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10 Module 6 - Works of Juan Luna and Fernando Amorsolo
10 Module 6 - Works of Juan Luna and Fernando Amorsolo
MODULE6: AMORSOLO
“Art history is less explosive than the rest of history so it sinks faster into the pulverized
regions of time.”
- Robert Smithson
INTRODUCTION.
You may have already took arts subjects throughout your academic
experience. This module simply meant to elicit the skills and knowledge that you learned
in your past arts subjects. Let’s break ourselves from reading texts instead, let us read
and interpret paintings from the past. It might interest you to know how famous
paintings were arrived at. Or after having been exposed to a number of paintings in the
module, hopefully, you may be so inspired that you too, would like to start painting on
your own or join a painting contest.
ANALYSIS.
Alright! Go to the next page to see if your interpretation is the same as what the painter
tries to convey through the painting.
ABSTRACTION
HISTORICAL PAINTINGS
These are the visual representations of concrete happenings on the life of people
in a specific period? The idea about certain events and people is communicated or
expressed aesthetically through art with form, technique, and style. Essentially, these
paintings are instrumentals to the visualization of the reality which stands with texts,
photos, caricatures and films.
The famous Filipino painter, Juan Luna addresses two things from his artwork,
the glorification of genius and the grandeur of his artistic skills.
“Embodied the essence of our social, moral and political life:humanity in the severe
ordeal, humanity unredeemed, reason, and idealism in open struggle with
prejudice, fanaticism, and injustice.”
The people on the stairway though
they are above all other
characters, but they’re not really Can clear define where the
given any solid form as if they’re not lights shine from above. Telling
important. As if they’re just a mere who is in the center stage.
background.
The main actor of the painting as he The gladiator on the center can
is being dragged by another be depicted as well as the Filipino
gladiator into the darkness, the heroes who fought bravely.
warrior being drag can be
represented as Filipinos.
Under the Spanish rule, not only those who fought suffered but also their families
and their loved ones. Some people who lost someone during the Spanish rule tell the
tales they saw, and some are weeps but are forgotten in the darkness of history.
In 2002, with the ownership of GSIS, it was decided to use The Parisian Life as
the official name which was also originally inscribed, signed and dated by Luna himself
at the back of the painting where he wrote, LUNA PARIS 1982. The painting can be
interpreted in three ways, by literal and popular interpretation where the lady sitting in
the sofa was identified as a flirt and prostitute.
The woman in the painting has a
“geographical likeness” to the mirror-image of the
archipelago of the Philippines.
Antipolo Fiesta The main focus is on a pair of dancers in the field surrounded by
revelers both young and old. Abundant food is presented in basketfuls of assorted fruits
on the benches and on the ground, as well as the traditional roasted pig or lechon
being prepared by two men. Nearby is a house with huge windows from where dwellers
watch the revelers. At the background is a huge church, a symbolic town structure. A
vast number of townsmen complete the essence of a fiesta.
Palay Maiden, 1920 Oil on canvas Palay is Tagalog for grain, which is symbolic of
the Philippines’ most staple crop. Maiden bears significance to Amorsolo’s preference for
beauty. Throughout his pieces showing women, Amorsolo does not conform to a Western
standard of beauty; rather, he portrayed them to have: [A] rounded face, not of the
oval type often presented to us in newspapers and magazine illustrations. The eyes
should be exceptionally lively, not the dreamy, sleepy type that characterizes the
Mongolian. The nose should be of the blunt form but firm and strongly marked. … So the
ideal Filipina beauty should not necessarily be white complexioned, nor of the dark
brown color of the typical Malayan, but of the clear skin or fresh colored type which
we often witness when we met a blushing girl.
APPLICATION
I.Essay. What is the relevance of the historical paintings in the understanding
of the Philippine History?