In Defense of Appropriation

 

Essay 46. IN DEFENSE OF APPROPRIATION (The Art of Levi Yu)

In the same manner that Cubism and other modernist styles liberated painters from their compulsion to copy natural appearances, so did Post Modernism free the succeeding generation of painters from their obsession to be original. That's because in this Post Modernist era, appropriation, or the copying of the artworks of other painters is no longer looked askance at by everyone.

Post Modernism dates from when Pop Art - which was a reaction against  Abstract Expressionism's negation of recognizable image - arose. Pop Art and all the other styles that came after it were subsumed by art historians under the eclectic embrace of Post Modernism. But even before the arrival of Pop Art, appropriation was already resorted to by Marcel Duchamp who came out with his mustachioed image of Mona Lisa, and Salvador Dali who painted a facsimile of Vermeer's "The Lace Maker". A 1979 painting with a longish title by Art and Language  (Michael Baldwin and Mel Ramsden) could be mistaken for a drip and splatter painting by the arch-action painter himself, Jackson Pollock. There is also Mike Bidlo, who now rocks, though notoriously so, the global art scene by churning out imitations and paintings in the style of Picasso, Fernand Leger, and Matisse, among other masters of the past. Our very own Mabini painters have been at it, too, copying Fernando Amorsolo's rustic scenes for years without using fancy terms like appropriation to describe their artistic practice.

LEVI YU however is not a mere copyists. Yu does appropriations. His paintings were definitely inspired by and near-copies of the works of recognized Filipino painting masters, like Malang, Luz, and Bencab. But there is something novel in his approach, because Yu often mingled in a single work altered fragments of paintings by the masters I mentioned. It is as if his paintings are interactions or collaborative works by them. 

Prime example of those is Yu's painting of a Malang woman with little eyes and little mouth and angled black outline nose, swathed in voluminous cloths that were the trademark garb of Bencab's Sabel. Subtle humor radiates from this painting as Yu playfully "teletransported" that woman to the present and equipped her with a gadget to take selfies with.

Yu's interpretations of Arturo Luz's linear hill paintings are very similar to the originals. What prevented them from being sheer imitations is Yu's insertion in the valleys and foothills clusters of foreign-looking houses, and even a walled city. Ubiquitous in all his works though is the circle or orb which serves as some sort of signature that would identify these works as his.

Yu was born in Davao City on August 26, 1980, to Emma and painter William Yu. He grew up in Manila. He said that he started doing art when he was small, and later on, when he grew older, became his dad's assistant. However, it wasn't Fine Arts that Yu took up and finished in college - at San Beda-Alabang, where he graduated with honors - but Management major in Entrepreneurship. Before going into painting full time, Yu was a Property Consultant for Britanny Corporation.

Yu seems to be treading the same career path being trodden on now by that prolific "appropriationist" Mike Bidlo. Nothing wrong with that as long as Yu exhibits the manual dexterity and aplomb necessary in the execution of his works. Which he does, and which shouldn't surprise us, because Levi Yu after all is the son of the noted Cubist William Yu. Curiously though, Yu appears to avoid (for the meantime at least) painting in the Cubist manner like his dad. Which again shouldn't surprise us, because a precedent was set decades before by Malang's sons Steve and Soler, who opted not to follow their father's Cubist footsteps.

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