Month: November 2025
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Sikatuna as viewer’s surrogate in Luna’s Pacto de Sangre
I reread Filomeno Aguilar’s essay on the pacto de sangre, and it reminded me how often Luna’s painting is still described as a straightforward image of uneven relations between Spaniards and indigenous leaders. Even the encyclopedia article by Santiago Pilar echoes this. That reading treats the canvas as if it were meant to function like…
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Juan Luna’s French Orientalist Connection
For a long time, art historians have speculated about Juan Luna’s larger network of artists in Paris, including the extent to which he moved within the academic orbit of Jean-Léon Gérôme, the towering figure of French Orientalism. Gérôme’s pedagogical influence has often been inferred through stylistic parallels and early biographical testimony, yet documentary anchors have…
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The afterlives of Rizal’s A orillas del Pasig
A orillas del Pasig circulated in late nineteenth-century Manila as music sung in drawing rooms and printed as sheet music. Its most familiar version, A orillas del Pasig: Danza Filipina para Canto y Piano, features lyrics credited to José Rizal and music composed by his Ateneo Municipal classmate Blas Echegoyen. Hardly anyone remembers that the…
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Coulisse ala Philippine
I was reminded of a term I’ve seen before but never fully grasped during an art history lecture by Andrew Moisey on staffage in photography: the coulisse (pronounced koo-LEES). Developed by Claude Lorrain and Nicolas Poussin in 17th-century Rome, it refers to the dark “wing” of trees or architecture placed on one side of a…
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Juan Luna in Japan
Juan Luna’s brief but productive stay in Japan in 1896 is not always discussed is scholarship even if the works he produced during those visits forms some of the most visually compelling episodes of his late career. After returning to Manila in 1894, and following a turbulent period amid the growing revolutionary climate, Luna traveled…
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Mga Bilanggong Birhen (1977), an Amorsolo-Pastoral in Film
Mga Bilanggong Birhen (1977) is set on a Visayan hacienda during the early years of American colonial administration. The film follows the Sagrada family—Felipa, Juan, Doña Sagrada, and the daughters Celina and Milagros—within a household that retains social structures established during the late Spanish period. Throughout the film, the architecture of the ancestral home, its…
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Rosa Rosal, 97
Rosa Rosal, who died today at 97, was a leading actress of the postwar studio era and one of the Philippines’ most prominent humanitarian workers. Born Florence Lansang Danon on October 16, 1928, in Manila, she was discovered by chance after the war and made her screen debut in Fort Santiago (1946) for the Nolasco…
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Indios Bravos, 1888–1889
Between April 28 and May 16, 1888, during his continental journey across the United States, and again during the Paris Exposition Universelle of 1889, Rizal confronted two dramatically different representations of Indigenous Americans: one as commercial stereotype, the other as dignified performers. These encounters shaped what would become Indios Bravos, the fraternity founded by Rizal…
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José Rizal’s visit to the Javanese Village at the 1889 Paris Exposition
rizal, gamelan, debussy, java, expo, 1889, dunia melayu
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Ang Mutya ng Epiro: Isang Maagímat na Pagbása sa Florante at Laura ni Balagtas at Marca Demonio ni Amorsolo
Disyembre 13, 2025, Sabado 3-4 PM Unibersidad ng Pilipinas-Diliman Tatalakayin ng presentasyong ito ang dalawang anyo ng alegorikong substitusyon. Una, ang pagpapalit ng Pilipinas bilang Epiro sa Florante at Laura ni Balagtas. Dito inilalarawan ang isang kalis bilang sandata ng kabutihan at sagisag ng banal na katarungan. Ikalawa, ang Kris Joloano na muling lumitaw sa imahen ni San Miguel Arkanghel sa Noli…
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The Teacher Who Became a Mountain: Fernando Poe Jr.’s Asedillo (1971)
When Asedillo premiered in 1971, Ferdinand Marcos was tightening his grip on the republic, and the air in Manila was thick with student marches, labor strikes, and the metallic aftertaste of tear gas. Celso Ad. Castillo’s film—produced by and starring Fernando Poe Jr.—could have been mistaken for another action vehicle designed to confirm FPJ’s legend…
Geronimo Cristobal 