There are anecdotes incorporated into many authentic art pieces. As a matter of note, a collector unabashedly remarked: “If an art work does not have a story to tell, aside from the one that we can hold in our hands and feast our eyes with, the art piece, somehow, diminishes in value.”
A professional art broker also quipped: “Some buyers ask for these stories. Many of these episodes go beyond the document of authenticity, and these add a lot of flavor to any art work.”
Let us begin with a narrative about some Botong Francisco watercolors.
It is said that a seamstress became so enamored with the watercolor studies of Botong that were forwarded to the costume department for execution that she began collecting them. Many years hence, those watercolor drawings are priceless and catalogued in the inventory of a prominent broker, all up for sale to the discriminating collector.
Another one tells of Fernando Amorsolo.
In one of his pieces, there is a “Peeping Tom” that the great artist surreptitiously added, painted beside a bamboo grove in quasi-surrealistic mode. The painting was hanged in the bedroom of one of his grandsons. Years passed. Nobody noticed, until one day, the master himself, asked for that specific piece. Everybody went crazy locating the painting. It was only after sometime that his grandson realized where the specific painting had been hanging all the along. A collector heard the story. He began negotiating for the painting on the strength of the anecdote behind it.
One female acquaintance, who has just started painting acquisition, also began collecting anecdotes associated with individual paintings. She is particularly fond of one of her first encounters with artists. She recalls that this occurred when she still had zero-data on what the visual art is all about. An artist stopped her on the street and insisted that she buys one of the paintings he was carrying under his arms.
This lady was taken aback. Perhaps, out of desperation to make a sale, the price went from 10K to 2 thousand pesos. The painting now hangs in her bedroom. It is now worth more than its peso value. It already has the stamp of an anecdote to back its merit and authenticity.
Then, there is an interesting story about a former AAP president who was doing an early morning on-the-spot watercolor painting at a Batangas beach. He looked at his finished work. He did not like what he saw. He crumpled the piece and carelessly tossed it aside.
When the session was over, he did not bring it with him. An onlooker, who happened to be another struggling artist, nonchalantly picked it up. Somewhere in time, that painting will re-surface, with a delightful art-necdote to go its rounds of art circles.
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