MONNAR BALDEMOR'S EVASION AND ESCAPE

By Arnel Mirasol

The boy Monnar watching his father Manny Baldemor at work

How does a son escape the long shadow cast by a famous father? Monnar Baldemor does it by signing his paintings merely with his first name, and by creating works antipodal in both theme and technique to the paintings of his father Manny.

Since first stepping into the University of the East School of Music and Fine Arts in Caloocan, Monnar had tried his best to downplay his relationship to the famous painter Manny Baldemor. He said that the pressure on him to prove himself worthy of being called Manny's son was palpable. What Monnar dreaded most at that time was to be compared to Manny and be found wanting.

That's the reason why Monnar pursued cartooning and illustrations when he graduated from college in 1989 with a BFA degree major in Advertising. He shunned serious painting for several years, and worked as graphic artist and later on as art director for the magazine Woman Today. He also did comic strips on the side ( sample below)  for newspapers and Glitter Magazine. He is working for sixteen years now as Design Director for Women's Journal Magazine.

But the call of the muse was insistent, and the son of the famous painter cannot ignore it for long.

Monnar did what another former cartoonist did. Like Malang, Monnar left cartooning and went full time into painting. But Monnar, unlike Malang and his father Manny, didn't adopt the cubist style originated by National Artist Vicente Manansala. He marched to the beat of different drummers, so to speak. And they are all foreigners. Monnar professed admiration for Hieronymus Bosch, Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dali, Friedensreich Hundertwasser, and Sergio Aragones : an admiration  manifested all too clearly in the iconography and the powerful narrative content of his drawings and paintings (below).

Monnar didn't explicitly mentioned Paul Klee among his favorites, but I discern traces of Klee's influence, inadvertent though it may be, in the way Monnar colors his works (below), and his fascination with lines. Paul Klee's famous quote about the dot being a line that went for a walk was probably Monnar's (who is an ardent proponent of dynamic linearism in art) guiding artistic principle too. We can perhaps also attribute this linearism and fondness for filling up his canvases with distorted figures to Monnar's past as a cartoonist. Monnar's early works are composite caricatures elevated to the status of fine paintings.

Odyssey

His painting Terminal Illusions (below right) is a case in point. At first glance, this painting would induce viewers to conclude that it is but another surrealist painting that deals with metaphysics and dreams. But Monnar promptly disabused me of that notion. He explained that this painting is merely about the traffic problem in Metro Manila and elsewhere. He opined that no matter how many overpasses and fly-overs are constructed, the problem would still be there - unresolved and stressing out everyone all around.

Though obfuscated somewhat by incongruously juxtaposed images that hinted at some psychological dysfunction, the very mundane and humor-laced message of this painting would make it an editorial cartoon, blown up to medium-sized painting proportions.

Monnar has mellowed now. He had eschewed social commentary in his recent works, excising from his graphic repertoire grotesqueries, like disembodied body parts and some such incongruities, that would make his paintings pregnant with meaning. These new works (below) approach non-objective abstraction because of the reduction and simplification they have undergone. These abstract paintings, with their plethora of twisting lines, are the most Klee-esque among his works. They looked celebratory, and would perhaps indicate Monnar's coming to terms with things as they are and escape from a rather provocative artistic past.

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The Smaller Cloud

City of Lights

Suburbia

Soft Act with Architectonic Future

Monnar will hold a solo show at the Artologist Gallery this coming August. This show would mark Monnar's return to clear figuration. The paintings for this show, which are about fiestas, are a far cry from the paintings that Monnar used to make. When asked about the shift, Monnar said "Ganyan dapat ang mga artists. Kailangan flexible ka. Hindi puro angst. Meron din naman tayong lighter side.

Even though Monnar's new works have traces of Manny's themes and technique, he won't be compared anymore to his father. That's because Monnar, early in his career, had already produced a body of works so packed with power and so replete with profundities that the painters he'll be compared to if he maintains his course are the artists who are stars of the international art firmament. And that could only mean one thing - Monnar Baldemor is beginning to cast a long shadow himself.

Monnar with wife Cheryl