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.