Devaluing art and journalism

There is a point, and it is reached more easily than is supposed, where interference with freedom of the arts and literature becomes an attack on the life of society.” Irish suffragist and writer Rebecca West may have well described our nation’s situation today.

Last week, a mural commissioned to celebrate press freedom was unveiled at a formal ceremony at the National Press Club. The painting, a collaborative effort of the Angono Neo-realist Collaborative, depicted a modern Manila street scene with several people from different walks of life reading newspapers. To the artists’ horror, their work had been censored and quickly painted over without their consent. The crude editing of the work was to remove or cover up references to the plight of Filipino journalists and citizens who have reported the abuses of those in power, been critical of the government or taken an active stance against those who seek to bleed the nation dry.

Their mural was not the first to be displayed at the National Press Club. The NPC was built in the early 1950s as a refuge for mid-century journalists and newspapermen. (They were mostly men then.) All the major dailies and publishing houses were headquartered nearby, so the present site was selected — beside the elegant Manila Post Office and at the foot of the storied Jones Bridge.

The enigmatic modernist Filipino architect Angel Nakpil was chosen to design the periodistas’ bastion. Nakpil put together a spare geometric box accented at the end with a transparent glass cylinder that housed a sculptural spiral staircase. The building became an instant landmark and reflected the optimism of the postwar era. The nation had suffered immensely during the war, but at least it now had independence and a democratic form of government that people believed would bring them the progress and prosperity they longed for.

The era was not without its problems and the painter Vicente Manansala, who was commissioned by the NPC to create a mural for their dining area, abstracted them. A feature from the popular Sunday Times Magazine describes the work of art and the structure that housed it:

“The National Press Club is said to be one of the plushiest press clubs in the world. It is said to be the only one of its kind, with a wall-to-wall mural in its cafeteria. This singular painting, the work of Vicente Manansala of the local neo-realist school, was executed on the wall facing the Pasig on the third floor of the NPC building. It covers the entire 16 feet of the partition between the Red Room and the kitchen and the cafeteria.

“The mural is outstanding in many ways, but above all in the way the artist met the exigencies of a modern structure. While at work on the design, the artist had to allow for not just the curving portion of the wall and a big rectangular hole where the serving counter would be, but also had to use his ingenuity to blend in the mural with 1) a Fidelity loudspeaker, 2) a full-sized door leading to one of the conference rooms, 3) several electrical outlets and 4) half a dozen air-conditioning duct vents.

“While all murals start out as decoration ideas, they often end up as editorials or as satires or both. In a newsmen’s clubhouse this seems especially inevitable. Thus we find in the mural a reader attempting to (express himself) while the moneyed man (painted over the door to the Red Room) gags him with one hand and deftly caresses the coins of power with the other.

“Close to the counter, in human form and drawn in the semi-abstract style in which the entire mural is done, is the act of giving money to the suffering poor, but the bills have heavy string attached to them. And everywhere there are little annoying animal forms, like big-mouthed fish, a cockroach and crabs. All these have their equivalent in the newspaper world and mean different things to different newsmen.”

The problems of the ’50s seem less complex and convoluted than those of today. Nevertheless, the Manansala mural became more than just the backdrop to newsmen’s smoke-filled, alcohol-driven debates on the day’s current issues. It became as much a part of the institution of the NPC as Nakpil’s building itself.

Sadly, the mural disappeared recently in a cloud of controversy. The current officers reportedly saw fit to dispose of it, apparently for the purpose of generating funds for the club. The selling price was P10 million. The GSIS, who owns the building, has sued the NPC board for qualified theft.

Some say the new mural was commissioned to deflect criticisms of the move to sell the original mural. The whole strategy has now backfired with the censorship of the work by the NPC officials and the resulting pubic opprobrium. From just an artwork intended to express the tenets of Filipino journalism, its censorship is now seen as mirror of today’s reality — where erstwhile public and social institutions are compromised, bought off with shopping bags of money or terrorized by those drunk with power.

Is journalism now just propaganda fueled by spin doctors’ concoctions of the truth? Are artists now relegated to painting posters valorizing a new regime of corruption and conceit? Will Filipino architecture now just shelter damaged institutions, house the machinery of oppression or hide politicians and their actions from public scrutiny?

Painting, architecture and literature are our society’s and our culture’s mediums of expression. Shall we paint the truth and build robust institutions or shall we live a lie and forever lose sight of the value of our hard-fought democracy?

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Feedback is welcome. Please e-mail the writer at Paulo.alcazaren@gmail.com.