ROMULO OLAZO : DIAPHANOUS B-CCXXXV

Romulo Olazo’s “Diaphanous B-CCXXXV”

Sailing Like A Barge

By Cid Reyes

The Diaphanous Series are a landmark and, by now, canonical works in contemporary Philippine art, Sustained through the decades (amazingly close to half a century), a resplendent example of the inexhaustibility of his chosen abstract format, and by its varying size, a chameleon quality to surrender to an intimate space, as well as projecting a theatrical and operatic presence, commanding a vast and capacious corporate and institutional space.

In principle, the Diaphanous can be reduced to its essential state: an aesthetics of light and shadow. As the word means a quality of sheer transparency, the works summon light, or perception of it, through layer upon layer of gauze-like radiance, all contained within the vessel of a rigorously shaped form.

The enduring work of a lifetime, the Diaphanous concept has been tested and refined and forged in the smithy of Olazo’s studio. Now in the autumn of his life, Olazo continues to work, surmounting health crises, and like the two titans of Philippine art, namely National Artist Arturo Luz and Juvenal Sanso, both well into their eighties, draw healing and revivifying sustenance from their art. For these artists at the crown of life, every work that emerges from the studio is like the ritual of rebirth. It was Picasso, after all, who, in typical braggadocio fashion, proclaimed: “It took the eighty years to become young!”

“Late style” is what critics often label to the works done by artists in their ripe old age. The great French artist, Matisse recovering from serious surgery, rebounded, and his sick bed produced his astounding papiers colles, all made with a pair of scissors. That most Romantic of the Impressionists, Renoir, withering with arthritis, had the paintbrush tied to his hands. The American Georgia O’Keefe, darkness descending on her eyes, painted into the night, till she turned blind. The symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease slowly encroaching, Willem de Kooning, famous for his tempestuous brush strokes, mellowed as a painter of lyrical ribbons of paint in space. All produce “Late style” works which quality and significance critics continue to argue and discuss. While seemingly complimentary, the label itself carries a whiff of disguised disdain.

Providentially, by God’s immense grace and blessing, Olazo today is at a much better state of health than his artistic forbears. And by the way of an art historical background, we come to the essential question: are the works being produced now by Olazo to be considered “Late style”?

Consider the latest “Diaphanous B-CCXXXV.” Sailing like a barge out of Olazo’s studio, the work measures an impressive over six feet in height and spanning panoramically across twenty feet. To be sure, this is not the first time that Olazo has undertaken the challenge of monumental scale. He has installed similar scaled works at, for instance, the lobby of the Pacific Star Building in Makati. Through after the successful launching of his definitive coffee table book, one would think that the artist would be content to sit back and browse leisurely through his well-stocked shelves of art books.

The use of immense scale in the Philippine art is fairly recent vintage. It is one of the characteristics of the works of the New York Abstract Expressionists such as Jackson Pollock, de Kooning, Franz Kline, Barnett Newman, Robert Motherwell, and others. It was the late abstractionist Jose Joya, posthumously declared National Artist, who, after his arrival from US study grant, began to espouse large scale in his works, culminating in his “Pagdiriwang” at the Philippine International Convention Center (PICC). The other example of immense scale is the tapestry at the main auditorium of the Cultural Center of the Philippines, though; in fact it is merely a transposition in medium of a relative small original work by the late National Artist Hernando H. Ocampo, titled “Genesis”. By his own admission, Ocampo has never subscribed to what he described in one interview as the American philosophy of “The bigger, the better.”

For Olazo, however, the challenge of large scale has more to do with seeming irreconcilability between the fragility of light and the voracious expansiveness of space. Indeed, the technical aspects of its execution were not at all daunting. In fact, they were exhilarating. Though he now, understandably, works with assistants, Olazo of course remains the commanding intelligence behind his works. This present work is no exception. While it deploys all the trademarks of the past Diaphanous works, the thrust of the shape of imagery this time is tantalizingly humanistic. What registers in the eye is the undulation of sinuous shapes, wiggling as they emerge through a sweeping gradation of tones across the canvas surface. The softened curvilinear forms, with their concave and convex alternation, offer irresistibly rich analogues to visages, breasts, torsos, arms, and title of which is extremely appropriate for the particular Diaphanous: “Unique Form of Continuity in Space.”

Just what is the impetus for his repetition of units of shape and light? Recall that Olazo has previously explored such as direction in the Diaphanous of the “Kasuy” and the “Anthuriums.” In the Diaphanous of the “Figura”, the image of the Mother and Child, though not repetitively rendered, the idea was brought forth that the human figure, will always be profoundly affecting. Thus one could regard each individual figure in this large-scale Diaphanous as a ray of light, however serpentine the apparition. The potentialities of the figure can be a refreshing and generative force in other Diaphanous to come. Flexibility, adaptability, inventiveness, virtuosity, and yes, monumentality, are turning out to be the distinguishing characteristics of the Diaphanous.

And even as Romulo Olazo, despite advancing years, continues to reconsider the possibilities and strategies of the Diaphanous, the works he produces now – “Late Style” or not – are all daringly and glowingly entering their final, and classic stage.

Cid Reyes is the author of coffeetable books for National Artists Arturo Luz, Bencab, J. Elizalde Navarro, and Napoleon Abueva. He is the main writer for the coffeetable book of Romulo Olazo. He received a Best in Art Criticism Award from the Art Association of the Philippines (AAP).