작품 상세

Juan Luna, Binondo dated 2016 oil on canvas 48" x 48" (122 cm x 122 cm) Accompanied by a certificate signed by the artist confirming the authenticity of this lot PROVENANCE Private collection, Singapore First inaugurated as the Pacific Commercial Company Building (PCCB), what is now known as the Juan Luna Building was completed in 1922 according to the design of the American architecture firm Murphy, McGill, and Hamlin. With firms planted in New York and Shanghai, it follows the manner of the traditional New York Neoclassical designs of the Beaux-Arts style. In the book ‘Arkitekturang Filipino,’ UP Professor Gerard Licos describes the building’s original structure as a sweeping edifice “made up of a row of colossal columns” with the ground floor having arched openings, with fanlights emphasized by stones forming around the arch.” Sporting six-storied floors, the first floor is where the Manila branch of the International Banking Corporation is located, with the Pacific Commercial Company occupying the rest of the floors. The building faces the Pasig River, with its next-door neighbor another famed historical office building: the El Hogar Filipino building, built in 1914 by Ramon Irureta-Goyena and Francisco Perez-Muñoz. This structure is a pioneer in many construction aspects of Manila. With its Neoclassical detailing, PCCB dominated the riverside from the 1920s to the 1950s, inspiring the usage of smooth, white plastering that had rendered prior forms of wooden construction obsolete. Its extensive usage of reinforced concrete helped the building survive the continuous damage the city experienced during the destructive 1945 Battle of Manila. The passage of time, however, was not kind to the building — the mass exodus of businesses out of the riverside, leaving their previous building neglected. There, PCCB would lie nigh untouched for almost four decades. However, despite the building itself remaining untouched, the world around it did not. Though heavily damaged during the Second World War, Binondo’s postwar years are still economic and cultural hubs, with attempts to emphasize its Chinese heritage through architecture. Between the 1980s and 1990s, it became evident that Binondo was no longer Manila’s main business center; even so, it still has an active business community that draws people into its borders. Emmanuel Garibay’s 2016 Juan Luna, Binondo portrays the busy street of Juan Luna. With PCCB at the back – now called the Juan Luna E-Services Building – becomes not the historic building but the people who mill around it. Indeed, more than half of the canvas becomes the crowd in the middle of an afternoon stroll, with the Juan Luna Building only a background feature. An artist who manages to acutely place his pulse on the Filipino experience, Garibay’s city portraits are not the romantic nostalgia of the days past. Instead, his works embody the compulsions of expressive figuration, with his recognizable long-limbed subjects occupying every inch of his canvases. His social realist bent is no doubt nurtured by his days in Salingpusa, a group of student activists from the UP College of Fine Arts whose works reflect their beliefs that an artist’s role is to expose the common Filipino’s everyday struggles. This unfiltered portrayal of the Philippines’ daily life leads to his showcase of the “richness of the poor.” In his own words: “The whole idea of the richness of the poor is another way of saying, if you have less care in the world, you are actually wealthier than rich people whose main concern is to become richer.” This “richness of the poor” is highlighted in Juan Luna, Binondo. Nearly every sort of activity is shown in this painting – some people flock to one of the many food stalls, a tindera or seller engrossed in her phone as she guards her stall, a pedicab, and many more. Truly, this work is a feast for the eyes for those who are fortunate enough to uncover the stories hidden within the canvas. Juan Luna, Binondo, therefore, is not just a quick snapshot of an afternoon in the streets. Indeed, it melds the past and the present of this particular corner of Binondo. Beginning as a veritable symbol of American colonialism, Juan Luna Street eventually forged its own path toward Filipino identity, which has stood the test of time, both literally and figuratively. (Hannah Valiente)