WHITHER ART HISTORY?

Whither Art History in the Non-Western World: Exploring the

Other('s) Art Histories
Author(s): Florina H. Capistrano-Baker
Source: The Art Bulletin, Vol. 97, No. 3 (September 2015), pp. 246-257
Published by: CAA
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/43947739
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WHITHER ART HISTORY?

Whither Art History in the Non-Western World: E

the Other ('s) Art Histories
Fiorina H. Capistrano-Baker

The discipline of art history in the Philippines is a tested on both sides of the Pacific. But for the Philippines, as
postcolo-
nial American construct, its roots going back to in the 1950s.
other parts of Southeast Asia, I suspect, the urgent chal-
This young field journeyed across the Pacific in the lenge lies not so much in developing new theory (although
mid-twen-
tieth century from the United States to its erstwhilethis is certainly important) as in retrieving and documenting
Southeast
Asian colony after hopping across the pond to the art United
historical data from archives and objects before they are
States from Europe, where it was first established as forever lost through the looting of archaeological sites,
a disci-
the vandalizing of colonial churches to install basketball
pline in the nineteenth century. Western art historians
deploy various methods of artistic analysis, describing
courts, and
the demolition of landmark buildings by misguided
interpreting works of art within prescribed theoretical developers
frame- and politicians, or the collapse of eighteenth- to
works. They examine art as visual markers of cultures nineteenth-century
at spe- architecture from the annual onslaught
cific spatial and temporal junctures. Western art historians of increasingly debilitating earthquakes, tsunamis, and
employ methodologies such as formal analysis, iconology typhoons. It would help as well to institutionalize private and
and iconography, connoisseurship, biography, psychology, government programs to ensure proper documentation, con-
structuralism, language, feminism, Marxism, and critical servation,
the- and preservation of artworks and heritage sites.
ory to discern an artwork' s multiplicity of meanings. Rather than retread previously articulated views from the
In contrast, among many cultures with a colonial "peripheries"
history, provocatively expressed in earlier contributions
to the conversation on "Whither Art History?" that might also
study of one's artistic heritage is less an abstract intellectual
exercise and academic preoccupation than an impulse that
apply to the Philippine condition, I would like to call attention
springs from an idealistic (and idealized) quest to retrieve
here to intriguing intersections between career trajectories of
one's "authentic," precolonial identity, or than a group strat-
artists from my particular geography and their Western coun-
egy for fashioning an imagined nationality. Recovering terparts
andat distinct temporal junctures that merit closer scru-
reclaiming cultural traditions and their corresponding tinyvisual
and might perhaps propel us closer toward a theory of art
expressions, entangled and blurred by centuries of colonial This discussion is framed by a brief history of art
in diaspora.
interventions, is thus imbricated with identity politics and
history at the University of the Philippines3 and an overview of
notions of nation. There exists an inherent conflict between areas of concern specific to the Philippine situation. Accounts
the Western intellectual tradition of (presumably) "objective"
of three important artists provide a way to articulate research
art historical analysis by the Western "outsider" studyingopportunities
non- and challenges at this "global turn" in which art
Western art versus the impassioned, sometimes intuitive,historians
per- at the center are turning to the peripheries in their
haps more "subjective" quest for lost identities and meanings
attempt to develop a truly global art history.4
by formerly colonized Others, the two approaches locked With in the unprecedented scale and frequency of global
constant struggle. movements of peoples and objects, coupled with technologi-
Distinguished colleagues contributing to the debate calonadvances that blur geographic borders and virtually con-
"Whither Art History?" have articulated critical issues, nect
ques- various centers with their peripheries, the question of
tions, and challenges vis-à-vis the much trumpeted crisis artinin diaspora seems particularly timely.
art history confounding the European-American center and
(presumably) reverberating through the distant peripheries.
The History of Art History at the University of the
Philippines
In previous responses to the question, colleagues from India
and Brazil, in particular, eloquently articulated thoughtsAsand
an art historian from a Southeast Asian nation with a suc-
concerns that resonate and rumble in Southeast Asia and the cession of colonial pasts - primarily Spanish (1521-1898)
Philippines as well - for example, the need to explore over- and American (1898-1946), with British (1762-64) and Japa-
looked local histories and sites of experimentation in the nese (1941-45) interludes - my first point of entry into the
non-Western world from which a new theory crisscrossing field of art history was through the side door of the humani-
time and geography might emerge,1 or the need to address ties program at the University of the Philippines (UP) in
and redress the politics of power and voice within the field,Quezon City. Like many scholars with a colonized past, I con-
including the location and relation between center and centrated on cultural translations and identity.
periphery.2 The formation of the Humanities Department as the initial
Colonial histories and cultural mutations in Latin America home of the UP's fledgling art program and its evolution to
with corresponding Philippine specificities have tremendous today's Department of Art Studies mirror in many ways art
potential to provide comparative theoretical models history'swhen development as a discipline in the "distant" islands

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 WHITHER ART HISTORY? 247

linked through the umbilical cord of colonialism to the erst- If I had to choose a favorite painter, it would without a
while motherland, the United States. It was the UP's humani- doubt have to be Fernando Amorsolo

ties curriculum that sired the country's first art history at his paintings, he makes
program with a pedagogical genealogy that goes back to the heart weeps from such an ov
University of Chicago's humanities program. to those beautiful days

In the 1950s, Albert Hays, a professor of humanities at the Uni- this vision of the Philippines is long
versity of Chicago, traveled to the Philippines on a Fulbright be brought back. But I don't think so
grant to develop a course with local UP faculty entitled the minds and hearts of individuals l
"Introduction to the Arts." Hays brought art slides, music tapes, why, even though Amorsolo has long
and the textbooks Learning to Look: A Handbook for the Visual Arts speak of him, as well as the olden da
by Joshua Taylor (University of Chicago Press, 1957) and Learn- like they still exist to this very day.8
ing to Listen: A Handbook for Music by Grosvenor Cooper (Univer-
sity of Chicago Press, 1957), which became the standard texts. Ideologically aligned with the spirit o
The art appreciation program in the style of the University of the 1970s, the UP's Humanities Depar
Chicago was taught in the UP's newly established Humanities courses in Philippine art. One of th
Department, which had been spun off from the Department of helped shape these courses was the p
English in 1959; a bachelor of arts degree in the humanities was the Philippines from the Spanish Conquest
instituted in 1964. This was the first art history program in the ture, Painting and Sculpture during the S
Philippines and in Southeast Asia.5 Regime and the Present by the painter
Intellectual ties to Chicago trace back not only to Hays but Castañeda.9
also the textbook's author Joshua Taylor (1917-1981), who In 1974, the university approved a master's degree
was the William Rainey Harper chair of Chicago's Depart- program in art history. Among the professors teaching the
ment of Art History, with a Ph.D. in art history from Prince- graduate and undergraduate courses in the Humanities
ton University. He was also director of the National Museum Department was Harvard-educated art historian Rod. Paras-
of American Art at the Smithsonian Institution. Taylor's Perez, who returned to the Philippines in 1971 as the
book embodied the heart of this teaching, which emphasized country's first holder of a doctorate in art history. Paras-Perez
the primacy of the art of seeing. Former Art Studies chair Pat- passed on to his students at UP, and across other institutions
rick Flores retraces the department's history, quoting former through time, methodologies and perspectives developed in
Humanities chair Josefa Lava: close intellectual engagement with his Harvard professors,
colleagues, and advisers, among them James Ackerman and
[The] Humanities . . . hewed very close to the content of Agnes Mongan, herself a pioneer in the study of drawings
the manuals of what must have been the University of Chi- and the first female director of Harvard's Fogg Art Museum.
cago approach. The course was primarily designed to In 1989, the Humanities Department changed its name to
make the students consciously aware of what constituted a the Department of Art Studies, in part to reflect its new focus
work of art and why it affected them the way it did, as far on the artistic expressions of cultural groups in the periph-
as it was possible (without the necessity of lecturing on art eral areas outside the urban center of Manila. Art history clas-
movements and historical styles) to draw the values and ses are also currently taught in the Fine Arts Department.
meanings . from each particular work discussed in class. Other Southeast Asian scholars generally hold in high regard
The students were made to grapple with the expressive the practice of art history in the Philippines, which enjoys
elements, first in isolation, to enable them to see as clearly something of a leadership position in the Southeast Asian
as possible the distinctive behavior of each expressive ele- region, a trail blazed by the pioneer art historian Paras-Perez
ment, later in their interrelationships, and still further, and a role that a new generation of scholars such as Patrick
the distinguishing characteristics of the major types of the Flores and other colleagues carry on.
visual arts, music, and literature.6
Other Geographies, Other('s) Art Histories
Lava continues:
Western interest in the anthropology and visual history of
I can never forget the momentary hush that always sweepsnon-Western cultures stems partly from the usefulness of
a classroom of forty or so students . . . when I flash ainsights
slide gained about Self through knowledge of the Other,
of Michelangelo's Moses or Velazquez's Las Meninas.a They strategy toward self-knowledge that could potentially func-
are caught in awe, they are speechless and just at tion thatas a two-way highway. For the formerly colonized also
instant of time are drinking with their eyes what seems gleanto
self-knowledge and insights through the prism, meth-
them to be unutterably beautiful.7 odology, and language of the erstwhile colonizer. One can-
not underestimate the importance of illuminating the
precolonial
In this early model of art appreciation and its emphasis on past, when Southeast Asian cultures actively
the aesthetic experience, art historical methodology and the- in cultural and artistic exchange with the dominant
engaged
cultures
ory appear to have taken a back seat. Contrasting with the dis- of India and China before sustained contact with
Western colonizers. Additionally, Asia's pivotal role in th
ciplined historical study of artworks, this intuitive, emotional
response remains popular among lay art enthusiasts, for
transpacific exchange at the zenith of Spain's power, when
example, in this blog expressing patriotic sentimentsthe that,
Pacific Ocean was considered the "Spanish Lake," has yet
one might safely say, are shared by many Filipinos: to be fully explored, and scholars from both sides of th

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248 ART bulletin September 2015 volume xcvii number 3

Pacific - Indian, Chinese, Filipino, American, Latin Ameri-

with the West, such as China and Japan, where debates
can - need to strengthen their tenuous network. Similarly,between "traditional-style" and "Western-style" painting modes
artistic connections between the Philippines and the earlyemerged in the modern period, two-dimensional painting in
American republic, less known than the period of American the Philippines was always a Western import. The earliest
colonization of the islands, await further study. known two-dimensional images were copied from European
Aspects of these large, complex topics are beginning to models
be that Filipino and Sino-Filipino artists replicated after
addressed by Asian, European, and American colleagues in first contact with Spain in the sixteenth and seventeenth
their
recent conferences, symposia, and multiauthor volumes.
centuries. Consequently, no dichotomy occurs such as in
However, more sustained and regular dialogues are needed
Japan, for example, where tension between nihonga (tradi-
for mutual illumination, especially regarding the pivotal role
tional) and Western-style modern and contemporary painting
persists, nor the schism between traditional Chinese brush
Manila played in the Spanish-controlled Manila galleon trade
commercially linking Manila and Mexico in the sixteenth painting
to versus Western techniques in the contemporary art
early nineteenth centuries. Access to English translationsof
ofChina.
documents in various languages, especially early Chinese and The long tradition of Western-style art making in the Phil-
Spanish texts, would be most useful to English-reading ippines, in fact, attracted Asian artists seeking a Western edu-
researchers, who, while straddling multiple cultures, might
cation with limited financial means to embark on the long
not necessarily be polyglot. journey to Europe or the United States. They studied in
New digital platforms currently in development that aim to
Manila instead. As early as the nineteenth century, instruc-
provide a digital environment for virtual engagements tors from the Spanish art academies sailed to the islands to
among scholars separated by vast geographic distances, such
teach in the Philippine academies. Philippine leadership in
as the digital scholars' work space being developed byAsiathe in making Western-style art persisted through the Ameri-
Getty Research Institute, hold tremendous potential for mul-
can period. Documentary evidence indicates, for example,
tilingual, interdisciplinary research. For example, a groupthat
of the Chinese founder of the Singapore Academy had, in
colleagues is planning a translation and annotation offact,
an studied in the Philippines to learn the latest Western
important but little studied sixteenth-century codex that
techniques.14
would involve input and collaboration in the digital work
space among scholars based in various countries in Asia,Philippine Art in the Late Nineteenth to Twentieth Centuries
Europe, and the Americas.10 The final product envisionedTo
is understand the social context and artistic genealogies of
a multilingual digital publication that would be widely acces-
representative works by three artists that I would like to dis-
sible online, with links to appropriate external resources cuss
to here as case studies in diasporic art, it is useful to review
include not only texts but also high-resolution image files.junctures and disjunctions in Philippine history. On March
Exciting developments in technology and the new era of1521, Ferdinand Magellan claimed the islands of the pres-
16,
digital humanities open a plethora of possibilities. These,
ent-day nation of the Philippines for the Spanish Crown dur-
however, would call for the laborious process of sorting them
ing the expedition that would ultimately circumnavigate the
out, for the unlimited accessibility of information does not
world. Spanish colonization and conversion gained momen-
yet distinguish reliable versus unreliable sources. This tum
and in 1565 with the arrival via Mexico of Miguel Lopez de
Legazpi and Friar Andres de Urdaneta. The Seven Years'
other challenges plaguing art history's "global turn" - such
as the "big" question of how to integrate understudied areas
War between Great Britain and Spain spilled over to the Phil-
and artworks within the traditional canon - are among theippines with the short-lived British occupation of Manila
urgent issues the current 2014-15 Getty Scholar theme, from 1762 to 1764, under the command of William Draper,
"Object - Value - Canon" addresses. As one who participatedwho led the expedition from Madras with some support from
the East India Company. Although the Philippines declared
in the previous year's gathering of scholars on another timely
topic (cultural and artistic exchange through maritime con-independence from Spain on June 12, 1898, the islands were
nections), I feel this current engagement will surely yield ceded to the United States through the Treaty of Paris end-
intriguing results that will ultimately ripple out to the wider
ing the Spanish-American War in Cuba the same year. With
scholarly community. the outbreak of World War II in 1941, Manila fell to the Japa-
In the Philippines, local art forms before sustained contact
nese shortly after the bombing of Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. In
with the West included prestige objects of precious mother- 1945, American forces regained control, and the colonial
of-pearl, jade, ivory, and gold. Imported silks, ceramics, and
government recognized Philippine independence on July 4,
other trade goods indicate that mercantile relations with
1946.

China and other Asian neighbors already existed as early as With a heritage of centuries of diasporic movements and
the tenth century.11 Spanish Catholic missionaries and weal-
global trade, prominent Filipino artists of the late nineteenth
thy families commissioned exquisite portraits, religious to twentieth centuries often straddle East and West, pardy
icons, and ecclesiastical paraphernalia throughout the seven-
inhabiting both realms, belonging completely to neither.
teenth to nineteenth centuries.12 Watercolor export paint- Three artists from this temporal frame serve as potential
ings whose iconographie genealogies trace back to Western
entry points for developing a model for the overlapping
phenomena of artistic diaspora, nationalism, and transna-
archetypes depicting occupations and attire emerged 21s pop-
ular travel souvenirs in the late nineteenth century.13 tionalism. Juan Luna y Novicio (1857-1899), Fernando
The Philippine case is unusual, for unlike other Asian
Cueto Amorsolo (1892-1972), and Fernando Zóbel (1924-
countries with painting traditions before artistic contact
1984) occupy disparate though intersecting temporal and

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 WHITHER ART HISTORY? 249

geographic space, sharing similar predicaments and disloca-
tions, each translating borrowed languages as strategies to
affirm equality, fashion identity, and confirm nationality.
Luna, Amorsolo, and Zóbel each left an indelible mark on
succeeding generations of artists.
After the first Philippine Academy of Painting was estab-
lished in 1821, government scholarships and private wealth
generated by the galleon trade between Manila and Acapulco
from the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries enabled the most
nation in spirit, in their duties, in their views, in their privi-
leges. I drink then to the health of our artists Luna and
Hidalgo, legitimate and pure glories of two peoples! ... I
drink to the health of the Filipino youth, sacred hope of
my Native Land, that they may imitate such precious
examples so that Mother Spain, solicitous and heedful of
the welfare of her province, implement soon the reforms
she has contemplated for a long time. . . ,18

ambitious artists to pursue further training abroad. AmongFellow nationalist and expatriate Graciano Lopez Jaena's
assessment of the colonial situation was harsher:
them was the artist Juan Luna, who studied at the Real Acade-
mia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando in Madrid. In the early
twentieth century, the artist Fernando Amorsolo studied at . . . gentlemen, when I contemplate Luna's painting, over
the same Spanish institution under the patronage of Enrique those terrible shapes, over that conjunction of horrors
Zóbel de Ayala, a wealthy businessman in Manila. Althoughthat shows me a barbaric scene, I feel something far
they were trained there, neither Luna nor Amorsolo was abeyond that excites me ... if there is anything grandiose,
member of the Spanish academy. But Luna became the first sublime in the Spoliarium, it is that through this canvas,
Filipino to be elected a member of the Société Nationale des through the figures depicted in it, through its coloring,
Beaux-Arts in France. Fernando Zóbel became the first artist floats the living image of the Filipino people grieving over
with a Philippine background elected to the Spanish acad- their misfortunes. Because, gentlemen, the Philippines is
emy. He was the son of Amorsolo's patron, Enrique Zóbel de nothing more than a Spoliarium in reality, with all its hor-
Ayala, and grandson of the Spanish Admiral Patricio Mon- rors. There rubbish lies everywhere; there human dignity
tojo, whom George Dewey defeated in the 1898 Battle of is mocked; the rights of man are torn to shreds; equality is
Manila Bay, giving Americans control of the islands. The a shapeless mass; and liberty is embers, ashes, smoke.19
combined careers of these three artists span one hundred
years of Philippine art history, each a pioneer in his own way,
Rendered in the grand academic style, the brutality portrayed
in his own time.15 in Spoliańum anticipates Luna's subsequent fascination with
Social Realism. But the last quarter of the nineteenth century
National Hero, Transnational Artist was still something of a golden age of history painting, as evi-
Born in Badoc, llocos Norte, to an ethnically mixed and eco-denced by the monumental works of the major Spanish
nomically middle-class family, Juan Luna sailed for Spain inartists associated with this tradition, including Francisco Pra-
1878 to study at the Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fer- dilla, José Casado del Alisal, Antonio Gisbert, Antonio Muñoz
nando, where he imbibed the Western classical canons of Delgrain, José Moreno Carbonero, and the young Joaquin
symmetry, balance, and proportion. Luna belonged to a Sorolla, who all featured episodes of ancient Greco-Roman
group of Filipino expatriate artists who actively participatedand more recent Iberian history painted in a highly dramatic
in the Madrid and Paris Salons, deliberately working in the fashion.20
grand academic style to prove that the colonized were equal Although Luna was an ardent Philippine nationalist, his
to the colonizers in their own language.16 The art historian works in Spain are regarded as "Spanish" and exhibited
Edward J. Sullivan notes, "The history of his early years in alongside those of well-known Spanish history painters. His
Europe is one of assimilation and apart-ness, frustration andmonumental Battle of Lepanto {La Batalla de Lepanto , 1887) in
adaptation the Spanish Senado (Senate building) in Madrid captures
Spain was deeply conflicted, bringing him
the chaos both
and terror satisfaction
of the battle between the Spanish, led
and anxiety."17 by Donjuán of Austria, and the Ottoman Turks in 1571.
Luna is best remembered for multiple
Luna's spontaneousvictories
application of paintin the meth-
appropriates
Spanish and French Salons. In 1884, he
ods of his won contemporaries
Impressionist the first gold
in the context of the
medal at the Exposición Nacional more
deconservative
Bellasgenre Artes inpainting.21
of historical Madrid It is note-
for Spoliarium , a monumental canvas
worthy that portraying
the image of Don Juan ofaAustria
Roman portrayed at
scene in the subterranean chamberthe
ofbow the Colosseum,
of the ship where
appears to derive from the well-known
mourning families claimed the bodies of dying
painting Emperor Charles V on gladiators.
Horseback by Titian (1548),
The imagery was interpreted by which Luna would have
nationalist seen at the Museo
Filipinos as andel Prado,
allegory for the colonial situation in the
Madrid. Philippines.
Luna's Fellow
familiarity with the Museo del Prado is evi-
expatriate and national hero José dentRizal hailed
in a portrait Luna's
painting tri-
tided Woman with Mantón (ca.
umph as a beacon for Filipino youth 1880s), to emulate
whose as a
setting conflates means
the Paseo del Prado, where
to hasten colonial reforms:
the museum is located, and the Parque de Retiro, Madrid's
main park (Fig. I).22 The European-looking woman, while
... we have all come here to this banquet to join our framed by these two Spanish landmarks, wears accessories
wishes, in order to give forum to our mutual embrace of that evoke transnational Asian connections. Sumptuously
two races that love one another, that like one another, draped around her shoulders is a Chinese silk shawl of the
morally, socially, politically united for a period of four cen- type brought to Spain via the Manila galleon trade, epony-
turies, so that they may form in the future one single mously known as Mantón de Manila. With her back to the

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250 ART BULLETIN SEPTEMBER 2015 VOLUME XCVII NUMBER 3

1 Juan Luna, Woman with Mantón ,

ca. 1880s, oil on canvas, 44V4 x
30% in. (112.5 x 77 cm). Ayala
Museum Collection, Makati City,
Philippines, Gift of Mercedes Zóbel
McMicking (artwork in the public
domain; photograph provided by Ayala
Museum)

viewer, displaying the shawl's rich embroidery, folds, and movement that would grip the Philippines during the last
fringes to full advantage, she gazes to one side, the contours decades of the Marcos dictatorship in the late twentieth
of her profile in counterpoint to the dramatic sweep of a century.
large Oriental fan she holds up to her face. This eclectic
European image situated in a specific Spanish site contrasts Translating Nationalism
with Luna's portraits of Filipino relatives and friends that Juan Luna's success as an artist who transcended the geogra-
seem to focus more on inner qualities rather than specific phies of the Philippines, Spain, and France was followed by
geographies, perhaps a reflection of his sense of dislocation. another extraordinary career primarily anchored in the Phil-
While lesser known than his portraits and earlier academic ippines, that of the younger artist Fernando Cueto Amorsolo.
works rendered in the grand manner, Luna's subsequent Arguably the most beloved Filipino artist in Philippine his-
interest in the Social Realist movement and intimate studies tory, Amorsolo is sometimes called the "painter of the Ameri-
of various classes of people during his residence in Pariscan period" because of his popularity among Americans and
predate by almost one hundred years the Social Realist other expatriate residents in the Philippines. One of his

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 WHITHER ART HISTORY? 251

earliest works is a large portrait of the American president of newly harvested rice stalks {palay) and pauses momentar-
Woodrow Wilson, which was sent to the Panama Exposition ily, gazing at the viewer, as if saying, "witness how beautiful is
of 1914.23 Another early work, from 1924, formerly in the col- this maiden, this Pearl of the Orient, this young nation, the
lection of the California Historical Society in San Francisco, Philippines." Resisting the American colonial gaze, Amorsolo
portrays an American lady dressed in traditional Filipina dresses the image in the red skirt of the katipunera , the nine-
attire: a baro't saya (sheer blouse and long skirt) with match- teenth-century freedom fighter against Spanish tyranny.27
ing pañuelo and tapis (fichu and wraparound overskirt) ,24 Improved technology during the American colonial period
This type of cross-dressing generally regarded by Filipinos made color reproductions of European and American art avail-
as complimentary might be read differently within the con- able in the Philippines through magazines like La Esfera from
text of race, gender, and colonialism. In her unconventional Spain, International Studio from England, and the Studio from
analysis of gender/power politics, Elizabeth Mary Holt calls the United States. Works by French Impressionist artists such
attention to the implications of cultural cross-dressing by as Edouard Manet, Claude Monet, and Pierre-Auguste Renoir
white American females. She submits that such actions were, became easily accessible. Amorsolo first witnessed their original
in fact, experiments in power relations by which desirable works during his visit to Europe and the United States in 1919.
qualities associated with Filipinas were appropriated by In a published interview in 1920, Amorsolo readily acknowl-
American women without forfeiting their dominant position edged inspiration from Western artists. He admired, in particu-
as colonizers: lar, the Spanish Impressionists Ignacio Zuloaga and Joaquin
Sorolla: "Of the moderns, I first like Zuloaga and Sorolla, who
Patriarchal and colonial discourses of the time repre- each in his own style, are two figures of the first magnitude."28
sented the ideal white-American woman as asexual, whileSorolla's pervasive influence is evident not only in Amorsolo's
Filipinas were portrayed as the antithesis of that ideal -
treatment of sunlight and the quick, broken brushstrokes but
also in his rendering of wet, transparent clothing on women
dusky, passionate, exciting, exotic, erotic, sexually power-
ful, and perilously attractive to white-American males. .bathing
. . and the ubiquitous straw hat worn by country lads.
For a brief time, dressed as Filipinas, white-AmericanIt is intriguing that Sorolla's earlier works in the academic
women could abandon their traditional role in colonial manner appear also to have a connection with the works of
society by wearing clothes that signified, not only Amorsolo's
romance predecessor, the nineteenth-century artist Juan
and excitement but also danger. . . . Attired in this Luna.
mannerLuna's and Sorolla's paths may well have crossed, for
they trapped the essence of a feminized colony enjoying recent research reveals that they both were friends of the
Spanish sculptor Mariano Benlliure, who resided in Rome
transgressive pleasure without forfeiture of their position
in the colonial hierarchy.25 with his brothers José and Juan Antonio.29 Luna stayed with
the Benlliure brothers in Rome during his apprenticeship
While there is danger in overreading or misreading with Alejo Vera in 1879, developing a deep friendship with
images, texts, and subtexts, such questions are usefulthem. In 1884, Luna painted Mariano's portrait, and he, in
as one
delves deeper into Amorsolo's "pretty" works. Despite exchange,
foreign created a bust of Luna.30 When Luna and his
patronage, Amorsolo remained profoundly nationalistic.brother
His Antonio (a revolutionary leader) were incarcerated
patriotic sentiments are encoded in his canvases celebrating
for sedition in the Philippines in 1896, it was Mariano Benl-
a pristine, rural countryside in counterpoint to the liure
Western-
who helped lobby in Madrid for their release.
ized urban capital of Manila. This yearning for the Sorolla,
"pure" who was of the same age and Valencian origin as
and "unspoiled" extends to the notion of the Filipinahis
beauty,
good friend Mariano Benlliure, had similarly frequented
clearly articulated in literary and visual imagery: the Benlliure brothers in Rome, for he studied at the studio
of Mariano's older brother José. Sorolla's commissioned
My conception of an ideal Filipina beauty is one with a
nineteenth-century paintings in the grand academic style
rounded face, not of the oval type. . . . The eyes should
hang today
be in the Spanish Senado, where Luna's Battle of Le-
exceptionally lively panto also hangs. An intriguing question to explore in this
form but firm and strongly marked
connection concerns the nature and direction of influences.

beauty should have a sensuous mouth . . . works

While their not overlap,
. . . white-
Luna was five years older. Sorolla's
artistic color
complexioned, nor of the dark brown language,. like
. . Luna's,
but of progressed
the from academicism
clear skin . . . which we often witness when we meet a blush- to Social Realism and a mature style that was often called
ing girl.26 Spanish Impressionism.31 His success in capturing light and
movement made him immensely popular in the United
The ideal Filipina beauty for Amorsolo was not just a pretty States, where he was the toast of New York during his first
face but an important symbol of national identity. Through exhibition there in 1909.32 By the time Amorsolo visited
his portrayal of the winsome country lass, Amorsolo suc- Madrid and New York in 1919, Sorolla had attained celebrity
ceeded in weaning Filipinos from the colonial ideal of the in these cities. Moreover, Amorsolo had studied with Luna's
half-Spanish, half-Filipina mestiza and turning to a nationalis- former colleagues at the Spanish academy, such as José Mo-
tic Filipino ideal. The patriotic subtext is most evident in the reno Carbonero and Cecilio Pla (also a friend of Sorolla) .33
colors of the Philippine flag encoded in one of his earliest Thus, Sorolla represents a stylistic link in the diasporic con-
works, the untitled painting popularly known as the Palay tinuum that embraces Luna and Amorsolo.

Maiden (1920, Fig. 2). Wearing a blue kerchief to protect her Informed by French and Spanish Impressionism, Amor-
head from the heat of the sun, she holds a generous bundle solo used swift, broken brushwork and thick impasto and

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252 ART BULLETIN SEPTEMBER 2015 VOLUME XCVII NUMBER 3

favored landscapes and daily scenes. Translating Sorolla's
Iberian sun to tropical brilliance, Amorsolo earned the same
sobriquet accorded his Spanish counterpart - "painter of
sunlight." Paintings from the 1920s created shortly after his
return from overseas are among Amorsolo 's most inspired
works before economic pressures constrained him increas-
ingly to replicate his most popular images. His skill in captur-
ing on canvas not only formal likenesses but also his subjects'
inner qualities made him the preeminent portraitist of his
time.
During World War II, Amorsolo sketched events as they
unfolded in Manila, refusing to leave his studio even as Japa-
nese and American planes bombed the city. In the painting
Bombing of the Intendencia (1942), Amorsolo captured the
chaos and confusion as Japanese bombs targeted the ship-
ping network in Manila Bay and the Pasig River before Japa-
nese troops entered the city, showing the Intendencia
Building, a Spanish colonial structure reused by the Ameri-
cans as offices, engulfed in billowing smoke.34 Like a war cor-
respondent, Amorsolo documented events leading up to the
fierce twenty-nine-day Battle of Manila from February 3 to
March 3, 1945, when American forces led by General Douglas
MacArthur recaptured Japanese-occupied Manila.35 His war
From Mimesis to Metamorphosis
Postimpressionism and nonobjective art arrived in the Philip-
pines with the return of Filipino artists from overseas in the
twentieth century. Like expatriates educated in Spain during
the nineteenth century, twentieth-century artists emulated
art movements from the new motherland, the United States.
Among the most articulate advocates of the Philippine
"modernist" movement was Fernando Zóbel, born in Manila
in 1924 and christened Enrique Francisco Fernando Zóbel
de Ayala y Mon tojo Torrentegui Zambrano, the youngest off-
spring of businessman Enrique Zóbel de Ayala. After World
War II, the young Zóbel left for the United States to study at
Harvard University, where he found intellectual stimulation
and friendship within an art circle that included Boston
painters such as Hyman Bloom and his first art teachers,
Reed Champion and Jim Pfeufer. Zóbel spent a year as
visiting artist at the Rhode Island School of Design in 1954,
when he witnessed a major exhibition of Mark Rothko's
paintings, which dazzled him. Rothko's masses of intense
color floating on the canvas with blurred edges that made
them appear to vibrate convinced Zóbel to give up the repre-
sentational style and to develop a visual language analogous to
Rothko's use of color. His search focused on line as a means

drawings include notations indicating colors to be filled in to evoke movement. To achieve movement, he had to invent a
later, vantage points, date, and time. Although he was method:

diabetic and medication was scarce, Amorsolo continued

to sketch war scenes witnessed from his window. After theThe technical problem, which I solved only after a long
battle, a United States intelligence officer bringing badly
time and a considerable effort, was to find the way to trace
needed drugs for the sick found the artist lying in a dimlines in oil paint that would be long, fine and controlled. I
corner in need of insulin.36 After the bombings ceased, finally found a suitable and simple way of doing this by
Amorsolo ventured outside to record the devastation. The using a surgical syringe.
newer structures, such as theaters, shops, and restaurants
built in the 1930s, utilizing the new technology of poured
With the unconventional use of the hypodermic syringe,
Zóbelof
concrete managed to survive the infernal bombing. One created the Saetas series, exploring the various ways
that
these that Amorsolo portrayed in his paintings, the Art line's density, angularity, or softness were capable of sug-
Deco
gesting movement and emotions.39 The title of the series was
Avenue Theater, ironically fell to a twenty-first-century wreck-
ing ball, which demolished the landmark building inmost likely inspired by the Spanish saeta , a piercing lament
2006,
q>7
amid much controversy. in flamenco style sung in Andalusia during the religious pro-
Amorsolo 's vibrant postwar paintings contrast with his cessions of Holy Week. The word saeta also means "dart" or
more lyrical works from the prewar period. With their pleas- "arrow," suggesting movement, speed, and direction.40
ing images and portrayals of daily human interactions - Informed by a wealth of cultural knowledge, Zóbel' s Dialo-
market vendors and shoppers haggling over fresh fruits and gos and Homenajes series engage works by other artists in
vegetables, a mother nursing her infant, a young couple intellectual conversation. It is said that during Zóbel's visits
courting - his paintings of this period were universally to various museums around the world, he was often ques-
loved. Amorsolo was by this time firmly established as tioned for standing too long in front of the same painting,
the dominant artist, and his mature confidence is evident intently sketching and taking notes. In reinterpreting other
in a rapid brush, sharper strokes, and thicker impasto. artists' works, he sought to distill images, narratives, and real-
Amorsolo 's use of impressionistic brush techniques and ities to their quintessence.41 In these pictorial cycles, Zóbel
shimmering sunlight on romanticized pastoral landscapes, expert Rafael Perez-Madero asserts that Zóbel was really hav-
while distinct from French, Spanish, and American Impres- ing an ongoing dialogue with himself.
sionism, is significant in the development of Philippine art
and the formation of Filipino notions of self. His idyllic It is not a matter of abandoning color to paint in black
country scenes, beautiful maidens, and gaily dressed peas- and white but of gradually reducing color until all that
ants planting or harvesting rice distilled an imagined sense remains is warm grays and cold grays. . . .
of nationality in counterpoint to American hegemony - I think that, in a work of art, anything that fails to prove
creating an idealized image of the "true" Filipino that necessary is superfluous and can even distract, weaken
persists and continues to be invoked today.38 Comparative and hinder.42
studies of deliberate self-fashioning in the Western and
non-Western worlds could unveil analogous strategies in dis- Zóbel started painting Philippine subjects in 1954. He qui-
parate geographies. etly began acquiring the best Philippine art being created at

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2 Fernando Amorsolo, Palay Maiden,
1920, oil on canvas, 335/s x 223/4 in.
(85.5 x 60.3 cm). Ayala Museum
Collection, Makati City, Philippines,
Gift of Ayala Corporation (artwork in
the public domain; photograph
provided by Ayala Museum)
the time, assembling the first collection of twentieth-century
Philippine art, which he subsequently donated to the Ateneo
de Manila University, leading to the formation of the Ateneo
Art Gallery in 1960, the first museum of Philippine modern
art. Zóbel's vision and generosity made possible the creation
of the Ayala Museum in Makati City and the Museo de Arte
Abstracto Español, housed in the medieval Casas Colgadas
(Hanging Houses) overlooking Huécar River in Cuenca,
Spain.43
A transnational from birth, Zóbel spent much of his life
searching for roots. The artist Peter Soriano points out that
while Zóbel was preoccupied with the question of nationality
during the first decade of his artistic career, his later works
transcended this notion, perhaps partly because he found
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WHITHER ART HISTORY? 253
acceptance in his adopted home in Cuenca. He embarked
on a series of paintings restructuring notions of time and
place, engaging past painters in a visual dialogue (Fig. 3).
These paintings, which portray time in a fluid manner, con-
vey a quiet, meditative quality. As Zóbel deliberately moved
away from thinking about national identity, his paintings
ended up "looking like nobody else's."44 After spending
nearly his entire lifetime seeking his place in the art world,
Zóbel was posthumously named an honorary citizen of
Cuenca, where he is buried.
In his lifetime, Zóbel's paintings were featured in hun-
dreds of shows, including the groundbreaking exhibitions of
Spanish painting Before Picasso , after Mirò at the Solomon R.
Guggenheim Museum, New York (1959-60), and Modern
254 ART bulletin September 2015 volume xcvii number 3

3 Fernando Zóbel, The Dream of the Damsel (El sueño de la doncella ), 1967, oil on canvas, 31 x 31 in. (78.7 x 78.7 cm). Harvard Art
Museums/Fogg Museum, Cambridge, Mass., Purchase through the generosity of Paul J. Haldeman, 1968.19 (artwork © Estate of
Fernando Zóbel; photograph © President and Fellows of Harvard College, provided by the Imaging Department)

Spanish Painting at the Tate Gallery, London (1962), and he Fernando Zóbel de Ayala Professorship of Spanish Art was
wrote several books on art. His work entered the permanentestablished at Harvard in 1985. 45
collections of more than twenty museums around the world. The historian Benito Legarda, Zóbel' s fellow student at
Harvard University Library made him honorary curator of Harvard, cites him as an example of "how misleading it would
calligraphy, and Spain awarded him the position of Knight-be to label an artist's nationality by the passport he carries . . .
Commander, Order of Isabel la Catoólica and Order of he was, at one and the same time, of Philippine birth and
Alfonso X. He donated seventeenth- to twentieth-century
upbringing, of Spanish ethnicity, and of international educa-
works by Spanish masters to Harvard's Fogg Museum. Thetion. Thus he defies . . . easy categorization."46 Legarda also

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notes how Zóbel sparked a renewed interest in surviving
examples of Hispano-Filipino colonial churches, an interest
entwined in the search for national identity, inspiring local
scholars to make it their primary area of research. Filipino
art critic Emmanuel Torres, who had studied art history
under Zóbel at the Ateneo de Manila University, eloquently
sums it up: "Before he belonged to Spain and the world, he
belonged to the Philippines."47
Zóbel' s pioneering experimentation with creative transfor-
mations, traversing a wide interpretative range from mimesis
to metamorphosis, spawned succeeding generations of
abstract artists and art historians who today acknowledge his
profound influence on their work. For transnational artists
and scholars with a colonial past, appropriating languages
and translating cultures are necessary strategies for redefin-
ing and shaping identity. Colonized histories divide our alle-
giances, situating artists and scholars in a fluctuating state of
liminality. We interrogate issues simultaneously through the
prisms of East and West. We utilize borrowed languages and
technologies but retain vernacular grammar and syntax.
In a paper presented at New York University, I addressed
the particular predicament of Philippine art: Is it Asian? is
it Spanish? is it American?48 Philippine art appears too
"Western" for inclusion in surveys of Asian art, but not main-
stream enough to make it to Western art surveys, thus twice
marginalized - a marginalization that springs not so much
from the artists' inability to adapt as from an infinite capacity
for cultural simulacrum to the point of invisibility. In contrast
to other Asian cultures that retain their "Asianness," the Phil-
ippines' long history of engagement with the West allows its
visual culture to acquire a formal Western character super-
posed on an (often invisible) Asian core. Art historians who
attempt to articulate a new metanarrative of the history of
Philippine art in a globalized world are challenged by migra-
tions, dislocations, and blurred identities suspended in dias-
pora. When a colleague from the Asian Art Museum of San
Francisco first experienced the art on permanent exhibit at
the Ayala Museum in the Philippines, he marveled at works
so atypical of traditional Western notions of what "Asian art"
is.
As Western languages are translated into Philippine ver-
naculars and various "isms" are imbricated in our visual para-
digms, the new generation of transnational visionaries, like
their predecessors Juan Luna, Fernando Amorsolo, and
Fernando Zóbel, continue to redefine and reframe identities
and notions of nation. The twenty-first-century Filipino-
American artist Paul Pfeiffer articulates the new thinking:
focus instead on others to prove my intellectual "objectivity."
"The whole notion of cultural identities based on national
I doubt that American scholars would similarly be advised to
boundaries belongs to another era. National boundaries
avoid American art or French scholars, French art.
don't disappear, but they're thrown into a different
dimension."49 Curatorial narratives similarly transcend and
extend beyond national borders, such as Patrick Flores's con-
cept for the Philippine pavilion at the 2015 Venice Biennale,
provocatively titled Tie a Stńng around the World. The exhibi-
tion centers on Genghis Khan , a seminal Philippine film made
in 1950 by actor Manuel Conde and painter Carlos V. Fran-
cisco, which serves as the pivot and node for two installations
by contemporary artists José Tence Ruiz and Mariano Monte-
libano III referencing the current geopolitical struggle over
the West Philippine Sea, better known as the South China
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WHITHER ART HISTORY? 255
Sea. Flores describes the concept as "a poetic and political
meditation on the history of the world through the extensi-
ties of the Philippine, a foil perhaps to the more aggressive
instincts of expansion around us - in the past and in 'present
passing.'"50
There are three final points I wish to make. First, in refrain-
ing the metanarrative of Philippine art history, the primary
concern should no longer be the quest for that elusive
"essence" of what is "authentically Filipino" but, rather, dis-
secting the dynamics of global entanglements that gave birth
to the Philippine present - dynamics that, I suspect, reverber-
ate across geographies to other diasporic, transnational cul-
tures. While it is easy for cultures with a colonial past to be
preoccupied with peeling away successive layers of external
interventions in search of its core, it might be more fruitful
to reconsider cultural mutations - as Zóbel and Legarda ulti-
mately conclude - as "not a simple addition of layers that can
be peeled away but ... an irreversible chemical process where
various elements combine to form something new ... a bio-
logical process in continuous evolution."51
Second, scrutiny of specific cases would help illuminate
larger patterns of cultural engagements, entanglements, and
translations. There is a wealth of untapped material in Asia,
Europe, and the Americas that would shed light on the inter-
twined art histories of centers and peripheries. Edward J. Sul-
livan, for example, submits strong visual connections
between the art of Luna and the Sevillian painter Luis Jime-
nez Aranda (1854-1928), noting the need for research on
Luna in Spanish archives and libraries.52 Retracing artistic
connections between Luna and Aranda could shed light on
other aspects as well, such as cultural and economic legacies
of the galleon trade that had linked the ports of Manila and
Seville via Mexico and Peru in previous years.
Third, sustained communication, collaboration, and
mutual respect among European and American scholars at
the center and non-Western scholars in the peripheries
could yield valuable insights and (re) discoveries of under-
studied areas at cultural interstices. Too often, scholars in
the peripheries rebuff outsiders as cultural interlopers lack-
ing true "insider" knowledge. In turn, scholars at the center
tend to dismiss art from the peripheries as "derivative" with-
out fully understanding the transnational art histories that
produced them. They mistrust "insider" scholarship as per-
haps too subjective or possibly self-serving. I recall that as an
international graduate student in the United States, I was
admonished to avoid researching my own culture but to
As with transnational artists, many non-Western scholars
transcend national borders, manipulating borrowed lan-
guages, navigating foreign intellectual terrain. We must
bridge the gap between outsider and insider scholars, scholars
at the center and scholars at the peripheries, who have much
to learn, and much to gain, were we to explore together the
many other art histories yet uncharted, awaiting integration in
a global art historical canon. Closer study of the art of dias-
pora, such as the representative examples discussed here,
might usefully reveal signposts to future strategies for refrain-
ing global art history through Other ('s) art histories.
256 ART bulletin September 2015 volume xcvii number 3

Fiorina H. Capistrano-Baker received her Ph.D., M.Phil. , and M.A. Trade and Visual Arts in Federal New England, ed. Patricia Johnston and Car-
oline Frank (Lebanon, N.H.: University Press of New England, 2014) , 251-
in art history from the Department of Art History and Archaeology ,64.
Columbia University , and an A.B. in humanities (cum laude) from
14. Chinese artists were attracted to the Western educational system in
the University of the Philippines. She was formerly the director ofManila. Huang Suibi and Yang Gengtang traveled from Xiamen to Manila
Ayala Museum , Philippines , where she is currently consultantto study oil painting and sculpture. On their return to China, they
founded the Xiamen Art School in 1918. In 1936, the volatile political sit-
[baker.fc@ayalafoundation.org or fcapbaker@yahoo.com]. uation in Xiamen forced many of the students and teachers to flee,
among them, Lim Hak Tai, who founded the Nanyang Academy of Fine
Arts in Singapore. Kwok Kian Chow and Chow Yian Ping, Modern Art in
Southeast Asia (Nanning: Guangxhi meishu chubanshe, 2006), 24-25.
15. An exhibition I curated at the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, Pio-
Notes
neers of Philippine Art: Luna, Amorsolo, Zóbel (October 20, 2006-January 7,
2007) , explored the transnationalism of these three visual artists.
I thank Kirk Ambrose for inviting me to contribute to this series and for help-
ful suggestions on an earlier version. I am grateful to Patrick Flores for shar-
16. Vicente L. Rafael's insightful critiques illuminate the complex manipula-
ing unpublished papers and exhibition briefs and for commenting on earlier tions of language and translation in the construction of nation in colonial
versions of this paper, and to Sandra Castro and Ethel Villafranca for Philippine society, particularly the analogy between painting in the bor-
thoughtful conversations, comments, and suggestions. I thank Mariles Gus- rowed academic style and appropriating the Castilian language: Rafael,
tilo for permission to publish images from the Ayala Museum's collection; Contracting Colonialism: Translation and Christian Conversion in Tagalog Soci-
Ditas Samson and Tenten Mina for kindly providing digital files; Alejandro ety under Early Spanish Rule (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1988);
and Georgina Padilla Zóbel for permission to publish Zóbel's The Dream of the White Love and Other Events in Filipino History (Quezon City: Ateneo de
Damsel, and Isabella Donadio at Harvard's Imaging Department for providing Manila University Press, 2000); and The Promise of the Foreign: Nationalism
a digital image. I am grateful to Zóbel's nephew Fernando Zóbel de Ayala for and the Technics of Translation in the Spanish Philippines (Durham, N.C.:
important information about the exhibitions at the Guggenheim Museum in Duke University Press, 2005).
1959-60 and the Tate Gallery in 1962.
17. Edward J. Sullivan, "Lost in Translation? Juan Luna between Manila and
I would like to dedicate this essay to the memory of Rod. Paras-Perez, art
Madrid," in Pioneers of Philippine Art: Luna, Amorsolo, Zóbel, Transnational-
historian, mentor, colleague, and friend.
ism in the Late 19th-20th Century, ed. Florina H. Capistrano-Baker with Sul-
livan and Peter Soriano (Makati City: Ayala Foundation, published in
1. Parul Dave Mukheiji, "Whither Art History in a Globalizing World," Art conjunction with the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, 2006), 61.
Bulletin 96 (June 2104): 151-55.
18. José Rizal, Political and Historical Writings , vol. 7 (Manila: National Heroes
2. Claudia Mattos, "Geography, Art Theory, and New Perspectives for an Commission, 1964), 17-22.
Inclusive Art History," Art Bulletin 96 (September 2014): 259-64.
19. Teodoro Agoncillo et al., Gradano Lopez Jaena: Speeches, Articles and Letters
3. There are numerous visual and art studies programs at other educational (Manila: National Historical Commission, 1974), 26-31.
institutions, but the first art history program in the country was developed
at the University of the Philippines. 20. Sullivan, "Lost in Translation?" 61.
21. Ibid., 62.
4. I use the third person "their" because despite inclusive efforts to reach
out to the peripheries, it is still those who sit at the center who have the
22. Ibid., 68-69; and Santiago Albano Pilar, "Juan Luna: The Blazing Corner-
dominant voice and who control the canon, as Mattos ("Geography, Art stone," in Capistrano-Baker et al., Pioneers of Philippine Art, 19-21.
Theory, and New Perspectives") notes.
23. Alfredo Roces, Amorsolo (Makati City: Filipinas Foundation, 1975), 35.
5. Patrick Flores, "Art History, Broadly" (paper presented at the conference
24. The painting, known as Maiden with Lanzones , is now in the collection of
"Histories of Art History in Southeast Asia," organized by the Sterling and
the Ayala Museum, illustrated in Capistrano-Baker et al., Pioneers of Philip-
Francine Clark Institute and the University of the Philippines, Depart-
pine Art, pl. 10.
ment of Art Studies, March 2013).
25. Elizabeth Mary Holt, Colonizing Filipinas: Nineteenth-Century Representations
6. Josefa Lava, quoted in ibid.
of the Philippines in Western Historiography (Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila
7. Ibid. University Press, 2002), 70.
8. "A Portrait of the Philippines - Fernando Amorsolo's Paintings," posted 26. Roces, Amorsolo, 90.
by Coconuter, January 25, 2010, http://coconuter.blogspot.com/2010
27. According to cultural historian Nick Joaquin, the color red was the theme
/01/portrait-of-philippines-fernando.html (accessed December 21, 2014).
of the revolution against Spain, when the "red, red saya came into its
9. Dominador Castañeda, Art in the Philippines from the Spanish Conquest to the own ... as the costume of the Katipunera." Joaquin, quoted in Holt,
Present: Architecture, Painting and Sculpture during the Spanish Regime, Colonizing Filipinas, 68.
American Regime and the Present (Quezon City: University of the Philip-
28. Fernando Amorsolo, quoted in Roces, Amorsolo, 30, 43.
pines, 1964).
29. For Sorolla's portraits of José and Mariano Benlliure, see Priscilla Muller
10. I first conceptualized this project as a traditional hard-copy translation of
and Marcus Burke, Sorolla (New York: Hispanic Society of America, 2004),
the illustrated Spanish manuscript known as the Boxer Codex in the col- 120-21, 223-24.
lection of the Lilly Library, Bloomington, Indiana, in partnership with
Maritoni Ortigas, former director of the Filipinas Heritage Library, after 30. I thank Edward J. Sullivan for alerting me to possible links between
our initial collaboration with the Lilly on excerpts from the Boxer Codex Luna's and Sorolla's art, which made me pay closer attention to their
as part of gallery didactics for a permanent exhibition at the Ayala mutual friends in Rome, the sculptor Mariano Benlliure and his brothers
Museum in 2008. With helpful advice from Murtha Baca, head of the dig- José and Juan Antonio. For Luna's portrait of Mariano Benlliure, see San-
ital art history program at the Getty Research Institute (GRI), the concept tiago Albano Pilar, Juan Luna (Pasig City, Philippines: Eugenio Lopez
has evolved into a digital art history project that will utilize the Getty Foundation, 1980), 56.
Scholars' Workspace being developed at GRI. Fellow resident scholars 31. Muller and Burke, Sorolla, 27.
from the 2013-14 "Connecting Seas: Cultural and Artistic Exchange"
32. Ibid., 14-19.
theme and others with pertinent research interests will be collaborating
in this online work environment.
33. Santiago Albano Pilar, Pamana: The Jorge B. Vargas Collection (Quezon City:
11. See, for example, Leandro Locsin and Cecilia Locsin, Oriental Ceramics UP Vargas Museum, 1992), 44; and Muller and Burke, Sorolla, 20.
Discovered in the Philippines (Rutland, Vt.: Charles E. Tuttle, 1967); and
34. Illustrated in Capistrano-Baker et al., Pioneers of Philippine Art, pl. 18.
Florina H. Capistrano-Baker, ed., Philippine Ancestral Gold (Makati City:
Ayala Foundation, 2011). 35. Alfonso J. Aluit, By Sword and Fire: The Destruction of Manila in World War II
(3 February-3 March 1945) (Makati City: Bookmark, 1994), 140 and passim.
12. See, for example, Fernando Zóbel de Ayala, Philippine Religious Imagery
36. Roces, Amorsolo, 110.
(1963; reprint, Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press, 1974);
Esperanza Gatbonton, Philippine Religious Carvings in Ivory (Manila: Intra-
37. Other landmark buildings demolished by city officials include the Jai Alai
muros Administration, 1983); and Regalado Trota Jose, Images of Faith:
Building designed by American architects Welton Becket and Walter
Religious Ivory Carvings from the Philippines (Pasadena, Calif.: Pacific Asia
Wurdemann, considered one of the finest Art Deco buildings in Asia,
Museum, 1990).
razed in 2000 amid protests, purportedly to make way for a new Hall of
13. See, for example, Benito Legarda, After the Galleons: Foreign Trade, Economic Justice, which was never built. Destruction of the Army and Navy Club
Change and Entrepreneurship in the Nineteenth Century Philippines (Quezon Building, designed by William Parsons and the former site of Museo ng
City: Ateneo de Manila University Press, 1999) ; and Florina H. Capistrano- Maynila, commenced in 2014. In the same year, the Department of
Baker, "Beyond Hemp: The Manila-Salem Trade, 1796-1858," in Global Public Works and Highways started demolishing a two-hundred-year-old

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Spanish colonial bridge built by Dominican missionaries and the Isinay
cultural community in Dupax, Nueva Vizcaya, as part of a road-widening
project. E. Sembrano, "Demolish Now Conserve Later," Philippine Daily
Inquirer, September 15, 2014, http://lifestyle.inquirer.net/171889
/demolish-now-conserve-later#ixzz3N8UVDEbp (accessed December 27,
2014). Support from international colleagues is urgently needed to
stop this ongoing destruction of heritage sites that are critical not
only in the local context but also in tracing cultural and artistic
exchange with the rest of the world.
38. Amorsolo's idealized images, while not always historically accurate or
based on reality, have nonetheless become indelible markers of group
identity. Benedict Anderson's influential discussion of the "imagined
community," in which he defines the nation as an imagined political
community whose sense of identity is grounded in an imagined historical
continuity, is particularly pertinent here. Anderson, Imagined Communi-
ties: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso,
1983), passim.
39. It is noteworthy that in 1950, through the artist and art patron Alfonso
Ossorio, his fellow Harvard alumnus, Zóbel met Jackson Pollock. Peter
Soriano, "Fernando Zóbel: A Biographical Sketch of Zóbel's Formative
Years," in Capistrano-Baker et al., Pioneers of Philippine Art, 93; and Grace
Glueck, obituary of Alfonso Ossorio, New York Times , December 6, 1990,
http://www.nytimes.com/1990/12/06/obituaries/alfonso-ossorio-74
-artist-and-patron-of-the-arts.html.
40. Rafael Perez-Madero, Zobel, exh. cat. (Madrid: Aldeasa, 2003), 273.
41. Peter Soriano, Creative Transformations: Drawings and Paintings by Fernando
Zóbel, exh. cat. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Art Museums, n.d.).
42. Perez-Madero, Zóbel, 273-75.
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WHITHER ART HISTORY? 257
43. Maritoni Ortigas, ed., Fernando Zóbel in the 1950s: The Formative Years, exh.
cat. (Makati City: Ayala Foundation, 2009), 4, 8. In his book Iberia: Spanish
Travels and Reflections (New York: Random House, 1984), James A. Mich-
ener describes a visit to Casas Colgadas in Cuenca with Fernando Zóbel.
44. Soriano, "Fernando Zóbel: A Biographical Sketch," 99-100.
45. Harvard University History of Named Chairs: Sketches of Donors and Donations,
1991-2004 (Cambridge, Mass.: President and Fellows of Harvard College,
2004), 188-89.
46. Benito Legarda, "Fernando Zóbel: A Personal Memoir," in Ortigas, Fer-
nando Zóbel in the 1 950s, 1 1 .
47. Emmanuel Torres, quoted in Ortigas, Fernando Zóbel in the 1950s, 5.
48. Florina H. Capistrano-Baker, "The Other Asian Art: The Philippines in
the Colonial and Postcolonial Era" (paper delivered at the King Juan Car-
los I of Spain Center, New York University, 2006).
49. Paul Pfeiffer, quoted in Lourdes Lee Valeriano, "Identity and Invisibility:
Contemporary Filipino-American Art in New York," in Pananaw Philippine
Journal of Visual Arts, vol. 4, ed. Florina H. Capistrano-Baker (Manila:
National Commission for Culture and the Arts, 2002), 43.
50. Patrick Flores, proposal for the Philippine Pavilion at the 2015 Ven-
ice Biennale. Filipino actor Manuel Conde's 1950 movie Genghis Khan
was screened at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and the Ven-
ice Film Festival in 1952, where it competed with the films of Charlie
Chaplin, René Clement, Federico Fellini, Ingmar Bergman, and Kenji
Mizoguchi. The film was co-written and designed by Filipino painter
Carlos V. Francisco.
51. Legarda, "Fernando Zóbel: A Personal Memoir," 12.
52. Sullivan, "Lost in Translation?" 81.