The Art of Gore

 

Amirasolo and Other Essays

Part 3. In my Book

Essay 47. THE ART OF GORE

Years ago, I saw on television a Filipino painter who uses real human skulls as his painting medium. I repeat, as painting medium, not as motif or subject matter. The painter broke the skull into several pieces and used each as some kind of chalk which he rubbed on big squarish sheets of abrasive paper (papel de liha) which served as his canvases.

The abstract images he produced consisting of white striations and hatchings would have won the nod of art enthusiasts with modernist leanings or taste. But the gross nature of the medium I'm sure would repulse them instead. The fellow apparently relished demonstrating his technique as revealed by his brisk manner and his quite articulate reply to the interviewer's queries. He was obviously euphoric; he savored to the last delectable morsel his fifteen minutes of fame.

Featured in the same program was another painter who uses his own blood as painting medium instead of watercolor, acrylic, and oil. This painter treads the path similar to that walked on by other painters who, in the name of innovation and uniqueness, utilize edible ingredients like fried garlic and coffee as their painting medium.

Attempts to break out of the box and do things the novel way are commendable, indeed. But, these painters should also see to it that their finished works would be durable. The buyers of these artworks will be shortchanged if the 'pigment' used begin to fade, crumble, and deteriorate after just a year or two. Watercolor and oil paints have binders mixed with their pigments (gum arabic for watercolor and linseed oil for oil paints) which hold the pigment particles in suspension and make them adhere to the paper or canvas. Without those binders, watercolors and oils done centuries, or even just decades ago, wouldn't have lasted and remained in mint condition up to this day. Now, if the blood, fried garlic, and coffee pigments don't have binders mixed with them, then, I doubt if they would last for a long time 

What could have impelled these painters to use untried pigments as their medium must have been their craving to attract the attention of journalists on the prowl for unique stories. They perhaps suspect that their talent is not remarkable enough to attract media attention. They are wrong there, because their outputs spoke volumes about the innate talent they all have, which I'm certain would thrust them later into prominence. The process of being recognized as a significant artist is a long and arduous one. There are absolutely no shortcuts. The celebrity they now basked in is certainly short-lived. They run the risk too, if they persist in their ways, of being considered more as curiosities---oddities---rather than as significant artists by those involved in the art scene here.

Although graphic renderings of the human skull is not the thing of the guy who used cracked skulls as drawing tool,  I guess i can include him among the disciples of the Skull School. I can feel that he shares the same impulse in his art making, which is necrophilia and love of gore. The skull-schoolers espouse an upside-down aesthetics. They see beauty in rot. They confused their preoccupation with arcana and esoterica as profundity. But as I have said before, I suspect that what may have impelled these people to go the gross route is their obsessive craving for publicity. They must have realized early on that the flouting of rules and conventions is almost always newsworthy. 

And they are right, too. Salvador Dali may have employed similar tactics to generate publicity for his art but his methods now look amusing and even wholesome. He may have disrupted societal conventions and overstepped the limits of good taste, but everything he did was done tongue-in-cheek. Dali was just hamming. His feigning lunacy was just a marketing ploy. And let's not forget that for all his clowning, Dali, was in fact the great artist that he loudly touted himself to be. In my opinion, only Picasso outranked him as the greatest painter of the twentieth century.

I don't know if that Filipino artists still use human skull as his painting medium. I suppose and hope that he had stopped doing so and realized that true fame only comes to those who pursue and excelled in their artistic endeavours by going the tasteful route. Fame achieved by being famously disagreeable is notoriety. It is not the kind of publicity we artists should crave for.

(The image above, titled THE TRAVELING COMPANION, is one of my two illustrations for the longest story in the picturebook "Once Upon a Time". It was also one of the two that remained unsold at the end of my 2001 solo art exhibit at the Crucible Gallery. The Traveling Companion remained in my possession for some time.  Years after the show, I offered it to one of my collectors, May C. Reyes. She bought it, though with some misgiving on her part, I presumed. I say that because although she'd already paid for it, she seemed reluctant to have it delivered to her. It could be because of the skulls that are part and parcel of the story and the artwork. I understand because the skulls are creepy, all right. After maybe around two years, she send me a message saying that she already wants the Traveling Companion handed over to her because her son saw and liked it and wants to keep it for himself. So, I brought the piece to our meeting place together with "The Emperor's New Clothes", the other unsold piece, which she also bought.)