How big is your Borlongan?
Published Mar 3, 2018 04:05 pm
By AA Patawaran
A SMOKIMG FAMILY Elmer Borlongan's Pamilyang Menthol masterpiece from 1994 is displayed at the Metropolitan Museum of Manila
How big is your Borlongan? I don’t like it. It smacks of arrogance and consumerism invading the sacred realms of art, not that it hasn’t yet. It reduces art to, say, a car, how big is your SUV? Who doesn’t want a big, bad 2016 Mercedes-Benz G-Class? I do, don’t you? Or to a piece of real estate, how big is your unit at Edades or the Raffles Residences? How big is the view of the Pacific Ocean from your casita? Or to body parts, how big is your D or how big are your Bs, depends on who’s asking?
But I like it. How big is your Borlongan? It smacks of pop culture, especially as the question, which has taken the form of an urban legend, was supposedly asked among young, upwardly mobile professionals whose condominium wall space is as empty as a blank page on which the rest of their lives is to be written. I like it that art, like lately, has reclaimed its place of pride among the trappings of success in a world that’s just beginning to reel from the age of Sex and the City and American Psycho and Kim Kardashian, where it had gone completely material and materialistic. In those days—do you remember?—everything was anything you could buy, the more expensive, the better. Didn’t matter if it was no more than a square box of a bag, as long as it cost a lot of money. It didn’t matter if the shoes killed your feet, if you had to wobble in them like a tightrope artist, but with less grace than a tightrope artist, as long as you could read about them deadly shoes in a fashion magazine. We worshipped Anna Wintour, didn’t we? She who didn’t have a hint of soul in her monthly editorials in Vogue, in which, as soon as she took over Grace Mirabella, who took over Diana Vreeland, the true artist, and the only artist ever at the helm of Vogue as EIC, she turned everything like bags and shoes and belts and people, especially herself, into sacred objects, objects worthy of worship, and brandnames, once forbidden in the news, were all of a sudden in the headlines or titles, like The Devil Wears Prada, turning from proper to common nouns, turning into verbs, “Let’s FaceTime!” turning into adjectives, “I’m having a Chanel moment, omigod.” A bag is a bag is a bag, unless it’s a Birkin. It was all about money. I mean, who cares if you got style? Just buy the damn’ thing.
And then now—how big is your Borlongan? But how does one price one’s art? To borrow from the 1998 Ethan Hawke/Gwyneth Paltrow-starrer Great Expectations, “do you charge by the inch or by the hour? By its size, square footage…how did we say you should price your art?” The answer, supplied by the Estella character, was of course, “…by its beauty.”
But how does one measure beauty? I’d say it’s the fantasy, some place I’ve never been before. But in a Borlongan, in Elmer Borlongan’s art, as others see it there, it might be the reality, the use of figures, often disfigured and odd-colored, to explore or express intense feelings or provocative insights or, in Borlongan’s case, as represented by over 150 works on display at his current 25th anniversary exhibition at the MET, a mirror of his deep feelings toward family and social awareness as well as a chronicle of his own personal transformations, shifting, for instance, from urban to rural themes.
I don’t like the question, but I do like it. How big is your Borlongan? As an art critique, it says a lot about how big, meaning how significant, his art is, how valuable, how covetable, how… beautiful. I prefer such an expressive critique over a 2,000-word review that uses high-falutin words like juxtaposition or palimpsest or self-important phrases like—brace yourself!—“where the object is neither the object of objecthood nor the art-object, it is rather the oblique object of intentions.” Ibuprofen, please!
I would have liked Borlongan’s Pamilyang Menthol from 1994, if I could still own it, to put on my bedroom wall, especially once I’ve ditched the habit, as some kind of memento. Maybe there is something sexy about it, like a cigarette after sex. Maybe there is something deliciously forbidden about it, like the orgy before the cigarettes. But, to the artist, as he said so himself, it’s just a family smoking, and I think I like it as it is, its sluggish lines, the scarlet couch, the swirls of smoke. Just don’t effing tell me it will transmogrify me!
So how big is your Borlongan? The question is provocative, if only it leads more of us into buying more art, more culture, more books, more beauty that is beyond material, more beauty that doesn’t need to be upgraded in three months or replaced with a new model in six, something with a soul that’s meant to last, something so much bigger than its size or its shape or the reputation of its creator, way bigger than its cost, its market value, or even its resalability, something that is beautiful all because, simply because it is.
The author is also on Twitter and Instagram as @aapatawaran and Facebook as Arnel Patawaran.
A SMOKIMG FAMILY Elmer Borlongan's Pamilyang Menthol masterpiece from 1994 is displayed at the Metropolitan Museum of Manila
How big is your Borlongan? I don’t like it. It smacks of arrogance and consumerism invading the sacred realms of art, not that it hasn’t yet. It reduces art to, say, a car, how big is your SUV? Who doesn’t want a big, bad 2016 Mercedes-Benz G-Class? I do, don’t you? Or to a piece of real estate, how big is your unit at Edades or the Raffles Residences? How big is the view of the Pacific Ocean from your casita? Or to body parts, how big is your D or how big are your Bs, depends on who’s asking?
But I like it. How big is your Borlongan? It smacks of pop culture, especially as the question, which has taken the form of an urban legend, was supposedly asked among young, upwardly mobile professionals whose condominium wall space is as empty as a blank page on which the rest of their lives is to be written. I like it that art, like lately, has reclaimed its place of pride among the trappings of success in a world that’s just beginning to reel from the age of Sex and the City and American Psycho and Kim Kardashian, where it had gone completely material and materialistic. In those days—do you remember?—everything was anything you could buy, the more expensive, the better. Didn’t matter if it was no more than a square box of a bag, as long as it cost a lot of money. It didn’t matter if the shoes killed your feet, if you had to wobble in them like a tightrope artist, but with less grace than a tightrope artist, as long as you could read about them deadly shoes in a fashion magazine. We worshipped Anna Wintour, didn’t we? She who didn’t have a hint of soul in her monthly editorials in Vogue, in which, as soon as she took over Grace Mirabella, who took over Diana Vreeland, the true artist, and the only artist ever at the helm of Vogue as EIC, she turned everything like bags and shoes and belts and people, especially herself, into sacred objects, objects worthy of worship, and brandnames, once forbidden in the news, were all of a sudden in the headlines or titles, like The Devil Wears Prada, turning from proper to common nouns, turning into verbs, “Let’s FaceTime!” turning into adjectives, “I’m having a Chanel moment, omigod.” A bag is a bag is a bag, unless it’s a Birkin. It was all about money. I mean, who cares if you got style? Just buy the damn’ thing.
And then now—how big is your Borlongan? But how does one price one’s art? To borrow from the 1998 Ethan Hawke/Gwyneth Paltrow-starrer Great Expectations, “do you charge by the inch or by the hour? By its size, square footage…how did we say you should price your art?” The answer, supplied by the Estella character, was of course, “…by its beauty.”
But how does one measure beauty? I’d say it’s the fantasy, some place I’ve never been before. But in a Borlongan, in Elmer Borlongan’s art, as others see it there, it might be the reality, the use of figures, often disfigured and odd-colored, to explore or express intense feelings or provocative insights or, in Borlongan’s case, as represented by over 150 works on display at his current 25th anniversary exhibition at the MET, a mirror of his deep feelings toward family and social awareness as well as a chronicle of his own personal transformations, shifting, for instance, from urban to rural themes.
I don’t like the question, but I do like it. How big is your Borlongan? As an art critique, it says a lot about how big, meaning how significant, his art is, how valuable, how covetable, how… beautiful. I prefer such an expressive critique over a 2,000-word review that uses high-falutin words like juxtaposition or palimpsest or self-important phrases like—brace yourself!—“where the object is neither the object of objecthood nor the art-object, it is rather the oblique object of intentions.” Ibuprofen, please!
I would have liked Borlongan’s Pamilyang Menthol from 1994, if I could still own it, to put on my bedroom wall, especially once I’ve ditched the habit, as some kind of memento. Maybe there is something sexy about it, like a cigarette after sex. Maybe there is something deliciously forbidden about it, like the orgy before the cigarettes. But, to the artist, as he said so himself, it’s just a family smoking, and I think I like it as it is, its sluggish lines, the scarlet couch, the swirls of smoke. Just don’t effing tell me it will transmogrify me!
So how big is your Borlongan? The question is provocative, if only it leads more of us into buying more art, more culture, more books, more beauty that is beyond material, more beauty that doesn’t need to be upgraded in three months or replaced with a new model in six, something with a soul that’s meant to last, something so much bigger than its size or its shape or the reputation of its creator, way bigger than its cost, its market value, or even its resalability, something that is beautiful all because, simply because it is.
The author is also on Twitter and Instagram as @aapatawaran and Facebook as Arnel Patawaran.