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 Vallarta Living | Art Talk | October 2006 
Catch Up with World Art at CUC
 Peter Gray - PVNN
| | A print of William Hogarth's "O the Roast Beef of Old England" is one of the works on exhibition at the Peter Gray Art Museum at the Centro Universitario de la Costa. |
The first exhibition of William Hogarth's work ever to be shown in France opened at the Louvre this month. It has taken nearly three hundred years for that to happen.
The reason being that Hogarth was a xenophobic Brit whose political satire, expressed in vividly anti-French, anti-Irish Catholic and anti-Scots satire, has not been exactly politically correct for a good while. But enough time has now passed for the curators of the Louvre to risk causing a little local controversy and to mount a show of Hogarth's art.
The most inflammatory work on view is a print for which Hogarth made sketches while in Calais in 1748. Its title is "O the Roast Beef of Old England." In it one sees a huge sirloin of beef being served to a group of Brits while some starving, enfeebled French soldiers look hungrily on. An Irish catholic priest also eyes the feast with envious eyes.
Maybe one reason Hogarth particularly sharpened his satire in this print is that while sketching for the finished work at the gates of Calais, he was summarily arrested and charged with espionage. In the left hand corner of the print you can see Hogarth at work, with the arm of the French law about to settle on him.
All that being said, the reason for providing this information here is that this print is one of the works on exhibition at the Peter Gray Art Museum at the Centro Universitario de la Costa, so everyone in Puerto Vallarta has a great opportunity to go and see for themselves what is also the key exhibit in the Louvre this month.
It is just one of the artworks that formed the basis for the university's permanent exhibition of art from around the world, now housed in the highly attractive museum building built for the collection two years ago.
It is just serendipitous that the Louvre in Paris and the Peter Gray Art Museum here in Puerto Vallarta are both exhibiting this very important milestone in art at the same time. Hogarth is the grand inventor and forefather of political commentary in artistic form.
For that reason it seems a suitable moment to draw the attention of all those who have not yet visited the CUC campus to the fact that we do have an important cultural resource on our door-steps.
With the high season around the corner and the winter-time residents returning, we hope that many people will make a visit to the museum one of their "things to do" this year.
The museum is open every weekday except for university vacation periods. CUC is located just off the highway to Ixtapa - just look for the posted signs. |
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