Visual Analysis: Reyna Del Inframundo

Tongfei Liu
AHIS 11888
TA Rachel Amato
October 6, 2013 Visual Analysis: Reyna Del Inframundo After Mexican Revolution (1910-1920), a new generation of Mexican artists led a national movement that involved political, historic, and folk themes in their work. The piece from USC Fisher Museum of Art called Reyna Del Inframundo, painted by Marcos Castro in 2011, just shows the violent realities in Mexico today. The composition is thought in diagonal, starting from upper right corner and ending in the lower left corner. From an overall perspective, the gun is the focal point, separating the left part and right part, which have clear contrast in spatial distribution. Specifically, the left side has less information than the right side has. Besides, the central point also divides the hues into two layers. The complementary colors, red and grey, give the strong visual impact. Grey makes red color appears much more “eye-popping” sense, so that fire is emphasized as foreground for its color dominance. Also in color theory, grey becomes the shadow of the piece. Therefore, the chiaroscuro makes people focus on the information that the artist wants to transmit. The layout of the piece is also interesting. From different perspectives, it will end with different results. One is that the fire is the foreground; the cell is in the middle; the hole of light is background; and the gun is on the top. Another is that the whole piece is like a target. The gun is the bull’s eye; the cell is the second ring; fire is the third one; and the hole is the outer shell. However, both versions emphasize the gun in the middle. The way of fire going, connected with dark smoke shadow, tries to turn the two-dimensional design into tree-dimension. The stereoscopic vision takes audience into the piece. In Mexico, many people died from disease, drug and maltreatment. While, in this piece, it can be seen that people suffer the torment and pray for the peace. The cell is colored in red and some bricks fell down besides mean that the environment and life in the cell are poor and chaos. Moreover, People in the fire kneel down with handcuffs in humble position. All the three slaves look up and face to the gun. They wish they could get out of suck and pain. Meanwhile, there are two eagles, the symbol of power and majesty, burning in the fire with men, means that Mexican people don’t want to lose their courage and ambition. The two creatures have a very clear contrast between each other in this picture. The big fire is burning them and going up with smoke billowing, also going to surround the gun. On one hand, the gun in this piece is

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