100 Masterpieces of Painting

Last year, I had a sudden yearning for art. The year before that, I was looking for spirituality, and I still am. It is, in my view, part of my own natural quest for meaning. It is my ascent in Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Three promotions in five years have earned me a good salary for my age and making good investments as everyone was risk averse because of the global recession has meant a higher level of material security than I felt five years ago. I obviously would not have been promoted if I had not earned recognition at work so I do not want for affirmation. It was only a matter of course that I began looking for the true, the good, and the beautiful as Imelda or, more accurately, Plato would put it.

So for my 26th birthday, I bought myself a copy of Michel Nuridsany's 100 Masterpieces of Painting. It was quite expensive, but it was all worth it. I was treated to page after page of full color reproductions of 100 masterpieces of art. While I did go through a high school subject called Communication through the Arts, and six units of Humanities in college, I never really appreciated art until I read this book. It was an immersion into the creative history of humanity from the cave paintings of Lascaux to the post modernist works of the late 20th century. My appetite for art was only whetted even more by an encounter with Ramon Hofilena of Silay, art connoisseur and raconteur par excellence. I almost bought a couple of abstract works by Hechanova from him. Maybe I should have given in to impulse.

I have since continued to read about art. I have visited art galleries and museums and went to the latest ManilART fair. But aside from a painting of a mother and child given by my wife's friend to her when she was pregnant, I have yet to really start my art collection. Armed with more knowledge, and, hopefully, a more refined taste, I hope to fill my home with art so my kids will grow up seeing beauty in a world that is often ugly and painful.