A Filipino Painter in Paris: Juan Luna in the Field of Cultural Production

Abstract

Academicism in France was breaking down and Manet had already redefined the criteria of artistic excellence when the Filipino painter Juan Luna won honors in the salons of Madrid and Paris. Luna’s paintings reaffirmed the classical norms, and while he introduced innovations that revitalized the Academic style, he never fully committed to impressionism. Occupying therefore a fraught position between traditionalism and experimentalism in a conflictive field of forces that was the art world of late nineteenth-century France and Spain, Luna’s work manifested an accumulating tension that was to lead to personal tragedy toward the end of his life.

KEYWORDS: Juan Luna; the Paris Period; Pierre Bourdieu;
field of cultural production