Personally for me, the strange twist added to the furor over the 2009 National Artist Awards is how Manoling Morato lashed out last week against the likes of Cesar Legaspi and Arturo Luz, saying that he junked his pieces by Legaspi and Luz and would prefer Carlo Caparas' works at any given day.

Is it senility that causes Manoling to act this way?  My late father often pointed back to a time in the mid 1950s when Cesar Legaspi, Arturo Luz, and my dad were scholars by the Spanish government studying at the Academia Real de Bellas Artes in Madrid.  Their friends then...the Moratos including Sra. Elvira Morato Cuenca (more easily known these days as the grandmother of ABS-CBN talent, Jake Cuenca).

So now it makes me wonder how Manoling could take this cruel stance in the fray.  Tsk, Tsk.




*picture shows Cesar Legaspi and me when I was 7 years old, sketching in Bacolod City.  Sana man lang nag-rub-off ang pagka National Artist nya sa akin. LOL!