Chagoya’s Take on Superheroism
By Amelie Satterwhite, Graduate Class 2027 Mexican born artist Enrique Chagoya is primarily a painter and printmaker, yet he also engages in ‘reverse anthropology.’ The idea of ‘reverse anthropology’ Chagoya describes as “an antithesis of modernist strategies of appropriation,” appropriating and “cannibalizing” Western- European and American works of art for himself.[i] Among the University of Denver’s recent acquisitions is Chagoya’s 1999 print Les Aventures des Cannibales Modernistes. Among his growing collection of accordion-styled codex works, the lithograph is printed using a chine collé process.[ii] Chagoya writes that in his work he enjoys using “many interacting elements from different historic times...