Constructing the Liminal: La Portentosa Vida de la Muerte

Abstract

Written in 1792 by Fr. Joaquin Bolanos, the rare book, La portentosa vida de la muerte, chronicles the life and exploits of Death. She appears neither as deity nor human, but as a skeletal personification with attributes of both man and woman. The constructed view of Death as a physical being in the prints that accompany the text offers the opportunity to explore artistic problems with respect to depicting the ambiguous. Within this thesis, I will use the conceptual framework of liminality to interrogate the boundaries of such constructed categories as art, ornament, trademark, gender and genre. Original research also centers the discovery of a vast array of watermarks that appear specifically in the Gilcrease Museum's copy of the book.