Rather an interesting day so far. Once again I had to fight and argue with the manager of the local laundry about getting my clothes back by tomorrow. It´s always the same script. He says the day after tomorrow, I say tomorrow. Finally he backs down a bit and says ´´Manaña a las seis de la tarde.´´ (Tomorrow, six pm). I think he enjoys it. I saw two robins. There are a few here and I suspect they might be winter migrants from the US. Nice reminder of home. On my way to Chapultepec Park I noticed a series of huge advertising posters (nearly billboard size) along a construction sight. One of them was a huge photo of a purple glossy starling, a bird from Africa I would love to paint some time![]() ![]() ![]()
The poster shows the full bird on a bright golden yellow background. What I find remarkable about this poster is it doesn´t advertise anything. There is no text. It simply shows this bird in all its beauty. lt is there for the sake of its beauty. This is something I have come to admire about this city. The appreciation of art and beauty for its own sake. It´s everywhere here. Once in Chapultepec Park I visited another art gallery, The Tamayo Museum of Modern Art. Mostly a lot of installation, video and deconstructionist work, particularly by Korean artists (there is a large Korean community in this city). I don´t really relate to this kind of art, but I respect and admire it. I try to do this from the point of view of an artist. Just because I neither understand or relate to the piece I have decided that that is not a basis on which to judge its value, but to accept that maybe I haven´t yet acquired the faculty in order to respond and appreciate. I think this argument can be taken to a lot of places. For example the current trend among some academics to aggressively promote atheism by dissing religion through rationalist means. Mind you the same could be said by certain religious fundamentalists who militantly endeavour to disprove evolution. (Please don´t ask me what I think. I wasn´t there when it happened.) Whatever, I really don´t think that dialogue of this kind, whether it´s about the value of art or about the existence of God or whether or not we are all descended from the same primeval ooze is really possible unless it is done with courtesy and without the intent of one trying to disprove or discredit the other. But this is for another conversation.
I did enjoy some of the paintings in their collection, particularly some pieces by Georgia O´Keefe, Max Ernst and Rene Magritte.
From there I walked over to the Museum of Anthropology for my second visit. This time I knew what I wanted to see and I went for it with surgical precision. I again reviewed the Aztec, or Mexica, room. It was nice again to see Montezuma´s headdress. This photo doesn´t do it justice. The thing is huge, measuring about six or seven feet across and maybe four to five feet in height. It is made primarily of tail feathers from the Resplendant Quetzal, which is another bird I love to paint, with trimmings from the Scarlet Macaw and the lovely cotinga. Anyway, just in case the photos didn´t get properly downloaded, you can get a good look at the birds and the headress through a quick google search. There is also a lot of gold ornamentation in this headdress. Looking at the artifacts, the solar stone (mistakenly assumed to be a calender but was really a stone on which human sacrifice was performed) and the many intricately carved statues and the surviving pieces of exquisitely rendered murals once again took my breath away. Reading the text gave me an added appreciation of the bloody culture of violence that reigned in these people´s lives and culture. This also holds true, of course for the conquering Spanish, whom I believe had a lot more in common with the Aztecs than they might have wanted to have believed, particularly the predominace in their culture the use of force, violence and bloodshed in the name of their very debased version of Christianity.
 
  Getting into the museum was rather a disturbing experience this time due to the extremely tight security. They went through my knapsack twice and asked me to empty my pockets etc. While I can´t blame them for being vigilant, I find that they tend to rely a lot on intimidation in order to keep the noisome mob in its place, and I wonder how much of this can be attributed to the huge legacy of violence in Mexican culture thanks to the combined Spanish and Aztec legacies, among others. Later, I went further into the park only to come across an enormous police and security presence near the road that leads to the presidential residence, Los Pinos. It got worse as I went further, then I discovered a huge phalanx of riot police armed with plastic shields, tear gas and everything else that helps incite a riot. Once I got past them I could hear the chanting of demonstrators marching towards where I was. So here are the people President Calderon and his riot police are so frightened of: About three hundred campesinos and workers, all obviously poor, made up primarily of old men in straw hats (some of them walking with canes), old women and younger women with small children. I walked with them as far as the phalanx of riot police. I didn´t stay for the whole event but I trust (and pray) that it concluded peacefully, Their demands and needs are simple enough. They want an end put to an unfair system of taxation that penalizes the poor, as well as a termination of policies that undermine basic social and health services.
Well, I´m sure that I´ve more than used up my fifteen minutes on this entry. Peace and Love.
Aaron |
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