Wanted: National Artist

We have ten new National Artists. When Malacañang announced their names last week, the news stirred newfound appreciation for our arts, and to some degree, disappointment and furor over missed possibilities. Discussions were rife on the merits of the recipients, their canon of work and perhaps, inadequacies — or for the more hopeful and wishful contemplators, who else would have deserved the recognition.

This lively discourse on art and artists reminded me of a recurring question which surfaced time and again in Contemporary Philippine Arts class: after all the what-ifs and could-have-beens, what truly constitutes the ‘national artist’? The lack of capitalization is deliberate: while it is easy to see the awarded title as a grand honorific, its conferment also invites us to reflect on how we collectively perceive and appreciate the Beautiful.

At the very least, the academic response to the query could be simplistic: one need but look at the criteria set by the committees involved in the selection process. Still, that would be reducing the honor to a checklist lacking in national or artistic depth at all. Eventually, our attempts to answer the question leads us back to questioning what is deemed as truly representative of the nation in matters artistic. In our archipelagic state, nationhood continues as a process of becoming, where diverse cultures are a melting pot of creative expression in constant surge towards the understanding of ourselves as Filipinos.

Despite this hodgepodge of creative impulses, artistry remains the most intense form of individualism (if we take Oscar Wilde’s dictum as gospel truth), whether it is crowned with laurels and adulations, or left to intimate circles where it can be appreciated and appraised.

Hence, the idea of a ‘national art’ is a nebulous proposition, laced with contradictions and ironies. One may argue that Fernando Amorsolo and Vicente Manansala’s painting techniques were derivative from Western styles, yet at the same time, point out the local nuance and color with which their subjects and themes were imbued — or that José Garcia Villa may have dazzled the chic New York crowd by his literary unorthodoxies, but has never written a single poem in Filipino. Brutalist architecture was never inherently ours to claim, yet who can deny the concrete poetry of the Cultural Center of the Philippines as designed by Leandro V. Locsin? Would it make our narratives less Filipino if they are danced as ballet (quintessentially European in character) choreographed by Alice Reyes, or that Guillermo Tolentino’s sculpture aspires to the heroics of the classical masters?

You get the picture: even our National Artists cannot break free from the universality of the art forms brought to our shores by colonial expansion and foreign influence. We have to come to terms with our oppressed past, even in the praxis of art.

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If one takes a close look at the medallion of the Order of National Artists, you would see the three stylized Ks emblazoned in baybayin at its center. They stand for Katotohanan, Kabutihan, at Kagandahan — Truth, Goodness, and Beauty, the Aristotelian standards of aesthetics, verily celebrated in Nick Joaquin’s quintessential play about the artist as Filipino. Complemented with the national colors and augmented with national symbols, the award is enshrined as a symbol of excellence. More than just a recognition of talent, it aspires to embody a national aesthetic, that by and through the works of the men and women in its ranks, we come nearer to an appreciation of what it means to be a Filipino.

Aptly, the recognition lends an elevated gravitas to our arts and humanities, ensuring that our posterity and heritage would not be the coarse squabbling in our halls of government, the avaricious politicking for power, or the soulless pursuit of monetary income: that Kidlat Tahimik would give up the award – title, medallion, and all corollary benefits – as protest to the belittling of the humanities in our universities speaks of the cultural expectation and responsibility attached to the Order, something which goes beyond mere prestige and adulation.

In the same vein, its conferment is also a testament of a breaking out of the box, a deliberate reconfiguration of the Filipino conventional. Through their works, we are given new vistas of understanding ourselves, of shattering our enshrined prejudices as a people, and of disturbing our comfortabilities by pointing the finger of art at the sordid stuff that we would have cringed at in their natural state. Who else would write and recite about the struggles of the common laborer, or dance and sing the incessant toil of finding our national identity? Who else would rage against the dying of the light in canvas, concrete, and cinema? Contra mundum – against the world, Nick Joaquin wrote, and it is an aphorism still worthy of our artistes.

We have ten new National Artists, and we celebrate their conferment of this great honor. But this nation needs more: more verse-weavers and bards, more dancers and songsters, more stone-shapers and image-makers, more tale-tellers and thespians. We anticipate with great hope the lengthening of the Order’s roster.

(The writer is a humanities teacher in one of the private schools of the city.)