STRENGTH AND SKULL

First you get the money, then you get the power, then you get the woman.

Today we’re back to Mexican pulp art with a piece from an artist who has signed his work R. Rojas Ordonez, someone we’ve never heard of before. A bit of text on the back of the painting suggests that the skull is somehow controlling the action here, maybe causing one of the characters to act while under a trance. Mexican art has used skulls as a major motif since at least the time of the Aztecs, and it has since been explored by everyone from Diego Rivera to contemporary graffiti artists, so we particularly like how this painting fits into that tradition. As we mentioned back in July when we shared five pieces from Dinorin, this style of art blossomed in the 1970s as covers for Mexican comic books, which makes it post-pulp rather than pure pulp. But the feel is certainly right, and collectors are responding, snapping up examples like this for hundreds of dollars. We’ll share a few more of these later.

Mexico, R. Rojas Ordonez, comic art

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HISTORY REWIND

The headlines that mattered yesteryear.

September 6

1901—McKinley Fatally Shot

Polish-born anarchist Leon Czolgosz shoots and fatally wounds U.S. President William McKinley at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York. McKinley dies September 12, and Czolgosz is later executed.

September 5

1939—U.S. Declares Neutrality in WW II

The Neutrality Acts, which had been passed in the 1930s when the United States considered foreign conflicts undesirable, prompts the nation to declare neutrality in World War II. The policy ended with the Lend-Lease Act of March 1941, which allowed the U.S. to sell, lend or give war materials to allied nations.

September 5

1972—Munich Massacre

During the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, West Germany, a paramilitary group calling itself Black September takes members of the Israeli olympic team hostage. Eventually the group, which represents the first glimpse of terrorists for most people in the Western world, kill eleven of the hostages along with one West German police officer during a rescue attempt by West German police that devolves into a firefight. Five of the eight members of Black September are also killed.

September 4

1957—U.S. National Guard Used Against Students

The governor of Arkansas, Orval Faubus, mobilizes the National Guard to prevent nine African-American students known as the Little Rock Nine from enrolling in high school in Little Rock, Arkansas.

September 3

1941—Auschwitz Begins Gassing Prisoners

Auschwitz-Birkenau, the largest of Nazi Germany’s concentration camps, becomes an extermination camp when it begins using poison gas to kill prisoners en masse. The camp commandant, Rudolf HÃ¶ss, later testifies at the Nuremberg Trials that he believes perhaps 3 million people died at Auschwitz, but the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum revises the figure to about 1 million.