Sketching skinscapes and other epiphanies

A caricature: My nerves were tripping over each other, my hands shaking, my mouth dry, my mangled Staedtler HB pencil wandering aimlessly across the void of my sketchpad, and my eyes pinned to a naked woman spilled on a black couch. The sketching-a-naked-woman part wasn’t to blame for the anarchy in my nervous system. Cubao’s red-light alleyways, the Internet’s red-light cyberspaces have almost desensitized me to the sight of a beautiful nude. Rather, it was the situation of drawing in the same room with masters such as Mauro "Malang" Santos, Arturo Luz, Benedicto "BenCab" Cabrera, Alfredo "Ding" Roces, Romulo "Ola" Olazo and Anita Magsaysay-Ho. Which is like trying to write this article with Jose Garcia Villa on the table beside me dreaming of blue monks swallowing pink raisins, or a frantic Nick Joaquin typing his illuminations about ancient Manila on a hundred-foot scroll.

That’s how intense that Saturday afternoon for me was at the PGA Cars showroom on EDSA near Greenhills.

When I got to the café at the second floor shortly before 12 noon, the artists were already at work. I met Doris Magsaysay Ho (Philippine STAR columnist, Anita's daughter and an artist herself), as well as Randy Young and Sari Ortiga, the owners of Crucible Gallery. Sari told me Saturday gatherings such as this began during the time Filipino masters Cesar Legaspi, Jose Joya and Onib Olmedo were still around. One of the very first nude-sketching sessions Crucible put together featured Tetchie Agbayani in ‘93, followed by Rosanna Roces a couple of years later. The latest session was organized because Australia-based Ding Roces was in the country for a short visit.

"There’s no show in mind; this is purely a gathering, a get-together. In fact, there’s no story here. The artists are the stories-in-themselves – Malang is here, Arturo Luz is here, BenCab is here, Ola is here, Anita is here."

We were all in this spacious room filled with sprawls of green and paper, and people drifting in and out of it. Canvases, paints, pencils, charcoals, paper cluttered one corner; potted plants in another. The artists formed a semi-circle around the slim model with ample breasts and really long legs who I was told was an FHM cover girl. A jarring irony: her name is Mona Lisa. Not Nicole or Apple or Kimberly, but Mona Lisa Sato. Either the Fates were playing cosmic dice on all of us that day or a girl came up with a really appropriate alias.

Ding Roces, an elderly man with stately white beard, took shots of "Mona Lisa" with his trusty Fuji digital camera. Roces has been living in Australia for several years already. He came home just for the launch of a coffeetable book on Malacanang, a project he worked on with National Artist Nick Joaquin. "I come home every now and then to recharge my batteries, and it has always given me a different perspective," Roces shared. "As you can see, this is not a regular session. This is more like a gathering of friends."

Before the artists took a break for lunch, National Artist Arturo Luz noticed that I was staring at him as he lighted a cigarette. "Yes I know, I smoke too much," Luz declared before walking out of the room.

I struck a conversation with Olazo and learned that the artist is recovering from lung surgery. Olazo – a warm, gregarious man – said he was supposed to go to Paris with his son Jonathan, but life, as John Lennon once sang, is what happens when we’re busy making plans. He had to rest easy. And Olazo hasn’t drawn in a long while; a year, exactly. But it didn’t show at all what with the way the old man masterfully dabbed shades and shadows on his nude sketches.

Over delicious duck dishes, the artists, as I expected, talked shop. I sat beside BenCab who said he likes the model’s face. The Baguio-based artist, a towering man, wore his trademark bonnet, a gray shirt and Bohemian maong. I showed him my "Tam-awan Village" T-shirt. His face lit up for a moment at the mention of the artists’ village he put up in La Trinidada, Benguet. (A digression: I went there years ago with some people from IBM. All of us were drawn to the Ifugao wheel of fate and took a spin. Most got HAPPINESS or something like it. I got DESPAIR – twice!)

I eavesdropped on the artists’ conversation about Picasso, Piero Manzoni, the Chilean Claudio Bravo, and the ineffable nature of art.

"Reinterpretation is very important," Roces stressed. "If you don’t reinterpret you’ll become something like the ‘Elvis Presley of the Philippines.’"

They also touched on the nagging "What is original?" question and the ancient clash between concept and craftsmanship.

"I’ve seen this book called Art in the Millennium," said BenCab, commenting that some of the works featured are more like drugstores than pieces of art. Manzoni’s name cropped up in the discussion.

Piero Manzoni was one crazy diamond. He put his thumb print on a batch of hard-boiled eggs; his guests at the gallery ate the entire exhibition in 70 minutes. Manzoni also made rabbit skin sculpture and red balloons ("45 Bodies of Air") filled with his breath – and was able to sell them, too. But this takes the cake: in the Sixties, the artist put his feces in 90 tin cans (30 grams each) and sent them to a number of galleries.

"We heard that the cans are already corroded, and some have already exploded," said BenCab, laughing. Yes, and one of these days, more galleries will be filled with inevitable exploding shit.

Someone mentioned about an exhibit wherein goldfish are put in a blender. And a glass window on the ceiling showing nothing but sky. And an empty white canvas with the disclaimer: Pollution will develop this painting. And an exhibit featuring 64 bricks – somebody accidentally poured paint on them and they had to be restored to their original state of "brickness."

This prompted Luz to quip, "I remember someone saying, ‘I can see the concept, but where is the art?’ It has always been a case of idea versus form, a clash between two extremes."

"Sometimes, there is less focus on the craftsmanship and more on the philosophy," observed Roces.

"Yes, and sometimes the explanation is better than the art itself."

"But once in a while they come up with great ideas," one of the artists opined – BenCab, I think.

At 2 in the afternoon, session resumed and all the artists took their places, including me (a skinny, longhaired frustrated artist). Except for Malang who meandered in and out of the room.

"I love drawing from life," BenCab told Roces. Luz, on the other hand, takes a lot of photographs in each session because he rarely does on-the-spot works. His photographs become the basis of his future artworks.

"I can make 50 drawings from these photos," Luz shared. "Unlike if I sat down and and drew from life."

I sat behind BenCab who was busily sharpening his pencils. I was awed not just by how beautiful his drawings of Mona Lisa were but by the short span of time he needed to complete them. Fifteen-minute poses equal breathtaking artwork in the BenCab aesthetics.

I told him over lunch how I admired his Rock Sessions, wherein he did portraits of Pinoy musicians such as Freddie Aguilar, Joey Ayala, Lolita Carbon, Mike Hanopol, Grace Nono, Yano, Wolfgang, and Joey "Pepe" Smith. (Before that, BenCab drew a series of portraits of London punks – mohawks, combat boots, safety pins and all.)

Was it hard to make the unpredictable Pepe pose?

"Not at all," BenCab answered. "He just sat there and played his guitar." The Eraserheads, on the other hand, didn’t want to pose at all, and Razorback snubbed the sessions.

"You know, I also did a series on Filipino writers such as Nick Joaquin, Greg Brilliantes, Jimmy Abad, Krip Yuson." BenCab’s regret was he wasn’t able to draw Franz Arcellana, one of the greatest Filipino writers who recently passed away.

Another thing I learned about BenCab is that during the late-Sixties, when the Beatles visited the country, Paul McCartney bought one of his paintings in Mabini – a Pampanga river scene with children, very Malang. "He even borrowed P70 from the driver because he didn’t have pesos. When I was putting together a coffeetable book, we sent McCartney a letter. I was surprised that he still has the painting, and was kind enough to send us transparencies."

* * *

I noticed that Anita Magsaysay-Ho – "Tita Anita" to all of them – started sketching the model’s face and worked her way down. Sari related that Anita still paints eight hours a day. "She’s always drawing something at home – flowers, anything. In sessions, despite her age, she’d be the first to sit and the last to stand up."

I remember the book A Sense of Serenity wherein Anita was paired with 12 Filipino poets, one of the most memorable marriages of painting and poetry ever undertaken. Marje Evasco’s "Origin" was put side by side with Anita’s "Women with Orchids ‘93"; my professor Ophelia Dimalanta’s "Flowers Are Not For Picking Or Are They?" with Anita’s "Women with Flowers"; and Cirilo Bautista’s "Watching the Garden" with Anita’s "Women with Lilies." Franz Arcellana, Jimmy Abad, and Ricky De Ungria were also featured. Great book.

"The whole session revolves around Anita," Sari shared. "When looking for a pose, the artists would ask her, ‘Tita Anita, is that okay?’ She’s everybody’s concern."

While Anita sketched, Ding Roces took snapshots of the model. I went to the man and took at peek at the pictures he took with his digital camera. "Every picture should tell a story," Roces said. "I don’t like the ones wherein the model looks artificial and anthropological. I don’t like her self-conscious poses. I prefer the ones where she’s moving, animated and human."

Photography, Roces added, is not presenting what should be or what we’d like to see but what is. One of his pictures showed BenCab hunched over his easel with the jutting figure of the woman symmetrical with the penciled figure. The old man liked the picture. So did I.

Malang, a jolly figure in a yellow Lacoste shirt, entered the room, cracked a few jokes with Crucible’s Charrie Elinzano and left. Sari explained, "Malang rarely sits down to do nude sketches. He would be dabbling on his canvas while the others are working on nude sketches. But he’s very active in the interactions."

* * *

When Sari asked me to get my sketchpad and draw, it was as if butterflies started playing roller derby inside my stomach. Yes, I was nervous. And yes, I had an all-too-human boner – at first. But when I started sketching, remembering all those drawing lessons ("Keep your eyes on the edges of the form," "Make your pencil describe and respond to that form," etc.), I started seeing the model not in terms of naked flesh but as pure form – her delicate swan neck, her long and slender torso, her eyes that peer into a seeming void in the room. The landscapes of her flesh – her "skinscapes." And after a few minutes, flesh was transubstantiated into art – or, in my case, a glorified stick figure in grayish pencil strokes.

Maybe that nameless, ineffable thing Malang, Luz, BenCab, Olazo, Roces, and Tita Anita posess has rubbed off on this starving non-artist. That incandescent madness the masters have can be quite contagious.