Ars et Natura

Map of the Philippine Islands, 1652: Catholic Luzon and Visayas in yellow, Muslim Mindanao in green The Philippines constitutes the only true end-point of the world.      ~Pierre Cahunu      Les Philippines et le Pasifique Ibériques (1960)                          On the other hand Spanish influence brought in Arab practices. Often forgotten is that a major part of Spain was under Arab and Berber influence for eight centuries. Many practices we consider Spanish are thanks to this influence. For instance, the Spanish fondness for flavoring and coloring rice with spices, like saffron, and mixing scraps of food with it, as in paella, has affinities with Near Eastern styles of treating rice. Thus, while the Maranao acquired the habit of coloring their yellow rice from fellow Moslems coming in from a geographically western direction, we got ours from the Spaniards who sailed in from the rising sun, the Americas. Fernando Nakpil Zialcita On how East meets West in Filipino cuisine Authentic T

Diaphanous #146 (1978, Romulo Olazo)                          While the pleasure of a Javanese meal derives in part from the ornate medley of spices, the pleasure of a Tagalog or Visayan meal is more subtle. The faint sourness does not totally hide the natural flavor of the fish or the meat. It half reveals the juices, half conceals them. This quality that I call “translucency” appears as well in our other art forms. Even the houses of wealthy nineteenth-century Filipinos does not have the gold-encrusted, jungle-like lushness of the carved screens and walls of Javanese and Balinese palaces. Instead interior wall transoms have strips of lacelike tracery, often in natural finish and exterior walls with sliding window panels whose flat capiz shell panes half-reveal, half-conceal the landscape while catching its shadows. Our traditional textiles in Luzon and the Visayas do not have the silk, the gold, or the ornate vegetation of batik. Rather they are delicate gauzes, as in piña, jusi, an

There is no intellectual exercise which is not ultimately useless. ~ Jorge Luis Borges

Pamela Anderson for Vivienne Westwood                          What makes me happy most is reading. That is how I spend my time. I think it’s the most concentrated form of experience you can have.                          When I’m reading, I’m thinking. That’s what I’m doing. You’re forming your own opinions.                          I’ve got two things in my life. Fashion, which I really enjoy and I’m very glad to do it—for years I didn’t want to do it, I just did it out of duty, because if I didn’t do it, it wouldn’t exist, and I thought it was good and I should do it—but the story of my life is when I finish this pair of trousers, I could read my book.                          I’ve got a category called “all these other things” which I hardly ever get time to do, but I do make time, whenever I can, to read. I don’t go on holidays, I don’t do things, I just read. Vivienne Westwood The Goddess Guide interview (2012)