Frogs, Frauds and Heroes
Frogs, Frauds and Heroes
By Cesare A.X. Syjuco
Published in: Sunday Globe Leisure, June 09, 1991
H R. Ocampo would have been doubly pleased at his "coronation" on Tuesday. Not only will his bones be conferred the National Artist Award for Painting in solemn rites to be led by the President, he will be toasted by his peers as the hero who saved the same award from an inglorious ending. Once a frog-in-waiting, Mang Nanding Ocampo is again a hero. And all because of an administrative kiss.
For one thing, he managed to save the award from a scandalous list of shady aspirants, and from dark pretenders like E.R. Tagle. Tagle was bandied in his own press releases as a leading contender for the title, and a victory by him would have sunked up the award like a toilet in rebound. In the first place, all that persistent talk about Ernie Tagle would have raised everybody's hair! Rampant but unprintable, I wonder if any of it is true.
A National Artist should be beyond blemish—indeed, beyond reproach—and someone like Ernie would have been a minefield of dark, seething controversy. The quality of his work alone would have been enough to inspire a hurricane of catcalls. Tagle's paintings are abominable, and that much I am allowed to say with the confidence of a critic. I suspect that whatever small reputation he enjoys among the ignorant is less the result of his talent than of his relentless media hype. Claiming to "father" a wild assortment of dubious if commercially viable genres—including "Philippine Eroticism" (a.k.a. brown tits and ass), "Asian Vendor-ism" (decidedly self-explanatory), and "Fossilism" (postcard-tacky canvases masquerading as mandalas of good fortune)—his sterling press connections have tried to paint him in turn as some kind of artworld bigshot. How queer the small and tortured!! And queerer still their dreams.
In fact, Ernie would be the last person on earth I would think of conferring an award on, and then only if my life depended on it. Between Ernie Tagle and Richard Gomez for National Artist, you know who Sharon and I would pick. But seeing Ernie in the newspapers, day after day after day, shaking hands with Oca Orbos and other penny-ante politicians, I can tell you that I was really worried there for a moment. And when Cory Aquino (on bad advice) appeared with Ernie in a press release to proclaim "Think Positive Week", I thought the unspeakable had happened.
The unspeakable is said to be the hallmark of this administration, and I would not be surprised to find Joey de Leon installed as Secretary of Culture and Public Welfare. A political imbecile with my nose in the arts, I sometimes think the President pokes through the entertainment section of the papers (or even the funnies) for her increasingly-frequent cabinet picks. But a lot of people I know would have taken to the streets with pitchforks if a Mabini artist like Ernie Tagle was conferred the country's most venerable artistic award. And I, for one, would have joined them.
The revenge of Mabini
In the legitimate art trade, Mabini is a leper colony situated in the heart of the "red light" Ermita district. The painters that continue to ply their trade along that street and its immediate surroundings are virtual outcasts, "pimps" and "prostitutes" of their own tainted talent who bear the mark of Cain. "Buy anything you want except Mabini paintings," new collectors are often admonished by the experienced. "One bad apple will spoil your whole collection."
It was not always so. Until the 1950s, Mabini was still considered by many to be the "seat" of Philippine art, and its mass-produced still-lifes, landscapes, sabongs and nudes—the subjects deemed most desirable by both the neowaich richer homeowners and tourists of that period—were thought by most to be the meat of contemporary painting in this country. Clearly, if the Philippines was to develop into a legitimate theater for the visual arts, a line had to be drawn between the crass commercialism of the Mabini painters and the higher aspirations of our artists. It was, after all, not so much a question of painterly skill but of locus, of conviction, and the buying public was ill-equipped to tell the difference.
I wasn't an easy task, nor was it a bloodless one. Such things never are. Mabini "art" derived one giving the public what it wanted, and popular taste was at its lowest. A thorough re-orientation had to be effected, and this eventually became a rallying point for some of the most vocal artists of the day. Prominent among them was the late Hernando R. Ocampo—Tuesday's man of the moment—who took a crusading interest in spawning a new audience conscious of "the difference."
Working with the Lyd Argullias and Arturo Luzes of the world, Mang Nanding and his comrades fostered a cult of extreme elitism with its focus on the innovative spirit of Modern Art. One of their most potent tools was modia, and Ocampo was a master of that game. A veteran newsman, poet and one who was not beyond sensationalism, he proved himself a tactical genius at promotional sleights-of-hand.
Through people like him, "Mabini" became a bad word in Manila society—something to be conscientiously avoided like a government post or the clap. The noose quickly tightened around Mabini's geographic borders, and the label "Mabini Artist" became the kiss of death for more than a few flourishing careers. As the line was indelibly drawn, the slowfooted were caught on the other side. But quite a few managed to get out in the nick of time, and they sowed their seeds among us.
Today, the "New Mabini" is an ever-aggressive breed of commercial pirates, mutant artists-of-a-feather who obviously paint for money and little else. But they no longer peddle their stock along A. Mabini Street, and in fact, go there only when they’re slumming. They are as comfortable in Makati as they are in faraway Angono. Many of them ride in chauffeured cars and cool their heels in high-rise shopping malls and five-star hotels. They wear three-piece suits and brandish a list of patrons as long as your arm. Most significantly in this context, they have learned to weild media as a weapon and hype as a matter of course—the very same tools once used by Ocampo to sell his own lofty vision of Philippine art to the public.
And here lies the rub. For one man's kiss is another man's vomit. And Media is its name.
The right to be heard
If there is one clear shot that has come through in the light of this year's deliberations for the National Artist Award, it is the ugliness of people from both sides of the cultural ballpark. "Lobbying"—that veneral disease of the political marketplace—has reared its ugly head in the garden of the muses, startling us with the extent of its shamelessness. Our highest cultural institutions have begun to look like the dens of thieves we have always suspected them to be. Corruption and greed, qualities heretofore associated with the ruling and merchant classes, have outdone themselves many times over among the keepers of the holy temple.
But equally as alarming is the sudden outburst of vigilante activity raised like fists against a common enemy—and the hysteria of the self-righteous who, disgusted by the apparent impotence of our cultural administrators, have decided to take matters into their own hands. Banding into virtual lynch mobs, they have taken to writing crank-letter, resorting to vicious "whispering campaigns", arbitrary blacklisting, and other forms of "justifiable" slander. Only recently, a series of vigilante-inspired letters was dispatched to key members of the print media, asking them to ban all publicly material from Tagle and his kind. Among its prominent signatories were some illustrious old painters who have been known to indulge in media hype themselves. The other week, another letter from an irate observer—published in part by a well-known columnist—virtually denounced the renowned Filipino painter Jose Joya for dogging newsbns with his well-worded press releases. Breathing hellfire, the writer added that Joya was actively campaigning for the National Artist Award through all possible channels.
Now, this is public hysteria at its most mindless and most destructive! While I have never been a great fan of the perennial Dean, I know enough to acknowledge that Jose Joya is one of the finest abstractionists this country has produced, and that much of his early work is adequate proof of the man's extraordinary talent. In recent years, the fleetfooted maestro has conscientiously made his presence felt in local art circles, mostly through his philanthropic and organizational efforts. Truth to tell, I have no quarrel with his eventually becoming a National Artist, and I anticipate that day is soon coming. To consider Joya's propensity for "high-profile exposure" a crime, would be tantamount to saying that the desire for success, recognition and fame, per se, is criminal.
In itself, art's partnership with media is not an evil thing. A symbiotic relationship exists here, for media is hungry for pictures and art thrives on public awareness. "Exposure," says American artist Jeff Koons, "is the name of the game". He could not have put it in clearer terms. Widely regarded as a non-essential activity shrouded in myth and half-truths, art must sell itself to the public whether as an ideal or as a commodity. People just don't think art on their own.
Likewise, no one—not even Ernie Tagle and the "New Mabini"—should ever be denied access to media the free market of ideas. Regardless of its caste and creed, it is every artist's inalienable right to reach out in as wide an audience as possible. Provided, of course, that his message is factual and his intentions are noble—no matter how self-serving they may seem.
A sword mightier than the word
How else then do we, keepers of the faith, override the enemies of the one true art, the desecrators of the truge, and beautiful? I have my own views, and I gladly share them here with other artists and art-lovers like myself. The way to halt the onslaught of the "New Mabini", the artworld hooligans, the phonies and the hacks, is to beat them at their own game of promotional tag—not to shriek like frightened schoolgirls and drive nails into our doors. Our complacency as agents of the one true art, our habitual laziness, our pussyfooting and intellectual posturing, has allowed the enemy to gain on us in the dead of night. Let us match them blow for blow in the public mind, peppering the airwaves with as much energy from our side as from theirs. On as ween keel, true art will always triumph over rubbish.
There is an even better way, but it is neither painless nor cheap. It involves purifying ourselves and our intentions, shunning the fast buck and the big deal, cleansing ourselves of the commercialism, and endless repetition that have made us look more and more like the enemy we despise. Who can recognize the difference between ourselves and the "New Mabini" when so many of us have taken on its ways, its attitudes, and its devices?
In the meantime, let us learn from the lessons of the moment. We kiss some frogs and they turn into champions. Others stay frogs despite the kiss and we recognize them to be worthless. Still others never get kissed at all, and they eventually turn into angry mobs.
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Cesare A.X. Syjuco, “Frogs, Frauds and Heroes” (page 1 of 1), Sunday Globe Leisure, June 09, 1991
