Northern South America: Latin American Art in the 20th Century: High/Newlights 4

A few weeks (OK, now it's months) back I finished reading Phaidon's coffee-table book Latin American Art in the Twentieth Century, edited by Edward J. Sullivan, and with country-by-country essays by various specialists. Since it was (apart from, say, the most famous of Mexican painters) pretty much new territory for me, at the end I flipped back through and noted the works and artists that I'd liked. I thought I might spin a few blog posts out of that list, using what images I can track down ... here's part 4, Northern South America, to the tip of the Southern Cone:

Venezuela
Manuel Cabré - Laguna de Boleíta: El Avila desde el Marquéz nope, but here's La Silla, also, I believe, of the hills surrounding Caracas:


Alejandro Otero - Colorritmo 39, nope, but here's an apparent work on paper by him:

Colombia
The book, of course, had works by the great and well-known Fernando Botero, who I like a lot, but I didn't note any specific works as stand-outs for this list...

Alejandro Obregón - Bodegón en Azules, no, but here's his Bodegón de flores con caracol:


Ecuador
Oswaldo Guayasamín - Fusilamiento, no but here's this one, from from a series of hands called Las Manos de Oración:

Enrique Tábara - Rojo Superstancial - nope.

Peru
Jorge Eduardo Eielson - Quipus, nope, but here's the similar, if I recall right, Nudo: both involve using knotted fabric/string, a reference to the Inca technique of encoding messages on knotted strings.


Brazil
Alfredo Volpi - Casas:

Waldemar Cordeiro - Movimento:


Lygia Clark - Bicho (one a long series of cute little abstract critters by the artist)
Rubem Valentim - Compsição - nope
Lygia Pape - Tercelares - nope
Mira Schendel - Desenho 2, nope, but here's an untitled from her series of graphic-design-derived works:

फूत्लिघ्त परेड

The post title is Google's attempt (yeah, I turned on the Hindi-posting feature for fun and forgot how to turn it off) at transliterating Footlight Parade, the 1933 James Cagney/Busbey Berkley musical I finished watching last night. While it's no Gold Diggers of 1933, there are, of course, some amazing (and dare I say Bollywood-prefiguring) moments in the final musical numbers. The knockout piece is a sort of water-nymphs-gone-wild setup called "By a Waterfall". It takes a while to warm up, but when it does, oh boy. You could unpack a lot from an art-history, mythology, psychological, or gender studies angle ... but whatever it is, it is amazing too.

The Most Dangerous Letter

The other day I was asking a friend who's living in Port-au-Prince if she knew anything about how Haiti same to have so many k's. The inspiration was the mountain village of Kenscoff, just south of the capital, that figures in Graham Greene's novel The Comedians. We're still trying to track down the origin of that name, but Kreyol (aka Haitian Creole) has lots of k's, whereas French, the country's other national language, has, more or less none.

A few searches turned up a great long answer, a chapter in the book Language Ideologies: Practice and Theory

My take-away from the article (most of which you can, and should, read) that Kreyol orthographies are various and contested, and that the first major promoted one (McConnell-Laubach) seems to have been introduced by American protestant missionaries (hey, we do love translating into local dialects!). The Wikipidia entry on Haitian Creole points out that most Kreyol spellings are very similar to the words' renditions in the International Phonetic Alphabet.

Meanwhile, I'll type for you my favorite sentence from the Language Ideologies chapter...

Among the most contested letters is k, which not only represents the danger of U.S. imperialism but has even been claimed to represent the threat of communism.

As for k's in French, they're all from other, non-romance languages. Here's the entire k section from the admittedly pocket-sized 1968 Dennison French Dictionary ("All Important Words"):

kangaurou, kayak, képi, kilogramme, kilometre, kiosque

What's really fun is imagining using all six of those words in a single sentence!

--

The whole idea of dangerous letters leads us, of course, to Costa-Garvas's 1969 film Z, a very slight fictionalization ("Any resemblance to actual events, to persons living or dead, is not the result of chance. It is DELIBERATE.") of a political murder in 1960s Greece.

The film (quite good and gripping, by the way), explains its title in a bit of screen text tacked at the end of the epilogue, just after we hear of the subsequent terrible things that happened to all the characters:

Concurrently, the military banned long hair on males; mini-skirts; Sophocles; Tolstoy; Euripedes; smashing glasses after drinking toasts; labor strikes; Aristophanes; Ionesco; Sartre; Albee; Pinter; freedom of the press; sociology; Beckett; Dostoyevsky; modern music; popular music; the new mathematics; and the letter "Z", which in ancient Greek means "He is alive!"

Bad News for Flatbreads

The Caribbean: Latin American Art in the 20th Century: High/Newlights 3

A few weeks back I finished reading Phaidon's coffee-table book Latin American Art in the Twentieth Century, edited by Edward J. Sullivan, and with country-by-country essays by various specialists. Since it was (apart from, say, the most famous of Mexican painters) pretty much new territory for me, at the end I flipped back through and noted the works and artists that I'd liked. I thought I might spin a few blog posts out of that list, using what images I can track down ... here's part 2, Central America:

Cuba
Victor Manuel Garía - Muchacha con Manzana Roja - Nope.
Wilfredo Lam - La Jungla I think of this as a sort of alternate, happy tropical version of Picasso's Guenerca.

Cundo Bermúdez - Romeo y Julieta - nope, but here's an untitled piece that I like. I think Bermúdez he gives his women these wonderful, long, sonorous-looking noses.
Manuel Mendive - Barco Negrero - nope.
Tomás Sánchez - Buscador de Bosques - nope, but here's Indecsion.


Dominican Republic
Celeste Woss y Gil - Mujer en Reposo
Yoryi Morel - A la Fiesta - nope, but here's La calle de las chancletas:

Jaime Colson - Meringue - I especially like the visual echo between the fan and the accordion:

Gilberto Hernández Ortega - Sin Título (1976) - nope.
Antonio Prats-Ventós - Familia - nope
Domingo Liz - Ciclista - nope, but here's an untitled:



Puerto Rico
Miguel Pou - La Promesa

Lorenzo Homar - Homenaje a julie de burgos - a silkscreen I couldn't find. One suprise from the book was learning about the prevalence of silkscreen art in PR — a number of workshops were set up that did some great nurturing of talent. Here's another poster by Homar:

Rafael Tufiño - couldn't find La Botella Jazz but here are his Cortoadores de Caña

Francisco Rodón - I couldn't find a large version of his wonderful portrait of governor Luis Muñoz Marín, which manages to be both cubist and realist. Here's La Maga Duende:

Luis Hernández Cruz - alas, couldn't locate Gran Mangle, which is a beautiful mangrove island landscape done entirely in solid-colored vertical lines. Here's Cruz:

Marcos Irizarry - no Asilah, but here's an untitled postor:

Central America: Latin American Art in the 20th Century: High/Newlights 2

A few weeks back I finished reading Phaidon's coffee-table book Latin American Art in the Twentieth Century, edited by Edward J. Sullivan, and with country-by-country essays by various specialists. Since it was (apart from, say, the most famous of Mexican painters) pretty much new territory for me, at the end I flipped back through and noted the works and artists that I'd liked. I thought I might spin a few blog posts out of that list, using what images I can track down ... here's part 2, Central America:

Guatemala
Efraín Recinos - Música Grande / Marimba

Logo for Music and Youth foundation, Guatemala. Note the similar profile to above.

... and, for that matter, his design for Guatemala's Teatro National / Centro Cultural Miguel Angel Asturias:


Moisés Barrios - Antes de Conocerte I couldn't find, but here's Familia en una piscina:



Honduras
Mario Castillo - Familia —nope.

Nicaragua
Roberto Galícia - Bandera — a twisted image of the country's flag:

Costa Rica
Juan Manuel Sánchez - Los Amantes - Nope
Teodorico Quirós - Caserío - no, but El portón rojo:


Panama
Manuel de la Cruz González - Amarillo Contínuo
Roberto Lewis - Tamarindos

Mexico: Latin American Art in the 20th Century: High/Newlights 1

A few weeks back I finished reading Phaidon's coffee-table book Latin American Art in the Twentieth Century, edited by Edward J. Sullivan, and with country-by-country essays by various specialists. Since it was (apart from, say, the most famous of Mexican painters) pretty much new territory for me, at the end I flipped back through and noted the works and artists that I'd liked. I thought I might spin a few blog posts out of that list, using what images I can track down ...

From the Preface

Juan Sánchez - Confused Paradice [sic]. What's not to like abut such a provocative yet fun set of images. If I recall (and view) right, the artist is of a Mexican-American background.

Mexico

Carlos Mérida - Retrato de mi Nieta, Ana Luna, la Niña del Triángulo couldn't be found, but here's his Tzel y el Brujo, which has a nice abstract alphabetic-populist look to it. The book had him in the Mexico chapter, since he did major work there, but he was born in Guatemala. I guess people can move:

Alfredo Castañeda - Diálogo de dos Poetas Disfrazdos de Aves (again, not there). But I may like this one, Hombre, even more, as a meditation on painting/viewing (and cool-patterned hair!).

Fernando García Ponce - Manchas Azules sobre Ocre y Gris, nope, but see Al Pie de la Letra:

Vicente Rojo - México bajo la Lluvia
theis is one of a whole series (the one in the book, subtitled Homenaje a Orosco, had I think a handwriting motif going through it. This one looks more like those crazy multicolor Bolivian patterns (Aymara?) that Evo Morales has on those jackets he wears.

Gunther Gerzso - Naranja-azul-verde wasn't there, but I do like Personaje en Rojo y Azul. His shaded/layered color blocks look great, the more so for being from before the era of Photoshop drop shadows.

Francisco Castro Leñero - Blanco y Negro

Digitally Devisive

Definitely digital, definitely divisive, but I'm not sure it's quite what digital divide usually means. I started going through the different wikipedia languages' pages for Mohammed to see which ones use the images in questions. I'm not sure if you can judge much by most of them. The Arabic one, of course, is quite image-free (except for a nifty inline graphic of the oft-used (in this context) phrase-cum-glyph "Mohammed, Peace Be Upon Him"

Meanwhile, I'll paste in the entire corresponding Scots-language entry:

Muhammad (Arab:محمد) is believed tae be a prophet o God bi Muslims. He stairtit the releegion o Islam. He wis an Arab leader an aw.

The Trouble with Dancing Hitler

Here's some excerpts of the most complete English article I've found about the trouble Rio de Janeiro's Viradouro Samba School got into for planning to include a Holocaust themed float among the dozen or so that made up their 2008 Carnival parade.

Dancing Hitler for Carnival Shocks Over-The-Top Rio

By Adriana Brasileiro
Feb. 4 (Bloomberg) -- Even Rio de Janeiro has its limits.
The city, whose annual Carnival celebrations regularly include half-naked women and over-the-top parties, banned a samba group from entering a holocaust-inspired float in the championship this year. The float, with a pile of atrophied concentration-camp victims at its base, was to be accompanied by a dancer dressed as Adolf Hitler.
"The idea of a dancing Hitler on top of dead Jews is outrageous," said Jose Roitberg, a spokesman for Rio de Janeiro's Israelite Federation, which represents Jewish interests and sued to have the float thrown out.

At this point, if you haven't, hop on over to the Viradouro site and pay attention to the flash animation on the home page, which uses a bit-o-montage to explain the theme.

The holocaust float was part of samba group Viradouro's "It Gives You Goose Bumps" show, which portrayed events, movies and characters that make people shiver.
"It's about all the wonderful and terrible things that make your hair stand on end," said Lucia dos Santos, who was in charge of Viradouro dancers dressing as the monsters from the movie "Alien."

Some of the other goose-bump-giving things in the parade: a Kama Sutra-themed float with gold-painted dancers of unclear attire enacting various, um, poses; a ski/snowboard ramp with ski/snowboarders; hundreds of dancing beheaded gentlemen with guillotines strapped to their backs; then a whole garbage-themed float with people in cockroach-costumes swarming around it; and a whole bunch of giant marching bugs--tarantulas and flies, I think. Then the creatures from Alien, some Japanese Geisha-types who for some reason have multiple arms. And (after the Kama Sutra float) courtly ladies with their arms bound to stakes above their heads. I'm getting the order wrong; watching all the videos mixes things up (plus they seem to be cutting between the parade proper and the folks lining up for it).





There was also a huge newborn-baby float featuring, of course, a huge newborn-baby, held up unwashed by its ankles, taking its first breaths. Presumably this was part of the positive things that give you goosebumps, but the rear part of the float had these towers constructed of smaller newborns, such that I couldn't quite decide whether they were supposed to be dead? alive? babies on a stick? Well, clearly the loss of the Holocaust float didn't hurt them in terms of variety or mind-boggling surreality. If they weren't all singing that same catchy song over and over I'd think I was seeing highlights for different Samba groups in different years on different planets, rather than part of a single, coherent theme. OK back to our reporter:

Viradouro lost in court Jan. 31, as Judge Juliana Kalichszteim of the Tribunal of Justice of Rio de Janeiro cited a federal law against Nazi propaganda and racism.

The judge warned that if the school included the float in its parade today, it would be fined 200,000 reais plus 50,000 reais for each dancer dressed as Hitler.

Viradouro didn't accept the court decision without protest. In place of the banned display, the school paraded a float carrying protesters dressed in white tunics with gags over their mouths and a sign that said "The future cannot be built by burying history." A dancer dressed as Joaquim Jose da Silva Xavier, the hero of Brazil's independence known as "Tiradentes," who was hanged in 1792, watched from above with a noose around his neck.

"The restriction to freedom of expression creates a fertile territory for the proliferation of violence, disrespect, brutality and extermination," Viradouro said in a statement on its Web site. "Neither the executioners nor the victims of the tragic history of humanity have the right to hide the facts and dim our memory."

Unlike Charlie Chaplin's "The Great Dictator" and "The Producers," two successful films that took a humorous look at Hitler, Viradouro's float probably failed because it wasn't obviously a satire and may have caught viewers by surprise, said Arnold Aronson, a professor at the theater division at Columbia University's School of the Arts.

"No one was forced to watch the Chaplin film or "The Producers"," which was "presented as ridiculous farce in which Hitler and Nazis were depicted as buffoons," Aronson said in an e-mailed response to questions from Bloomberg News. "A parade float forces itself on everyone who views the parade, and Carnival has a huge and diverse audience."

I don't know about the "Forces Itself on Everyone" argument. There's plenty else that forces itself on the viewer too. Rather, I think the best tactic would be to affirm (at least a little) the performers' desire to play with conventions and distinctions. If they'd done a float focusing on the horrors of Brazilian slavery, for instance, they could have pulled it off with uncomfortable joy, an dancing-on-the-graves sense of things. But this is too much someone else's (many other people's) story for that to work.

That said, if the Nazi float had run, it would have been the worst of the lot, but in the context of a great parade of oddness and creepiness and combined celebration of life and death, the effect would have been diluted. Then again, maybe the dilution, too, would be part of the problem. Though I wonder if all the publicity, and the School's "principled" anti-censorship response really just made the outcome even worse, and less helpful, educative, or edifying all around.

Tiki in Berlin

In a recent Feat of Correspondance I realized that two college friends were both doing academic things in Berlin at the moment. Emails were sent. And they did get to meet up, o'er Indonesian food, no less. A few days on, I received the following report:

We've decided that next time we're going to search out Berlin's tiki bars. We've concluded that the American presence here for so many years, especially in Schoeneberg, should mean that there's a good tiki bar remnant still around here somewhere! Let us know if you hear of anything in that magical network of yours.

Well I couldn't turn down a challange (plea for help?) like that. Thus:


Berlin Tiki Establishments
[via the requisite Google search etc.]

From the dates and pictures I found, Berlin's tiki establishments all seem to date to the last decade or so, which calls the occupation/cold war theory into question. Perhaps there were tiki bars in the 50s and 60s, coinciding with the American tiki wave, and the current establishments traffic both in the at-home retro as well as the we-love-america-now-and-then retro.

OK, back to the shortlist:

• Rock-a-tiki (but it seems more like a skater-store?)
• tabou tiki room (they get points for referencing French exoticism too)
• Aloha-Luau Lounge
  
• Trader Vic's (invented the Mai-Tai at their Oakland, CA location. Now a global chain w/25 outposts, 6 in the Persian Gulf!)
• Tiki Heart Cafe (their Tuesday Special menu doesn't, though, seem that Polynesian, or even Pseudonesian:
  
  Menue 29.01.08
  
  Avocado - Rote Beete - Cocktail [Avocado - beets - Cocktail]
  Barbarie-Enten-Carpaccio auf Auberginen Mousse (als veggie: Tofu Carpaccio) [ Barbarie duck carpaccio-on eggplant mousse (veggie option: Tofu carpaccio)]
  Geschmorter Burgunderbraten vom Rind mit Sauce von weißen und schwarzen Feigen, dazu Kartoffel-Rösti und Wurzelgemüse (als veggie: Tofu -Burgunderbraten) [ Geschmorter Burgundy roast of beef with sauce of white and black figs, plus potato hash browns and root vegetables (veggie option: tofu roast Burgundy) ]
  Gefüllter Milchreispudding [Stuffed milk rice pudding]

Tiki aggregators: some proof that folks take this stuff very, very seriously.
http://www.tikieurope.com/
http://www.critiki.com/cgi-bin/map.cgi

And he establishment weighs in:

NY Times 3/20/05:

Berlin
Where to wear it? The best people-watching can be done at White Trash Fast Food, a bar, restaurant and club in a former Chinese restaurant. It feels like a ''Cantonese Tiki bar'' gone wild, says Stefanie Roth, an editor at the German style magazine Lodown. What to wear: Veronique Branquinho suede boots. Devi Kroell python hobo, $2,690. Levi's Superlow Skinny jeans, $40. Jil Sander trench coat, $2,040. Dries Van Noten scarf, $995

NY Times 11/12/06:

Surfacing
Street Food With Ambition in Berlin
By GISELA WILLIAMS

NEW YORKERS have hot dog stands, Parisians have crêperies, but street food in Berlin is all about imbisse — a word that encompasses everything from sidewalk stalls that sell currywurst (sliced sausage smothered with curry powder and ketchup) to holes in the wall that serve Turkish döner kebabs (thick pita sandwiches stuffed with shaved meat, salad and yogurt sauce).

They’re great if you’re in a rush or need to save some beer money (the price rarely exceeds 3 euros, or less than $4 at $1.28 to the euro), but don’t expect a culinary revelation. The taste usually ranges from salty to saltier.

But lately, Berlin’s fast-food scene has gone foodie. Imbisse (the singular form of the word is imbiss) with an epicurean twist are popping up all over this city, Western Europe’s most affordable capital, bringing fancy fast food to the masses.

One of the best is the W Imbiss (Kastanienallee 49; 49-30-48-49-26-57; www.agentur103.de) on the stylish edge of Mitte and Prenzlauer Berg, whose logo resembles the golden arches turned upside down. If you’re lucky, Gordon W., as its Canadian chef and owner calls himself, will be in the tiny open kitchen, wearing his signature fez and manning the tandoor.

Four euros will get you a delicious and filling nan-bread pizza, topped with fresh ingredients like pesto, fresh arugula, sun-dried tomatoes and pine nuts. Six and a half euros buys one of the popular rice bowls, piled high with marinated tandoori salmon, leafy greens and Japanese-style dressing. Besides being cheap, everything is made to order, so expect long waits — though no one in this tiki-inspired joint seems to mind..

There's a Hole in Mozambique

Here's an interesting close-up of the triple-border between Malawi, Mozambique, and Tanzania on Lake Nyasa (aka Lake Malawi). The two islands in the rounded enclave are Chisamula (the small one) and Likoma -- they belong to Malawi but are surrounded by Mozambiquan waters. I wonder if there's anywhere else in the world with such a perfec elipse of a border.

Also, it's interesting that whereas Malawi and Mozambique roughly split the southern end of the lake, up north Tanzania border hugs its own shoreline, giving Malawi all the water.

Dr. Livingstone, How Presumptuous!

Direct-quote from the Wikipedia entry for Blantyre, Scotland, as of 8pm EST 2/2/08:

David Livingstone

Blantyre's most famous son is the lap dancer David Livingstone, and there is a museum, the David Livingstone Centre at the bottom of Station Road. This centre includes a museum, a playpark, a cafe, a shop, an African Garden and several workshop studios. An adventure assault course also existed here until a young man died in 1995.

The largest city and commercial centre of Malawi, one of the countries which Livingstone explored, is still called Blantyre, having been named for Livingstone's birthplace during the colonial era.

I was just about to do my first ever Wikipedia edit, but, oddly, when I clicked to change the section, the editable text lacked the crucial epithet:

== David Livingstone ==

Blantyre's most famous son is [[David Livingstone]], and there is a museum, the [[David Livingstone Centre]] at the bottom of Station Road. This centre includes a museum, a playpark, a cafe, a shop, an African Garden and several workshop studios. An adventure assault course also existed here until a young man died in 1995.

The largest city and commercial centre of [[Malawi]], one of the countries which Livingstone explored, is still called [[Blantyre, Malawi|Blantyre]], having been named for Livingstone's birthplace during the colonial era.

But when I clicked back to the main page, there it was, getting its jollies. So what was going on here? In the end, adding "19th century missionary and explorer" (a counter-epithet! and quite factual!) seems to have gotten rid of Dr. L's alleged other career, at least for the moment. Though it still shows up in a few sites that take content from Wikipedia. Ah, c'est le wiki.

Walt Whitman Speaks!

Edison cylindar recording of (apparently) Whitman reading Whitman. I read on IMDB that Daniel Day-Lewis based his accent in Gangs of New York in part on recording(s) of Whitman (for that mid-19th-century native New York twang).

Gua Gua Gua!

A friend, after some longstanding scrutiny of her map-of-the-world shower curtain, emailed to ask, basically, whence cometh all the gua/gui/guays in various country names. I'll paste in my response right ... now:

OK, here be etymologies:

For each I've started from my shelf copy of Place-Names of the World (Adrian Room, 1974), and then added bits from wikipedia etc.


Guadalquivir River (southern Spain) - From Arabic Wadi-al-kebir = 'river of great water' (Guada- is common 1st element of many Spanish names, from Arabic wadi = 'river, ravine').

Guadeloupe - named after monestary on Guadelupe R. in Spain ... same 'wadi' as above.

Guam - sighted by Magellan's men on St. John's day 1521. Present name native verison of 'Juan/John'. [currently Guáhán in chimorro, Guaján in Spanish).

Guatemala - Spanish version of Indian (probably Tuendal) uhazmala = 'mountain that gushes out water', though earlier explanation of origin had been from Aztec [nahautl?] quauhtemellan = 'land of the eagle' [spanish wikipedia has it meaning "place of many trees"]

Guyana, French Guiana (la Guyane; in French, Guyana is le Guyane), Guayana Esequiba (Venezuelan territorial ciaim) - explored in 1499 by Vespucci and Hojeda, latter naming territory after people, the Guaizas, whose own name = 'respected' (ie 'we who must be respected').
But en.wikipedia: Guyana is an Amerindian word meaning "Land of many waters".
And fr.wilipedia: The term "guyane" is of indigenous origin. In the guanao language, which is spoken by the indians of the Orinoco delta, GUAI means 'name', or 'denomination', UANA is a negation. ... thus Guyane means 'that which can't be named' or 'sacred ground ' or 'the house of the supreme being' (referring to the "italien" [indian?] name for the guyana massif)

Guinea, Equitorial Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, New Guinea - probably from Berber aguinau = 'black (-skinned people)'.
Guinea hen = fowl from Guinea. Guinea pig - 1664, native to South America and is so called either because it was first brought back to Britain aboard Guinea-men, ships that plied the triangle trade between England, Guinea, and South America; or from confusion of Guinea (q.v.) with the South American region of Guyana.

[N.B. I always found it interesting that when you jigsaw Africa and S. America back together, guinea and guiana match up!]

Nicaragua - discovered 1522 by explorer Gil Gonzalez, named territory after Indian chief who owned it. Chief's name of uncertain meaning. [es.wikipdia has the Nicarao tribe emigrating south from Teotihuacan (the classical civilization near present Mexico City). The Nicaraguan government cites unnamed etymologists to say that the name has Nahuatl [ie Aztec-lang-family] origins -- some say it can be divided ni-can-atl-hua, 'the lords of water are here' or 'place where there are great deposits of water'. Others suggest that nic-atl-nahuac' means 'here together on the water'. es.wikipedia quites that, but also suggests that the -agua is from the Spanish 'water'.

Paraguay - country after river, after native tribe, Paragua, with name derived from Indian [sic] para = 'water' en.wikipedia has this: The literal translation from Guaraní is Para=great river or sea; Gua=from or belonging to or place; Y=water or river or lake. This could lead to:
* "Water or river belonging to the sea" (the Atlantic Ocean).
* "Water or river that belongs to a great river" (the Paraná River).
* "Water or river that comes from a sea" or "water or river from the place where the sea is" (the Pantanal wetland).
The fourth version states that it could be a corruption from Pajaguay, "river of the Pajaguás", a tribe that inhabited the right bank, opposite from the Guaranís.

Uruguay - country after river, origin perhaps in Indian [sic] guay = 'tail' + uru = 'bird', referring to species of bird w/remarkable tail living in forests here. Or perhaps connected with guay = 'river', common element in South American names.
both wikipedias have: The name "Uruguay" comes from Guaraní. It has many possible meanings. Some of the proposed meanings are:
* "River of the uru" or "River of the country of the uru": a version attributed to Felix de Azara, which suggests that the name of the country comes from a small bird, called the urú, native to the banks of the Uruguay river (from uru, idem, gua, "place of", and y, "water")[4]
* "River of colorful or 'painted' chinchillas (birds) [sic? I can't find any refernces, Spanish or English, to chinchillas that aren't the soft-furred Andean rodents, apart from a city called Chinchilla in Spain]": poetic interpretation attributed to Juan Zorrilla de San Martín.
* "Rivers that have dead people of snails": an interpretation attributed to a collaborator of Félix de Azara (from arugua, "snail", and y, "water")[4]
* "River of those who bring food": an anonymous version which has been popularized since the discovery of an old document written by Jesuit Lucas Marton.

Escher Lives ... in Canada!

While talking with an old friend in Toronto yesterday afternoon, I opened up Google Maps to see just where he was. Afterwards, I decided to have a look around. Click-and-dragging down Bay St. (thinking of the Ron Sexmith song "Dragonfly on Bay Street") I stopped short at Toronto City Hall trying to make the perspectives resolve, before finally realizing that it must be where two aerial photos are stitched together:

Dubai Design Downpour

The Gulf News came up with a witty wet-ink cover treatment in its coverage of the torrential rain they've had in the United Arab Emirates this week -- note how the smudges run down into the article text.

Alphabet Geography

I keep a 1977 London Times Atlas open on my bedroom dresser. Every morning, as part of my getting-ready ritual, I flip the page to see the next map-plate, and play a little game, scanning the map to find a city or other feature that starts with a letter of the alphabet. I jot it down in my little notebook. The next day, I turn the page and set about finding something that starts with the next letter. So on through the atlas, across the globe, and down the alphabet from A to Z and all over again. And now that little notebook's become a blog: Alphabet Geography. It's still, three days in, finding its feet as I discover what, and how much, additional info, links, and sketches to add. The goal is not to take any posting-impetus from this site, but rather to make public something I was already doing anyway, a day and a letter at a time.

Mapping Man/Woman/Boy/Girl

I finally got all my sketches from the Man/Woman/Boy/Girl project plotted on a Google Map. They're best viewed in the Google environs, but I've also set up a separate blog, with the map and the initial sketchbook-slideshow here.


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I Monogram I

I'm a big fan of a certain sort of interwoven monogram, what I assume to be a late-19th century graphic fashion that crops up these days (in my world) most often in the logos of Brazilian soccer teams. Here's the crest of Internacional (aka Sport Club Internacional), from the southern metropolis of Porto Alegre:

And here's the shield of Fluminense (Futebol Club?), from Rio de Janeiro:

... and of their Rio rivals Flamengo (Clube de Regatas—they began as a rowing club!):

... and of the Vitória Futebol Club (which started out as a cricket club, though the second C didn't make the current monogram):

The Brazilians aren't the only ones with cool monograms, of course. My favorite Aussie Rules team (picked largely on uniform design—how un-Aussie-Rules is that?!) is the Carlton Football Club, from Melbourne (as are most of the clubs in the AFL). The current one's lost the laurels (perhaps due to a pretty dismal performance in the last couple of seasons I was able to watch from the USA):

... and finally (most famously) here's the badge of European soccer giants Inter Milan (F.C. Internazionale Milano):

But the real reason for all this is a lead-up to the following, an artwork I scanned from a very odd design book, The Art of Looking Sideways, by the late British designer Alan Fletcher. It's a monogram of every letter, A-Z. Making it the mongram that contains all monograms, perhaps. Definitely amazing, full of the antler-esque, victorian madness that can only be called, as the 17th century Dutch did, "pronk".

Mumbai Manga

First, a history-vocab lesson, from the great old Hobson-Jobson: A Glossary of Colloquial Anglo-Indian Words and Phrases:

And now a present usage, a truncated story from the oft-cited Mumbai daily DNA:

This brings up a long-standing question for me: how do you represent a generic, anonymous criminal without reorting to sketchy cliches about what a "representative" criminal looks like? The ingenious DNA answer: just use an anime-character silhouette!


(I couldn't find the exact stance, but here's, perhaps, our dacoit's tourist girlfriend, as seen on the animenano podcast)