The Order of the National Artist, an award reserved for the country’s most prolific cultural practitioners, has long been a subject of praise and scrutiny.
At first glance, the award’s mechanics seem simple enough: It is awarded every three years to Filipino artists who have made significant contributions in the field of music, dance, theater, visual arts, literature, film, broadcast arts, or architecture and allied arts.
But like any high-profile award, the selection process usually finds itself mired in controversy due in part to its nature as a state award.
The National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA) administers The Order of National Artists (Gawad Pambansang Alagad ng Sining) along with the Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP). Upon recommendation by both institutions, it is then conferred by the President of the Philippines, who in the past committed “grave abuse of discretion,” per a Supreme Court decision regarding a controversial move.
In 2009, former President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo altered the shortlist to include four artists, who had not been initially picked by NCCA and CCP. The conferment of these four individuals was voided by the Supreme Court in 2013.
Despite the faults that come with the award, Filipino cultural practitioners still consider it an honor to be ordained a National Artist.
To explore the many artists who deserve the award but have yet to receive it, Rolling Stone Philippines tapped cultural practitioners from each field. Isabel Sandoval, Trickie Lopa, Glenn Diaz, Audie Gemora, Madge Reyes, Gino Gonzalez, Dominic Galicia, and the minds behind Brutalist Pilipinas sound off on who they felt were overlooked as National Artist awardees.
Film
Mike de Leon
Director and actress Isabel Sandoval’s pick for National Artist for Film is director auteur Mike de Leon, whose cinematic career spans over four decades. “I’m frankly astonished he isn’t one yet,” says Sandoval. Of de Leon’s oeuvre, Sandoval believes Kisapmata, Kakabakaba Ka Ba?, Batch ‘81, and Sister Stella make the best case for his nomination.
For Sandoval, who recently wrapped up production for detective thriller Moonglow, the National Artist Award is “a testament to a filmmaker’s singular and substantive contribution to Philippine cinema: a distinct sensibility, a style that expresses the artist’s idiosyncratic subjectivity or worldview.”
Dance
Nonoy Froilan
To Madge Reyes, dance artist and founder of movement platform Fifth Wall, the National Artist Award for Dance should go to Nonoy Froilan next. Widely known as the country’s “Prince of Dance,” Froilan is recognized for performing top roles in major classical and contemporary ballets, as well as partnering with some of the world’s leading ballerinas.
“Sir Nonoy,” as he is fondly referred to among dance circles, played the lead role of Duke Albrecht in the ballet Giselle and Prince Siegfried in the ballet Swan Lake, among others.
Beyond his work onstage, Froilan’s offstage presence, Reyes argues, has cemented him as a beloved fixture in the local dance scene. “It is Sir Nonoy’s natural charm and sense of humor — which, I think, came even before the dancing — [that] makes him the everyday prince.”
Reyes’ praise for Froilan has also been echoed by the local government unity of Calbiga, Samar, which nominated Froilan for the award in September.
Literature
Lualhati Bautista
For National Book awardee and Palanca-winning author Glenn Diaz, the conferment of the order of the National Artist comes with complicity to the state and its self-legitimizing agenda. No field covered by the award has been more subversive about the very nature of the honor than Literature. In 1976, Nick Joaquin’s acceptance of the National Artist for Literature award came with the condition that the Marcos administration would free political prisoner and activist, Pete Lacaba.
“The Order of National Artists is, of course, a state award. So, its purported exaltation of its recipients necessarily and simultaneously implicates them in the state’s self-legitimating agenda, including co-opting the cultural sector,” Diaz says. The same state, he adds, is capable of the kind of violence — patriarchy, empire, authoritarianism — that his pick for National Artist award, the late novelist, activist, and screenwriter Lualhati Bautista’s works have depicted and critiqued.
Bautista’s novels Gapo, Dekada 70, and Bata, Bata… Pa’no Ka Ginawa?, and screenplays like Sakada, Diaz argues, depict both the tiny and spectacular acts of violence that besiege Filipinos — especially women, mothers. “She grounds [their experiences] in the everyday, narrates with clarity and sharpness, and situates [them] within history.”
Fashion
Ben Farrales, Joe Salazar
For scenographer and Gawad CCP Para sa Sining (another prestigious award given to deserving Filipino artists and cultural workers by the Cultural Center of the Philippines) awardee Gino Gonzales argues that the award should go to the late costume designer Ben Farrales.
Farrales pushed the aesthetics of Muslim Mindanao forward, says Gonzales. “But it also went beyond malong and other Indigenous motifs from the South. He also did beautiful ternos, barongs, and other forms of contemporary clothing.”
Another designer of note is Joe Salazar, who Gonzales praises as “the ultimate Filipino designer from the second golden age of Philippine fashion.” He designed elaborate ternos for former First Lady Imelda Marcos, and red carpet dresses for National Artist awardee Nora Aunor.
Other honorable mentions for Gonzales include designers Christian Espiritu, Patis Tesoro, and Inno Sotto. “There are very few who can be called artists in the field of fashion,” says Gonzales. “But the National Artist Award takes a person [to] a higher plane. Suddenly, beyond the desire to wear [their] works for a party or a wedding, the works are collected for their intrinsic value — as works of art.”
Visual Arts
Luis Enano ‘Junyee’ Yee Jr.
“[R]ecognition for artists should be made at the national level,” says Trickie Lopa, co-founder of Art Fair Philippines. “Think of the French awarding their legions of honor, or the [British] bestowing knighthoods on individuals for their services to art.”
One artist that Lopa believes is deserving of this recognition is Luis Enano “Junyee” Lee Jr., who is widely acknowledged as the “father of installation art in the Philippines.” To Lopa, the Laguna-based artist should be known for his entire practice, not just for select thought-provoking pieces such as Abortion or Wood Things.
“In the early years of his practice,” Lopa explains, “he received little recognition or acknowledgment for the work he was doing. He also championed environmental causes way before these became buzzwords.”
Performing Arts
Onofre Pagsanghan
Audie Gemora, known for his award-winning stage performances in productions of Sweeney Todd, La Cage Aux Folles, and others, says that Onofre Pagsanghan merits a nomination.
Pagsanghan, whose career as a playwright, stage director, and teacher spanned over four decades, is mainly recognized for co-founding Ateneo de Manila High School’s theater group, Dulaang Sibol, in 1956. Under his creative direction, several popular play productions were staged, such as Sinta! and Doon Po sa Amin.
“So many theater practitioners were mentored by him,” says Gemora, listing playwright and historian Paul Dumol, Tanghalang Pilipino Artistic Director Nonon Padilla, and playwright, novelist, and visual artist Tony Perez as some of the many theater titans who studied under Pagsanghan.
Architecture
Juan Arellano, Andres Luna de San Pedro
Andres Luna de San Pedro and Juan Arellano are among the picks of Dominic Galicia, the architect of the Tree of Life courtyard at the National Museum of Natural History. However, because they died before the establishment of the award in 1972, they are not eligible. Luna de San Pedro is the architect of the First United Building in Escolta (previously the Perez Samanillo Building) while Arellano designed the Manila Metropolitan Theater.
“Their structures, the most prominent of which were completed before World War II, continue to be benchmarks of design excellence today,” Galicia says.
Carlos Arguelles
Brutalist Pilipinas, an online archive of Brutalist architecture in the country, has long been championing the works of Carlos Arguelles. To the trio of Patrick Kasingsing, Karl Castro, and Eldry John Infante, Arguelles is one of the few Filipino modernist architects who successfully blended the “placelessness of the International Style with the tropicality of the Philippines,” best exemplified in his early work on the now-defunct Philamlife Building and Theater.
“He is not an architect with a readily perceivable ‘style,’ but one whose spatial responses are consistently a conversation with the structure’s context,” Brutalist Pilipinas says.
The collective argues that Arguelles has yet to receive the award due to “a lack of recognition and recall, and poor documentation” as opposed to his peers Leandro Locsin, Francisco Mañosa, and Gabriel Formoso.
To Galicia, the National Artist Award is a “supreme accolade.” Brutalist Pilipinas is a bit skeptical of the honor and its safeguards to the recipient’s creations, having documented many structures — whether by a National Artist or not — that fall victim to neglect and demolition.
For Kasingsing, it is still a necessity to “protect the best examples of creativity our country’s talents has on offer” despite having an imperfect selection system prone to being hijacked for political and self-serving purposes.
The way Infante sees it, the recipient and their creations can benefit from the award if there’s extensive research, documentation, and archiving — that can be publicly accessed — after the fact.
“While it plays an important role in giving Filipino artists due recognition,” Castro sums up, “there is much to be reimagined in this regard.”
