Vanitas

[poli]

For those who didn't know it, vanitas is alive and well in Mexico. Here are
some cheerful examples.
http://www.elmundo.es/multimedia/?media=vQxBPENQqaK

This is a brief explanation of vanitas popular centuries ago in northern Europe.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vanitas

[AngelicaDeAlquezar]

Ahem... For what I understand, the use of the death in Mexican popular arts has a very different meaning from what "vanitas" seems to be.

Celebrations of the dead on November 1st and 2nd are meant to celebrate the lives of those who died, and whose spirits still live and come back to witness and participate in such celebration.

During these days, in the traditional beliefs, the dead get out of their graves and come as guests to their families' tables for eating and having a nice time with those they left behind.
Families set altars with flowers, incense, dishes with traditional food, and also the things they used to like --favourite dishes, cigarrettes, alcohol, toys for children...
Some of those who keep the tradition even more orthodox, have picnics at the very graveyards, where their dead actually are.

It is true that it's a reminder that we are all going to die sometime; the fact that people give their friends a sugar skull with the friend's name on them has an unquestionable meaning, but it also celebrates their lives and wishes them a long life.

The intention of assuming we're all dying some day does not reflect shallowness of life; the cult for the dead and the respect for their souls is necessary for your own well-being as a soul when you are dead, as you will be the one invited by those who are still alive and remember you and honour your memory.

Skulls and skeletons are not a cold reminder of our own death, but rather a warmhearted memory of our lost loved ones.

[CrOtALiTo]

The history is nice, the season is near for us, the man dead never die, they are with us all the time, and we need to remember them.

[poli]

How about la Katrina donned in feathers and furs? As someone foreign to
Mexican culture, she seems me to be the image of vanity. Anyway the presence of skeletons in Mexican culture obviously joyful, and that differs from doom-ridden images I'm familiar with in early Dutch/Flemish Rennaissance art.

[CrOtALiTo]

Yes effectively the culture around of the Mexican folks is have a skeleton in the houses as kind to ritual or begun them, we have nearer the man dead in our hard, although I'm not agree with that kind to culture, at lease here the dead are completely lauded all the time during the next month.

The season is waited for the children already they joyful the season more that the big people.

Of the contrary of your country that is the witches night here is the dead night.

How do you see it?

[AngelicaDeAlquezar]

@Poli: La Catrina is something else. She has indeed become an icon of November festivities, but her origin does not belong to this tradition.

She's a character created by José Guadalupe Posada, an early 20th Century cartoonist, and somehow matches the idea of vanitas, as she was meant to be a political and social criticism to high class society; that is why she's dressed in fancy clothes (and the reason why she's depicted as a part of the criticism to the regime that led to Mexican Revolution in a famous painting by Diego Rivera). Her name means "high class woman" in old slang.

Other smiling skulls and dancing skeletons you can find everywhere for the celebration, are a clear image that the days of the dead are a party for the dead... and for the living as well.

[Don José]

A medieval dance of death. Still alive and may be more related to vanitas:



The death in Holy Week:

[CrOtALiTo]

Excellent for the sampler that you have proportioned us.