What would life be without it? Art's Annual of Annuals
What would life be without it?
Art's Annual of Annuals
By Cesare A.X. Syjuco
Published in: The Manila Times, January 13, 1988
THE annual competition of the 40-year-old Art Association of the Philippines (AAP) is little known outside local art circles. But to artists eager to match their talents against those of their peers, it’s just about everything to aspire for.
The AAP Annual survives as a sacred trust, a gleaming star that alights but once a year to shine its special magic on a few deserving individuals — artists who might otherwise have been too poor, too young, or too inarticulate to have called attention to themselves in any other way.
History is its witness and its greatest ally. Manansala, Ocampo, Botong Francisco, Legaspi, Abueva, Joya, Luz, Aguinaldo, Paras-Perez, Sanso, Malang and Anita Ho — indeed, just about everyone of significance and stature has entered this contest at some time or another. A few have won it outright. Others have managed to win only after years of tireless participation. Some are even known to spend their lives trying again and again. For the AAP Grand Prize is as elusive as it is whimsical.
It is little wonder then, that like wines of distinction, the contest has had its good and bad years. The 1987 annual — on exhibit at the PICC on Roxas Boulevard until later this month — is, I think, evidence of a particularly lean harvest.
Some of the winners will make your jaw drop.
Ma. Victoria Abano’s winning entry in the hotly-contested “Painting Category" — traditionally the stellar attraction on Awards Night — is at best dull and uninspired, remarkable only because it triumphed for all its glaring inadequacy. This sizeable still-life centered on a rustic vegetable arrangement hints neither of great talent nor a fertile imagination, possessing, perhaps, some special quality as did Da Vinci’s eternal muse — a smile which, fleeting though it might have been, was enough to knock the socks off some jurors and earn for the artist a substantial cash prize of P25,000!
There’s even more to gape at than you might think. For all its impressive parentage, Impy Pilapil’s sculpture entitled “Ocean No. 1” is still another surprise winner, strongly reminiscent of those graphics-inspired constructions by Roy Lichtenstein in spirit if not nearly in polish. This towering metal wafer is as blue as a Ferrari but not quite as fluid, an object stranged between a wrought-iron mermaid and a hybrid jazz note — stiff/supple in turn and smacking of the confectionery and the ludicrous.
As usual, the floundering “Prints Category” is hardly contested at all, entries numbering only a small handful and their overall quality sadly wanting. Three winners were announced for this year — sharing the honor and the cash prize — a sure indication that the judges had difficulty locating an entry of singular achievement. Proclaimed outstanding in their field were Noel Farol (first), Oyeng Jocano (second), and Benjamin Cabrera (third). All three printmakers failed to arrive at works of originality and substance.
To give credit where it is due, one must first recognize that it often belongs in the most unlikely places. Albert Tomes, Grand Prize winner in the controversial “Mixed Media Category,” is the year’s most exciting find. His “Puro Kayod” — a startling composite of severed chicken-claws nailed onto an expanse of golden grain — is a work both bravely innovative and impressively crafted, making it one of the most exciting artworks I have seen all season. If this artist’s winning opus is a fair indication of his potential, he should be thrilling us with his energy and daring, his satirical wit and his innate sense of order, in years to come.
From a dark pit below the arena are the voices of ghosts that cry out in pain and indignation. They include the outstanding works of Maliva Raymond, Danny Garcia, Phillip Victor, Jonathan Olazo, Mario Batoy, Ceasar S. Peralta and Gerardo Ingco to name only a few. On another day, in other circumstances, fortune might just as easily have smiled on them.
Again, it must be said that an AAP prize does not a great artist make. Fools and incompetents have been known to win them from time to time, and many artists who have outgrown the thrill of competition like to deride the annual as an awkward sideshow-cum-lottery. But suffice it to say that it remains our “annual of annuals” that has survived the longest, has introduced more worthwhile talents than any other, has turned more than one corner with history in the making.
Part-myth, part-carnival, part-western-style showdown, it is the artworld’s version of the Rodeo, a knock-‘em-dead spectacle where young and old, gifted and barren, “established” and “unknown” face each other in a furious joust. And who but the winner takes all?
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Cesare A.X. Syjuco, “What would life be without it? Art's Annual of Annuals” (page 1 of 1), The Manila Times, January 13, 1988
