E. Chagoya - Homage to Goya II + A Way of Flying (2003)

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Exceptional Finds | Ancient, Asian, Ethno, Fi...

By Artemis Fine Arts

Mar 20, 2025

Set Reminder 2025-03-20 10:00:00 2025-03-20 10:00:00 America/New_York Bidsquare Bidsquare : Exceptional Finds | Ancient, Asian, Ethno, Fine Art https://www.bidsquare.com/auctions/artemis-gallery/exceptional-finds-ancient-asian-ethno-fine-art-18151
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• Lot Description
  Enrique Chagoya (American, b. Mexico 1953). (1) "A Way of Flying" etching with aquatint on Rives paper, 2003 (framed) + "Homage to Goya II: Disasters of War 1983-2003" ten etchings with aquatint on Rives paper in portfolio, 2003. Printer: Segura Publishing Company, Tempe, Arizona. Each print is hand-signed at lower right beneath image with date. "P.P." inscribed at lower left and artist's stamp as well as Segura publishers blind stamp at lower center. This lot includes a captivating ensemble of ten etchings on paper by Mexican-born American painter, printmaker, and educator Enrique Chagoya, each depicting the artist's view on how Goya's "Disasters of War" - a series addressing the Napoleonic invasion of Spain - would have looked if created in the present. In addition, this lot includes a framed publisher's proof of Chagoya's "A Way of Flying" which presents the artist's updated version of Goya's etching of the same title first issued in 1864 as part of "Los Disparates" (The Follies) - a series that satirized human follies and superstitions. Size (A Way of Flying - sheet): 16" L x 18.75" W (40.6 cm x 47.6 cm) Size (frame): 19.2" L x 22" W (48.8 cm x 55.9 cm) Size (Disasters - sheets): 12.875" L x 14.875" W (32.7 cm x 37.8 cm)
  
  More on "A Way of Flying" from the Minneapolis Institute of Art : "Illustrating the adage 'Where there's a will, there's a way,' Goya's fantastical original depicts a group of nearly naked men flying about a darkened sky with the aid of outsized mechanical dragon wings. Each flier wears raptor-like headgear. Though Goya sometimes used flying as a symbol of humankind's evil and vanity, the exact meaning of the imagery is uncertain and may have been intended to mock outlandish or inconceivable ideas (like flying). Nevertheless, Chagoya's version of the print brings currency to Goya's image by equipping each flying machine with a 'smart bomb,' a transparent critique of the American invasion of Iraq in March 2003 and the military's reliance on remote-controlled armaments." (source: Arts MIA website description for "A Way of Flying" in their permanent collection, accession number: 2014.121.2)
  
  Please Note: The "Homage to Goya II: Disasters of War 1983-2003" series includes all 10 prints housed in the original portfolio case. Printed on the interior of the portfolio case: "ENRIQUE CHAGOYA BEGAN HOMAGE TO GOYA TWENTY YEARS AGO IN HIS STUDIO BUT WAS FORCED TO STOP BEFORE THE SUITE COULD BE COMPLETED. / RECENTLY, CHAGOYA, IN COLLABORATION WITH SEGURA PUBLISHING COMPANY, REVISITED THE SUITE OF PRINTS, RE-AQUATINTING THE PLATES, RESULTING IN HOMAGE TO GOYA II / THIS SUITE OF ETCHINGS WAS PRINTED BY MASTER PRINTER JILL LERNER ON RIVES HEAVYWEIGHT PAPER, WITH FINISH WORK BY SEGURA STUDIO MANAGER PETER VENTI IN AN EDITION OF 30."
  
  About the artist: "Enrique Chagoya was born in Mexico City in 1953. He was encouraged to be an artist from an early age by his father, who worked at the national bank of Mexico by day and was himself an artist by night. While studying political economy at the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico, Chagoya created political cartoons for local student-run newspapers and was an active participant in student and worker protests in Mexico City during the early 1970s. After emigrating to the United States in 1977, he went on to study at the San Francisco Art Institute, receiving a BFA in 1984, and an MFA from the University of California, Berkeley in 1987. He currently lives and works in San Francisco, and has been a professor of art and art history at Stanford University since 1995.
  
  Chagoya's art practice is an extension of his political activism. He uses his experiences on both sides of the United States-Mexico border to inform his work, as he tackles themes such as immigration, politics, stereotypes and cultural conflicts 'to construct a narrative, with humor and a more contemporary feel, that is different from the dominant history.' His approach is multivalent and he utilizes a range of media including painting, drawing, sculpture, and prints. An early series of large-scale editorial drawings from the mid '80s rendered mainly in black and red, lampooned current events by conflating cartoon characters such as Mickey Mouse with political figures such as Ronald Reagan. As his work became more pointedly critical of dominant Western cultures, he continued to draw from popular culture, political figures and canonical artworks as fodder for his art, albeit as seen through a nonwestern lens, both poking fun and demanding societal accountability for the pressing issues of the day. Chagoya's method of revisionism, particularly of Western narratives, is through satire, by appropriating historical and pop-cultural figures and depicting them from the perspectives of colonized or defeated cultures. He defines this process as 'reverse anthropology,' and his codices epitomize this: they depict contemporary events using visual language ranging from pre-Columbian imagery to American pop culture icons in the tradition of Mesoamerican book-making, using amate paper folded accordion-style and read from right to left. As a further example of cultural 'borrowing,' Chagoya has appropriated works by artists such as Philip Guston, James Ensor, Vincent Van Gogh, and Claude Monet, but none more comprehensively than Goya: he sees the satirical content in Goya's etchings as continually relevant, even today. Chagoya has continued to develop his satirical approach in recent bodies of work: his series of Illegal Alien's Guides directly engages with border politics, narrating the histories of modern European colonists who settled in the Americas such as Pilgrims and Spanish conquistadors, from the perspectives of the native peoples that they displaced. As well, Chagoya challenges racial stereotypes and the process of 'othering' in his series Aliens Sans Frontieres by creating self-portraits that stereotype himself based on the make-up of his own DNA, or by completely abstracting his figures altogether.
  
  Chagoya has exhibited internationally and has been the subject of several survey exhibitions. A mid-career retrospective of his work was organized by the Des Moines Art Center, Iowa in 2007, which travelled to the Berkeley Art Museum and the Palm Springs Art Museum, California. In 2014, a survey of his work was organized by Artium in Vitoria, Spain. He is the recipient of several grants and awards, including the Academy Award for Visual Arts from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1997, and an Artadia Foundation Grant in 2005. His work is included in public collections internationally such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Art Institute of Chicago; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington D.C.; and the Centro Cultural de Arte Contemporaneo, Mexico City, Mexico." (source: George Adams Gallery website)
  
  Of Note: Impressions of Chagoya's "A Way of Flying" are held in permanent collections of several important museums including: Metropolitan Museum of Art, Minneapolis Institute of Art, Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, McNay Art Museum, Yale University Art Gallery, Philadelphia Museum of Art, and others. Impressions of Chagoya's "Homage to Goya II: Disasters of War 1983-2003" are held in permanent collections of several important museums including: Saint Louis Art Museum, Yale University Art Gallery, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, and others.
  
  Provenance: private Bozeman, Montana, USA collection, acquired before 2015; consignor was co-owner of Segura Publishing Company, Tempe, Arizona and acquired this piece directly from Segura during his tenure
  
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  #191270

  Condition

  Excellent. Each print is hand-signed at lower right beneath image with date. "P.P." (publisher's proof) inscribed at lower left and artist's stamp as well as Segura Publishing blindstamp at lower center. "A Way of Flying" is mounted under glass in a custom frame. It has not been examined outside the frame but appears to be in excellent condition as well. Minor abrasions to verso of board backing the framing that do not impact the piece. Frame is in excellent condition.
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