Speech
of
His Excellency Fidel V. Ramos
President of the Philippines
At the 1997 National Artists Awarding Ceremony

[Delivered at the Ceremonial Hall, Malacañang, December 8, 1997]

The humanist
alternative

LET ME WELCOME you all to this most noble of ceremonies. It has been some times since the National Artist Awards were last conferred. Today—with an unprecedentedly large number of distinguished persons to be honored—we not only fill an unnatural void but also remind and reassure our people of the continuity, diversity and quality of Filipino artistic genius.

No compulsion exists for this award to be given regularly and to a specific number, and the scale on which it is being given today in no way diminishes the individual value of the towering achievements of each of its recipients. Indeed, the National Artist Award has never been taken lightly, because it has never been given lightly. Its prestige has been commensurate to the reputation of the very few so chosen to bear the title.

In a sense to be a National Artist is to be more than a President of our republic, because no temporal or geographic boundaries apply to the artist’s power and influence. The material emoluments that go with this title may not be much—although we have enhanced them—but the honor itself is beyond material reckoning, having been earned over many decades of painstaking effort and brilliant and sustained delivery.

Of course, it will be argued by many—including many artists themselves—that, with very few exceptions, artists have had very little say in the running of a nation’s practical affairs. And again, with rare exceptions, even the best artists have remained relatively unknown to the masses of our people, compared to, say, our politicians and popular entertainers.

The contemplation of beauty

I am not about to suggest that inconsequence and obscurity are the artist’s natural lot, but rather that artistry’s rewards and effects lie elsewhere—in the contemplation and propagation of truth and beauty, and the upliftment of the human spirit. Nevertheless, art never strays too far from practical reality as to completely deny it. The artist’s pleasure is among the rarest and purest of all pleasures, but it occurs precisely in that exciting space between the real and the ideal.

Jose Rizal recalled how, as a young man, he had enjoyed the company of the muses: “Although I was studying philosophy, physics, chemistry and natural history. . . in my leisure hours I continued speaking and cultivating the beautiful language of Olympus. . . . What matters, I said to myself, the poverty that is the eternal companion of muses? Is there anything sweeter than poetry?”

In Rizal we find the finest example of what a national artist of his time might have been—a gifted man so thoroughly enamored of his art and yet also fiercely in love with his country and people. Although a poor expatriate student in foreign lands—reduced to just two meals a day for prolonged periods, and to one set of winter clothing, he forsook none of the pleasures of his artistic talents, of which he had quite a few. Still, he engaged himself in the vigorous business and challenges of daily life with equal fervor. In 1892 he would write, “What matters death if one dies for what one loves, for native land and adored beings?”

It is not for me to tell our artists how to produce their art and lead their lives; it is not for us to demand that they mirror our own thoughts, aspirations and anxieties—the best of them will do this without needing to be told, indeed before most others do, because the true artist’s eye sees everything significant that happens.

Rather, it is for us to do our best to ensure that their gifts of beauty and wisdom do not go to waste. It is for us to watch, to listen, to read and to marvel at their imaginations and visions that are lifted out of the ordinary, and are transformed into enduring wonders and penetrating questions.

For light and liberty

The great achievement of these nine outstanding Filipinos has been to give the nation its truest image of itself—and to give the world the richest fruit of the Filipino imagination and creativity. In words, images and musical notes, they tell us who and what we are—and what we might yet become.

Their art may not be all sweetness and light, but neither has been our history of struggle for freedom, prosperity and justice. Rizal himself described Juan Luna’s art as carrying “the shadows, the contrasts … the reverberations of the dark tempests of the tropics,” even as he rejoiced in Luna’s artistic triumphs on behalf of a people thirsting “for light and liberty.”

And so we give these highest awards not only in grateful recognition of their accomplishments, but also as a reminder to our people of the value of the imagination and the creative spirit.

Our new National Artists

Our new National Artists are the writers NVM Gonzalez, Rolando S. Tinio and Wilfrido Maria Guerrero; the musicians Felipe de Leon, Jose Monserrat Maceda and Levi Celerio; the filmmaker Lino Ortiz Brocka; the painter Arturo Rogerio Luz; and the historian Carlos L. Quirino. They deserve our highest praise and respect, and the title of National Artists we bestow on them is but a token of the esteem in which their fellow citizens hold their contributions to our culture and to our national life.

Four of the awards are being given posthumously; rather than being a belated gesture, this recognizes the continuing relevance and influence of these artists’ work. Let me just express my personal hope that, in future awards, the efforts of more of our women artists-including the departed but especially the living—will be as suitably recognized.

The nature of daily life in the late 20th century has been such that many of us have been preoccupied with purely material pursuits, with a dollars-and-cents approach to the valuation of people and things. Our artists remind us of the humanist alternative—that is , to appreciate ourselves as a complex of physical, intellectual and spiritual elements, each one of which needs tending as much as the stomach.

Indeed our artists give us a glimpse of our better selves. When we read their stories, poems and essays, when we watch their films and plays, when we listen to their music, when we look at their paintings and sculptures, we find harmony and wholeness, and new reason to have faith in the ability of humankind to make order out of chaos.

A challenge to art

In developing a country on the threshold of modernization, like the Philippines, these achievements are invaluable because culture is our assurance of unity and survival as a people amid a technology-driven globalization process that tends to blur political and cultural boundaries among nations. Although globalization has opened the wonders of the world to all nations, it has also tended to diminish the uniqueness and the strength of native cultures, and thereby the common values and beliefs that bind a people together.

While it is incumbent upon the Government to provide for the people’s basic needs and—while the Ramos Administration continues to pursue resolutely its program of economic liberalization, social justice and political reform for our greater global competitiveness—we, too, are aware of the need to preserve and strengthen the ethical, moral and spiritual components that define and unite all Filipinos. And this imperative becomes even more crucial as we prepare for the celebration of the centennial of our independence in 1998.

This is a challenge not just to politics but to art—and it is a challenge that, I am certain, our National Artists, present and future, will face with exemplary passion and imagination.

On behalf of our Government and the Filipino people, let me express our highest commendations and warmest congratulations to our new National Artists. May we all continue to be enlightened and may our lives be enriched by your extraordinary vision and creative talent.