I am always struck by the way in which almost every art form was re-invented if not actually invented during the 1920s: Ulysses and The Waste Land were both published in 1922, Picasso and Stravinsky were at the peak of their powers, the Bauhaus architectural movement came into being, Nijinsky was dancing to Diaghilev’s choreography, Louis Armstrong was recording with the Hot Fives and Sevens … and in 1925, Juan Belmonte made the cover of Time magazine. It is indicative of the risks implicit in his revolutionary style that in 1933, in just over 30 appearances, he was gored no fewer than a dozen times.
Bill Crandfield
But his feat in turning a savage, circus-like diversion into something that was recognised as art by all with eyes to see it as such is comparable with the way that Armstrong transformed a potpourri of folk genres into something as emotionally charged and creatively complex as chamber music. And Belmonte’s duel with Joselito was a unique confrontation of the best of the old with the birth of the new. Joselito’s untimely death and Belmonte’s unstoppable rise marked the passage of “el toreo” from a crude peasant-based recreation to an ever more sophisticated art form, albeit one recognised largely by those primed by their roots in its older, more primitive version and therefore able to make the distinction.
From hereinafter, the aesthetic effect of “passes” made with cape or muleta became the focal point of a matador’s performance, replacing the kill as the raison d’etre of it all. What had previously been mere defensive manoeuvering — the pieces of silk and serge respectively being used to divert the animal’s charge — now served the opposite purpose: they were employed to attract the charge and guide it as close to the matador’s body as possible. Passes were executed in series, with acknowledged beginnings, middles and endings, and series were built upon, one after another, to create a coherent body of work. This was judged by spectators, and later analysed by critics, using a variety of criteria, most of which pertained to the degree with which a sequence of harmonious, plastic, sculptural tableaux of man and beast had been achieved that were in themselves beautiful to behold, but imbued with added emotional power by what was literally at stake.