Of Fabric Prints, Japonisme, and Klimt

Essay 55. OF FABRIC PRINTS, JAPONISME, AND KLIMT

By Arnaldo Bernabe Mirasol 

MYLENE QUITO's art exudes feminity all over. Her paintings of blossoming flowers, mother and child, and even her abstracts, are all decorated with patterns not unlike the prints of dainty girl dresses. Mylene might have arrived at this style on her own, without her being influenced by artists doing similar works, but this style, Pattern and Decoration (P&D), has been around since the mid-1970s. The P&D Movement was organized to attract the critical attention monopolized then by conceptual and minimalist art. The P&D's distinct trait was its appropriation of fabric and wallpaper patterns, and also the arabesques and ornate designs of Islamic and other non-Western art. 

Although often associated with feminism and feminine crafts like quilting, embroidery, and the like, the P&D Movement also has male adherents and practitioners. There's nothing surprising in that because this patterning and decorative tendency in painting went back 125 years earlier as can be seen in the output of Gustav Klimt and his associates in the Vienna Secession movement. 

Gustav Klimt, who Mylene mentioned as one of her idols, is a big influence in the evolution of her style. Although she added that she also admires Salvador Dali and Vincent Van Gogh, Mylene's recent works were totally purged of hints of the two painters' influence. No trace whatsoever of Dali's surrealism and Van Gogh's swirling impastos surfaced in any of her new paintings. But of Klimt's iconography, there are many. Yet, I can say that Mylene managed to digress and veer gradually away from the style of Klimt, and introduce her own original motifs and composition devices into her paintings. While retaining the floral and other fabric design-like patterning in her works in the manner of Klimt, Mylene pared and simplified her human figures to the point of abstraction, which Klimt never did.

A certain orientalism, or more specifically, "Japonisme", crept into Mylene's paintings, with her usage of what seem like lotus flower as central motif for her work, and her appropriation of an image of Mt. Fuji, the rising sun symbol, and the Great Wave image by that renown Japanese graphic artist of long ago, Hokusai. Mylene told me that she was a great fan of many things Japanese - like their lovely land and unique culture - and made special mention of Hokusai. She explained that the painting with the great wave, the rising sun, and Mt. Fuji is her homage to him 

Mylene was born in Tondo, Manila, to Evangeline Malate and Arnel Quito. But she grew up in Pampanga, a province north of Manila. Mylene started young in her art journey. She started drawing, out of the blue, when she was only seven years old. She claimed that no one had inspired her, because no one she knew when she was still a child was into art. Like many painters born of working class parents, Mylene was not able to take up any formal schooling in fine arts. She was self-taught. And like many painters born with innate artistic talent, lack of a diploma from a Fine Arts college proved to be no hindrance to her attainment of her goal of making a mark in the art scene. Mylene had attracted quite a number of clients who valued and collected her works. She had also exhibited extensively not only here in the Philippines, but also in Japan, China, Malaysia, and Singapore.

Mylene's mother, who had to work abroad as a part-time seamstress to help provide for their family, inspired her so. Mylene's fixation with fabric patterns wasn't due solely to her admiration for Klimt's work. She disclosed that her paintings will serve as forever reminders of the time when their mother used to make dresses herself for Mylene and her siblings. In the same way that Mylene's mother invested time, effort, money, and love in sewing those dainty printed dresses, so did Mylene invested time, effort, money, and most of all, love, in creating these, her painting tributes to her.