Quieto [Still]

José Luis Cuevas is one of the twentieth century’s most acclaimed draftsmen, known for his unflinching description of the grotesque. In Mexico, he successfully contested the dominance of the muralists, and in Latin America he stimulated a graphic arts boom and pioneered neofiguration. The neofigurative artists of the 1960s embraced the existentialist belief that meaning can only be determined on an individual basis, through subjective experience. Therefore, even though Cuevas frequently draws inspiration from narrative forms such as the novel, cinema, and satirical drawing, he never provides intelligible stories. Still is an example of how Cuevas deploys figures in an evocative rather than narrative way. Second from the left is the artist himself, walking closely beside silent-era film star Harry Langdon in front of a gray-washed wall that divides the picture roughly in half; both stare out blankly toward the viewer. Sketched on the other half of the picture are the silent-era film stars who played the parents of Langdon’s character in the 1924 comedy Feet of Mud. Although Cuevas’s companions are comedians, the scene is humorless. It is up to the viewer to create meaning from this strange group of figures.