RPH MIDTERM

• • The Philippines is an archipelago consisting of more than 7,000 islands.
• • The Philippines was colonized by Spain from 1565 to 1898, resulting in significant cultural exchange with Europe.
• Historical Paintings


  Visual representations of concrete happenings on the life of people in a specific period
• • Historical paintings communicate or express aesthetically through art with form, technique, and style
• Fernando Amorsolo


  • Portraitist and painter of rural Philippine landscapes
• • Fernando Amorsolo was the first-ever to be recognized as a National Artist of the Philippines
• Amorsolo's recognition

  • For his pioneering use of impressionistic technique
  • For his skill in the use of lighting and backlighting in his paintings, significant not only in the development of Philippine art but also in the formation of Filipino notions of self and identity
• Juan Luna


  • Best known for impressive rendition of classical subjects in his academic works, including historical scenes and portraiture, however subsequently he turned to realism depicting social inequalities
• Spoliarium


  • A Latin word that refers to the basement of the Roman Colosseum, where fallen and dying gladiators were dumped
• Spoliarium


  • A Latin word that refers to the basement of the Roman Colosseum, where fallen and dying gladiators were dumped

  
• • Spoliarium is the most valuable oil-on-canvas painting by Juan Luna, a Filipino educated at the Academia de Dibujo y Pintura (Philippines) and at the Academia de San Fernando in Madrid, Spain
• • Spoliarium is the largest painting in the Philippines, with a size of 4.22 meters x 7.675 meters
• • Spoliarium was made by Luna in 1884 as an entry to the prestigious Exposicion de Bellas Artes (Madrid Art Exposition, May 1884) and eventually won for him the First Gold Medal
• Spoliarium


  • Symbolizes the despair and the countless deaths of Filipinos during the Spanish reign
• The Parisian Life


  • An oil on canvas impressionist painting made by Filipino painter and revolutionary activist Juan Luna in 1892
• • The Parisian Life fetched $859,924 at Christie's auction in Hong Kong in 2002, an exorbitant sum paid by the Government Service Insurance System (GSIS), the pension fund institution of the Philippines
• The Parisian Life


  • A richly layered portrayal of contemporary social norms, gender politics and national allegory
• The Parisian Life


  • Formal and social analyses reveal a woman, believed to be a prostitute, as the subject of the male gaze
• The Parisian Life


  • Women in Paris were increasingly seen as a threat to the status quo, if they did not conform to the traditional role of a femme honnête (respectable woman), they were seen as the courtisane, or the prostitute
• The Parisian Life


  • The unregistered prostitute, who constituted a growing labor force in Paris, was regarded as the site of absolute degradation and dominance, the place where the body became at last an exchange value, a perfect and complete commodity
• The Parisian Life


  • The prostitute could be considered as the spectacle in the flesh, which Manet's Olympia (1863) embodied, representing desire and death, a femme fatale who was both loved and loathed
• The Parisian Life


  • Mirrors the constructions of masculinity and civility among the three men wearing European clothes, part of a larger attempt at nationalist self-fashioning
• The Parisian Life


  • Despite the civilized middle-class body, their brown faces disclose their racial identity, they are identified as the Filipino patriots Jose Rizal, Juan Luna (frontal pose), and Ariston Bautista (holding cane handle)
• The Parisian Life

  • They are fixed on the woman whose very appearance in a café is an erotic encounter itself
• The Parisian Life


  • While Luna's self-portrait exhibits fatigue or even ennui, Bautista registers the curiosity and pleasure of a voyeur "in a fairly lascivious way" tilting his head toward the sexually objectified cocotte who furtively acknowledges his gaze
• The Parisian Life


  • Far from heroic, Juan Luna brought to light the hypocrisy and duplicity of his milieu and the general anxiety against the prostitute
• Antipolo Fiesta


  An oil painting on canvas depicting a rural scene where a group of people are shown celebrating a fiesta in Antipolo
• • The pair of dancers in Antipolo Fiesta are not performing the tinikling dance, which makes this painting unique compared to Amorsolo's other tinikling-related paintings
• Palay Maiden


  • Palay is Tagalog for grain, which is symbolic of the Philippines' most staple crop. Maiden bears significance to Amorsolo's preference for beauty, portraying women with rounded faces, lively eyes, and blunt but firm noses, not conforming to Western standards of beauty