Amorsolo: The cost of fear
On April 24, 1972, Fernando C. Amorsolo breathed his last. Three days later, he rose again (figuratively) as the first national artist for painting. One could say that the national artist award was created for him, or began because of him. With Proclamation No. 1001, April 27, 1972, former President Ferdinand Marcos Sr. established the national artist award to recognize, celebrate, and thank artists for their contributions to the nation. After all, he declared, “art is an expression of the national genius.”
Amorsolo is often referred to as the “Master of Light.” His paintings captured the blazing Philippine sunlight absent from the works of the generation before him: Juan Luna, Felix Resurreccion Hidalgo, and his uncle Fabian de la Rosa. Amorsolo’s cheerful canvasses remind us of the Spanish master, Joaquin Sorolla, who captured the sunlight and spirit of Spain in his canvasses. While thinking of the death and destruction that came with the so-called “Liberation of Manila,” now billed as the 1945 Battle for Manila, I remembered that I have Amorsolo’s desk diary for 1942 in my files. He survived the war and perhaps dealt with post-traumatic stress disorder by capturing the smoldering ruins of Manila in many drawings and paintings.
Amorsolo’s grocery list for 1942 contains jottings of daily expenses. Passed over as irrelevant “trivia” by constipated historians, these mundane lists reflect Amorsolo’s household, a sliver of life in Japanese-occupied Manila. One way to know a person is to see how he spends his money. In these lists, the “Master of Light” is revealed through his shadows—his daily spending.
On Jan. 1, 1942, a Thursday, he wrote in Spanish: “El nuevo año paso en Mi Existencia (A new year has passed in my existence).” He added that the night before, the eve of the New Year, he, Nanding, Adring, Angel, and Domingo were in complete silence at 8 p.m. On the first day of 1942, he spent: desayuno (breakfast) 45 centavos; mercado (marketing) P2.20; soap 70 centavos; botica (medicines from the drugstore) P2.50; cine niños (children watched a movie) P2; lechon (roast pig) P2.
Expenses for Jan. 2, 1942. Friday: mercado P3; gasolina P4.25; botica P6.50; café P1.50; Ah Sy P3; cajes conserva (canned goods) P9.50. Jan. 3: botica P1.90; gas 50 centavos; papers 20 centavos. Jan. 4, 1942: botica 30 centavos; mercado P2; gas 80 centavos; comentano (cementerio?)P3; camote 75 centavos; pants P3; plancha (iron or did he mean ironing service?) 50 centavos; gas 60 centavos. Jan. 5, 1942: desayuno 40 centavos; mercado P3; carromata (horse-drawn carriage ride) 35 centavos; popcorn 15 centavos; camote 25 centavos; Kisses 30 centavos.
Expenses for the month that stood out were: two entries for laterias on different days: P3.50 and P2.30. Did he mean canned goods, or could these be “loterias” (lottery tickets)? If so, those were quite a gamble in those uncertain times. Unusual expenses were: aguinaldo (Christmas gift) P2.75; cinturon (belt) P4; cuaderno, lapis (notebook and pencil) P3.50; gatas (milk) P1.35; candies P2 (if for him, not the children, this explains his diabetes). I find it charming that to keep the young ones happy, there was an expense for movies, popcorn, and candies. Adring, Nanding, and Oscar are names that recur all throughout and in one instance Amorsolo paid 50 centavos each for their cedula (residence certificate). The list goes on and on. I won’t bore you, dear reader with more of the same.
For the January expenses alone, some preliminary observations arise. For context, the Japanese began the invasion of the Philippines 10 hours after the bombs dropped on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 8, 1941. Manila was declared an open city and the Japanese marched in on Jan. 2, 1942. That year, Amorsolo’s world changed from the “pistaym” or “peace time” frozen in his bucolic landscapes peopled with beautiful dalagas and smiling carabaos to a time of uncertainty and terror. His expenses for the first two weeks of January 1942 suggest an effort to stock his pantry and secure the household.
On Jan. 2, he bought P9.50-worth of canned goods and P14-worth of rice on Jan. 15. Camote (sweet potato) is a recurring expense: Jan. 4, 5, 13, 15, and 22 suggesting substitution when the staple was scarce or expensive. He bought platanos (bananas) and buko (coconut) not as props for still life paintings but for his daily meals, the nonnegotiable being breakfast. He valued his morning meal as much as his painted morning sunlight. His expenses ran the gamut from survival food like camote and rice to wartime luxuries like: lechon, Kisses, candies, and popcorn.
On Jan. 12, he paid 50 centavos for batteries and lightbulbs. Allowances or salaries were doled out regularly to Adring, Nanding, Maria, Federico, Jaime, and others. A certain “Ah Sy” was paid various sums, six times in the month. His largest single expense was P50 for casa (house/house rental/mortgage). A roof over their heads cost more than all the food bought for the month.
Amorsolo was exceptional; he could actually live on his art. On the surface the expenses cover a big multigenerational household; underneath, they reflected the cost of uncertainty and fear.
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Comments are welcome at ambeth.ocampo@inquirer.net
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