MANILA, Philippines - Marlene Aguilar is obviously in love with her country and people. She has produced no less than four massive, award-worthy books on the Philippine environment and culture.

?Fine Artists of the Philippines? was nominated for the Hong Kong Print Awards in 1999. ?The Philippine Coral Reefs? won the European Art for Environment Award in 2000. ?Myths and Legends of the Philippines? received the Best Literature Award from the Children?s Association of the Philippines in 2002.

Aguilar has come up with the first volume of her ?Encyclopedia of Philippine Art,? which had been nominated for the Southeast Asian Print Awards.

This is an expensive-looking coffee-table book of glossy photographic reproductions of hundreds of artworks (paintings, drawings, sculptures) spanning over a century of Philippine art.

The sharp-resolution illustrations on first-grade paper are visually pleasing, indeed. Each page could work as a pull-out, and one can have it perfectly framed.

As suggested by its editor Mike Cassey, without books such as this, ?many magnificent works of Filipino art would have been lost in the mists of time and would not exist for future generations to experience and enjoy.?

On this note, the book opens to Solomon Saprid?s bronze monument ?Gomburza? and Napoleon Abueva?s ?Transfiguration.?

Vanishing images

Such public art is always in danger of being overtaken by the environment, as what?s happening to Abueva?s monumental masterwork in Eternal Gardens at Balintawak in Caloocan City. It used to serenely dominate the skyline at the start of the North Expressway, but now giant billboards and squatters? structures have taken over the place, obliterating the view of the Christ.

That magnificent figure may soon be run down by urban development, commercialism, human carelessness and neglect, but its photographic image has been recorded forever. In this book, Aguilar has fulfilled her commitment to record or retrieve those vanishing images of Filipino culture.

It is almost all visuals, however, with practically no text except for the captions of the artworks and the artists? profiles at the back. Even then, the text of the entries is too brief, in the manner of a biodata or résumé.

A major irritant is the typographical errors, such as one artist?s name spelled as Kiko Escosa. A typical Kiko Escora drawing can be found in the book?s main body, but the artist has no profile at the back.

And why is there an entry on the poet Recaredo Demetillo? Why not Cirilo Bautista or Nestor Torre, who are also into painting and drawing?

Also, space allotted to some personages is hardly proportionate to their actual achievements in Philippine art. A glaring example is the entry on José Rizal, which takes half a page while others get too few a line.

Rizal may be our greatest hero but no art critic would honestly claim he was a great artist. What?s more, the sketch on him was largely taken from an American pastor?s speech on Rizal?s rôle in Philippine history, which is, of course, irrelevant.

Meanwhile, the entries on Juan Luna and Felix Resureccion Hidalgo get a quarter of a page each.

Visual favoritism

The body of the book runs on a similar vein, in what would constitute visual favoritism.

In some cases, what is obviously student art or the work of a minor artist is given several spreads of lavish illustrations, while works of more mature or major artists are limited to a page or two. And sometimes the work included is not typical or representative of the artist?s mature period.

A disproportionately large number of pages are given over to conservative art (genre painting, naïf, still life, portraiture, landscape, architectural imagery, representational art) and traditional mediums. The brave works of the avant-garde, the ugly visions of the expressionists, the unpleasant imagery of the young, the blood-letting of the abstractionists have been cut down.

This book is presumably meant to be no more than a visual record, as it has no textual analyses of the developments of Philippine art or evaluative essays on the artworks. It should be useful for art collectors, but not necessarily for art scholars.

It works, after all, more like a catalogue than an encyclopedia. Okay, a visual encyclopedia then.