top of page
Para dibujar al Pato Donald
How to Draw Donald Duck
Para dibujar al Pato Donald is a diagram composed of different objects and graphic gestures found in Chilean Disney comics. The drawing is based on the book Para leer al Pato Donald (Mattelart and Dorfman, 1971), a marxist analysis of Disney comics seeking to unveil the capitalist propaganda aimed to children through Disney magazines published in democratic-socialist Chile. More about media studies than about drawing, the book overlooked the fact that, the comics were created by anonymous underpaid workers. In a reference to William Hogarth’s diagrams on beauty, Para dibujar al Pato Donald is a drawing manual that outlines a new reading of these magazines based in form, shape and craft, considering the place of authorship within standardized commercial art.
The original ink-and-paper drawing was exhibited first in 2014 at the show Migratory Patterns, in Brooklyn NY, and the in 2015 at the show Historia Mutante, at the Contemporary Art Museum in Santiago (MAC).
In 2018, a small edition was printed as a poster in blue by Otra Sinceridad and presented at the NY Art Book Fair at MoMA PS1.
I presented the research behind the drawing at a panel at the first version of the comics research symposium Dibujos que Hablan, at the Universidad de Santiago de Chile, in 2015.
bottom of page