Filipino

Concept of Art
 1.

The Humanities and

the Filipino
Personhood
(Pagkatao)
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COVAR’S FILIPINO ANTHROPOLOGY

Katauhan Pagkatao
Biological: Cultural:
• Born as a human • Becoming a human
being; Act as a being being; Process of
human “personality” becoming a human
“personhood”
“Madaling maging tao; mahirap magpakatao”
“Pagpapakatao” – The process by which one
becomes a human
3 being.
 The Jar and the
Filipino
Personhood
Manunggul Jar of Palawan “ SYMBOLISM
✔Labas – ulo at dibdib
✔Loob – isip at damdamin
✔Lalim – kaluluwa at budhi
LABAS
Labas ng Pagkatao – Katawan
LOOB (Physical) – kulay ng balat (maputi,
maitim, kayumanggi), tindig
(matangkad, pandak, katamtaman),
LALIM ilong (matangos, pango), dibdib
(malapad,
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malaki, maliit)
 The Jar and the Filipino
✘ Loob ng Pagkatao – kalooban (Spiritual, Emotional and Moral); isip
Personhood
(matalino); ugali, asal (mabuti).
✘ Lalim ng Pagkatao – Kaluluwa [Spiritual – anito (banal)].
Non-Dualistic Relations in Filipino
Non-Dualistic Relations of Terms Psychology
LABAS LOOB LABAS LOOB
Malapad ang noo Matalino hipo dama
Salubong ang Kilay Matapang o galit pigil timpi
Malagkit ang tingin Umiibig dinig ulinig
Maduming bibig Masama magsalita tawa tuwa
LALIM saya ligaya
Malinis ang kaluluwa Matuwid ang budhi 5 sarap ginhawa
 Humanities in Filipino
Pagpapakatao is the process on how a human being
✘
Concept
becomes a Filipino.
–

✘ The first objective of the colonizing power is to erase the cultural memory of
the conquered people, to induce a collective amnesia about their past and
supplant it with the culture of the colonizers. In this lie the roots of the Filipino
derivativeness and inferiority complex vis-à-vis West.
✘ Pre – Colonial Period (Before 1500s) – Had our own cultural identity.
✘ Colonial Period (1500-1950) – Our identity destroyed by colonizers.
Westernization of Filipino Culture making us alienated from our own.
✘ Post – Colonial Period (1500 onwards) – Reclamation, affirmation and
definition of our identity in our own terms.
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 Felipe De Leon Jr. (2011)
Defining the Filipino Through Arts
CULTURAL IDENTITY
“The worldview and values, belief systems, knowledge, skills, and practices,
cultural principles and ideas shared by a society.”

ART
Cultural identity is a sine qua non for
becoming active in the world… a source of
social empowerment. Rob a people of their
identity and they become passive, lost,
Filipino
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indolent, uncreative and unproductive.
 Forms of Alienation Caused by
Westernization of Filipino Culture
✘ Alienation from Community
✘ Alienation from our source of cultural energy: Thinking in borrowed
forms and the economics of dependency
✘ Alienations from our own race: The Dona Victoriana Syndrome
✘ Alienation from the indigenous: Denigrating the Local
✘ Alienation from the land
✘ Alienation from being Filipino
✘ Alienation from sustainable living
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Some Recommendations for Developing
a Filipino and Humanistic Perspective
✘ Heightening social consciousness and sense of responsibility
to the nation.
✘ Promoting people participation, local genius and cultural
diversity.
✘ Promoting the local but thinking the national or global:
human communities, not the state, are the ultimate actors in
the development process.
✘ Integrating the arts to social and cultural phenomena as
lucid mirrors of social consciousness.
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Becoming Filipino Through Arts: The
Process of Pagpapakatao
✘ The arts can provide us the most vivid
images of social relations and cultural
values. They are perhaps the most
lucid symbols of a people’s quality of
being or consciousness.
Contemplating the arts is like
reflecting on the psychic template of
an artist or a cultural community.

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Filipino Concept of Art
Philippine Art Western Art

????
is the portrayal, in two or three dimensions,
of the history, people, landscape and wildlife
of the area confined to the western regions
of North America, in a highly realistic or
realistic impressionist style and is
inextricably linked to the culture of the
American West (Garth, 2015).

✘ One positive way of looking at Filipino identity in the

arts is to see Philippine Art as integrated in Western Art,
and these two traditions are uniting and harmonizing
with one another.
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NEOCLASSICM: Bonifacio
Monument, 1933 by Guillermo
Tolentino

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ROMANTIC REALISM & RENAISSANCE ART
IMPRESSIONISM: Planting Rice, 1922 by Fernando
Amorsolo
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TRANSPARENT CUBISM: “The Market
Scene”, 1975 by Vicente Manansala

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SURREALISM: “The Ecology Series”, 1978 by
Prudencio Lamarozza

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 ACTION PAINTING AND ABSTRACT
EXPESSIONISM: “Karate” by Jose Joya

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 COLOR FIELD
PAINTING: “Upward
Dualty” by Gus
Albor

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TINALAK, T’Boli Art

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BASEY, Art of Colorful Mats from
Samar-Leyte

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PASTILLAS WRAPPER ART of
Pampanga and Bulacan

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Maranao Brassware Art

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SARIMANOK of Maranao

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FILIPINO IDENTITY WESTERN
✘ The Philippine Culture has to be dynamic in its
relation with other cultures in the world. By
harmonizing the western and the Filipino
concepts of art and its practice, a truly
Philippine identity in the arts would emerge out
of the shared cultural universe, not only of our
own people, but of the humanity as a whole.
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 thanks!
Any questions?

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