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Put Me in the Zoo is a famous children’s book by Robert Lopshire, originally released in 1960 on Dr. Seuss’s publishing imprint. It tells the story of a spotted leopard who can change his spots and their colors, and can even juggle them. He fails to convince two children that he is special enough to be in the zoo, and in the end they tell him where he belongs, and the story ends happily.

Little could Mr. Lopshire have known that his story would one day explain Damien Hirst’s spot paintings to a tee. In fact it could be surmised that Mr. Hirst, below referred to as $pot, was directly inspired by this story.

Put Me In The Zoo: Thinking about Damien Hirst, as a bedtime story. Thanks to BenCab for the alert.

Resolution for 2012: Visit museums regularly. Drag your friends. Get away from the crowds at the shopping malls. Give your brains something to process besides clothes and price tags. The malls aren’t going anywhere, more are being built every day, but the museums are struggling and they won’t survive your indifference. (Doesn’t that make you feel important, the thought that something will die without you?)

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Our first museum for the year: the Metropolitan Museum of Manila at the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas complex on Roxas Boulevard.

What to see at the Met:

1. The Suite Vollard by Pablo Picasso.

Pablo Picasso. Rembrandt and Woman with a Veil. Fundacion MAPRE’s Collections. Copyright Sucesion Pablo Picasso. VEGAP. Madrid, 2011.

100 etchings produced by the artist between 1930 and 1937, commissioned by the art dealer Ambroise Vollard. The Suite Vollard from the Fundacion MAPFRE Collection is one of the few complete sets in existence. Minotaurs, models, circus performers, lovers, order and chaos within the same frame. Essential for anyone with the slightest interest in modern art.

A reminder that before you can experiment, you have to have the skills; before you can be a revolutionary, you have to understand what you’re taking apart. Don’t give us that “I don’t care about tradition” crap, it’s just another way of saying “I can’t draw my way out of a paper bag.”

The exhibition is made possible by Fundacion MAPFRE and Fundacion Santiago. It closes on Saturday, 7 January 2012, so you have 3 days to see it. The Met is open from 9am to 6pm.

The British Museum recently acquired a complete set of the Suite Vollard; it will go on display in May 2012. So you can see the etchings before your friends in England do.

2. Foto a foto. A Portrait of Spain.

Photograph by Ramon Masats, Madrid, 1960. What a shot. What a shot.

Fifteen Spanish photographers depict the evolution of Spanish cities from the 1950s to the present. Presented by Accion Cultural Espanola and the Spanish Embassy on the occasion of the 150th birth anniversary of Jose Rizal.

Photograph by Francesc Catala-Roca.

3. Conscripcion, documents and maps from the National Archives showing how the colonial world produces documents, and documents produce the colonial world.

The exhibit features the Basi Revolt paintings by the 19th century artist Esteban Villanueva. The Basi Revolt broke out in Piddig, Ilocos Norte in 1807 when the Spanish authorities banned the private manufacture of basi, an alcoholic beverage made of fermented sugarcane. You do not come between the citizens and their drinks.

4. Hidalgo: The Colonial Subject as Master

Charon’s Boat.

The Christian Virgins Being Exposed to the Populace.

The major paintings of Felix Resurreccion Hidalgo.

5. The permanent exhibition of Pre-Colonial Gold and Pottery in the basement.

We hadn’t been in the basement since our grade school field trips. The Met was always on the itinerary, along with the Manila Aquarium, a doll museum that no longer exists, the Magnolia ice cream plant, and the Manila Zoo, where there was the thrilling possibility that the gorilla would throw a banana peel at someone.

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How to get to the Met: Go straight down Edsa and turn right on Roxas Boulevard. Or take the LRT to Vito Cruz and walk the rest of the way, or hop on the orange shuttle to the CCP Complex.

Price of admission: P100, less than the price of the fast food burgers we have decided to shun this year. (No fast food in 2012. We don’t love them, why should we consume them?)

Thanks to Metropolitan Museum of Manila director Gerry Torres for the tour and to his staff for the photos. Photography is not allowed at the museum. The preservation of the artifacts is somewhat more important than your need to post pictures of yourself online.

It’s a replica of an 18th century bust with its face sawn off and replaced with bathroom tiles for that pixellated effect.

Banksy wades into Catholic church sex abuse scandal with new sculpture

Apart from the obvious lack of academic qualifications there are good reasons why we should be barred from reviewing art. One, art shows elicit only two types of reactions from us: violence and indifference. Of the first type there is violent admiration—in which we become a total fan and, having no outlet for our enthusiasm, take to stalking the artist or waging war upon the artist’s detractors. On the other end there is violent revulsion—in which we must combat the urge to rip the painting from the wall and smash it upon its perpetrator’s head, although sometimes this expresses itself in fits of hysterical laughter.

But the most painful reaction is indifference. We don’t like it, we don’t dislike it, its existence is an unnecessary expense of energy and likely, so is its creator’s.

The other, more obvious reason is that we make the discussion about ourself. Lacking academic qualifications, left to my own devices, what else are supposed to talk about?

Zobel, D’Bayan and the Shock of the New in Emotional Weather Report in the Philippine Star. Whenever it comes out.

The year-long 25th anniversary celebration of the Philippine Star continues with a joint exhibition by Jaime Zobel and Igan D’Bayan at the Ayala Museum. D’Bayan thrives on shock value: exploding heads, deliquescing corpses, things seen on the covers of death metal LPs. Hmmm. But the real shock is what happens when Zobel applies his austere, formal approach to street art.

Zobel-D’Bayan is open to the public till Sunday November the 13th on the ground floor of the Ayala Museum.

Although we had the world’s most useless portable GPS (places of interest: Shopwise, Jollibee…) our trip from Makati to Pinto Art Museum in Antipolo took just half an hour in the light holiday traffic. After a good lunch at the Pinto Cafe (run by Bizu, have the evil chocolate souffle), we visited the permanent collections and then the Ciento Cincuenta exhibition celebrating the 150th birthday of our national hero, Jose Rizal.

We especially liked this piece by Leo Abaya: Di kailangang madaling maupos ang kandilang maliwanag ang apoy (The candle with the bright flame need not burn out quickly). Yes it’s a candle the height of a short man, with a bowler on top.

Sculpture by Daniel de la Cruz

Mixed media thingummy by Mark Justiniani

The humidity was off the charts so we fled into the car (air-conditioning) before we dissolved completely. As long as we were in Antipolo we decided to look for suman. We drove around town for half an hour but did not spot a single suman vendor. However we found lots of chicken-to-go stands and siopawan, and what we could only assume was a gay bar near the capitol. As the gay bar was still closed at 2.30 pm, we had ice cream instead. The McDonald’s in Antipolo is the nicest we’ve ever been in, much nicer than the ones in Makati.

We got back just in time for Ambeth’s talk on Rizal: History and Re-presentation. Ambeth gives the most fascinating lectures—he ropes you in with historical chismis and trivia, and before you know it you’re poring through the archives to satisfy your curiosity. (In a previous Rizal talk I had learned that Andres Bonifacio, the action man, was a stick figure while Jose Rizal, the nerd, was quite fit from doing weights.)

Ambeth opened his talk with photos of Rizal monuments, including this arresting tableau in Catbalogan: naked men hoisting a bust of the national hero.

We learned, among other things, that there are many fake photographs of Rizal’s execution at Bagumbayan. To check if the photo is authentic, look for the dog Isagani, mascot of the firing squad. Bagumbayan used to be killing fields during the Spanish colonial regime—on Sundays crowds gathered to watch executions. If you woke up late you could still drop by after lunch: the corpses were on view till 2pm.

Ambeth showed us archival photos of criminals being garroted. He quoted Teodoro Agoncillo’s statement that Philippine history really begins in 1872 with the execution by garrote of the priests Gomez, Burgos and Zamora. Before that there was only Spanish history. Ambeth noted that when Gomburza were executed Rizal was a child of 11 and Bonifacio, Mabini, Jacinto, Aguinaldo, Luna, del Pilar were all below the age of 10.

Gomez, Burgos and Zamora were buried in Paco Cemetery. At one point cemetery management had attempted to build a ladies’ lavatory on top of their graves.

After the Spanish era Bagumbayan the killing fields became Luneta/Rizal Park. A town in Germany presented the Philippines with a drinking fountain from which Rizal had drunk. It’s in Luneta to this day, but nobody knows what it is.

Rizal’s mortal remains are in the crypt under the Rizal monument—all except one of his vertebrae, which is in a reliquary at Fort Santiago. Rizal family tradition holds that it was chipped by a bullet from the firing squad. A DNA test would determine if it really is Rizal and not, say, a lechon.

There are many pictures of Rizal’s mom Teodora Alonzo with his skull. In fact there are many pictures of Jose Rizal, who always knew he would be famous. There are only two of his brother Paciano: one in his casket when he could hardly protest, and one in front of what appears to be a table but is really the ass of a 200-pound aunt diverting his attention from the camera.

Ambeth also talked about the competition to design the Rizal monument. It was won by a Swiss sculptor named Kissling, who had also designed a monument for William Tell, whose legend Rizal had translated into Tagalog. Rizal also translated five of Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tales, including Ang pangit na sisiw ng pato.

The manuscript of El Filibusterismo was stolen from the National Archives in the 1960s and held hostage for Php500,000. This was bargained down to Php5,000. The thief was the janitor, who claimed that he’d read Rizal’s manuscript with tears in his eyes. Probably because he could not read Spanish.

If the Noli and Fili manuscripts fell out of the sky and landed on our lap we could not read them. Thanks to knee-jerk nationalism we never learned Spanish and are effectively cut off from the work of our national hero.