Jekyll & Hyde Club
José Luis Sánchez Rull
The title of this piece alludes to a New York restaurant so jam-packed with pop culture references that it saturates the senses—much like this canvas. At the same time, the title also refers to the gothic novel by Robert Louis Stevenson, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886), which employs the contrast between two characters to describe the human duality of good and evil. Sánchez Rull makes visceral use of the canvas, amassing references from a vast visual, musical, and literary repertoire; together, they chronicle a generation marked by punk aesthetics and underground comix.
Here, pop satisfies the gaze’s need for constant stimulation, and it serves as a narrative that synthesizes the artist’s references: the Sex Pistols, William Blake, and MAD Magazine, among others. The texts appearing here and there allude to the songs “Hello Stranger” by Barbara Lewis, “New York Mining Disaster 1941” and “First of May” by the Bee Gees and “B.C. 1675” by the experimental musician Raymond Scott.
This monumental canvas, primarily concerned with intertextuality, offers a proposal of “anti-culture.” Through the saturation of images, which comes to resemble a pen drawing, the piece occupies an ambiguous middle ground between “fine” and “popular” art. Deep down, Sánchez Rull seeks to elevate his idea of “anti-cultured painting” to replace the obsolete project of “the end of painting.”
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JOSÉ LUIS SÁNCHEZ RULL (1964)
Jekyll & Hyde Club, 2006
Oil on canvas
Acquisition with funds from the Presupuesto de Egresos de la Federación, 2014
