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

Very Early Cinema: Moon Guns and Rubber Heads

This week I watched a very interesting French documentary Le fantôme d'Henri Langlois about the manic-obsessive-brilliant-wonderful film preservationist who founded the Cinémathéque Française. Along the way, he mentioned the two contrasting foundational figures of French cinema, the Lumière Brothers, and George Méliès. Here's a sample of the former:

The Lumière clips they included were definitely fascinating—how could documentary footage of people walking around in 1895 not be fascinating? but the Meiloc ones really piqued my interest (as they did Langlois'—he used to pull out the old, flammable prints to show them as a special treat to the Cinematique's imployees). I'd heard him mentioned in Michael Silverblatt's interview with Brian Selznik, whose illustrated novel The Invention of Hugo Cabret is full of magical Méliès referencces and tips-of-the-hat. The thing that stuck with me there was the comment that, although Méliès discovered and pioneered all of these amazing and surreal special effects, he never discovered (or at least used) that most basic of effects: moving the camera. All of his shots are framed more or less like a theater stage—or, better said, the stage in a magic show.

Here are two Meiloc films from YouTube, L'homme a la tête en caoutchoc ("The man with the rubber head", 1901) which is a more basic magic-show setup, and the delightfully surreal (and famous-in-places) Le voyage dans la lune ("A Trip to the Moon", 1902), which crams near-infinite motion into that non-moving camera.

Re:Rereading. Also, Men in Boats Asleep

PATRICIA: Have you ever slept on a boat before?
JOE: No.
PATRICIA: It really affects your dreams. I look forward to it. Even though, sometimes, the dreams really shake me up. Okay. Good night.
JOE: Good night.

—John Patrick Shanley, Joe Versus the Volcano

A few days ago I finished rereading the Odyssey—I think this was the third time to completion. Among other things it brought back to mind a question I've asked myself before, whether it's better to read three great books once or one great book three times (or, indeed, whether they amount to somewhat the same thing). In the past year or so I've fallen out of the habit of having one of the 6–8 books I'm working through at a given time (not counting the Bible and Book of Common Prayer) be a reread. New ground is always so tempting, but I think it's a good discipline. But did I start a new-oldie after the Odyssey? Not yet anyway.

One detail of Homer's plot that I was especially thrilled to rediscover is that Odysseus, the great wide-awake sefarer, sleeps through the whole of his final homeward voyage. The crew that's bringing him back to Ithaca carries him and his parting gifts ashore so he wakes on dry land. There's something very moving about that image, and its other ancient parallels: Jonah asleep in the hold of the storm-tossed ship that's (trying) to take him away from Ninevah and God's calling; and Jesus, asleep in the bow of a similarly wind-vexed boat on the Sea of Galilee, right before his disciples woke him up and he calmed the storm. Three great wanderers, asleep at the wheel.

Wonder Bread and the Mountaintop

For the past few weeks I've been reading a collection of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s speeches, essays, sermons, books, and other writings. Obviously, plenty of inspring and moving stuff (what else did I expect?) — and also, given the nature of public speaking, a lot of repetition. It's a delight seeing phrases and pieces from the "I Have a Dream" speech popping up years ahead of time.

One thing that's surpised me is the extent to which MLK quotes from white intellectuals—James Russel Lowell, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Paul Tillich, Victor Hugo. I'm not sure if I can recall him quoting Frederick Douglass, W.E.B. DuBois, or Booker T. Washington. I wonder if this was because of philosophical differences with those African-American luminaries, or more that he consciously needed, in speaking to the majority culture, to win their trust by referencing majority figures?

I did have a kind of amusing surprise as I read the text of King's final, deeply prophetic "I've Been to the Mountaintop" speech—delivered the night before his assasination. I was familiar with the moving, slightly eerie climax, which is in the video clip above. But earlier on in the speech, he's sort of rambling along about the latest boycott the SCLC is supporting:

And so, as a result of this, we are asking you tonight, to go out and tell your neighbors not to buy Coca-Cola in Memphis. Go by and tell them not to buy Sealtest milk. Tell them not to buy—what is the other bread?—Wonder Bread. And what is the other bread company, Jesse? Tell them not to buy Hart's bread. As Jesse Jackson has said, up to now, only the garbage men have been feeling pain; now we must kind of redistribute the pain.

For me those two elements—Jesse Jackson and Wonder Bread were this strange, almost jarring intrusion of the present-day into an iconic American speech.

(I had a similar bit of cognitive dissonance when I first saw, last year, footage of Bob Dylan singing at the March on Washington. It was as if they'd taken the familar film of King's speech—those guys in the white hats standing behind, etc.—and Zelig'd the pop icon into the scene.)