Bull Fighting Posters

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Aaron's Bull Fighting Highlights

Bull fighting is a spectacle sport, involving conflict between a bull and one or more contestants, fought in an outdoor arena according to certain rules and procedures. As the sport evolved, changes were introduced that converted what once was a primitive and cruel encounter, the Medieval hunt, into the skillful art form which is practiced today in the bullfighting arenas of Spain, France, Portugal, and in the Latin American republics of Colombia, Ecuador, Guatemala, Mexico, Panama, Peru and Venezuela. Traditionally, the bullfight is a combination of ritual and mortal combat, with an attempt, (at the risk of the principal contestant's life) to maneuver a bull gracefully and kill it in a manner both courageous and aesthetically pleasing.

Mario Carrion, a Spanish bullfighter writes that the objective of the bullfight is, in fact, "to avoid a brutal confrontation by using the human attributes of intelligence, grace, and elegance". In a sport, the important thing is to win; the sport fan is satisfied with the accumulation of points, hits, and records. In bullfighting, there is no scorekeeping. Satisfaction is implicit in the expected triumph of human cunning over brute force; a bullfight fan screams "olé" not because the matador has won, but because of the manner, the form, the grace, the wit, the dexterity of the torero. The trophies awarded to the bullfighter are often nothing more than the people's momentary show of emotion; it is not unusual for a matador who may have only performed one artful move in the entire event to be the true winner of the day. For just as in painting, singing, or dancing, the quality that made that move special cannot be quantified or described. The appreciation of its worth is intuitive.