José Guadalupe Posada

Marigolds asked to hear more about the artist José Guadalupe Posada and so I thought I would post a little about him.

Posada (1852-1913) was a Mexican artist known especially for his caricatures that drew on Mexican folkloric traditions and also commented on current social issues. He's considered an important influence on later Mexican mural art. Today's urban graffiti int he US bears some resemblance to Posada's work, though I'm not sure the influence is direct.

Wikipedia Commons has several of his drawings. Perhaps his most famous image is La Catrina:

I've been reading about Posada in a wonderful book by Carlos Fuentes, El Espejo Enterrado (1992). He writes, "José Guadalupe Posada fue un cronista de la actualidad en sus grabados sensactionalistas y llamativos, derivados de la observación directa desde la ventana de su imprenta en la Ciudad de México." [José Guadalupe Posada was a chronicler of current events in his sensational and intense prints, derived from direct observation out the window of his press in Mexico City.]

That image of Posada aborbing events from observing the street through his office window is captured in this 1956 linoleum cut by Leopoldo Méndez (1902-1969), called "Homenaje a José Guadalupe Posada [Homage to José Guadalupe Posada]:

The Web site of the Spencer Museum of Art at the University of Kansas says that Posada is "generally regarded as the founder of ideological printmaking in Mexico". Fuentes writes, "Los grabados de Posada evocan, junto al progreso, los pesos muertos de la superstición, la ignorancia y el bandidaje armado." [Posada's prints evoke, together with progress, the dead weight of superstition, ignorance and armed banditry.] And he writes that "los grabados de Posada le dan una voz a los pobres." [Pasado's prints gave a voice to the poor." And:

Posada perteneció a esa rara categoría de artistas claramente asociados con una forma universal de la cultura: la cultura del peligro, de lo extraño, de los extremos y de la informalidad. En éste sentido, Posada pertenece a la familia española de Goya y de Buñuel. Su arte también logra universalizar lo excéntrico. Por esta misma razón, se encuentra estrechamente ligado a la i ultura callejera de los que carecen de letra y de voz.

[Posado belonged to that rare category of artists clearly associated with a universal cultural form: the culture of danger, of the unusual, of extremes and of informality. In this sense, Pesado belongs to the Spanish family of Goya and Buñuel. His art also achieves the universalizing of the eccentric. For this very reason, it meshes especially closely with the street culture of those who lack writing and a voice.]

He drew a lot of pictures dealing with death and sex. Also some just weird stuff. Like this one:

Hombre rico acostado por los siete pecados capitales (Rich man assaulted by the seven deadly sins)

He also liked to draw animated skeletons, which makes his images particularly appropriate for blog posts about war. He actually made a lot of them to commemorate the Catholic holy days of All Saints' Day and the Day of the Dead, aka, All Soul's Day (November 1 and 2, respectively).

The famous Soviet film director Sergei Eisenstein did a movie called Qué viva México, for which he acknowledged the influence of Posada's Day of the Dead imagery.

Fuentes also characterizes Posada's overall work as follows:

Hemos pagado caro la creencia equivocada de que la historia y la felicidad pueden coincidir beatíficamente. Posada nos recuerda que debemos ser siempre críticos. Toda felicidad es relativa porque no hay absolutos. La historia sólo es histórica si no nos eñgana con una promesa de éxito absoluto o de cumplimiento perfecto. La vida sólo es vivible si no se olvida de la conciencia trágica, incluyendo, como lo hace Posada, la visión do la muerte.

[We have paid dearly for the false notion that history and happiness can beatifically coincide with each other. Posado reminds us that we should always be critics. All happiness is relative because there are no absolutes. History is only history if we don't deceive ourselves with a promise of complete success or of perfect fulfillment. Life is livable only if we don't forget the tragic consciousness, including, as Posada did, the view of death.]

Tags: carlos fuentes, josé guadalupe posada