BOOKS

The treasure that is 'TANAW'

I AM holding a multibillion-peso – or, even priceless – treasure and it weighs less than a 24-karat gold bar.
It has the works of Filipino masters from Juan Luna, Felix Resurrecion Hidalgo, Vicente Rivera, Jorge Pineda, Fernando Amorsolo, Carlos "Botong" Francisco to Hernando Ocampo, Jose Joya, Fernando Zobel, Anita Magsaysay-Ho, Lao Lianben, Augusto Albor, Lee Aguinaldo, Ang Kiukok, Onib Olmedo, Claude Tayag, Galo Ocampo, Edgar Talusan Fernandez, Juvenal Sanso , Edwin Wilwayco, Danny Dalena, Federico Alcuaz, Mauro Malang Santos, Roberto Chabet, Manuel Baldemor, Norma Belleza, among others.
This priceless treasure is the golden coffee-table book Tanaw, Perspectives on The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas Painting Collection," which was published recently and made available to the Filipino readers by the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas.
Art critics and historians Alice Guillermo, Jaime C. Laya, Cid Reyes, Ma. Victoria T. Herrera, Fatima Lasay and editor-professor-curator-writer Ramon E.S. Lerma discuss the works of the artists in the context of their impact in the history of Philippine visual arts and the nation itself.
A reader perusing the book gets a virtual tour of the vast and highly valuable BSP art collection. The paintings featured in the book are as heavily guarded as the BSP’s gold collection and viewing them could mean a long, arduous paper trail to be signed by several important people at the central monetary authority of the Philippines.
As Governor Rafael Buenaventura (July 3, 1999 to July 3, 2005) said, "The collection, spanning two centuries and numbering over a thousand pieces (1,500 as of last count), serves as a mirror of ourselves as Filipinos: how we shaped our history, how we grew our sensibility and how we handled our sensitivity."
He cited two Central Bank governors before him Gregorio C. Licaros and Jaime C. Laya, who, during their watch, enriched the collection with new acquisitions and state-of-the-art preservation. They are Gregorio C. Licarios and Jaime C. Laya.
Incumbent Governor Amando M. Tetangco (July 4, 2005 to July 3, 2011), added, "the BSP art collection can serve as a powerful catalyst for instilling a strong sense of national identity and love of country, attributes that foster social stability and economic growth."
Lerma discusses in his introduction how the BSP, since its establishment in 1949, has built a collection that could rival other museums of national importance. He wrote: "Indeed, there can be no other way to explain the existence of this collection, and to justify the substantial public resources involved in procuring these paintings, than to look at the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas as an institution whose role as repository and custodian goes beyond solipsistic definitions of our country’s material wealth."
The first chapter, "Anyo: The Progenitors of the Filipino Nation" has Laya discussing portraiture. Here, the reader is ushered into the earliest works of Luna, Hidalgo and the realists or those who lived in the era when still-photography was considered a young art.
Guillermo discusses the development of visual arts as influenced by the events that shaped the Filipino psyche, from the late 19th century to the present, in the chapter "Gunita: Memory, History, Society."
Here, we are brought to the rice fields and seaside communities, with farmers and fishermen as seen in the eyes of Amorsolo and Francisco. We are also introduced to the nuances of certain works showing how how wars changed those sedate perspectives as images of men suffering from man-made causes emerged from the canvases of Galo Ocampo and contemporary painters like Egai Fernandez.
Reyes in the third chapter, "Diwa: Brush with Spirituality," discusses the religious images preserved in churches, among others, and how European masters like Rembrandt and Carvaggio influenced Filipino and Spanish painters in the Philippines. He deconstructs the landscapes of Francisco, Sanso and Gabriel Custodio, pointing out how an artist’s intense fixation for the sublime, or how one had viewed such genre as a spiritual exercise redefined visual arts in the post-war years. From there, Reyes ushers us to abstraction via the works of Joya, Zobel, Nena Saguil and younger, living artists like
Edwin Wilwayco, Albor and Lao Lianben. We must be reminded that Reyes is an abstract painter himself, thus, his expertise on the subject as critic and practitioner of the genre.
He later explains how the works of Olmedo, Kiukok, Dalena, Aguinaldo, Bencab, among others, helped reshape Philippine art by re-introducing figures in the chaos of lines and circles that is abstraction, thus, the entry of abstract expressionism and figurative abstraction. In one section titled "Transforming the Ordinary," while discussing the magic-realist influence on the works of Stevesantos and B. Carvajal Kiamko, Reyes quoted William Blake’s famous line, "If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is, infinite." Reyes’ mentioned that what’s important is the "viewer’s immersion into a higher level of reality," which could sum up the reasons-for-being of all those collected artworks and the beautifully-written exploratory essays in the book.

So as not to divulge all the precious discussions in "Tanaw," we leave to the curious readers the joy of discovering more hidden information about the priceless works of art in the BSP via the last two chapters, "Ganap, The Material Nature of Images and Collections," by Herrera, also an art professor at the UP Diliman and Ateneo, and "Tanaw, Seeing and Shaping the World in the Philippine Landscape," by Lansay, artist-curator and educator of digital media. Herrera and Lasay, like Lerma, belong to the younger generation of credible art critics and historians.
Responsible for reproducing the paintings in printed form is topnotch lensman Wig Tysmans and the brilliant team of lay-out artists and book designers in Studio 5 Publishing, the same group behind many bestselling coffee-table books.


"Tanaw," is exclusively available at the BSP. For inquiries, call the BSP corporate affairs office at 524 7011 local 2259 or email fdelacruz@bsp.gov.ph

www.malaya.com.ph/nov16/livi1.htm