ICONOGRAPHY IN MEXICO DAY OF THE DEAD - ORIGINS AND MEANING

This article analyzes the origin and meaning of artistic representatio ns of death-principally skulls and skeletons-in Mexico's Day of the De ad. It challenges stereotypes of the death-obsessed Mexican by tracing mortuary imagery in the Day of the Dead to two separate artistic deve lopments, the first deriving from religious and demographic imperative s of colonial times, the second from nineteenth-century politics and j ournalism. Now generally perceived as belonging to a single, undiffere ntiated iconographic tradition, cranial and skeletal images of death h ave become virtually synonymous with Mexico itself.