Originally published in Panorama, Volume X (Issue No.120 December 1958

They are a product of both East and West,
but have a distinct art of their own
By E. Aguilar Cruz

Painting and architecture were integrated until comparatively recent times. It was only with the rise of the European merchant class, which had no palaces but town houses and guild halls, that framed pictures took the place of the picture painted directly on wall or ceiling.

This in turn changed the work habits of painters. Where once they climbed ladders to decorate the residences of the rich, they now could take their ease in a studio, turning out pictures for select clients—or, what was even more remarkable, just painting to suit themselves.

Filipino art, an offshoot of Western art, was to repeat this historical pattern in due time. The situation of the Filipino artist today is the same as that of others living under Western culture, isolated from the public that, paradoxically enough, must buy pictures to enable the artist to make a living at his trade. The result of this has been to focus people’s attention on painting as the all-important form of art. The minor arts, so-called, are neglected. And so paintings hang on the wall, but the chairs are ugly as well as uncongenial, and five-and-ten “art” objects betray the real taste of the owner.

The wealth of Filipino art is not to be found in the works of painters alone. We see it in religious and secular art, in furniture and ornament, in wood, stone and metal. These objects belong in the Filipino environment and, despite obvious foreign influences which often make them seem altogether alien, they show, on closer inspection, characteristics which stamp them as our own.

It is a truism by this time to say that Filipino art is a blend of Orient and Occident. Yet we cannot too often be reminded of this fact. Four hundred years of living with Western modes of thought and feeling has left its mark. Thought may be altered by education; feeling is much more lasting. Indeed, it is debatable whether our emotionalism is as much a result of Spanish influence as we generally think. More probably, as in the case of the Christian religion itself, the Occidental layer was merely superimposed on the Oriental. It may well be that in both instances it was the native element which became dominant, as shown in the animistic beliefs of many Catholic worshippers to this day.

As in religion, so in art there is a recognizable trait which stamps our culture as being indeed our own. The belief, still current, that there is no Filipino culture to speak of could easily be demolished by any objective sociologist.

It may be stretching the point too far to speak of Filipino feeling in the church art that our craftsmen produced during the early years of the Spanish regime. After all, national consciousness in Filipinos was a nineteenth-century product. But native rather than Spanish genius is responsible for the peculiar versions of Baroque that characterize these buildings. The monk-engineer laid the foundations; the Filipino craftsman or artist (as in Europe formerly there was no distinction between the two) made a thing of beauty of the whole.

As the center of community life, the parish church represented the aspirations of the people. They not only took part wholeheartedly in devotional rites but prided themselves on the magnificence of their house of worship. Many people living today still remember how towns were known by the comparative sonority of their church bells. Like the church ornaments, these were cast by local artisans, and hauling them into position in the belfry was a great event.

In the carving of saintly faces, the sculptors of this period found the utmost use of their talent. Realism often was carried to bizarre lengths. Natural hair was employed to heighten verisimilitude, tinted glass went to make the eyes, and such was the skill of the craftsman that the Lady of Sorrows appeared actually to shed tears.

Constant exposure to such excesses of Baroque sculpture has left a lasting influence on Filipino conceptions of what is beautiful and touching in art. The sorrowing, the ecstatic, and the innocent in facial expression were equated with beauty. The evocations of these moods in other objects, such as landscape paintings, were to be highly prized later when secular art was developed in the middle of the nineteenth century.

If the holy images were works of art, no less so were their pedestals, shrines, and carriages on which they rode in processions. Gilding became a fine art and its secrets were handed down from one generation of craftsmen to another. The actual work was done by women who, in order to qualify, had to forego smoking and buyo-chewing. The gold foil was delicately picked up with a camel’s hair brush, on which the worker exhaled to effect the transfer to the stucco-covered wood which was moistened with saliva. Specialization in this craft can be seen from the fact that in the more delicate work pregnant women were preferred, on the theory that their saliva was better suited to the purpose.

The report of Governor Salazar to the King of Spain in 1590 shows that church art, at first practiced by Chinese who taught the native craftsmen, was already flourishing at the time. It continued to be the principal form of art in the Islands until toward the middle of the nineteenth century, when the rising middle class of Filipinos created a demand for secular art.

Pictorial representation, arabesques, and scrolls appeared on the walls of their salas in imitation of the European style, but more often than not using native motifs. It would appear from contemporary accounts that the taste for non-religious pictures was then already widespread. A leading public attraction in Manila at the time was the Cosmorama, a series of panoramic paintings in realistic detail. It was as the author of these paintings that the now-forgotten painter José Lozano of Sampaloc won early fame.

Lozano typified the secular Filipino painter of the generation which immediately followed the establishment of the first art school in the country by Damián Domingo between 1815 and 1820. Although a mildly successful portrait painter, Domingo, a Spanish mestizo, was better known for his religious paintings done on metal sheets or cloth overlaid with gesso.

The itinerant painter was a familiar figure among the well-to-do families of the era. Like his predecessor in colonial America, his portraits were often ready-made from the neck down, the subject’s head being painted in as orders were filled. Antonio Malantic, the most accomplished painter of this period, appears to have been not above using this method, but his best works were painted from life, from start to finish.

Malantic was taken into the family by Hilario Francia of Pagsanjan, Laguna, to paint the members of the household. One of these was the daughter of the house, Soledad. Malantic’s portrait of her, painted in 1876, is not only a family heirloom but a masterpiece of Filipino painting worthy to rank with the best of Juan Luna and later painters.

Further comparison with the history of Western art is inevitable as the age of Luna approaches. Once more, as in Europe of the mercantile era, painting was emancipated from architecture. Wreaths and cornucopias in raised style still graced the walls of the rich man’s sala, and foreshortened goddesses reminiscent of the Venetian school were a favorite ceiling adornment in larger residences.

But more and more the easel picture was coming into vogue. The profusion of paintings in the homes of the well-to-do is best described by Rizal in Noli Me Tangere, which also gives a vivid glimpse into the prevailing fashion in furniture. Here, in part, is the inventory of art objects in the house of Capitan Tiago:

“Contrasting with these earthly preparations (for the Capitan’s soiree) are the motley paintings on the walls representing religious matters such as Purgatory, Hell, The Last Judgment, The Death of the Just, The Death of the Sinner and, in a central place, amidst a splendid and elegant setting in the style of the Renaissance fashioned by Arevalo (contemporary painter and sculptor of religious subjects), a curious canvas of great proportions wherein are seen two aged women. The inscription says: ‘Our Lady of Peace and Good Voyage, who is venerated in Antipolo, under the disguise of a beggar visiting in her idleness the pious and celebrated Capitana Ines.’”

The Baroque realism of church images, already noted, is still strong during this period. Rizal continues:

“The picture, while revealing neither taste nor art, has by way of compensation extreme realism: the sick woman already seems like a corpse in putrefaction by the yellow and bluish tints of its face; the glasses and other objects, the effects of long illness, are reproduced so minutely that the very contents are visible.”

On the furniture:

“He has hung from the ceiling precious lanterns of China, frosted crystal balls, red, green, and blue, faded air plants, dried and inflated fishes which they call botetes, etc., closing entirely the side that faces the river with curious arches of wood, half Chinese, half European, affording a view of an azotea, arbors and bowers dimly lighted by paper lanterns of all colors.”

After noting “massive mirrors and brilliant chandeliers,” the author’s eyes light on yet another painting:

“of a fine man in full dress, rigid, erect, symmetrical as the tasselled cane he holds in his fingers covered with rings. The picture seems to say: ‘Ahem! Look what I have on and how serious I am.’”

No doubt, this is none other than the master himself, Capitan Tiago.

Filipinos of means in the 1880s were not as exuberant in taste as this particular Capitan. But of the popularity of oil paintings at this time, good as well as bad, there can scarcely be any doubt, judging by the large number of Filipino painters who flourished immediately before and during Luna’s time. There were, to name just a few, Lorenzo Guerrero, Lorenzo Rocha, and Felipe Roxas.

Guerrero painted religious pictures in addition to bodegones or still lifes, but they were marked by restraint. Doubtless others like him existed, but on the whole we may safely assume that the average religious painting was hardly better than the chromos sold at feria stalls.

If anything, however, they would only be further proof, if they were extant today, of the Filipino painter’s unconscious injection of his own temperament—a peculiarly Filipino quality—even when literally copying a foreign work.

Juan Luna seems at a casual glance to be completely Europeanized. The same is true of Félix Resurrección Hidalgo, his equally famous contemporary. Together they made Europeans aware of the Philippines through art for the first time. To put it rather naively, they proved that Filipinos were just as good painters as Europeans, if not better. This is the motivation of their grandiose works.

But their smaller paintings are no less Filipino than those of, let us say, Fabián de la Rosa. The sunsets and seascapes of Hidalgo strike poetic moods dear to the heart of our countrymen. There are landscapes, genre, and portraits of Luna’s that might have been painted by De la Rosa.

The closing years of the Spanish regime and the early years of the American era were, in more senses than one, a time of transition. Until years after the revival of the old School of Fine Arts as a department of the University of the Philippines in 1909, there were no new influences in painting.

But genre painting, which traces at least as far back as Felipe Roxas, flourished as never before or since. De la Rosa, who wielded pen and brush with equal facility, wrote occasionally for the literary press on subjects like color and design. Perhaps the most cultured painter of them all, he was what people might have called “Europeanized.” But even more than in Luna’s case, appearances were deceiving. It would be difficult, if not impossible, to find among De la Rosa’s many works one which would merit the label “foreign.”

Fernando Amorsolo, the pupil of De la Rosa whose fame was to rival that of his teacher—and in some respects surpass it—has often been criticized in the past as an imitator of the Spanish form. The Baroque, the romantic, the sentimental, and the irrational are not entirely missing and often, indeed, speak out boldly behind the mask of impersonality that is supposed to characterize abstract art.

Many who are familiar with contemporary Filipino painting, foreigners included, have commented on the affinity between Amorsolo on the one hand and Carlos Francisco and Vicente Manansala on the other. Farther on the artistic left, they have noted also the “native colors” of Hernando Ocampo. One might even say that Ocampo’s preoccupation with texture and interlocking forms are Baroque in modern dress. Other painters, except in more or less pure abstractions, unconsciously reveal similar emotional content.

When all is said, however, paintings cannot reveal to us all that they meant to the men who first owned them. Even less can be got from books, useful guides though they may be, and certainly valuable for name-dropping purposes at arty gatherings. But in the opinion of at least one person, a well-designed chair that combines utility and beauty in one harmonious whole would illustrate better the meaning of art. — Progress ’57