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José Guadalupe Posada and the Mexican Broadside
The Art Institute of Chicago
In a longtime relationship with publisher Antonio Vanegas Arroyo, printmaker José Guadalupe Posada crafted vulgar, vigorous images perfectly suited to appeal to the popular imagination: bold images in black and white incorporating vivid dynamics, fantastical details, and a crude doll-like quality that underscored the grimmest sensational news with a current of dark humor. This two-part exhibition mounted by the Art Institute of Chicago, now in the second of its installments, is an opportunity to see Posada's work in its original context. The fantastical prints often excerpted solely as the illustrations themselves here appear as the full broadside, with titles and text intact. Additional works by fellow printmakers such as Manuel Manilla, a special brief section on Posada's use of contemporary mass-production techniques, and the inclusion of finer prints by Posada give an opportunity to compare and appreciate the full energy of this artist's signature style. Integral to the potency of Posada's works is a coarseness of handling, a tendency to crowd the image with rude vigor, a direct appeal to vulgar satire. Horrible murders and popular ballads; heroes, whether bandits or bullfighters; current-day satire of political and journalistic personalities and events; moralizing tales of murder or gossip and its often devilish comeuppance: all were part of the culture of Mexican popular broadsides, also known as the "penny press". These large printed sheets on cheap colorful paper, striking in their vulgar appeal, were meant for quick sale to the working and middle classes. The large illustrations had to be immediate in their impact, the better to capture the attention of the purchasing public. Posada's direct depictions provided the visual draw to feed curiosity and fuel popular demand. Murder in comic-tragic vignette, his capering demons, lively little monsters dragging off some hapless wretch, and his satirical calaveras, the dressed, animated skeletons derived from the Mexican tradition of Dia de los Muertos or Day of the Dead, all provided immediate legibility to advertise the latest sensational offering, appearing in large, bold graphics taking up a full one-third of the page and effectively drawing in the reader with the promise of a juicy story in the text beneath. The sensationalism itself was a key element in eliciting quick public appeal, and explains a great deal of the bizarre and often outré nature of Posada's illustrations. Even new inventions such as the installation of an electric trolley in Mexico City received a fantastical handling, as in the mesmeric force of the giant calavera in Grand Electric Calavera as a Present to You, A Most Conceited Calavera of Pure Electricity (Gran calavera electrica que se les va a regalar, calavera muy fachosa de pure electricidad) (photo-relief etching, drawing style: 16-1/16 x 11-7/8 in.: c. 1907), where the streetcar itself stands to the background behind the countless calaveras responding to the hypnotic call. Underlying this immediacy is Posada's significant skill: a complex balance of line, thrust and animation that brings the action to life and never fails to satisfy the eye time and again. Diagonals suggest dynamic action, scattering energy as darting here and there, yet Posada never loses control of the composition. Even in the busiest images, in the mob of running skulls that pours like a wave in Revolt of the Calavera, flooding and encompassing the opposing sides of firing squad and soldier with saber, or the jostling line of bicycling journalists in From the Track of This Famous Hippodrome Not a Single Journalist Will Be Missing (De este famoso hipodromo en la pista no faltará ni un solo periodista) (relief engraving or photo-relief etching, engraving style: 23-5/8 x 15-7/8 in.: after 1895) (the Spanish title also picks up the sing-song rhythms of the satirical poetry beneath), the action is directed and sensible in its vitality. That vitality is further illustrated by comparison of Posada's work with that of his contemporaries. Like Posada, printmaker Manuel Manilla was also employed by publisher Arroyo as a broadside illustrator. In This is Don Quixote's, the First, the Matchless, the Giant Calavera (Esta es Don Quijote la primera, la sin par la gigante calavera) (relief engraving or photo-relief etching (engraving style): 23-5/8 x 15-7/8 in.: undated), the broadside features works by both, Posada's above, Manilla's below. They are similar in subject, but Manilla's, though satisfactory, is less lively. Manilla's rider draws up the reins of his skeletal horse, standing foursquare and staring out at the viewer as a grim yet placid apparition. Posada's galloping Quixote scatters the calaveras around him, sending them rolling, tumbling and rebounding into the air in an exercise in chaotic energy. Posada's coarse vigor, if a source of power and popular appeal, was also a practical consideration for an illustrator of prints meant for the popular press, who needed to provide a maximum of visual 'punch' in a minimum of time expenditure. Later artists in rediscovering Posada's work focused on the hand-crafted nature of Posada's prints, highlighting his connection with artisanal practices and the common people. As this exhibition points out, Posada, not surprisingly given commercial and professional considerations, was accomplished in mass-reproductive print processes and even a workshop approach, where assistants might complete lesser areas of a particular image. Methods such as photo-relief etching allowed the artist to work out an image in a more forgiving medium such as scraperboard (also known as scratchboard), where the softer surface allowed the artist to work faster and more easily than in the rugged substances of either wood (woodcut) or metal (engraving, etching). A photographic process then transferred the image from cardboard-backed scratchboard to an acid-etched metal printing plate. Once transferred to the plate, the image could then be finished out by hand by the artist or his assistants. It is a reminder that even Posada's pungent illustrations were created under constraints of time and commercial need to maximize mass production -- more prints, more quickly, for sales in numbers were the means by which publisher Antonio Vanegas Arroyo could see a return on broadsides that sold for a mere penny each. Arroyo himself is presented as a calavera with fine suit and bowler hat in Here is the Calavera of the Popular Publisher A. Vanegas Arroyo (Aquí está la calavera del popular editor A. Vanegas Arroyo) (photo-relief etching, drawing style: 15-3/4 x 11-15/16 in.: 1907), noteworthy for its surrounding illustrations which include calaveras engaged in every aspect of printing for the popular press. Arroyo like many publishers also capitalized on his return by re-using visuals from illustrators such as Posada, setting them to different texts as need demanded or commissioning the artist to do a generic scene, such as a firing squad, to maintain in reserve for breaking news. To wring every last value from his investment, Arroyo also made extreme re-use of plates, even to the point of breaking and repair. The actual printing plate of Calaveras of the Masses, Number 2 (Calavera of Francisco Madero) (Calaveras del montón, número 2 [Calavera Maderista]) (photo-relief etching, drawing style, with touches of engraving: 15-15/16 x 11-1/2 in.: c. 1910) shows wear, broken plate areas, and even nailheads where fatigued fragments have been rejoined to the block. At times, the same image might be worked over in differing styles depending on the transfer method. Two impressions of the illustration for Horrible Murder! (Horrible asesinato!) highlight the difference, that from the 1890s showing the "engraving style", a more refined image with deeper blacks, in which white lines on areas of black mass define the image, and that from ca. 1910 showing the "drawing style," with the image defined by black lines on white paper, the illustrative style itself more crude but still effective. Selected works offer a further comparison within Posada's own ouvre, showing that the artist so accomplished with calaveras of vulgar propositions and grinning horselaughs could execute, as well, a sensitive and straightforward fine-printing style. Don Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla (relief engraving or photo-relief etching, engraving style: 23-11/16 x 15-3/4 in.: c. 1899), a commemorative portrait of Hidalgo, father of Mexican independence, and The Miraculous Image of Our Saviour (La milagrosa imagen del Señor del Rescate) (relief impression from stereotyped plate or photo-relief etching, engraving style: 15-5/8 x 11-15/16 in.: 1903), a devotional image, both illustrate the artist's less well-known departure from the lively and crude into the finest of engraving or engraving-style techniques. With forty-four works, José Guadalupe Posada and the Mexican Print is an excellent small exhibition on the great Mexican printmaker and the broadsides which were his primary medium. With bold figures, sensational subject matter, and an earthy, accomplished vigor, Posada carved out memorable visual satire on current events, vanities and the fascination of the sensational. José Guadalupe Posada and the Mexican Print is presented in two parts, Part I running from June 24 - October 1, 2006 and Part II from October 7, 2006 - January 17, 2007. The selections are drawn from the Art Institute's significant holdings of Posada's work. A 40-page catalogue in English and Spanish authored by the exhibition's curator, Diane Miliotes, includes more than 30 illustrations of the prints of Posada and his contemporaries. --Katherine R. Lieber Katherine R. Lieber has edited ArtScope.net's Visual Arts reviews since 1998. Ms. Lieber is Editor and Associate Producer for ArtScope.net. She was also a contributor to the 2002 book Viva Posada! A Salute to the Great Printmaker of the Mexican Revolution.
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