The Coffin Bearers 1892

Félix Vallotton made this woodcut, The Coffin Bearers, in France, sometime around the turn of the 20th century. In it, we see a funeral procession: men in dark coats carry a coffin, while a crowd looks on. Vallotton was a master of the woodcut medium, using stark black and white to create powerful images. Here, the artist uses radical simplification to convey a sense of anonymity and the interchangeability of the figures, and the use of a black and white palette lends the image a documentary quality. The artist was associated with the avant-garde journal, La Revue Blanche, known for its anarchist politics, and his images frequently critiqued the social conventions of his time. The strong class divisions of France in this period were a topic of political debate, and Vallotton seems to comment on this rigid social structure, and perhaps to question it. To understand this print fully, we can look to sources from the period, such as newspapers, journals, and political pamphlets. The meaning of art is always contingent on its social and institutional context.