BACKGROUND OF PHILIPPINE ART AND LITERATURE IN ROMANTIC REALISM

ROMANTIC REALISM – seeks personal expression of values imbuing art with feelings for
ideas that the artist holds passionately about life and humankind. Thereby suffusing in the
work with a glowing emotional essence. Fernando Amorsolo y Cueto is the best example and
he also known for his illuminated landscapes which often portray traditional Filipino
customs, culture, fiestas, and occupations.
Art that combines elements of both romanticism and realism. The terms "romanticism" and
"realism" have been used in varied ways and are sometimes seen as opposed to one another.
Romanticism focused on individual feelings. Meanwhile Realism, focused their type of
writing on the lifestyle of common people. Romanticism had a big part in creating the
realism movement because people wanted to stop looking at the ideal lifestyle and focus
more on the present.
Today’s romantic uses form to communicate content through individual style (emotional
expression),thereby making the means and the end merge, blend, and re-emerge as one
totality of experience that unifies mind, body, and soul. Romantic Realist knows that in art it
is positive, life-affirming values that we need to see — to feel — in order to maintain the
courage and energy to bring our own highest and most promising visions of values into
existence in the real world. Romantic Realist painters and sculptors, however, tend to project
harmony between reason and emotions and the senses.
The artist’s feelings for the ideas he holds about life and about humankind and about himself
that turn him from a realist into a "romantic" who needs to suffuse his work with the
emotional aura of his values. Like his nineteenth century forbearers, today’s romantic uses
form (the physical presentation) to communicate content (human values) through individual
style (emotional expression), thereby making the means and the end merge, blend and re-
emerge as one totality of experience that unifies mind, body, and soul. The whole, then, is
much greater than the sum of its parts. Herein lies art’s ability to afford us a spiritual
experience as well as an aesthetic one. The spiritual in art, as in all spiritual experience, is not
evoked by an escape from reality but by an embrace of it—existence and consciousness
unified and experienced as one. Remember that one of the root meanings of the word "holy"
is whole, as in "complete."

ADD:
Romantic Realism is an aesthetic term that usually refers to art that deals with the themes of
while also acknowledging objective reality and the importance.
Though the term was used earlier by Joseph Conrad, it was very much popularized by
writer/philosopher Ayn Rand. Many objectivists who consider themselves artists apply this
term to themselves. Rand defined Romantic realism as a portrayal of things and people "as
they might and ought to be." "Might be" implied realism, as contrasted with mere fantasy.
"Ought to be" implied a moral vision and a standard of beauty and virtue. This combination
is based on the idea that heroic values, and similar themes, "are" rational and 'realistic,' as a
Romantic Realist wouldn't believe in a necessary dichotomy between 'romanticism' and
'realism.'