Reading Material in Contemporary Philippine Arts from the Regions

Topic: Brief History of Philippine Art

I. Pre-conquest

 In art historical terms, we refer to art before the coming of the first colonizers as “pre-conquest”.
 In stylistic terms, we call it “indigenous” to emphasize the idea that our ancestors have been making art
even before colonization.
 In cultural terms, it is called “pre-colonial”, a general term used to describe life before colonization.
 The art of the early Filipinos was woven into the fabric of everyday life.
 Early Filipinos do not refer to an art, as we do today.
 Everyday expressions were all integrated within rituals that marked significant moments in community
life such as planting and harvesting, rites of passage, funeral rites, weddings, etc.
 Creative forms such as pottery, weaving, carving, metalwork, and jewelry; body ornament.
 Early Filipinos were great hunters.
 They imitated the movement of animals and prey, and the sounds that they made.
 They told the stories about the hunt, this form of oral storytelling marked the birth of oral literature.
 They had early beginnings of theater or play-acting through the imitation of animals’ movements.
 They learned to add drum beating and attach rhythm to their movements, they had given birth to music
and dance.
 Many of their early rituals can be considered as the earliest forms of theater.
 Rituals such as kanyaw of the Cordillerans, mayvanuvanua of the Ibatans in Batanes, and Kashawing
ritual of the tribes in Lanao.
 These rituals were done during the time of planting and harvesting; during wakes and burial ceremonies.
 The Philippines has early forms of music through pipes, flutes, drums, string instruments like kudyapi;
kulintang, and gansa or gongs; bamboo percussion instruments.
 The early Filipinos has early forms of dance such as the pangalay of Sulu, talip of Ifugao; mandayas
kinabua, banog-banog of the Higaonon and B’laan tribes, and inamong of the Matigsalugs.
 Early Filipinos had been engaged in pottery, before the colonial era, like the Manunggul Jar.
 The pagbuburnay in Vigan.
 Early Filipinos were into weaving, textile weaving has a long history that Philippine ethnolinguistic groups
have a rich textile weaving tradition.
 Examples of woven textiles include the pis siyabit and malong.
 Early Filipinos were also into body ornamentation such as tattoos and gold pieces of jewelry.

II. Islamic Colonial (13th Century – Present)

 Islam was already well-entrenched in Southern Philippines, where it continues to be culturally dominant
and strong.
 Islam was said to have gained a significant grounding in Sulu as early as the 13th century.
 It was the arrival of Sayyid Abubakar of Arabia in the 15th Century that led to a significant turn of events.
 He introduced holy texts through the holy book of the Quran; he built religious buildings for worship and
studies of the Quran.
 He facilitated the teaching of madrasa or Arabic writing in the 16 th Century.
 Islam was embraced as a religion and as a way of life by the people of Mindanao such as the Tausugs,
Maranaos, Maguindanaons, Yakan, Samal, and Badjao, as well as some people of Palawan.
 Islam was the driving force that enabled the natives to resist centuries of Spanish colonization.
 Filipino Muslims recognize that they belong to an ummah or a community of believers.
 Central to the Islamic faith is the doctrine of Tawhid or unity of God; it emphasizes the impermanence
of nature and the incomprehensible greatness of the divine Being.
 In Islam, divine unity is expressed through abstract forms and patterns that compel the believer to
engage in mental concentration.
 The Filipino Muslims have a strict adherence to Tawhid and other Islamic beliefs, for instance in
architecture.
 One of the famous forms of architecture in Islam is the Mosque and its dome.
 The dome of the mosque relates to all levels of cosmic existence.
  The octagon base symbolizes the spirit, while the four-sided main base refers to the earth or material
world.
 Ka’bah is the most revered Muslim architecture which serves as a reference point for Qiblah, the
direction that should be faced when a Muslim prays.
 Garden within the Mosque compound or even outside homes are evocative of paradise.
 Another Islamic influence is the ukkil/okir.
 Sakili observed that many Islamic forms are inclined to project, grow, or have an upward orientation, or
putting high regard to heavens such as the Panolon, an elaborately carved protrusion akin to a wing
attached to the Torogak or the royal house of the Maranao.

III. Spanish Colonial Period (1521-1898)

 Art that flourished during the Spanish era conformed to the demands of the church and colonial state.
 The art forms from that period are referred to stylistically and culturally as religious art, lowland
Christian art, or folk art.
 During this period, cruciform churches following the shape of the Latin cross were built.
 The design of the churches was predominantly Baroque style, characterized by the grandeur, drama,
and elaborate details that purposely appealed to the emotions.
 Ex: San Agustin Church in Manila, Morong Church in Rizal, Paoay Church in Ilocos Norte, and Sto Toma
de Villanueva in Miag-ao.
 Under the strict patronage of the church, images were produced through painting, sculpting, and
engraving.
 During the 17th Century, Chinese artisans under Spaniard's supervision were engaged in making icons or
saints in wood or ivory; building churches; and making furniture.
 In colonial churches, Santo is displayed in a decorative altar niche called the retablo.
 Retablo integrates architecture and sculpture and is often embellished with rosette, scrolls, pediments,
and Solomon columns which may be gilded and polychromed.
 Church altars are sometimes decorated with carved figurative protrusions on the surface called relieves
or plateria.
 Spanish brought musical instruments such as pipe organ, the violin, the guitar, and the piano.
 Philippine musical forms also took on a very European flavor with new rhythms, melodies, and music.
 Catholic liturgical music was introduced in 1742 by the then Archibishop of Manila, Juan Rodriguez
Angel.
 Musical forms based on Catholic faith emerge in pasyon or pabasa or aka the biblical narration of Christ’s
passion chanted in an improvised melody.
 Secular music forms such as awit and corrido flourished in the lowland Christian communities of
Pampanga, Ilocos, Bicol, and Iloilo.
 Kundiman, balitao,balitao sentimental love songs, and lullabies also evolved.
 The kundiman which usually spoke of resignation and fatalism became a vehicle for resistance during
the revolt.
 Bayan Ko is an experienced renewed kundiman during the EDSA People Power Revolution in 1986.
 Local theaters were developed featuring the zarzuela or sarsuwela that features singing and dancing
with prosed dialogue.
 Severino Reyes and Hermogenes Ilagan were the ones who wrote sarsuwelas in Tagalog.
 Senakulo or Passion play was written by Gaspar Aquino de Belen in 1704.
 Komedya is another local theater form that emerged during this period; it depicts the conflict of the
Christians and Muslims.
 The komedya has two types: the komedya de santo and secular komedya.
 The trade and viceroyalty arrangement also brought Mexican influences in Philippine folk music and
dance. Ex: Carinosa, pandanggo, polka, dansa, and rigodon.
 In the visual arts, paintings served an instructive function through visual interpretation of Biblical texts
central to Catholic devotion. Ex: Heaven, Earth, and Hell (1850) a mural by Jose Dans in Paete Church,
Laguna.
 The reprographic art of printmaking was introduced in the Philippines as early as the 16th century.
 Applying the technique of xylography or woodcut printing, Doctrina Christiana (The Teachings of
Christianity) was printed in 1593 in Spanish and Tagalog by Dominican priests.
  Prayer booklets called estampas and its smaller size called, estampitas were developed to produce
secular or non-religious works
 During the Spanish period, the Imperial crown commissioned scientists and artists to produce maps and
sources of classification; as means to gain more knowledge about the colony and for the age of
expedition.
 Carta Hydrographica de las Yslas Filipinas, the first scientific map of the Philippines.
 Surrounding the map are vignettes of everyday life that focus on the different “types” of people and
their surroundings called tipos del pais.
 Suarez and de la Cruz bagay were among the first to acknowledge their roles as artists by signing their
names at the bottom of the map.
 Attention to detail in painting can also be observed in Letras y Figuras.
 Combining names of individuals and vignettes of everyday life, this painting style became popular when
Filipino natives acquire Spanish names in compliance with a decree implemented in 1884.
 Jose Honorata Lozano was a practitioner of this art where the tipos del pais are painstakingly rendered
within the graphic outline.
 Academic painters gained ground as thy received their art studies in local schools, or abroad as in the
case of Juan Luna and Felix Hidalgo.
 In 1821, Damian Domingo, the painter known for his watercolor albums of tipos del pais established the
first art school in the country right at his studio in Binondo, Manila.
 The Academia-trained Lorenzo Guerrero painted The Water Carrier which exemplifies the use of
chiaroscuro in the genre of the late 19th century; an example of this is the painting Primeras Letras in
1890 by Simon Flores.
 In 1884, the expatriates Juan Luna and Felix Resurreccion Hidalgo won medals in the Madrid Exposition.
Juan Luna won gold for Spolarium and silver medal for Hidalgo for Virgenes Christianas Expuestas Al
Populacho.
 The paintings of Luna and Hidalgo are large in scale and grandiose in effect, the significance of both
paintings lies not only in the prestige these gained but also in the relay of meanings these continue to
generate.
 Luna’s depiction of a lifeless body of a gladiator being pulled across the coliseum and Hidalgo’s emphasis
on a woman held captive have been interpreted as searing reminders of the Philippines’ oppression
under Spanish rule.
 The Spolarium may be viewed at the National Art Gallery of the Philippines and Espana y Filipinas at the
Lopez Museum, while the Virgenes Christianas Expuestas Al Populacho is part of the Metropolitan
Museum of Manila or MET Collection.

III. American Colonial Period to the Post-war Republic

 With the coming of the Americans, Filipino playwrights who had just undergone the Philippine
Revolution of 1898 against Spain now found themselves confronted by censorship with the issuance of
the Sedition Law which banned the writing, printing, and publication of materials advocating the
Philippine independence.
 Playwrights such as Juan Abad’s Tanikalang Ginto or Golden Chain in 1902, Juan Matapang Cruz’s Hindi
Ako Patay or I am not Dead in 1903, and Aurelio Tolentino’s Kahapon nationalist sentiments of their
playwrights but also served as the medium for political protest, openly attacking the Americans.
 These plays were known as drama simbolico, these one-act plays came to represent a profound yearning
for freedom.
 The lingua franca of this period was English, poems and stories from books were dramatized in the
classroom, to facilitative the teaching of the English language.
 In less than a decade, Filipino playwrights began to write plays in English.
 In 1915, Lino Castillejo and Jesus Aruallo authored plays from classics to Broadway and West End
Musical.
 Vaudeville, which originated from France was another form of theater which the Americans introduced
that became popular in the Philippines during the 19020s.
 This motley collection of slapstick, songs, dances, acrobatics, comedy-sits, chorus girls, magic arts, and
stand-up comic acts would be known locally as bodabil.
  The architect and urban planner Daniel Burnham was commissioned by the American government to
design Manila and Baguio, while Architect William Parsons introduced the Burnham Plan, inspired by
the City Beautiful Movement, introduced in 1893 at the Chicago World Fair.
 The new urban design employed Neoclassic architecture for its government edifices and integrated
parks and lawns to make the city attractive by making its buildings impressive and places more
architecture include the Post Office and the Legislative Building (now the National Art Gallery).
 Neoclassic architecture may incorporate decorative sculptural elements housed in a pediment, as
exemplified by the National Art Gallery
 Tomas Mapua, Juan Arellano, Andres Luna de San Pedro, and Antonio Toledo were among the Filipino
architects who designed buildings during the period; they received pieces of training in the US and
Europe.
 The inclination toward genre, still life, and portrait paintings persisted.
 Landscapes, on the other hand, became cherished as travel souvenirs, especially those that captured
the exotic qualities of the Philippine terrain.
 In 1909, a year after the establishment of the University of the Philippines, its School of Fine Arts was
opened.
 Dela Rosa was known for his naturalist paintings, characterized by restraint and formality in brushwork,
choice of somber colors, and subject matter, as seen in the works Planting Rice, 1921 and El Kundiman,
1930.
 The National Artist Fernando Amorsolo was known for romantic paintings that captured the warm glow
of the Philippine sunlight.
 A prolific artist, Amorsolo had produced numerous portraits of prominent individuals; genres scenes
highlighting the beauty of the damaging Filipina, idyllic landscapes; and historical paintings.
 Amorsolo’s logo design for Ginebra San Miguel, depicting the saint trampling on a devil, won him a grant
that enabled him to study Fine Arts in Spain.
 Guillermo Tolentino was Amorsolo’s counterpart in sculpture.
 He studies Fine Arts in Rome and was influenced by its classical tradition.
 He is credited for the iconic Oblation of the University of the Philippines and Bonifacio Monument in
Caloocan.
 The most well-known proponent of Modern Art in painting was Victorio Edades, whose works were
shared by several artists such as National Artist Carlos “Botong” Francisco and Galo Ocampo.
 Carlos Francisco is known for his magisterial murals, particularly, Filipino Struggles Through History in
1964.
 Edades, Francisco, and Ocampo were regarded as the “triumvirate” of modern art after having worked
on several murals together.
 A collaborative work that survives to this day is Nature’s Beauty, 1935, which portrays a group of women
harvesting fruits in a field.
 Right after the World War 2, Edades publicized a roster of artists whom he considered have modernist
learnings. He called them the 13 moderns namely, Arsenio Capili, Bonifacio Cristobal, Denetrio Diego,
National Artist Carlos Francisco, National Artist Cesar Legaspi, Diosdado Lorenzo, Anita Magsasay-Ho,
Galo Campo, National Artist Hernando Ocampo, Jose Pardo, Ricarte Purugganan, and Victorio Edades.
 These artists explored various mediums, techniques, and themes that were at the time considered new
and even shocking to those who were more used to images that are closer to how they looked in reality.

IV. Japanese Occupation

 Under the Japanese rule of Manila, the modern art project would slow down in pace.
 Early modernists and conservatives alike continued to produce art and even participated in KALIBAPI
(Kapisanan sa Paglilingkod ng Bagong Pilipinas) sponsored art contests.
 In 1943 and 1944, Purugganan and Francisco won the KALIBAPI awards respectively.
 Slogans such as “Asians for Asians” made their way to the public through posters, ephemera, comics,
and Japanese sponsored publications such as Shin-Seiki, and newspapers and magazines such as
Liwayway and Tribune.
 In music, the composer National Artist Felipe P. de Leon was said to have been “commanded at the point
of the gun” to write Awit sa Paglika ng Bagong Pilipinas”.
  One of the well-known singers was Sylvia La Torres and her song Sa Kabukiran, written in Tagalog in the
1940s by the National Artist Levi Celerio.
 In painting, artworks that evoked a semblance of peace, idealized work in the countryside, and promoted
the values of docile industriousness flourished.
 Genre paintings were the most widely produced, in particular those that presented a neutral relationship
between the Filipinos and the Japanese through works that showed the normality of daily living.
 Portraits representing different ethnolinguistic groups were produced, this is exemplified by Crispin
Lopez’s Study of an Aeta in 1943.
 Works that depicted the horrors of war such as Diosdado Lorenzo’s Atrocities in Paco and Dominador
Castaneda’s Doomed Family were painted after 1945.

V.70s to Contemporary

 Under the helm of the Marcos couple beginning in 1965, many cultural projects ensued amid the
backdrop of poverty and volatile social conditions.
 The optimism toward a new beginning was articulated for example, in Levi Celerio and Felipe Padilla de
Leon’s composition for the New Society titled Bagong Pagsilang.
 National pride was instilled by invoking the pre-modern through murals, folk festivals, and museums
devoted to collecting and displaying ethnographic artifacts and natural specimens, among these key
sites was the National Museum, which was revitalized through Constitutional amendments.
 During the Marcos regime, various edifices and structures were built: Cultural Center of the Philippines,
Philippine International Convention Center, Coconut Palace; Manila Film Center, and National Arts
Center.
 These buildings were designed by Architect, Francisco Manosa and National Artist for Architecture,
Leandro Locsin through the initiative of former First Lady, Imelda Marcos.
 The visual art unit also shared a similar trajectory.
 It opened and managed a museum in which the artist-professor Roberto Chabet was tasked to be the
first director of the CCP.
 Some of the exhibited artworks in CCP during Chabet’s directorship were collages, drawings, sculptures,
and installation arts.
 A significant strand that emerged during the intense political ferment in the 70s and the 80s was Social
Realism or SR, short.
 Social Realism is a form of protest art that exposed the sociopolitical issues and struggles of the times.
 SR tackles the plight of the marginalized, inequality, and forms of repression.
 Some of the works in the SR are Itak sa Puso ni Mang Juan by Antipas Delotovas; Kinupot by Edgar
Fernandez.
 The format of protest art is not just confined to painting on canvas but also extends to other more
accessible and popular forms like posters and illustrations, or street art as in collaborative murals in
public spaces.
 Several years after the declaration of Martial Law, an artist collective committed to the development of
the said art movement was formed – Kaisahan.
 Kaisahan was composed of Antipas Delotova, Neil Doloricon, Renato Habula, Edgar Talusan Hernandez,
Al Manrique, Jose Tence Ruiz, and Pable Baen Santos.
 Kaisahan’s influence as a collective reached organization like the group of UP Fine Arts students who
eventually became known in the 80s as the Salingpusa.
 Among its founding members were Elmer Borlongan, Karen Ocampo Flores, Emmanuel Garibay, Mark
Justiniani Lito Mondejar, and Frederico Sievert.
 At present, younger artists have also organized themselves as loose collectives to share common
interests or to create a platform where they can exchange, support each other, and spearhead
collaborative programs.
 An example is Project Space Pilipinas, based in Lucban Quezon and founded by the artist Leslie de Chavez
in 2007.
 Varied forms of expression can be observed from the period which spilled over from the previous
decades.
  Among these expressionist works that conveyed emotional qualities or states, as in the dogfight
paintings of National Artist Ang Kiukok, hinting of conflict and aggression; or the paintings of Onib
Olmedo which feature men with ovoid faces often donning a mysterious expression bordering on ennui.
 In sculpture, Eduardo Castrillo’s gigantic metal work Pieta in 1969, evoked a strong feeling of anguish
and loss through the expressive poses of Mary the mother and the oversized body of Christ which she
supports.
 Ethnicity, identity, and alternative historical narratives are explored in the intermedia works of Santiago
Bose.
 Roberto Feleo’s installations re-tell creation stories drawn from indigenous myths and combine them
with foreign interventions such as vitrines or altar niches normally used to house saints.
 Brenda Fajardo, on the other hand, would foreground the histories of ethnic communities through her
tarot card series.
 In other words, the native or the folk, the self, the environment, the nation, the past, and the various
variations of the Modern continue to be revisited by artists as a source of inspiration in contemporary.

This varied range of practice demonstrates that making art in the artist’s studio is inseparable from cultural and
research work. The studio extends to various sites-classrooms, the streets, every cyberspace, among others. Art
is not just a “tool” or handmaiden to a certain ideology, advocacy, or purpose, but a methodology in itself, with
specific and independent modes of seeing, doing, and feeling, from where new knowledge springs. The artworks
that artists produce transcend their status as objects or collectors’ items; they are inseparable from the artists’
process and practice as cultural workers, a phrase that also implicates their roles as organizers, collaborators,
educators, administrators, writers, theorists, quasi-ethnographers, healers, curators, and in some cases, as
owners of galleries and other spaces.

Topic: The Gawad Sa Manlilikha ng Bayan (GAMABA) and The Order of the National Artists Award

The Gawad Sa Manlilikha ng Bayan

In April 1992, the Gawad sa Manlilikha ng Bayan or the National Living Treasures Award was institutionalized
through Republic Act No. 7355. Tasked with the administration and implementation of the Award is the National
Commission for Culture and the Arts, the highest policy-making and coordinating body for culture and the arts
of the State. The NCCA, through the Gawad sa Manlilikha ng Bayan Executive Council, conducts the search for
the finest traditional artists of the land, adopts a program that will ensure the transfer of their skills to others,
and undertakes measures to promote a genuine appreciation of and instill pride among our people about the
genius of the Manlilikha ng Bayan.

As envisioned under R.A. 7355, “Manlilikha ng Bayan” shall mean a citizen engaged in any traditional art uniquely
Filipino whose distinctive skills have reached such a high level of technical and artistic excellence and have been
passed on to and widely practiced by the present generation in his/her community with the same degree of
technical and artistic competence.

The GAMABA Awardees

Manlilikha ng Bayan Year of Conferment Form Expertise
Lang Dulay 1998 Weaving Tinalak weaving
Salinta Monon 1998 Weaving Inabal weaving
Darhata Sawabi 2004 Weaving Pis Siyabit weaving
Haja Amina 2004 Weaving Mat weaving
Magdalena Gamayo 2012 Weaving Inabel Weaving
Ginaw Bilog 1993 Literature and Surat Mangya and
Performing Arts ambahan poetry
Masino Intaray 1993 Literature and Lyrical poems and playing
Performing Arts their accompanying
instruments; epic
chanting and storytelling
Samaon Sulaiman 1993 Literature and Playing the Kudyapi
Performing Arts
Alonzo Saclag 2000 Literature and Playing Kalinga musical
Performing Arts instruments; dance
patterns and movements
associated with rituals
 Federico Cabllero 2000 Literature and Chanting the sugidanon
Performing Arts epic of the Panay
Bukidnon
Uwang Ahadas 2000 Literature and Playing Yakan musical
Performing Arts instruments
Eduardo Mutuc 2004 Plastic Arts Silver plating of religious
and secular art
Teofilo Garcia 2012 Plastic Arts Gourd casque making

The Order of the National Artists Award

The Order of the National Artists Award (Orden ng Gawad Pambansang Alagad ng Sining) is the highest national
recognition given to Filipino individuals who have made significant contributions to the development of
Philippine arts; namely, Music, Dance, Theater, Visual Arts, Literature, Film, and Broadcast Arts, and
Architecture and Allied Arts. The order is jointly administered by the National Commission for Culture and the
Arts (NCCA) and Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP) and conferred by the President of the Philippines upon
recommendation by both institutions.

The Order of National Artists Award is one of the honors conferred by the Republic of the Philippines that
embodies the nation’s highest ideals in the humanities and aesthetic expression through the distinct
achievements of individual citizens. While the Republic bestows due recognition to these singular achievements,
it also honors its cultural heritage, whose enrichment these achievements have significantly affected, enhanced,
and given direction.

These achievements are measured in terms of their vision, unusual insight, creativity and imagination, technical
proficiency of the highest order in expressing Filipino culture and traditions, history, way of life, and aspirations.

To view the roster of National Artists, access this link: https://www.culturalcenter.gov.ph/programs/awards-

and-grants/the-national-artists-award/details

Topic: 7 Major Contemporary Art Forms in the Philippines

1. Music The art that appeals to the sense of hearing is composed by combining notes into
harmony.
2. Literature The art form of language through the combined use of words, creating meaning and
experience through literary texts.
3. Theater The art form of performance. Dramatic text is portrayed on stage by actors and actresses
and is enhanced by props, lights, costumes, and sounds. An art form in which artists use
their voices and/or their bodies to convey artistic expression.
4. Film A technological translation of theater in which special effects are utilized to enhance the
storytelling.
5. Dance The art of human form in which the body is used, mobilized, and choreograph in a
specific time, form, and space.
6. Architecture, The art of structure meant to be used as a shelter relies on the design and purpose of
Design, and Allied the structure.
Arts
7. Fine/Visual Arts The artwork that comprises painting, photography, or sculpture which appeals primarily
to the visual sense and exists in permanent form.

REFERENCES:

Datuin, F., Paulino, R., Ramirez, E. L., & Marcelino, L. (2016). Contemporary Philippine Art From The Regions
(First). Rex Book Store, Inc.

Gamaba: Gawad SA Manlilikha ng Bayan. National Commission for Culture and the Arts. (2020, August 14).
Retrieved October 13, 2021, from https://ncca.gov.ph/about-culture-and-arts/culture-profile/gamaba/.

Philippines, C. C. of the. (n.d.). The National Artists Award. Retrieved October 13, 2021, from
https://www.culturalcenter.gov.ph/programs/awards-and-grants/the-national-artists-award/details.