Storm over Asia…No; raging the country…Yes; But it’s no calamity—even if its effects are widespread—it’s (just) misappropriate hoopla!

What’s the ruckus about? Only the dispersable rumblings-grumblings noised by the previous National Artists awardees against this year’s winners.

Two Fridays ago, in the sacred grounds of the CCP, with waves of tiny black ribbons fluttering in the air like angry blackbirds, backed by their sympathizers clad in black, the disgruntled national artists clad in black too, symbolically held necrological rites by burying the national artists awards (for good?). The news didn’t say whether they buried their medals or surrendered them. (The happenstance was a collective-aggrieved act.)

Poet Yeats sings, things fall apart; the centre cannot hold, mere anarchy is loosed upon the land…the best lack conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.

Yeats ends; and what rough beast, its hour come around at last, slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

A tempest in a teapot, really, these artists plaints-protestations, its lid only blown off. Their target objective: two winners- Carlo Caparas, director of massacre and rape movies (for the titillation of the masses); and Cecile Guidote Alvarez, NCAA executive director that plans the selection of national artists; out of delicadeza, she should have declined the award; she decided to accept it and stand up on her decision and face the consequences. And let posterity be the judge. The national artists have buried the awards declaring them good as dead. 

Art has the insidious way of giving deliverance to things and events. Like the upheaval of old values, the surfacing of the new, etc. (It’s given that it’s dangerous for art to aim at materialistic ends.)

Mighty Goethe forewarns us: events cast their shadows before.

To cite examples…critics agree now that two art parturitions dealt the death blow in the arts that brought about The Modern. In the past, two tremendous energies were unleashed to the world. One by the scandalous dance, the other by the equally scandalous modern music. In 1912, the famed Diaghilev entrepreneured both. The first was Debussy’s Afternoon of a Fawn, danced orgasmically by the great danseur Nijinski. The second was the premier of modern music, Rites of Spring by Stravinsky. Both first-time mind-boggling events shook the foundations of Parisian elite society; their cultured senses were insulted-assaulted. Thus the Birth of the Modern. These brought about the eruption of World War 1 and the unsettling of society’s values.

Hope that the noisome public performance of the disgruntled national artists might usher in something positively better for us. Caparas shouting that the elitists object to him shows that he has not done his homework; FPJ, Tinio, and Celerio are masa. Art’s true mien is indeed elitist; which has nothing to do with social class or status of the artist. Elitist because the national artist award demands of the artist elevation of spirit, excellence of work, lucidity of vision of the artist, and totality of his artistic opus.

Winners of the Marcos years, when the awards were created and given out, ennobled the brows of the artists; they made them stand unquestionably apart from the rest of us by bestowed noble dignity. Artists like Amorsolo, Edades, Kasilag, Maceda, Botong Francisco, Villa, Joaquin. Edades was born poor but the award gave him an elitist aura.

The artist is solitary in a shameless, threatening society. He’s the burning beacon in the creeping darkness, the spiritual icon of his generation and yet remaining contemporary, free and liberated.

We must call for lucidity when there are dissenting voices in the enthusiastic multitudes. Selection of national artists must be a common consensus by the Artistic Elite, by a council of national artists themselves by those granted deserved authority to choose.

There are potential national artists still, despite its demise; to name some: the group ASIN, Kidlat Tahimik, Virginia Moreno, Julie Lluch, The Bayanihan’s Isabel Santos, Jerry Araos, Grace Nono, Fred Liongoren, Ernani Cuenco, Sylvia La Torre, Celeste Legaspi. The list can be long.

But then the problem lies in this, as Malraux says; the point is not to force art upon the masses which are indifferent to it. The point is to open up the realm of culture to all those who wish to reach it.

Art must uplift the consciousness of every one it touches.

The point which Lord Wheatfield avers is, when I hear the word Culture, I reach for my revolver!