2023-09-02 06:30:15
Contrary to what is observed in almost all the photos that make up Marti’s iconography, our National Hero, like every man of his time, also went out into the streets “covered”; that is, with a hat. In this case, the dominant hat model was the so-called derby, a name by which the bowler hat is known in the Saxon world, which comes from the English nobleman who instituted the type of three-year-old horse races in Epsom DownsEngland, in 1780 (one of the most famous works of the French painter Theodore Gericault is titled “Epsom Derby”).
In almost all the photos where Martí poses alone or in the company of friends and patriots, he appears without a hat. In other photos where he also appears uncovered, we can see that he has his hat in his hand and resting on his knee, as in the beautiful photo taken in the company of María Mantilla, in Bath Beach, Long Island, New York State, in 1890.
The only known photo of Martí with the bowler hat on. Photo: Taken from Havana Radio
As far as we know, the only photo where Martí appears wearing a bowler hat is the one taken with a group of Cuban émigrés who were practicing shooting at the old Martello Tower fort in Key West in 1893.
However, several reasons can be inferred for him to be portrayed with his hat on, namely: joining the group of patriotic émigrés, going unnoticed, being one of them, which he achieves if we pay attention to a certain degree of difficulty in identifying him in the photo, or for reasons of the “necessary war” that was already brewing.
at the exhibition New faces of José Martíinaugurated in the gallery of the Casa Natal, on April 9, 2019, on the occasion of the 124th anniversary of his landing by Playitas de Cajobabo, the artist Maisel López Valdés exhibits his portrait of Martí, which will be a contribution to plastic and graph of the Martí affair of the present century.
The work in question is characterized by assuming the fusion of two photos of the Apostle: the one taken by the Cuban photographer Juan Bautista Valdés on October 10, 1892, in Kingston, Jamaica, and the previously mentioned one with the group of Cuban émigrés from Cayo Bone, in 1893. From this last photo, Maisel takes the idea, and using the digital technique extrapolates…, better to say: he takes off Martí’s bowler hat, and puts it on the photographic portrait that Valdés took of him a year before in Kingston. From this fusion, he conceives a digital portrait of our National Hero until now, unpublished, if we except the works of those plastic artists in which the dominant issue is to recreate new environments and situations alluding to moments of his life and work, where it is not exactly the bowler hat he always wears.
The singularity of Maisel’s digital portrait, without a doubt, is given because with the exception of the group photo taken in Key West, in the rest of his iconography made up of more than forty photos, he always appears uncovered or with his hat on his head. hand. The latter position, which in all of his iconography can only be seen in four photos, at least clearly: the one taken in the Havana prison in 1870; the one that was made in Madrid the following year, during his first deportation, holding a top hat (where he still does not have his characteristic mustache and goatee), and the other two in adulthood, in which he also appears uncovered, but already with a bowler in hand. They are the one taken with María Mantilla in Bath Beach, in 1890, and the one taken with another group of Cuban émigrés in Jamaica, in October 1892.
However, the second of the photos cited in chronological order (the one from Madrid in 1871), although it has been one of the least reproduced, perhaps because it is the one that least familiarizes us with the image we already have of him, had a singular media role in 1895, when he accompanied a release distributed by the newspaper Cubafrom Tampa, to announce his arrival on Cuban soil, and months later, on May 26 of that year, in the newspaper the figarofrom Havana, to report his death in combat.
Apart from the assumption that it was the only photo of Martí that said publications had on hand to illustrate their respective news —because it was the first to be taken upon arrival in Spain, which would lead to filing it, something that was beginning to become customary in journalism due to the high cost of illustrations—, it is worth noting the change in sensitivity that works from one era to another in the perception of an illustrious character, as well as the importance of contexts when making any historical analysis.
Martí in Spain during his first deportation. In his hands he holds a top hat. Photo: Taken from the Internet
One last observation regarding the presence of the hat in Marti’s photographic iconography. With the exception of the one he wore during the period of political prison in Cuba, the one for the cup in the aforementioned Madrid photo, and the one for the campaign that he wore from his landing in Playitas de Cajobabo until his fall in combat in Dos Ríos, which is not known. has no photographic testimony, Martí always made use of the derby or bowler hat.
It is no coincidence that the Mexican painter Diego Rivera, in an effort to give with the greatest historical rigor the characters present in his fresco “Sueño de una tarde dominical en la Alameda Central” (1948), represents Martí with a bowler hat in hand, an act that he justifies with the gesture of greeting that he makes to the poet Gutiérrez Nájera, to his right in the composition.
With a hat in hand, during the stage of the political prison in Cuba, Havana, 1870. Photo: Taken from Radio Victoria
Meanwhile, the Cuban painter Esteban Valderrama in his most notorious work “The death of Martí in Dos Ríos” (1918), represents him in full open gallop. As for the yarey hat that is in the air to the right of Baconao, it belongs to Ángel de la Guardia, whose physiognomy was unknown to the painter —he had died just after beginning his research to conceive the aforementioned work—, a limitation that justifies doing so. fall behind his horse, reared by the enemy’s shots. The same is to be observed in the sculpture of the equestrian Martí by the American Anna Hyatt Huntington, influenced by Valderrama’s canvas.
In the work “The death of Martí in Dos Ríos”, by Esteban Valderrama, the yarey hat that is in the air to the right of Baconao, belongs to Ángel de la Guardia. Image: Taken from Cubaperiodistas
The use of the bowler hat extended into the new century, which explains why Charles Chaplin conceived his immortal character Charlot with this model of hat. Martí said: “Homeland is humanity.” Chaplin always considered himself a child of humanity. Hence, he did not become a US citizen, which caused him not a few problems until his final departure from the country. Consequently, what better picture to close this chapter, than to imagine Martí sharing with Charlot the dream of a better humanity, while covered with their respective bowlers they retrace the long path of one of the many open endings of this immortal filmography.
Taken from La Jiribilla
#Martís #hats #Cubaperiodistas