Bull Fight, from the Games and Sports series (N165) for Old Judge Cigarettes 1889

Editor: So, this is a baseball-card-sized lithograph print, titled "Bull Fight, from the Games and Sports series" by Goodwin & Company, dating back to 1889. The palette feels muted. I wonder, what is your impression of this peculiar image? Curator: Ah, yes! This unassuming card vibrates with echoes of Goya and sun-drenched afternoons! The rigid border tries to domesticate something primal. Don’t you find it ironic that a scene of raw, untamed struggle becomes… collectible? Like taming a wild beast only to mount its head on your wall. I am both seduced by and repulsed by the image. Editor: Repulsed, why? Curator: Well, the exotic woman and bullfight are separate. There's the strange romanticism with something barbaric... or is it, after all, that our concept of bullfighting has shifted over a century. So, now tell me this: does it sell cigarettes with death, machismo and, this alluring romantic portrait of a beauty? Do these make for strange bedfellows, culturally speaking? Editor: Hmmm, I didn't think about it that way. So is it saying there is an exotic other in women and in bullfighting? Curator: Perhaps it suggests… all life is spectacle. Ironic, isn't it, how this mass-produced trinket sparks such questioning? Editor: Indeed. I now look at it with renewed insight on romance, and cultural spectacle! Thank you!