THIS small acrylic piece is obviously a take on James McNeill Whistler’s Symphony in White, No. 3.

    Titled A Paedophile's Mini-Symphony in White, de Veyra’s piece reconfigures Whistler’s 30” x 20” oil work to carry what would look like girls much younger than Whistler’s women, girls who would also qualify as belonging to the Filipino race in their appearance.

    As de Veyra’s title suggests, the artist is here challenging the Whistler painting’s ostensibly apolitical position, which was a position supposedly dedicated to sheer whiteness as well as to the harmonizing of whiteness’ several shades in various shapes/forms, in the limited company of other colors. De Veyra replaced all the formalist stance of the Whistler work with a political direction for his “symphony in white” variant.

    So, in his mini-symphony (little girls, little symphony), de Veyra introduced the concept of pedophilia. By doing so, he here positioned Whistler’s propensity for white in one that would instigate various meanings. This positioning could reference foreigner pedophiles commonly identified in local news reports as belonging to the white race, for one. But as that could almost certainly be taken as racist (haven’t been there cases of, say, Japanese pedophiles caught here, as well?), in an interview de Veyra offered that his appropriation of Whistler’s white could simply refer to pureness (purity) or prepubescent or pre-menstrual virginity.

    Clearly this is a painting influenced by Marxist criticism that not only would rebuke Whistlerian formalism but would also transform or transgress Whistler from within, even if Whistler, albeit a bit of a mistress collector, is not the pedophile alluded to in this new social or political narrative de Veyra contrived to deny whiteness its neutrality. In fact, to say that de Veyra’s act here denigrates Whistlerian formalism and denies apolitical stances their right to exist in favor of political ends in art-making would seem to forget that Whistler himself, advertently or inadvertently, helped to develop white as the color of the elite, satirically at first, then not so, even introducing white as the ideal color for elitist gallery exhibitions. . . .

​    Now, if this is a picture of young girls supposedly patronized by a pedophile’s camera, what then is the painting’s intent with the work qua offered sight? Is it itself a picture meant for pedophiles to enjoy? For even if there are viewers who like the picture for its announced intent and certain other significations, they might avoid hanging it on their walls by virtue of de Veyra’s accusatory title.

    However, we might remember that there are collectors of social realist works, works the content of which might embrace more heinous crimes. A collector of paintings portraying the torture or murder of, say, unionists wouldn’t necessarily be deemed a fan of torture or any kind of oppressive act—would they? Collectors of social realism do not collect social realist scenes as fetishes, it would be safe to presume; they would be collecting the idea, the social realist idea, behind these scenes or depictions of oppression. De Veyra’s Pedophile’s Mini-Symphony in White is a subtle kind of social realism, depicted in the same manner as his early subtle social realist work titled Mask of an Artivist Soul...; both works apply the social realist motive for painting instead of the old social realist habits of image-making.

    Having mentioned this, clearly de Veyra had a view of his potential audience or collector, as against other painters who wouldn’t really care about who their audiences could be. Perhaps it was de Veyra’s advertising industry experience at work there. Any concept for a painting would have its market niche, of course, it’s just a matter for art marketing to know which among the many niches would desire which painting and telling them things about how this or that painting could fit into their profile, instead of just catering to existing markets in a certain city in a way that merely provides them what they have been used to seeing!