1 The Asian Modern © John Clark 2013 Juan Luna (1857-1899) Notes Precursor discourses domestic Art worlds patronage 1790s ca. Tipos del páis imported from both Iberio-American sources as well as China coast 1846 School of Fine Arts of Manila founded. Contemporary discourses with period of artist’s activity Other prizewinners: 1881 Francisco Pradilla y Ortiz, Donña Juana la Loca, Emilio Sala, Guillén de Vinatea, Alejandro Ferrant, Entiero de San Sebastián 1884 Jose Moreno Carbonero [aged 24, Luan;s colleague in Rome] The Conversion of the Duke of Gandía, Salvador Sánchez Barbudo, Hamlet, Rafel Senet, Return from a fishing trip in Naples. 2nd place gold medalist , Atonio Muñoz Degraín,Lovers of Teruel [future teacher of Picasso] Silver, Juan Antonio Belliure, Moanquillo [sculpture of acolyte accidentally burning his fingers on a censer, anti-clerical in message, roommate of Luna] Letter from Hidalgo to José Rizal, October 1879 Describing classes at Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando You have us here as students of the Academy attending all classes of its school of Fine Arts. We enter with diffidence and why deny it, with little fear, but upon seeing here the work of students of the Academy, we lost our fear. On the other hand we were greatly disenchanted because we would like to have as classmates people who have more mettle than the ones now attending the school for they would have served as a stimulus to us. Our professor in the class of ancient painting and drapery from 8 to 10 in the morning is Sr. Espalter; in that of colouring and composition from 10 to 12 in the morning Sr. Federico Madrazo; in that of pictorial anatomy from 1 to 2 in the afternoon Sr. Ignacio Llanos; and in that of natural painting or still life painting from 6.30 to 8.30 in the evening Sr. Catols Ribera. They are all very good professors, but you can be very sure that what you can study there (Manila) under Sr. Augustin Saez is exactly the same as what is taught here, neither more nor less, with the difference that there you paint and draw much more comfortably than we do here, because there you have the entire hall at your disposal, while here we can hardly pick up a bad corner, often enveloped in darkness, and we have to stretch our necks to see the model who, parenthetically speaking, is almost always quite poor, though very suitable for the study of deviations of the human form…. In the meantime do not lose your courage and follow the advice of our dear professor Sr. Augustin Saez and in that way you will advance greatly in such a difficult study as that of painting. I do not want to tell you about the Museo del Prado because I have no more time. I will only tell you that it contains the most valuable collection of paintings, more than 3,000 that is found in Europe. One leaves that building with a headache and despair in the soul, because one is convinced of the little he knows, that one is not even an atom compared with the colossi of art. (From Ocampo-2008 146-7) On Luna’s later socialist sympathies: 2 The Asian Modern © John Clark 2013 Tomorrow is the opening of the Salon du Champ du Mars. It is the first time that I have two pictures on the cimaise [a small shelf used to prop up pictures] or on the socle. I can take some satisfaction from this (for the moment), since you know how I peddle my pictures, like potatoes in the market. To my painting of the burial I have given the title Les Ignorés, and as you will see [have seen?] I am busying myself now with the lowly and disinherited. What book would you recommend me to read to inspire me in this plan? By someone who has written against such naked materialism and such infamous exploitation of the poor, and the war of the rich against the wretched! I am seeking a subject worthy of being developed into an eight-meter canvas. I am now reading Le socialisme contemporarire by E. de Lavelaye, in which he has summarized the theories of Karl Marx, Lasalle, etc., Catholic socialism, conservative, evangelical, etc. The book interests me very much, but what I would like is a book that would highlight the miseries of contemporary society, a kind of Divine Comedy, a Dante who would walk through the workshops where one can hardly breather, and where men, little kids, and women live in the most wretched conditions one could imagine. My dear fellow, I have myself gone to see an iron foundry. I spent five hours there, and believe me, no matter how hardhearted a person may be, the spectacle I witnessed there made the deepest impression upon me. Despite all the evil that friars commit over there, our compatriots are fortunate compared to this misery and death. There was a workshop there for grinding up sand and coal, which, converted into the finest dust by the action ofr the milling machine, swirled up in huge black clouds, and the whole room seemed swathed in smoke. Everything there was filled with dust, and the ten or twelve workers busy shoveling the coal and sand into the machine looked just like corpses. Such was the miserable sight of the poor! I stood there for three or four minutes, and it seemed as if I had swallowed sand and dust all my life; they penetrated me through the nostrils, the mouth and the eyes... And to think that those unfortunates breathe coal and dust twelve hours a day: I believe that they are inevitably condemned to death, and that it is a crime to abandon such poor people in this way… Letter from Juan Luna to José Rizal May 13, 1891. (Anderson-2005 [translated from the Spanish found in Cartas entre Rizal y sus colegas de la Propaganda, Manila, José Rizal Centennial Commission, 1961, 2 vols, p.660 p.206, See also Ocampo, 2008, p.63] Social milieu ‘Luna’s history is short: the story of a plant hidden in the ground which forces its way to the light despite a thousand difficulties’. Rizal, 1886 1834 Manila opened to trade with non-Spanish Europe and America. (see earlier Materials under Simon Flores) The following social classes were distinguished in early 1850s’ Philippines: Indio: Philippine person of only native descent. Sangley: Philippine person of only Chinese descent. Mestizo: persons of Philippine descent mixed with Chinese [Mestizo de sangley] or Spanish [Mestizo de Español] or other foreign ancestors eg Persons of Chinese, Spanish and other descent [Tomatrás] Criollos, Insulares: Phillipinese-born persons of only Spanish descent. Peninsulares: persons not born in the Philippines of only Spanish descent, usually employed by the state. Changes in taste 3 The Asian Modern © John Clark 2013 As the British consul remarked in 1858: A very marked change has taken place in the dress and general exterior appearance of the inhabitants of the large pueblos….In the interior of the houses the same change is observable in the furniture and other arrangements, and the more evident wish to add the ornamental to the more necessary articles of household uses’. Rafael, 2006, 8 Changes in thought A serious obstacle to contemporary understanding of the Katipunan is the established view that the rise of nationalism culminating in the revolution of 1896-1900 was purely a consequence of heightened Westernization in the nineteenth century. The general argument is that the rise of liberalism in Spain and the opening up of key Philippine cities to world trade encouraged the formation of a well-to-do native and mestizo class that could afford to send tis son to Europe, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Japan to study. It was only during their stay abroad that these young, educated Filipinos, called “illustrados’ realized what freedom meant, heightened consciousness led to the dissolution of the “aura of authority and the halo of grace” that has bound Filipinos to the colonial order. Realizing such injustices done to them, as forced labor, taxes, and inequality before the law, the illustrados began to wage a propaganda campaign aimed to make Filipinos and Spaniards equal before the existing colonial framework; they wanted reforms not independence. In spite of their limited aims, however, the illustrados are credited with having first conceived of a Filipino national community. Ileto, Reynaldo Clemeña, Pasyon and Revolution, popular movements in the Philippines, 1840-1910, Manila: Ateneo de Manila University Press, 1979, 79. the illustrados who quickly took over the affairs of the new nation succeeded in institutionalizing their definition, borrowed from the West, of “sovereign nation” as a bounded territory encompassing all of its inhabitants who pledge loyalty to the government and the constitution. Ileto 115 The experience of payson was defined by Diego Mojica [poet, former President of Katipunan in San Francisco de Malabon] as: A redemptive act, the completion of a divine plan, the painful death to a former state of being Ileto 129 …the real origins of the nation lie outside of the national. These include but are not limited to the violent and revolutionary breakup of dynastic, religious, and colonial orders; the expansion ofcapitalist markets in general and print capitalism in particular;the rise of new technologies of transportation and communication; the vernacularisation of languages of power; the spread of the serial, mechanical temporality of the clock and calendar alongside modern modes of publicity such as newspapers and novels producing new publics populated by emergent social types; and the compulsion, especially among emergent elites, to comparative thinking.