Art and eco-literacy: Re-reading the plains of Amorsolo, re-reading the plane of the eye/I

• Main Author: Salazar, Jaime Oscar M.
• Format: text
• Published: Animo Repository 2009
• Subjects: Nature (Aesthetics); Art; Environmental literacy; Fernando Cueto Amorsol—Criticism and interpretation; Arts and Humanities; South and Southeast Asian Languages and Societies
• Online Access: https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/faculty_research/4116
• Institution: De La Salle University

In a time when the entire planet is in peril, what can the role of art be? This paper suggests that when the approach of the art educator is grounded in the lived experience of students, the power and relevance of both art and environmental education increase, thereby creating opportunities to change not only students’ attitudes, but also their behavior toward vital ecological issues. Such an approach, which here is specifically informed by Suzi Gablik’s concept of “connective aesthetics” as well as the principles of eco-literacy, involves the critical reading of images in the interest of interrogating the relationship between human beings and the environment, developing an abiding sense of place, and awakening to a fuller awareness of one’s role in the all-too-urgent task of preserving and sustaining the environment. This paper takes as its example the art of Fernando Cueto Amorsolo, the first national artist, and offers an alternative to the present hegemonic discourse on the artist and his oeuvre, which tends toward sacralization— “his art, our heart”, the ongoing multi-venue retrospective exhibition of Amorsolo’s work, is a particularly timely example—and therefore deadens his legacy. In view of the national rice crisis that threatens the already precarious security and self-sufficiency of the country—not to mention the global food crisis that has raised the specter of mass famine—it seems imperative to re-view and re-vision how rice, the staple of every Filipino table, is represented by and in Amorsolo, what such representations can mean for the contemporary viewer, and how such meaning can re-seed the agency of the eye/I so as to cultivate the possibilities and conditions for a harvest of change.