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- The artistic dimension of bullfighting is undeniable. Each bullfight is an ephemeral work of art, where the bullfighter, as an artist, performs a dance of precision, risk and aesthetics. The muleta and the cape are his brushes; the arena, his canvas.
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Jul 10, 2015 · Ideas | The bloody artistry of bullfighting. Nobel laureate Mario Vargas Llosa insists that bullfighting is art, like dance, and a worthy influence on literature and philosophy. “In a dance...
- Overview
- Bullfighting and the arts
It is highly probable that artistic renderings of bulls arose nearly simultaneously with art itself. Excavations at Çatalhüyük in Anatolia, a site dating to 6700–5650 bce, have uncovered temples adorned with bull heads as well as furniture and pillars composed of stylized bull horns. This art is thought to have been used to ward off evil, as were the pairs of human-headed bulls that were commonly carved as protective creatures on the porticoes of important buildings in ancient Sumer and Assyria. Bull gods and bull-slaying cults were common in prehistoric and ancient Europe and the Middle East, and the animal was widely revered as a symbol of strength and fertility; the bull-god Apis was worshipped in Memphis (founded c. 2925 bce), capital of ancient Egypt, and Nandi the bull has long been revered and portrayed in Indian art and architecture as either the zoomorphic form of the Hindu god Shiva or as Shiva’s vehicle.
Scenes of man’s struggles with bulls and wild beasts are also common. Such struggles are depicted in the Paleolithic paintings (which date between 15,000 and 10,000 bce) found in the caves of France and Spain and are a mainstay of world literature. Hercules’ battle with the Nemean lion, Theseus’s slaying of the Minotaur, and Mithra’s vanquishing of a bull, a scene often depicted in Hellenistic art—all these examine this common theme. Perhaps the first matador in recorded literature is the hero of the Epic of Gilgamesh, the most important literary product of ancient Mesopotamia. As the 4,000-year-old Babylonian legend states, “And Gilgamesh, like a huntsman, thrusts his sword between nape and horns” and slays the bull sent to destroy him. The frescoes of ancient Crete depict acrobatic dances or games with bulls, and, although these scenes do not show bullfighting as it is known today, they are interesting in showing both girls and boys vaulting over the horns of the charging animals. Mary Renault recreated these ancient games and times in her novels The King Must Die (1958) and The Bull from the Sea (1962).
The traditional bullfight—that “dance with death” which has been called “indefensible but irresistible”—has long captured the attention and imagination of painters, novelists, poets, photographers, sculptors, and cinematographers. The Spaniard Francisco de Goya was the first major painter to record the spectacle artistically and in all its aspects. Goya was an amateur torero himself, and his La tauromaquia series of etchings (1815–16) show what the corrida looked like in the early 19th century. One of his masterpieces depicts two spirited bullfights, divided by a fence, taking place in the Madrid bullring.
Édouard Manet often painted taurine themes, The Dead Toreador (1864) being perhaps his most famous example. Pablo Picasso began drawing bullfights as a boy in Málaga, Spain, and continued to depict taurine subjects in his mature art. John Fulton, the North American matador promoted to the corrida’s highest rank in Spain, also painted, and many of his most popular works in private and public galleries were done with a single pigment: the blood of the bulls he had dispatched in the ring. This corresponds, he wrote, “to the ancient art of primitive matador-painters who had to limit themselves to natural media taken from the very animals they killed.” A major contribution to taurine art occurred in the 1920s and ’30s with the flashy, impressionistic bullfight posters (carteles). Most popular were those of Roberto Domingo and Carlos Ruano Llopis and their later imitator Juan Reus.
Sculptors such as Mariano Benlliure (from Spain) and Humberto Peraza (from Mexico) have also been drawn to bullfighting themes. A superb example of Benlliure’s work can be seen in the graveyard at Sevilla where, depicted in bronze, are 12 life-size figures carrying the open coffin of the great Joselito, who was killed by a bull in 1920. Peraza’s enormous bronze bulls and matadors can be seen outside the arenas in Mexico City and Tijuana, Mexico.
Bullfighting, not surprisingly, has been a theme for Spanish writers for centuries, and Spanish novels about bullfighting are too numerous to mention. Perhaps the most famous novel about bullfighting in Spain is Sangre y arena (1909; Blood and Sand, 1922), by Vicente Blasco Ibáñez, which was adapted for film many times, arguably the most famous version starring Rita Hayworth and Tyrone Power (1941). The best-known poem of Federico García Lorca is Llanto por Ignacio Sánchez Mejías (1935; Eng. trans. Lament for a Bullfighter), each verse of which ends with the line “at five in the afternoon.” (Mejías was a writer, a close friend of Lorca’s, and a bullfighter who was killed in the ring in 1934.) Unquestionably the most important nonfiction piece of taurine literature is by Spanish historian José María de Cossío, who in 1943 published the first volume of the monumental work Los toros. This multivolume set explores every aspect of bullfighting and analyzes every torero, bullring, and bull of importance then known.
It is highly probable that artistic renderings of bulls arose nearly simultaneously with art itself. Excavations at Çatalhüyük in Anatolia, a site dating to 6700–5650 bce, have uncovered temples adorned with bull heads as well as furniture and pillars composed of stylized bull horns. This art is thought to have been used to ward off evil, as were the pairs of human-headed bulls that were commonly carved as protective creatures on the porticoes of important buildings in ancient Sumer and Assyria. Bull gods and bull-slaying cults were common in prehistoric and ancient Europe and the Middle East, and the animal was widely revered as a symbol of strength and fertility; the bull-god Apis was worshipped in Memphis (founded c. 2925 bce), capital of ancient Egypt, and Nandi the bull has long been revered and portrayed in Indian art and architecture as either the zoomorphic form of the Hindu god Shiva or as Shiva’s vehicle.
Scenes of man’s struggles with bulls and wild beasts are also common. Such struggles are depicted in the Paleolithic paintings (which date between 15,000 and 10,000 bce) found in the caves of France and Spain and are a mainstay of world literature. Hercules’ battle with the Nemean lion, Theseus’s slaying of the Minotaur, and Mithra’s vanquishing of a bull, a scene often depicted in Hellenistic art—all these examine this common theme. Perhaps the first matador in recorded literature is the hero of the Epic of Gilgamesh, the most important literary product of ancient Mesopotamia. As the 4,000-year-old Babylonian legend states, “And Gilgamesh, like a huntsman, thrusts his sword between nape and horns” and slays the bull sent to destroy him. The frescoes of ancient Crete depict acrobatic dances or games with bulls, and, although these scenes do not show bullfighting as it is known today, they are interesting in showing both girls and boys vaulting over the horns of the charging animals. Mary Renault recreated these ancient games and times in her novels The King Must Die (1958) and The Bull from the Sea (1962).
The traditional bullfight—that “dance with death” which has been called “indefensible but irresistible”—has long captured the attention and imagination of painters, novelists, poets, photographers, sculptors, and cinematographers. The Spaniard Francisco de Goya was the first major painter to record the spectacle artistically and in all its aspects. Goya was an amateur torero himself, and his La tauromaquia series of etchings (1815–16) show what the corrida looked like in the early 19th century. One of his masterpieces depicts two spirited bullfights, divided by a fence, taking place in the Madrid bullring.
Édouard Manet often painted taurine themes, The Dead Toreador (1864) being perhaps his most famous example. Pablo Picasso began drawing bullfights as a boy in Málaga, Spain, and continued to depict taurine subjects in his mature art. John Fulton, the North American matador promoted to the corrida’s highest rank in Spain, also painted, and many of his most popular works in private and public galleries were done with a single pigment: the blood of the bulls he had dispatched in the ring. This corresponds, he wrote, “to the ancient art of primitive matador-painters who had to limit themselves to natural media taken from the very animals they killed.” A major contribution to taurine art occurred in the 1920s and ’30s with the flashy, impressionistic bullfight posters (carteles). Most popular were those of Roberto Domingo and Carlos Ruano Llopis and their later imitator Juan Reus.
Sculptors such as Mariano Benlliure (from Spain) and Humberto Peraza (from Mexico) have also been drawn to bullfighting themes. A superb example of Benlliure’s work can be seen in the graveyard at Sevilla where, depicted in bronze, are 12 life-size figures carrying the open coffin of the great Joselito, who was killed by a bull in 1920. Peraza’s enormous bronze bulls and matadors can be seen outside the arenas in Mexico City and Tijuana, Mexico.
Bullfighting, not surprisingly, has been a theme for Spanish writers for centuries, and Spanish novels about bullfighting are too numerous to mention. Perhaps the most famous novel about bullfighting in Spain is Sangre y arena (1909; Blood and Sand, 1922), by Vicente Blasco Ibáñez, which was adapted for film many times, arguably the most famous version starring Rita Hayworth and Tyrone Power (1941). The best-known poem of Federico García Lorca is Llanto por Ignacio Sánchez Mejías (1935; Eng. trans. Lament for a Bullfighter), each verse of which ends with the line “at five in the afternoon.” (Mejías was a writer, a close friend of Lorca’s, and a bullfighter who was killed in the ring in 1934.) Unquestionably the most important nonfiction piece of taurine literature is by Spanish historian José María de Cossío, who in 1943 published the first volume of the monumental work Los toros. This multivolume set explores every aspect of bullfighting and analyzes every torero, bullring, and bull of importance then known.
Nov 28, 2023 · These innovations allowed for more intricate and artistic maneuvers, adding a new dimension to the spectacle. In the 19th century, bullfighting became a symbol of Spanish nationalism and a way to showcase the country’s cultural identity.
Bullfighting has its roots in rituals dating back many centuries. In its modern Spanish style, bullfighting first became a prominent cultural event in the early 18th century. Yet despite its cultural significance, bullfighting continues to face increasing scrutiny in light of animal rights issues.
Feb 25, 2015 · What you are interested in is the art whereby a man using no tricks reduces a raging bull to his dimensions, and this means that the relationship between the two must always be maintained and even highlighted. The only way this can be achieved is with art. Curro Romero, Matador of Seville, performs a ‘veronica’. And what is the essence of this art?
Jan 19, 2015 · The visual dimension of bullfighting has been central to the production of both collective and individual bullfight memories. 1 Photography is integral to the realist documentation and symbolic imagery of bullfighting. 2 Thus it is possible to see this essay as an ethnographic case study in social uses of photography.
