Ah … thanks Miguel. We’re familiar with the Dia de Los Muertos .. and it is very akin to the spirit of the Diableries, I think.
I wasn’t aware of Posada, though, unless Denis told me and I forgot !
This is great stuff … and I think it’s true that familiarising ourselves with death, or at least what is inside us … is a healthy thing !
All the very best And a Happy New Year !
Bri
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Miguel Angel López Loredo wrote:
Hi Brian,
I’ve reading about your deep interest and work in the Diableries. Great, great work of art.
You may know that here, in Mexico, we celebrate dead in a very different way from Halloween. We have here the Dead Day. I was thinking that maybe you can find interesting this celebration, which have many many centuries of tradition in our country. This day is celebrated in very many different ways along the country, too many that I can’t mention all, I’m afraid.
But it has some things in common, like the “calaveras” (Verses or improvised songs making fun of the death), or the “papel picado” (poked paper, I’m sorry, the translation may lose some of the sense) which is art made out of paper with death-like themes, and representations of public figures, historic characters or so, in funny scenes, but represented as skeletons. This may sound a little macabre, but it’s really very fun. Some anthropologists refer that making fun of death this way, may be a collective way to try to ignore that fear we all feel about death.
There was a graphic artist, at the beginning of the XX Century who produced many works about the Dead Day, Jose Guadalupe Posada, and I find his work very close to the Diableries ones, here’s a Wikipedia article about him: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/José_Guadalupe_Posada
His creation “La Catrina” (The female dandy, or something like that), it’s one of the most common illustrations you can see around the Dead Day in Mexico, and many of his works as well, the interesting point is that here, in Mexico, these works by Posada are still in our dinamic present each year, and the artists still produce their works in this way for this celebration.
I hope you can find this interesting.
Please have a very happy new year. Much love from all the Mexico fans.
Miguel López.
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