By Samito Jalbuena
RETROSPECTIVES are rewarding, fundamentally for the artist who is having one, and secondarily for the viewer who needs to see one. The artist is rewarded for a lifetime of good works, and is allowed to review the best of his oeuvre in one fell swoop. Meanwhile, the visitor learns to understand the reasons the artist is celebrated.
For this unraveling of mystique and for those who wonder why Benedicto “BenCab” Cabrera has received so much attention, here is a grand reason. The Metropolitan Museum of Manila unveiled on October 5 a celebration of 50 creative years of the National Artist. Titled BenCab: The Filipino Artist, the exhibit will run until February 27 next year.
This offering presents a rare opportunity to survey the prolific career of the artist through installations of more than a hundred paintings, prints, drawings and sculptures loaned from various institutional and private collections. Many of the pieces will receive a gala for the first time.
Though retrospectives often tend to show more of the middle and recent works of artists, each of BenCab’s five decades of ingenuity is amply represented, starting from his early works as an art student at the College of Fine Arts of the University of the Philippines (UPCFA) to his 1960s paintings when he began exhibiting as a professional artist, and all the way to his most recent output of this year, namely in the form of sculpture.
Thus, viewers will leave the retrospective with a fresher view of BenCab, not merely as an art world darling who has surpassed monetary expectations in the secondary or auction market but as an artist’s artist, a master proficient in art forms beyond painting and printmaking. Viewers will also learn how the artist has continuously caused change to his familiar images, which we term his series, namely his Sabel and Larawan.
These have engaged viewers starting as mere signature motifs of the times and have undergone metamorphosis into creative grounds of artistic experimentation, finally turning into engaging totems of social critique. The latter is a discourse on art and poverty, though the artist will never be termed a social realist in the Marxian vein.
En toto, the exhibition reveals the journey of how this individual became one of the Philippines’s most esteemed and iconic artists of the 21st century.
It is only a loss that, as of press time, no instance was available to show how BenCab, who was born on April 10, 1942, was, indeed, a very talented young man. He is said to have painted on readily available surfaces of pavements and walls, and made extra income by doing his classmates’ illustration assignments. He also won student art contests.
As a fine arts undegrad at the UPCFA, he had the opportunity to work with one of the greatest professors of art ever, Dean Jose T. Joya, who posthumously became National Artist in 2003.
But it was growing up in the eclectic hub of Manila in the 1960s that BenCab became exposed to surroundings rife with material that influenced his bohemian lifestyle and subsequent wanderlust. He left school to work as an illustrator and magazine layout designer, while developing his technique in form and figuration. His most popular subject, Sabel, emerged from the raw, corporeal depiction of poverty portrayed as a bedraggled scavenger wandering the streets of Bambang, Santa Cruz. This prefigured a trajectory from commercial arts to painting. In 1965, he participated in his first group show with the Art Association of the Philippines, marking the start of his professional career.
Meanwhile his wanderlust brought him to London in the late 1960s. While taking printmaking classes and participating in gallery shows, he rediscovered colonial Filipino photographs among the flotsam of Chelsea’s antique shops. These prints became the visual anchor of his Larawan series. Despite sociopolitical tensions, BenCab returned to the country in 1972 to unveil his Larawan at the Luz Gallery where it generated strong public interest for its visual familiarity and resonant social-historical nuance.
In late 1985, BenCab returned to the Philippines for good. He settled in Baguio where he cofounded the Baguio Arts Guild with fellow travelers Kidlat Tahimik, Santiago Bose and Roberto Villanueva. They ignited a dynamic art scene in the Cordilleras which in 1993 culminated in the Baguio Arts Festival, which was participated in by international artists.
As a major figure in Philippine art, BenCab is a contemporary giant. His accolades include the Thirteen Artists Award in 1970, Kalinangan Award for Painting from the City of Manila in 1988, the Gawad CCP Para Sa Sining Biswal in 1992, and the Asean Achievement Award for Visual and Performing Arts in 1997.
In 2006 he was conferred the Order of National Artist for Visual Arts. Three years later, he was given the distinction of Doctor of Humanities, Honoris Causa, by the UP. Just recently, the House of Representatives recognized him on the occasion of his 50th year as a professional artist.
“BenCab: The Filipino Artist” is curated by Dannie Alvarez. It is a part of a series of exhibitions in eight museums marking a half century of creative output. The Metropolitan Museum of Manila is at the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas Complex, Roxas Boulevard, Manila. Museum hours are from 10 am to 5:30 pm, Mondays through Saturdays. For more information, e-mail info@metmuseum.ph.
Image credits: Samito Jalbuena