2. SELF-PORTRAIT WITH VANITAS SYMBOLS
BAILLY, DAVID
1651
OIL ON WOOD, 65 X 97,5 CM
STEDELIJK MUSEUM DE LAKENHAL, LEIDEN
In this vanitas still-life, the border between the two genres of the still-
life and the portrait are blurred.
On the one hand, there are several portraits (as painting within the
painting) forming part of a still-life arrangement on the table. The
arrangement includes, among other things, a skull, an extinguished
candle, coins, a wine glass on its side, a pocket watch, roses, a
pearl necklace, a pipe, books and sculpture. Soap bubbles hover
above them as symbols of transience.
On the other hand, the entire collection functions as a statement
about the young man on the left, whose face displays the typical
features of a self-portrait. It may therefore be somewhat irritating
that the artist was in fact 67 years old when he painted this picture in
1651.
3. However, the contradiction can be solved when we consider
that his current features are shown in the small oval portrait,
demonstratively held out towards the viewer - a medium which
in itself already documents the transience of life. The youthful
artist's face, by contrast, shows Bailly as he was at an earlier
stage in his life, more than four decades previously. Thus, by
changing the time references of past fiction and present reality,
the painting suggests that the young artist is anticipating his
future age, which - though part of the present in 1651 - appears
to belong to the past, as conveyed through the medium of the
portrait. The young man, who appears to be so real within the
first-degree reality of the painting, really represents a state of
the past.
Unlike the repetitive, dull and often schematic topics of Dutch
vanitas still-lifes, the misleading time scale in Bailly's painting
adds a new dimension to the whole subject.
4. Skulls, flowers, and burning or extinguished candles
were among the symbols of the transience and
impermanence of human life in his vanitas paintings. He
also included portraits of himself in these paintings to
emphasize the fleeting nature of his own artistic
achievements.
5.
6. FILIPINO CONTEMPORARY ARTWORKS
Ronald Ventura is a contemporary Filipino artist known for his
dynamic melding of realism, cartoons, and graffiti. Portraying scenes
of chaotic disarray, Ventura culls from science fiction, Western
history, Asian mythology, Catholicism, and popular comic book
characters, in producing his work. “I will paint and update a painting
until I am satisfied. It’s like a film director who is shooting a scene—
at certain points he will feel like he needs more extras or more light,”
he said of his working method. “This is the closest analogy to my
painting process that I can think of. It is like a process of addition
and subtraction.” He was born in 1973 in Manila, Philippines, he
earned a BFA in painting from the University of Santo Tomas in
1993. In 2011, Ventura’s painting Grayground set a record for the
most ever paid for a work of Southeast Asian contemporary art,
when it sold for $1.1 million at Sotheby’s Modern and Contemporary
Southeast Asian Paintings auction in Hong Kong. His work has been
reviewed in The New York Times, and is included in many private
collections and Ventura continues to live and work in Manila,
Philippines.
7.
8. According to Mr. Igan D’Bayan, the existential mash-up of
styles (hyperrealism and graffiti, the classical and the
lowbrow — everything in between) continues for Ronald
Ventura in his painting titled “Grayground.” Here, as
presented with powerful forces represented by horses in
mid-stride going in opposite directions. A white thoroughbred
and ghostly horses going right; a couple of skeletal,
muscular, shadowy others going left. What lies between
(well, all over the place, actually) is the chasm, the void, the
gray area, mere anarchy and its happy riot of robots, dog-
men, disembodies figures, cryptic texts and menacing
doodles. Two red-and-black lines emphasize and (pardon
the pun) stress the tension, how — to steal a line from Yeats
— the center can no longer hold. For the artist, this is what
happens when two realms go on reverse: a hole is dug up
and all hell breaks loose. Therein lies the mystery.
9. There’s a lot of fun in guesswork. We could say that we as
viewers are confronted with how art is. Two forces (a
multitude, to be precise) go into opposite directions, leaving a
big gray empty lot of possibilities where nothing is real and
everything is permitted. No matter. This is where the wicked
party is. This is condition un-clash. This is Ronald Ventura’s
nihilistic playground. In Ventura’s multilayered painting
entitled Grayground (2011), the fusion between the physical
reals is made possible. The recurring theme of platonic or
metaphysical fall is magnificently interacted with the images
of robotics and modern technology Ronald is a leading figure
in Southeast Asian. His intricately layered paintings and
multimedia artworks intertwine historically laden symbols with
pop culture signifiers, creating richly imaginative
compositions that act as a metaphor for multifaceted national
identity of the Philippines.
