Sunday, July 21, 2013

Ernest Hemingway, one of my all-time favorite writers! Happy 114th birthday!

Let us remember and honor the great novelist and journalist, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, one of my all-time favorite writers---Ernest Hemingway---today on his 114th birth anniversary.

Image of Hemingway below, sourced from guardian.co.uk



Ernest Miller Hemingway (July 21, 1899 – July 2, 1961) was an outstanding American author and journalist. Hemingway produced most of his work between the mid-1920s and the mid-1950s, and won the Nobel Prize in 1954.

This image below of the 1954 cover of Time magazine on Hemingway, sourced from time.com



I admire Hemingway's powerful yet understated, elegant yet economic and clean literary writing style as well as his robust, adventurous life!


Image below of Hemingway in his youth, sourced from en.wikipedia.org





Hemingway published seven novels, six short story collections, and two non-fiction works.

Some of Hemingway's works:

Indian Camp (1926)
The Sun Also Rises (1926)
A Farewell to Arms (1929)
"The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber" (1935)
For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940)
The Old Man and the Sea (1951)
A Moveable Feast (1964, posthumous)
True at First Light (1999)

Image below of Hemingway's novel For Whom The Bell Tolls, sourced from washingtonpost.com


I had recently bought a private resort in Pansol, Laguna from the Collantes family, renamed it Hemingway Eco-Resort, and I'm now renovating this garden-style and tropical-inspired private resort as my humble way of honoring this outstanding and great writer.


Hemingway image below, sourced from gepl.org


Monday, July 15, 2013

Iggy Rodriguez oil painting recently sold at Salcedo Auctions in the Philippines

On June 29, 2013, Saturday afternoon---via telephone bids because I was at a business meeting in another part of Metro Manila---I had recently bought this oil painting of talented and award-winning artist Raoul Ignacio "IggyRodriguez from the Salcedo Auctions in Makati City, the Philippines. The seller originally bought it from his first solo art exhibit entitled "KIMI-IMIK" from November 10 to 30, 2009 at Blanc Compound in Mandaluyong City, Metro Manila.

I remember I was invited to the opening of that exhibit by businessman and art collector Jonathan Que, and that was the particular work that I liked the most in the entire exhibit but it was already sold. So when this painting "Hindi Laging Ganito" came up for resale this year, I made sure that I should buy it, not only because I admire the talented painter and 2009 CCP Thirteen Artists Awardee Iggy Rodriguez, but I am very impressed by that intriguing, thought-provoking, powerful, defiant, idealistic yet still hopeful masterpiece.

Without telling him that I had bought it, I texted him that it was sold in the auction, the artist texted back me that it is one of his favorite works and which he also used as image for protest rallies of activist groups in Metro Manila.


"Hindi Laging Ganito," oil on canvas, Photo courtesy of Blanc Compound
"Hindi Laging Ganito," oil on canvas, Iggy Rodriguez, Photo courtesy of Blanc Compound


Joel Vega, based in Nijmegen, the Netherlands, wrote in his "18th Moon" blog wrote this essay on the first solo art exhibit of Iggy Rodriguez, here are excepts:

Not only is Rodriguez in my artist-to-watch list after seeing, on-line, some of his earlier pen-and-ink works, but also the fact that it is his first solo (co-produced with Slash/Art Artist Initiatives) in a mainstream art venue.
Kimi is “timid” in Filipino, a trait often attributed by Western observers to many Filipinos. Whether the observation is correct or not, assertiveness is a social trait determined by one’s cultural genes in the Philippines where the politics of class, stature and money dominates or is the red line that crosses many social narratives. In Rodriguez’s chosen title the flipside of “Kimi” is “Imik” which in Filipino means “to speak out.” Not exactly a palindrome, the show’s title is a clever twist on the palindrome. More intriguing is the implicit suggestion: is the Filipino’s ‘timidity-assertiveness’ actually a Janus-face attribute?
Three works in Rodriguez’s Blanc show engage my attention... Hindi Laging Ganito,” (Not Always Like This) is a sharp commentary on capitalism, where the fruits of a capitalistic society is literally rooted or made on the bent backs of the working class. Rodriquez’s burnt reds and frenetic lines and brush strokes eloquently convey this urgent message of social inequality, a powerful work depicting the ‘powerless.’ 

In socially engaged art it is easy to slide into pamphletry and sloganeering and the pitfalls are many even for the skilled artist. And, perhaps, for many Filipinos, the art of speaking out remains a skill that has yet to be fully mastered and expressed particularly in the face of blatant corruption shown by those who are in power. Thus, the posited query: which part of the Janus-face should the Filipino show in these dog days of  rampant power abuse? 
In this debut solo show, and among his peers, Rodriguez has shown that an artist can eloquently speak out on the country’s ills without straying from or abandoning his own artistic vision.   
In his foreword to the Blanc exhibit, the Filipino social-realist writer Jun Cruz Reyes wrote that Rodriguez obviously still has a lot to say on the social ills that continue to plague Philippine society, adding that it would be a fitting gesture if the art world open the gates to welcome this young artist.

Image below of the artist, sourced from bulatlat.com