martins School of Art, Chelsea School of Art, Goldsmiths College of Art, and the University of Southampton. In 1989 he gave a series of lectures on global cultures at MOMA, the Museum of Moderm Art of NY. He has also lectured at the University of Hawaii in Manva, Cooper Union in NY, the Universities of Amsterdam and Utrecht, the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Bruxelles, the Fundacion Tapies in Barcelona, the Sorbonne in Paris, the British School in Rome and many other schools, universities and colleges all over the world."

With so much tucked under his belt, Medalla was a breath of fresh air, being completely devoid of any diva attitude or pretense. He thanked the organizers constantly for the opportunity to exhibit together with his compatriots, and always made sure to interject a positive note whenever Filipino artists of much, much lesser ilk heaved and hawed about, well, everything. He said that he felt very fortunate to be subsisting on his work today through grants or commissions, traveling overseas, staying in five-star hotels, dining in gourmet restaurants and attending ritzy opening parties when only some years back there were times when he would live on the streets scrounging for food just so he could pursue his muse.

Medalla’s charisma was palpable and self-sustaining. I could see that he drew strength from being the object of adulation – the incredible stories of his adventures so engrossing that nobody cared to know if they were truth or fiction – in as much as the objects he created drew the public’s attention towards him.

In the center of the exhibition space at Conde Duque, his "Cloud Canyons," a version of which I had seen only a few months back in Melbourne, on loan from New Zealand’s Auckland City Art Gallery, as part of an exhibition of British art from the Sixties, majestically held court. Undeniably his most iconic and celebrated opus, the phallic columns steadily spewed forth froth in a mesmeric meeting of Duchampian wit, technical pizzazz, gossamer texture, ethereal movement, fleeting temporality, and Op-effect appeal drawn from the glint of light on the suds.

Recently, no less than the director of the Tate, Sir Nicholas Serota, wrote Medalla, informing him that the museum’s trustees were commissioning him to do a bubble machine for the Tate’s permanent collection. So there it is: alongside the likes of Louise Bourgeois, Gerhard Richter, Francis Bacon, Joseph Beuys, Richard Serra, Yves Klein, Bill Viola, Yayoi Kusama, Sol Le Witt, Robert Rauschenberg and Andy Warhol is our very own David Medalla.

I have always believed that the history of art is a body of knowledge, and artists who contribute something unique to it by persuading humanity to shift perception or challenge the status quo are those who ultimately achieve significance and immortality. David Medalla, in my opinion, is one such artist.

For a country starved for heroes, here is proof that Filipinos needn’t climb mountains or boxing rings to come out on top of the world.