Ilustrado 2.0: Reviving Filipino greatness

Genius knows no country, genius sprouts anywhere, genius is like light, air, the patrimony of everybody,” exclaimed José Rizal in one of his most memorable speeches on record. The special occasion was the crowning of two of his colleagues, namely Juan Luna and Felix Resurreccion Hidalgo, as among Europe’s most accomplished artists. Luna bagged the gold medal for “El Expoliarium,” better known as “The Spoliarium,” at the Exposición Nacional de Bellas Artes in Madrid in 1884. On his part, Hidalgo had just won a silver medal for “Virgenes Christianas Expuestas al Populacho” (Christian Virgins Exposed to the Populace).

Ecstatic, if not almost intoxicated, by the singular achievement of his fellow Filipinos, Rizal placed Luna and Hidalgo in the pantheon of the world’s leading artists and as “the pride of Spain as [well as] of the Philippines.” What makes Rizal’s speech particularly special is not its rhetorical flourish per se, but instead, its profound dialectical subtlety. By arguing that “genius has no country,” he was actually emphasizing the enormous talent of his fellow Filipinos, who managed to achieve, against all odds, the most illustrious awards in the heart of imperium.

Fortunately, one no longer needs to fly all the way to the Old World in order to witness the genius of Filipino talent. Our very own Ayala Museum is now hosting, in cooperation with León Gallery, the “holy grail” of Philippine art: Luna’s “Hymen, oh Hyménée!” a gorgeously splendid painting that clearly occupied a special place in its author’s heart.

According to Jaime Ponce de Leon, the heroically dauntless auctioneer who tracked down the much-vaunted painting, “Hymen, oh Hyménée!” is singular, precisely because it managed to win a top award in no less than in Exposition Universelle in 1889 in Paris, then the “ground zero of [high] art.” I wonder, though, whether Luna’s other masterpieces, “Spoliarium” (1884) and “The Death of Cleopatra” (1881), would have also bagged the top awards had imperial Spanish authorities allowed the Filipino artist to exhibit all his key works in Paris.

Rizal’s speech was also crucial in another sense: It underscored the social foundations of individual genius. Luna’s greatest works were, after all, not only inspired by marital romance and his creative genius but also the revolutionary fervent of the ilustrado class. Thus, to celebrate Luna’s genius in singular terms is a disservice to his peers, who brought the best out of each other by constantly pushing the boundaries of artistic imagination and political activism.

In fact, not only Luna but also Rizal and countless other ilustrado achievers were heavily indebted to pioneers such as Pedro Alejandro Paterno (1857-1911). Paterno, the author of the first Filipino novel, “Ninay,” was a brilliant legal and artistic mind who leveraged his wealth and social networks to catapult his fellow ilustrados to Europe’s high society. It was Paterno, arguably more than any of his peers, who played a crucial role in mainstreaming the “Filipino perspective” among Spain’s cultural elite, who had scant notions of their sole Asian colony up until the “fin de siècle” years.

As the Spanish scholar Jorge Mojarro notes, it was Paterno who “turned his Madrid home into a meeting point for lively literary and artistic gatherings where he was visited, thanks to his generosity, by the most select Spanish intelligentsia of the late 19th century.” In short, Luna’s genius didn’t blossom in a vacuum, but instead among kindred spirits.

Long before the Young Turks emerged in Eurasia, bravely advocating for republican democracy in the ashes of a crumbling Ottoman empire, the Filipino ilustrado class was a vanguard of modern nationalism in the Asia-Pacific region. As the Indian essayist Pankaj Mishra notes, Rizal and his peers served as a locomotive for anti-colonial imagination across the region.

Over the next century, however, their beloved motherland succumbed to a notorious kakistocracy and a culture of mediocrity. Ours is a country where the ancien régime is alive and well, while the progressive opposition is in de facto hibernation. This is a disservice to our founding fathers, who achieved greatness against the grain of full-spectrum oppression and imperial tyranny. What we need is no less than a new generation of ilustrado, who, in tandem with an inspired and mobilized masses, can serve as a vanguard of national rejuvenation.

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