THE BULL LIES DOWN ON BROADWAY

”Bullfighting is the only art in which the artist is in danger of death and in which the degree of brilliance in the performance is left to the fighter’s honor.”…“There are only three sports: bullfighting, motor racing, and mountaineering; all the rest are merely games.” ( Ernest Hemingway )

Francisco de Goya The Speed and Daring of Juanito Apinani in the Ring of Madrid Tauromaquia No. 21 1815-1816

Francisco de Goya The Speed and Daring of Juanito Apinani in the Ring of Madrid Tauromaquia No. 21 1815-1816

The Dead Toreador Society. Gored by ego; a pair of horns in the groin and a pain in the butt. Cheer for the bull. Anti bullfighting campaigners decry the cruelty of a practice in which the bull is publicly taunted, maimed, and made to bleed, before being callously killed. It breeds insensitivity to the brutal abuse of animals, they argue, and causes unnecessary suffering simply for the pleasure of the spectators. Aficionados counter with a variety of arguments. Bullfighting is part of the Spanish identity; the bull leads a pampered life until it enters the ring, where it will die within 20 minutes,  and therefore receives better treatment than the millions of animals, fattened for mass consumption; the bull is so driven by adrenaline that it doesn’t really suffer and so on.picasso33

About 250,000 bulls are estimated to die each year in the nine countries that allow the sport, with 60,000 of the kills occurring in Spain. The romantic imagery painted of Spanish bullfighting in Ernest Hemingway’s famous book The Sun Also Rises has been taking some hard knocks lately. Spain is edging ever closer to banning the sport and few topics  generate more heated discussion than bullfighting. Advocates call it an art, and there  seems to be no room for compromise.Its claim to be an integral part of Spanish artistic culture is reflected in its place in Spanish newspapers, where reports on bullfights regularly appear in the section entitled Cultura; it is not a sport, goes the argument. There is an aesthetic of bullfighting that has been linked to Spain’s identity, but this appears secondary to the attraction of the spectacle as an earlier pagan traditions; and a human drama and dilemma that play itself out vicariously in the bullfight that has always attracted artists.

Picasso: La Corrida. Bravado and mystique

Picasso: La Corrida. Bravado and mystique

While many literary critics are hung up on observing that bullfighting in The Sun Also Rises is symbolic of Ernest Hemingway’s seeming obsession with masculinity and machismo, there are likely more subtler symbolic meanings can be gleaned from the vivid depictions of bullfighting in the novel. For example, the piercing dialogue and resulting momentary revealing glimpses of characters in the novel can be viewed as characters feinting about each other in an open arena. As the matador of dialogue, Hemingway masterfully handles his cape of words with true finesse. Viewed from this perspective, Hemingway’s bullfight is a metaphor for the intricate but often choreographed relationships between men and women.

The Bullfight, Edouard Manet c.1865-67, The Art Institute of Chicago

The Bullfight, Edouard Manet c.1865-67, The Art Institute of Chicago

The understated passion between Jake and the promicuous Brett in The Sun Also Rises is what marks the novel as a brilliant representative of the Modern period of American literature. Without that passionate undercurrent that exists within the dialogue, the novel plods along without evident purpose, plot, or resolution; but within the dialogue, one can perceive the complicated posturing of a group of actors who collectively make a statement about the futility of relationships. In the same way, the bullfight represents the final fight of the bull against the skillful handling of the bullfighter.The novel becomes an arousing roller coaster ride between “the bull,” “the steer,” “the matador” and “the cape.” The emotionally unstable characters within the story can easily be identified within the novel when analyzing each character. The characters are all overly complicated yet intellectually simplistic so the formula works well for Hemingway.

The idea is a bit crude, but it holds up to a certain point; as long as the characters are relatively transparent,  lack dimensionality, and don’t think too much or too often, and are willing to trot through the paces.  As with bullfighting, everything has a beginning and the ultimate end. In the novel, the end is the destruction of the character’s relationship with one another.The equivalence of sexual and mental conquests are the main theme of “The Sun Also Rise.” The character of Lady Brett stands firm as one of passion, purpose and resolve. The force of Lady Brett is not dissimilar from Hemingway’s graphic description of the bullfight. The genius of Picasso was to flip the conventional paradigm on its back:

''Animal rights activists gathered in the Spanish town on Las Ventas, for a very original protest against the famous bull fights held there.  Organized by Equanimal, the protest had the participants strip to their underwear, lie down and cover themselves with fake blood, and corrida spears. It took place at the end of May and hoped to convince authorities that the Spanish people no longer support such a cruel and barbaric tradition as bullfighting.''

''Animal rights activists gathered in the Spanish town on Las Ventas, for a very original protest against the famous bull fights held there. Organized by Equanimal, the protest had the participants strip to their underwear, lie down and cover themselves with fake blood, and corrida spears. It took place at the end of May and hoped to convince authorities that the Spanish people no longer support such a cruel and barbaric tradition as bullfighting.''

”It is first important to see how Picasso’s eccentric take on the bullfight, in which the horse and the bull interact, diverges from the traditional bullfight in order to understand the horse’s significance in Guerinca. Traditionally, the bull in the corrida, or the bullfight, represents the inherent and animalistic brute of nature, the matador the more feminine and graceful personality, dressed accordingly so in pinks with pointy shoes, and often overlooked, the horse is seen as the innocent victim of gorings by an enraged bull during this dance on the brink of death. The horse plays a neutral and ignorant role underscored by the fact that it is historically blindfolded during the bullfight and due to a prior operation on its vocal cords it is literally silenced during the fight . The horse is a member of an intermediary team of it and its rider, the picador, who stabs the bull to

it riled up before the matador steps into to the ring to deliver the final blows.”

odditycentral.com: ''People in San Sebastian, a small town in central Spain, have come up with a way of having fun and keeping the bull as a part of their ancient tradition. Instead of torturing and finally killing the animal to show off their matador skills, the brave Spaniards simply taunts the bull and try to dodge its attacks.  That’s it, no swords, no blood, no animal cruelty, just pure guts and, they say, a lot of fun. I have to say I like bull dallying a lot better than old fashioned bullfighting and I just wish they had thought about this sooner.''  Photos by Xinhua/Chen Haitiong

odditycentral.com: ''People in San Sebastian, a small town in central Spain, have come up with a way of having fun and keeping the bull as a part of their ancient tradition. Instead of torturing and finally killing the animal to show off their matador skills, the brave Spaniards simply taunts the bull and try to dodge its attacks. That’s it, no swords, no blood, no animal cruelty, just pure guts and, they say, a lot of fun. I have to say I like bull dallying a lot better than old fashioned bullfighting and I just wish they had thought about this sooner.'' Photos by Xinhua/Chen Haitiong

Portugal has its own variation in which the bull is fought from horseback and not killed in the ring. Even within Spain, there may be regional variations. For example, the recortes of the Basque Country and Navarra, which involve young men doing acrobatic stunts around and over the bull,which though teased mercilessly,  is not killed or even physically harmed, though humiliated he may be. If you have seen Goya’s famous etching of the 19th-century fighter Juanito Apiñani vaulting over a bull, you get the idea.

”Of course, it is likely that opposition to banning the sport will be noisy, especially when it’s a multimillion dollar generating industry that’s subsidized by the Spanish government. Then there are also those fans to whom the sport is a profound tradition to be upheld, like a ten year old matador who set a Guiness World Record for killing six young bulls in one weekend despite protests. He later declared, “No one can stop me fighting… I was born a bullfighter and will die one.” At least this boy has been banned from bullfighting in Spain and now must practice his trade in Latin America.”

Goya. A Village Bullfight. ''Like many of his contemporary fellow-Spaniards, Goya was, throughout his life, an aficionado, a keen follower of bullfighting. According to his own testimony, he was even daring enough in his youth to try his skill and courage against a young bull. During the second half of the 18th century bullfighting was more popular than ever, before it was prohibited in 1805.In Saragossa, and later even in the Madrid ring and in Seville in Andalusia, Goya attended some of the most famous bullfights of his day.  As a motif in his art, bullfighting occurs throughout his work, beginning with his tapestry designs and continuing right up to his last paintings, executed in exile in France. He often selected scenes from bullfights as a motif when he painted pictures without a commission. The small painting Village Bullfight, for example, shows an improvised corrida, as in the Spanish countryside.''

Goya. A Village Bullfight. ''Like many of his contemporary fellow-Spaniards, Goya was, throughout his life, an aficionado, a keen follower of bullfighting. According to his own testimony, he was even daring enough in his youth to try his skill and courage against a young bull. During the second half of the 18th century bullfighting was more popular than ever, before it was prohibited in 1805.In Saragossa, and later even in the Madrid ring and in Seville in Andalusia, Goya attended some of the most famous bullfights of his day. As a motif in his art, bullfighting occurs throughout his work, beginning with his tapestry designs and continuing right up to his last paintings, executed in exile in France. He often selected scenes from bullfights as a motif when he painted pictures without a commission. The small painting Village Bullfight, for example, shows an improvised corrida, as in the Spanish countryside.''

Manet, who some refer to as the dry modernist who created access to Spanish painting for our contemporary age, struggled mightily with and may have felt that he lost the battle with his Dead Toreador,which is at the National Gallery of Art in Washington. He initially constructed the painting to include a bullfighting ring on the upper half. After much public criticism, Manet cut the painting and what we see now is the the Dead Toreador. The Bullfight is the upper half and can be seen at the Frick Collection.

Édouard Manet, The Dead Toreador, 1864  National Gallery of Art, Washington, Widener Collection

Édouard Manet, The Dead Toreador, 1864 National Gallery of Art, Washington, Widener Collection

Many painters consider painting to be a battle from which to emerge victorious. The bullfight could be viewed as a metaphor for the fighter’s lightness and dexterity versus the bull beast’s dark massive force, man versus nature, artist vs. art, and painter vs. painting. Which is plausible. The bullfight ring and the toreador encompasses the grand gesture, and like opera it has to work. The bravado and or mystique that accompanies the bullfight in Spanish painting in Picasso’s La Corrida ,  Manet’s Dead Toreador, and Goya ‘s Tauromaquia and Bullfight are difficult and challenging works; grand gestures. Goya painted his bullfight as in one of his last paintings during his exile in Paris, shortly after his Disaster of War series, his emphasized the sacrificial and brutal aspects.

Eric Fischl’s is a modern artist who has tried to capture the bullfight and with mixed results since the  process was to take photographs and base his paintings on the pictures and his actual experience and try to create an understanding of an idiom. As a group the paintings seem like a stage separate from the place with no noise, clutter or crowd. Neither is the blood a major player on the stage as in Goya’s Bullfight. They are distanced from the spectacle and informed by the photographs as a separate experience from the actual hot, dusty, smelly, brutal reality.

Goya. Burial of the Sardine. ''Religious festivals throughout Christian Europe became the focus of communal recreation, as well as being occasions for markets, street entertainments, drinking and love-making. That some of those festivals hark back to the rituals and beliefs of pre-Christian cults is evident from paintings like Goya’s Burial of the Sardine and Manet’s Bullfight.''

Goya. Burial of the Sardine. ''Religious festivals throughout Christian Europe became the focus of communal recreation, as well as being occasions for markets, street entertainments, drinking and love-making. That some of those festivals hark back to the rituals and beliefs of pre-Christian cults is evident from paintings like Goya’s Burial of the Sardine and Manet’s Bullfight.''

”Eric Fischl is light and deft with his strokes in Corrida In Ronda #8. The sword is key and consists of a single red stroke of paint. That paint stroke bisects the canvas into thirds and sets up a triangular relationship with the toreador, sword and dying bull. In triumph, the fighter is pictorially equal to the bull, the thin red stroke; delineating the sword is key and is also evidence of the grand gesture of the painter himself: his stroke of blood red paint in battle with painting, which he has subdued. He takes a back seat because the stroke is king, the brush is like the sword in battle as the bull wears a garland of flowers and is skewered there. The bull dies slowly in the mix with a garland of blood and flowers. The pictorial construction here marries the content, hand in glove. This grand gesture encompasses the struggle between man and nature: subduing nature with bravado and delicacy.

As is the tradition in Goya’ hometown, Zaragoza, the fighters make their own costumes and according to the press release Goya created the costume’s basic design. This violet one Fischl represents so delicately in Corrida In Ronda #8 ,that I thought I was looking at a vase of lilacs for a moment. Thinking of Manet’s last flower paintings I also considered the lightness of it, almost too light in color and weight, difficult to believe the painting is about ultimately about killing and death. This is an elegant and light drenched piece, with no trace of awkwardness but it with left me with an emotional ambivalence. Does the painter emerge victorious and does it matter?”

Picasso. The Bullfight. “He can who thinks he can, and he can’t who thinks he can’t. This is an inexorable, indisputable law.”-Picasso

Picasso. The Bullfight. “He can who thinks he can, and he can’t who thinks he can’t. This is an inexorable, indisputable law.”-Picasso

”The way former Mexican bullfighter Christian Hernandez explained himself – recalling the moment earlier this week, when, faced with a charging bull, he ran away from it, dropped his cape and jumped out of the ring – is that he did it because he “felt a deep fear.” …“I decided that was it. I didn’t have the ability,” he said after he officially ended his bullfighting career. And for saying that, he is my new hero. …It’s almost as if the man just really didn’t want to get gored by a bull. …Ignoring everything Mr. Hernandez said about his love of bullfighting, PETA has reimbursed him for the fine he had to pay and congratulated all the “ ‘real men’ out there who save animals rather than stab them,” with a condescending “Olé!” on a post on their website.) …Of course the video has made the rounds and many have ridiculed Mr. Hernandez’s actions as unmanly.

Yet I found his behaviour to be the opposite. We’re moving towards a more self-aware matador, that’s all. Watching that video of Mr. Hernandez fleeing amid derisive whistles from his fellow Mexicans, I felt that facing the bull would’ve been the easier choice for Mr. Hernandez. Instead he ran. “You must know a few things about yourself, like I can’t do this…this is not my cup of tea,” he said.( Tabatha Southey, Globe and Mail )

Eric Fischl. Corrida in Ronda #8. ''Eric Fischl: The theme of the bull fight was initially suggested to me by Rafael Jablonka, my dealer in Germany. He had been to a bull fight the previous year and wondered how I might handle that subject. I told him I had never been to one so I couldn't say whether or not it would ignite my creative fancy. He took me to see the fights in Rhonda at the Corrida Goyaesque, which as you can see from the name, is where Goya would go and paint his paintings.   It is also where many artists and writers, like Hemingway and Picasso have gone revealing its deep tradition within the arts.   That made it even more compelling. It is such a challenge to see if you can bring something fresh to a well-worn genre.  ''

Eric Fischl. Corrida in Ronda #8. ''Eric Fischl: The theme of the bull fight was initially suggested to me by Rafael Jablonka, my dealer in Germany. He had been to a bull fight the previous year and wondered how I might handle that subject. I told him I had never been to one so I couldn't say whether or not it would ignite my creative fancy. He took me to see the fights in Rhonda at the Corrida Goyaesque, which as you can see from the name, is where Goya would go and paint his paintings. It is also where many artists and writers, like Hemingway and Picasso have gone revealing its deep tradition within the arts. That made it even more compelling. It is such a challenge to see if you can bring something fresh to a well-worn genre. ''

”In Corrida La Ronda No. 6 the space looks chopped up and the blankets look incidental while main figure seems stiff and to have his head falling too far forward. In Corrida La Ronda No. 3 the Bull is too prussian blue, the fighter feels merged with the bull and I am not convinced about the presence of his right leg, the one that is hidden by the blanket. To compare, Hopper always convinces us that what is hidden and necessary is there. The bull looks to long for the whole configuration and the group: man, blanket and bull, appears to separate from its environment, cut out, and also connected like leggos in a funny way, and stiff. That said, Corrida La Ronda No. 1 and 2 are masterful,… ”

Picador Caught by the Bull by Francisco Goya, 1793

Picador Caught by the Bull by Francisco Goya, 1793

Bullfighting has popularly been viewed as a male pursuit, but in fact women bullfighters have appeared periodically in some form since the birth of modern bullfighting in the 18th century. Opposition was always strong and the arguments against matadoras similar through the centuries: they degraded the bullfight; they threatened social stability; they were an affront to public decency and lowered moral standards; they should be at home and so on. The opposition came from moralists, purist aficionados and bullfighters themselves, many of whom threatened not to appear in the ring with a matadora. The appeal of the spectacle, however has always had women as a strong fan base on the attraction of the charismatic and macho matadors like Jesus Janeiro and Manuel Benitez who could be showered with brassieres.  The appeal was the ”authenticity” of the bullfight; how it strips away at an artificiality of contemporary life to go back to a form of pagan ritual. Dali would probably equate the Bull with the rhinoceros horn he made famous and draw the parallel with this representational form of aggressive symbolism that have underlined even the works of the masters from Vermeer to Picasso according to him.

Fans in general, on the other hand, were more accepting if the sale of tickets to corridas including matadoras was anything to go by. Still, there were periodic bans, and a long hiatus during the Franco dictatorship (1939-75). Following a successful appeal against the ban in 1974, matadoras or senoritas toreras (as they were called) again made an appearance. The best known is Cristina Sánchez who took her alternativa (formal investiture in the presence of a veteran matador) in 1996 in Nimes, southern France. She retired 3 years later, however, asserting that she couldn’t get top billing and that some bullfighters would not fight if she was on the programme.

Picasso . Guernica

Picasso . Guernica

”Though Picasso demonstrates the bull/matador dichotomy to some extent in his early works expressed by Marrero, he later abandons it for a more symbolic struggle between just bull and horse. He untraditionally embodies the “graceful” and feminine aspects of the bullfight all in the horse rather than the matador. Picasso’s “successive compositions” note this evolution to the bull and horse duality—a de-emphasis of the human member of the bullfight, the matador and the picador, leaving the gory and symbolic battle of the animals.

Salvador Dali painted The Hallucinogenic Toreador in 1970, following the canons of his particular interpretation of surrealist thought. The entire scene is contained within a bullfighting ring, submerged under a barrage of red and yellow tones, alluring tentatively to the colors of the Spanish flag. In the upper left section we observe a representational portrait of his wife, Gala, to whom he dedicated this piece. Her serious, rigid expression could be interpreted as a pictorial representation of her deep seated dislike for Bullfighting. In the bottom left section, a pattern of multicolored circles is made evident. This rectangular-shaped burst of colors immediately grasps the viewer’s attention and steers it down towards the visibly emerging shape of a dying bull’s head, dripping blood and saliva from its mouth''

Salvador Dali painted The Hallucinogenic Toreador in 1970, following the canons of his particular interpretation of surrealist thought. The entire scene is contained within a bullfighting ring, submerged under a barrage of red and yellow tones, alluring tentatively to the colors of the Spanish flag. In the upper left section we observe a representational portrait of his wife, Gala, to whom he dedicated this piece. Her serious, rigid expression could be interpreted as a pictorial representation of her deep seated dislike for Bullfighting. In the bottom left section, a pattern of multicolored circles is made evident. This rectangular-shaped burst of colors immediately grasps the viewer’s attention and steers it down towards the visibly emerging shape of a dying bull’s head, dripping blood and saliva from its mouth''

This dichotomy is first seen in the early of Barcelona pastels and is later developed and redefined symbolically in Guernica. The theme of the bullfight has been a constant in Picasso’s artistic career, all the way back to the start of the century during his first visits to the ring. When he frequented Barcelona during 1900 to 1901, he attempted to capture the corrida in all its Spanish glory to sell to the exotic-seeking Parisians in a series of bright pastels of the bullfight. However they were not going to get what they expected. Superficially, from these pastels emanated the sense of Barcelona’s summer and the vivid reds of the stands and of the blood combined with the yellows of the sands of the ring which mimicked the colors of the Spanish flag as Picasso declared his identity as a Spaniard (Comisarenco, 69). Yet, since these paintings seem symbolically thin when compared to the extreme symbolism in Picasso’s later works, these future works, especially the Guernica (1937), indicate that there is much more meaning behind these simple pastels. Already this young artist was observing the famous bullfight in terms of the biases that he would carry on throughout his career and thus is it extremely important to understand his first impressions of the bullfight to begin to interpret the complexity of the Guernica.”

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5 Responses to THE BULL LIES DOWN ON BROADWAY

  1. HEMINGWAY ON STAGE would like to congratulate you on a truly excellent posting. Your synopsis draws together many elements which will illuminate the understanding of many in relation to both bullfighting and art.
    Let me know if I can ever offer a complimentary fundraiser of one of my Hemingway plays.
    briangordonsinclair.com

  2. mason says:

    I have never understood bullfighting. The only remotely beautiful thing i can conceive regarding human/bull “contests” is Minoan Bull-leaping which you nearly mentioned.

    Thanks for putting this together.

    Best regards, mason

  3. Dave says:

    thanks for your comment. Yes it does appear that the violence is simply being sublimated with the dallying. I subsequently read about tying firecrackers and similar devices to the bull’s horns as well. Hemingway was quite hooked, as is well known. Its not that simple to pass judgement when in North America. Best.
    Dave

  4. Michel Michaeljohn says:

    Bullfighting: The most ‘indefensible’ type of ‘animal abuse.’
    Bullfighting is not a ‘fight’ at all, but a systematic ‘torture-killing’ that pits a gang of armed thugs wielding ‘razor-sharp’ barbed spikes, spears, swords and daggers (these weapons are designed to ‘inflict intense pain and cause blood loss’ to weaken the animal) against a lone, terrified; confused; ‘fatally’ disabled and wounded animal.

    It’s a ‘sickening’ economic industry based on HORRIFYING victimization; sadistic abuse; extreme cruelty and ‘mutilation and torture’ of bulls (and horses) during the cruel exhibitions of ‘bullfights’ (which are ‘blood’ fiestas): “GRAPHIC – Bullfighting Cruelty and Cowardice Exposed”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3WvFaG2j8E

    Handlers weaken the bull for days before the bullfight. They put laxatives in his food and heavy sandbags on his back. They file his horns down to the tender quick; they blind and drug him; they stuff his ears so that he cannot ‘hear’; they stuff his nostrils so that he cannot ‘breath’. In the ring, they drive ‘razor-sharp’ lances into his back and neck muscles so he can’t lift his head. By the time the matador appears, the bull is weak from blood loss and dizzy from being chased in circles.

    The horses used in bullfights are old and drugged. Wet newspaper is stuffed in their ears and their vocal cords are cut so the audience will not hear their cries. They wear long blankets to hide their entrails, which spill out when they are ‘gored and disemboweled’ by the ‘deceived; tortured; agonizing’ bull.

    It’s no fun to see an innocent, crazed animal ‘tortured’ before a screaming crowd of people, who should be hanging their heads in shame. Even if you leave after 15 to 20 minutes, the damage has been done – your money has gone to support this ‘hellish business,’ which ‘decent people’ are working to ‘end.’

    The continuation of bullfighting depends on ‘government subsidies’ and the ‘tourist industry.’

    Don’t be an ‘accomplice’ to this ‘savagery’ by supporting it with your ‘tourist dollars.’

    Please help these ‘suffering’ animals – ‘STAY AWAY FROM BULLFIGHTS; speak out against them and DEMAND that they be ABOLISHED.’

    Michel Michaeljohn; California; United States.

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