Telling Modern Time: The Life and Art of Botong Francisco Coching by Patrick D. Flores

This book traces the discourse between the high art of painting and the low media of komiks or graphic design in the works of Botong Francisco and Francisco Coching. It offers an intelligent account of the complex and often ambivalent relationship between art and popular culture, which signaled the emergence of Philippine modernity. Though they worked different media--Botong pursued painting and murals while Coching gained popularity with his komiks -- both artists inhabited a collective ground: the Philippines before and after the Pacific War and through the hectic phases of development, nation building, internationalism, and the advent of Martial Law. Botong and Coching articulated the visual culture and sensibility of their eras. They forged a powerful iconography of the olk and the popular, the mass and the national in kindred registers, taking in the indigenous and art nouveau, Prince Valiant and the Mexican Revolution.
They were part of a generation of Filipino artists for whom the opposition between "high" and "low" art was not yet fully established. Botong transformed sly notebook caricatures and design sketches into sprawling murals. Coching delved into abstruse historical sources and the widely circulated Tagalog novels of his time to create stirring narratives of Filipino heroism and nationhood in komiks. Telling Modern Time: The Life of Botong Francisco Coching features approximately 100 works by Botong and Coching, spanning a fascinating range of material, including komiks excerpts, murals, prints, sketches and memorabilia.
A Philippine import. Limited copies available.

Paperback
Publisher: Vibal Publishing House, Inc. (2010)
ASIN: B00697O1OE