Titian could construct his "Bacchanal of the Adrians" for the 1518 Spanish Imperial Court and, since a passing courtier knew already the story, the subjects' faces and the room it was meant to be placed in, he fully understood the meaning of the painting as a matter of course (Strickland 38). RenT Magritte cuts context down to an extreme close-up of an eye with a cloud-filled sky for an iris in his 1928 "The False Mirror"; it either makes an "interior" sense to the viewer or is incomprehensible (Strickland 151). Mexican print artist JosT Guadalupe Posada strikes a similar pose of "abstract reality" with his 1912 woodcut "Zapata Halloween": a skeletal sombrero-wearing horseman (atop a stallion that had to be the inspiration for the horses in "Guernica") rides roughshod over a field of skulls, waving the banner of skeletal nationalism - the artist's comment on the end results of revolution is primal (Chavez 209). Twentieth Century visual art makes its bid for direct communication with the viewer. It is a preliterate approach.
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