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OPINION: |
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On 
December 21 I read in several
publications about the selection of a poster to announce the 2008 taurine
season at the Maestranza Bullring in Seville. The information, appropriately,
did not criticize the selection, and the news was illustrated with a rare image
of the poster, so that readers could form their own opinion about how wise the
selection was. Since I do not have permission to reproduce the cartel, I will
merely say that the image represented in the poster would be more appropriate
to promote the sale of meat at a butcher’s shop or to promote a bow and arrow
hunting expedition than to announce a series of bullfights in one the most
prestigious bullrings in Spain.
Many opinions about the appropriateness of the cartel appeared
immediately in the taurine chart rooms, and the majority of the e-mails were
extremely negative. I have to admit that I also reacted negatively, although I
was more offended by the wrong message the crude image could send than by the
artistic quality of the painting. So I expressed my opinion, first to a few
aficionado friends with whom I correspond regularly, and later I sent an email
to the Mundo Taurino chat room. In these communications basically I expressed
thoughts similar to the ones I am expressing bellow:
The cartel
announcing the Seville taurine season is esthetically unattractive. Of course,
that could be open to discussion, since there is no accounting for taste. What
really angers me is that the persons who have chosen the image of a bull upside
down pierced by an arrow, and bleeding, to announce bullfights, seem to ignore
that the Fiesta Brava is undergoing attacks claming that it is cruel and bloody
without any redeeming values
In view of the extent of
the publicity throughout the world of the Feria de Sevilla, is amazing that an
image that, in a certain manner, represents violence not art was chosen to
promote bullfighting. That image will be seen by millions of people to include
a goodly number of whom are antitaurine. Those persons will use this image to
reinforce the false concept that aficionados like raw violence, instead of
beauty and art. In an era when we are obsessed with being politically correct,
the last thing that should be done is to provide ammunition to the antitaurine
guerillas.
I have commented
several times on the unattractive nature of recent taurine posters from
Seville. Then, my opinion was based on esthetics and on the breaking with
tradition of what a taurine cartel should be, even acknowledging and allowing
for different pictorial styles, but in this case my complaint is based on
socio-political and public relations reasons.
I conclude by
reaffirming my opinion that the people involved in the process of selecting the
cartel for the first or the second most prestigious feria in the taurine world
are probably intellectual geniuses, but apparently leave something to be
desired when it comes to common sense, since they have chosen an image that
emphasizes violence instead of art.
