Re CCP’s ‘Thirteen Artists’: Short-Changed Again!
Re CCP’s ‘Thirteen Artists’:
Short-Changed Again!
By Cesare A.X. Syjuco
Published in: The Manila Times, February 24, 1988
SOMETIMES a lot of good tidings from the media can help to cosmeticize a bad act. And scrub the blackest slate clean.
So let’s get one thing straight about the CCP’s conduct of its rejuvenated “13 Artists” awards. It’s about as popular with the artworld as a potent case of foul breath, and about as credible as a wooden injun. In fact, some may even think my assessment here too kind, and for once, I will willingly stand corrected.
For this year’s controversial selection is like salt in our wounds. Worse, it’s a cruel blight in the middle of a debilitating drought, a monumental disappointment timed on the edge of despair, a farcical overkill heaped like unwarranted abuse on a suffering, captive artworld. Rules of decency warn sternly against taunting people when they’re down and out. Can we do more than stifle a yelp when the CCP kicks — and with pointed toes?
For instance, you don’t have to be an abacus tô know that eight artists are not the same as thirteen, and that an accounting comes up five artists short Must we, then, take this unpardonable insult sitting down? Only eight deserving artists out of countless thousands? Only eight when there was money enough to have helped thirteen? Why, Caligula himself would have marvelled at the arrogance, the sternness, the vanity of CCP, the boastful and costly flaunting of its unreasonably high “standards” for little more than self-aggrandizement!
In fact, the implications from this one tell-tale blunder alone are staggering, and we would be foolish to leave them unchecked. Common sense tells us that only those who genuinely adore children should be placed in charge of a nursery, and the logic to this is sound enough. To have any chance at all of bringing out the best in your flock, you must yourself be fired with the vision of your flock’s immense worth and promise. And conversely, those who actually believe that there aren’t enough talented artists in the entire country to fill up all thirteen slots in the program are simply not qualified, simply not worthy, simply not suitable .for key administrative positions in our Cultural Center.
One’s eligibility for holding public office likewise requires an inherent knack for avoiding controversy and scandal, and in this also, CCP’s corps of humbug enforcers has proved itself hopelessly inept. Ugly rumors could easily have been avoided with a semblance of delicadeza — or at least, might have been easier to disprove had they not been based on irrefutable facts. Can we blame our artists for whispering when the CCP’s visual arts bosslady is currently exhibiting her work at the gallery owned by one of the lucky awardees? And who can deny that seven of the eight artists selected were virtually launched by that very gallery, and that an influential member of CCP’s three-man screening committee also moonlights in the same gallery as a professional curator? Tact, if not a sense of righteousness and fair play, is sadly wanting in this case, and its absence has cast an indelible stain on the CCP and its 1988 “13 Artists” program.
Perhaps an official statement would be timely from CCP President Bing Roxas, who incidentally, is also named as a member of the review committee that approved the outcome of this search. Specifically, we would all like to know if Mrs. Roxas actually approves of her staff’s rather bizarre behavior, and if not, whether she intends to initiate corrective measures.
We will also be publishing our comprehensive review of the “13 Artists” exhibit currently at the CCP Main Gallery, along with our insights on the annointed eight.”
(To be continued)
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Cesare A.X. Syjuco, “Re CCP’s ‘Thirteen Artists’: Short-Changed Again!” (page 1 of 1), The Manila Times, February 24, 1988
