Answer:
In the 1920s, the Amorsolo School of painting , with its head Fernando Amorsolo, and its
members, Irineo Miranda, Dominador Castaneda, and some others, asserted its dominance,
especially since it was esconced in the School of Fine Arts of the state university. Its predominant
influence would continue to grow into the decades of the Thirti es and Forties, during which their
work became widely known, not only as paintings, although these were widely reproduced in
calendars and cards, but also as illustrations for books, publicati ons, and corporate advertisements .
In sculpture, Guillermo Tolentino who had trained in the acade my in Rome, was the proponent of
classical sculpture, as seen in his public monuments and statues.
What modernism would be up against in the following d ecade was primarily this prolific
school, which turned out hundreds of genre paintings and lands capes. It amply satisfied the needs
and tastes of the American patrons, the colonial authorities , and tourists in search of "exotic
images" from their new colony in the East to display in the Un ited States . Perpetuating the myth
of the "beautiful land," Amorsolo was best known for his rice-pl anting scenes in which the arduous
occupation of peasants working in the green paddies seemed to be gracefully choreographed against
a backdrop of huge mango trees, mountains, and a nipa hut or two. To enhance the romantic
undertones, he used the technique of backlighting with golden-hued sunlight to soften and gild the
laboring figures . Also part of the Amorsolo imagery were folk observing the pieties of going to
Sunday Mass in picturesque settings of stone churches graced by flame trees. Then, too, there were
the cornucopia paintings of rosy young women and men carrying baskets of fruit from the harvest.
Doubtless, these superbly executed paintings contributed much in stimulating the art market and it
was Amorsolo as the leading artist who systematized certain of its aspects. Moreover, these images
constituted a seductive form of orientalist myth-making, which lent a bright tone to the colonial
endeavor and assuaged all sense of social responsibility on the part of the landlord art patrons. In
fact, such images continued to be urban fare in the years of the Thirties marked by peasant uprisings
in the countryside.
In the Philippines, modernism was also a reaction against the local surrogate of the European
beaux-arts academy. The Academia de Dibujo y Pintura was the official purveyor of the ideals of
classical academism. It fell under the management of the Sociedad Economica de Amigos del Pais,
which brought over Spanish art instructors and imported copie s of European paintings to serve as
models. The products of the Academia were mainly dark-toned monochromatic landscapes, genre
and character studies that had an air of detachment. Form ing a separate category were the
ilustrado or elite portraits of the nineteenth century, which came in fashion with the opening of
the country to international trade and cash crop agriculture, resulting in the unprecedented
prosperity of the new merchant class. These were characterized by the miniaturist style, which
painstakingly brought out the details of costume, primarily the embroidery and accessories, to give
evidence of social refinement. Art patronage in the nineteenth century was thus directly linked to the ambitions and presuppositions of the emergent bourgeoisie.
Explanation:
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