a few more minutes in the museum

I promised we were going to Teotihuacán today, but I changed my mind.


I managed to see a couple of the other rooms in the National Museum of Anthropology.  And I thought you might like to see a few more photographs.


I have no grand commentary because the objects have no common cultural source.  But I found each piece to have its own interest.


Such as the rabbit pot at the top of this post.  There was just something very humorous in its pose.  Some artist had a nice bit of wit with that piece.


When I first saw these two statues, I mistook them for two tired and baffled tourists who tried to see too much of the museum in one day.  I particularly like the look on the "wife's" face.

Or this Aztec deity doing his best to look furious, but looking more like he escaped from a Men in Black remake.  It is a testament to American comedy that such creatures have been tamed in our minds.

This priestess is another piece that made me think the artist based it on a real person.  If you increase the size of the photograph (by clicking on it), you can get a better view of her face.  She could be my neighbor.

 

And speaking of my other Mexican neighbor, this is what he calls the Mexican salute.  It appears to have a noble genesis.

 

 

And this piece seemed to be part of a Hummel "Lord of the Rings" figurine collection.  And I do not mean that as an insult.  It is a piece that I can immediately relate to.  Ancient art was not all rigid deities and decapitated corpses.

But I saved this for last. 


People often ask me why I like archaeology.  The usual answer I give is that it helps us to understand who we are by letting us know who we were. 


But the answer can even be more basic.  Sometimes we simply find ourselves in the past.  Who would think Marge Simpson's ancestor would show up in pottery form?

OK.  I have had my little bit of fun.


Tomorrow we will go to Teotihuacán.


Really!

an hour in the museum

When I decided to sign up for the Mexico City tour, two places were on the top of my list -- places I have wanted to see for years.


The National Museum of Anthropology -- and the cosmopolitan ruins of Teotihuacán.

One turned out to be everything I had hoped for.  The other was a little disappointing -- due to my health circumstances.


Let's take the good first -- and leave the not-as-good for tomorrow.

We only had about two hours to see the exhibits in the National Museum of Anthropology -- the largest anthropological museum in Mexico. 


That is an impossible task.The museum consists of 23 rooms.   Starting with a great introduction to anthropology, a comparison of the chief Mesoamerican cultures, and a survey of Mexico's pre-history.


The succeeding rooms then take the visitor through each of Mexico's major cultures: pre-Classic, Teotihuacán, Toltec, Aztec, Oaxaca, Olmec, Maya, and the pre-conquest cultures of the north and west.  Topped off (literally) by nine rooms of contemporary Mexican culture.


It was impossible to see everything in every room during our short stay.  After seeing the place, I am convinced it would be a great place to spend a week.  Devoting a day to each culture.


But I did not have that luxury.  Rather than running from room to room like a culture vulture, I decided to pick one area for most of the brief time we were there.


And the choice was easy.  We were going to visit the ruins of Teotihuacán the next day.  So, the Teotihuacán room it was.

I already knew anthropologists have little data about the people who built and inhabited Teotihuacán.  It had long been a ruin by the time the Aztecs came on the scene. 


Culturally, the builders are an enigma.  They were cosmopolitan -- adapting other cultures to their own ends. 


And they had a similar impact on the surrounding cultures.  In a way, it reminds me of American culture -- an amalgam of the aspects of other nations, but with a disproportionate cultural impact on the rest of the world.


Like most of the other major sites in Mexico, Teotihuacán was known for its monumental buildings -- especially, the pyramids of the sun and the moon.


But there were smaller temples.  Some of them a bit more accessible to modern eyes. 


The museum has recreated one of those smaller temples, the Temple of the Feathered Serpent.  With all of its bright colors and symbolic portrayals of the gods that required regular appeasement.

The characteristic that first struck me was the use of primary colors.  Blues.  Yellows.  Reds.  Most of the pigment produced from vegetable dyes.  But they are the same colors you often see on buildings in contemporary Mexico.


The colors are there to add impact to one of the wonders of the ancient world.  The people of Teotihuacán developed amazing stone-working talents.  Almost all of the stone figures are a combination of carved stones and mosaics.


For example, the head of this serpent is carved, but the fluting is mosaic.

Or this representation of the rain god -- a mosaic of large stone pieces.  (This motif has been copied in several art deco buildings in Mexico.  In its original form, it could almost pass as art deco.)

The recreation helps the viewer to see what we have been told about these monumental buildings.  They were stunning both in color and in design.  And that is what they were designed to do -- stun their viewers.  But I think I could have passed on the dramatic Boris Karloff lighting.


But, there may be a legitimate basis for the lighting.  There is horror associated with this small temple.  When the original was excavated, the bodies of over 200 sacrificed victims were discovered at its base.  Human sacrifice is one of the constants in Mexican history. 

But Teotihuacán is far more than temples and blood.  At its height, as many as 250,000 people lived there.  Making it one of the largest cities of the ancient world.


And where there are people, there is every-day life.  The walls of some their homes can still be seen.  But the museum has evidence of those lives in the lifeblood of archaeology -- pottery.  I particularly liked this whimsical piece.

And the ever-present carved votive offerings.  This piece made me wonder if it was modeled on someone the artist knew.  The face has an individual look to it.

 

This piece is from one of the temples.  But it struck me as something someone's grandmother might put on her end table.  Right next to the most recent edition of National Geographic.

Visiting the museum helped orient my mind to what we were to see the next day -- the actual ruins of Teotihuacán.  Unfortunately, I was a bit of a ruin myself that day.


But that is a tale for tomorrow.

murals r us

If you visit Mexico City and never see a mural, you should have your eyeglass prescription rewritten.


Murals are to Mexico what stained glass is to Catholics.  And there is a connection there.


The church realized that most of their congregants were illiterate, and those who were not were not enlightened enough to read scripture.  So, rather than give them the Word, the church served up their version of scripture in various art pieces in churches – the highest being stained glass windows.


Mexican artists faced a similar problem.  How could they best convey their visions of history to the public.  That musing is not devoid of its own history.


Most of those artists started thinking about instructing the public in political correctness as a result of the Mexican Revolution.  It does not seem possible now, but the Revolution was seen as a successful cousin of the Russian Revolution.  And lines of Mexican politicians and artists were soon to earn the dubious distinction of being Lenin and Stalin prize winners.


The artists had a new mission in that environment.  How to reach out to the public to teach the lessons of of historical determinism.


Thus was born Mexican Muralism.


I always tried to initially view art pieces stripped of their historical contexts.  What does the art say – merely as a piece of art.


That is almost impossible with Mexican Muralism.  Almost all of the big names were Communists who sublimated their art to the political message.  They did not see a distinction between the two.  Art is politics.  Period.


Some of the muralists were good artists without regard to their politics.  Others put politics first and their art subsequently suffered.


Diego Rivera (or to use his full aristocratic moniker: Diego María de la Concepción Juan Nepomuceno Estanislao de la Rivera y Barrientos Acosta y Rodríguez) was part of the second group. 


His early works showed a lot of promise.  Like most early muralists, he painted Mexico pre-conquest cultures.  In his case, he developed a stylization with a connection between his viewer and the art.


But that period came to an end in the 1930s.  Diego became an artistic tool of the Mexican Revolution and the Mexican Communist Party.  And, because he loved revolutionary power, he soon became a political hack painter for the Mexican government.


If you examine his murals in the National Palace, you will see flashes of artistic genius.  But that genius is trapped in Hegelian handcuffs that celebrate the inevitable paradise of the Mexican Revolution.


His fabled Man at the Crossroads, originally commissioned for the Rockefeller Center, is a perfect example.  Admittedly, the version we now see on the walls of the Palacio de Bellas Artes is a Marxed-up version to satisfy Diego’s hurt pride about his lost piece of art.


The story is that Nelson Rockefeller rejected the mural because Lenin’s face appeared as a driving force in man’s constant progress of subduing the earth.  It is hard to believe that such an innocuous portrait could cause such a furor.

The future vice president would have had a better argument that the piece was not really art.  It is merely a Classics Illustrated version of history.  And not a very interesting one.

Marxism is not very big on subtleties.  And that is clear from the dialectic that Diego sets up.  On one hand, he portrays capitalism as little more than shallow women and corrupt men.

 

And his conclusion of the world living in socialist peace is just as comical.  The whole gang is there.  Mark.  Engels.  Trotsky.  There is some question whether Diego was still a crypto-Stalinist at the time.)

 

But there are some better muralist artists – all of them who were willing to maintain a bit of artistic integrity by criticizing their political masters.


David Alfasri Siqueiros was an unrepentant Stalinist – to the extent that he planned one of the assassination attempts on Leon Trotsky in Mexico City.  It failed, but not for lack of trying.  It was a brutal gangster hit.


Sisqueiros was quite the art theorist.  His goal was to have his art seen and appreciated by people who would then bring about a true proletariat revolution in Mexico.


Even with that mindset, he managed to find room in his paintings for his voice.  That may simply say that he is more Nietzsche than Marx.  But you can actually see his love for humanity in his art.

 

But even his work pales when compared with that of José Clemente Orozco.


Along with Rivera and Siqeiros, Orozco was one of the big three of the Mexican Muralism movement.  But, just as Siqueiros thought Mexico had sold out the Revolution by becoming too bourgeois, Orozco believed the revolution had completely lost its way with bloody revenge.


His Katharsis mural on the wall of the Palacio de Bellas Artes is a good example of that style.  You can feel the pain that the Revolution brought to Mexico. 

The figures in his mural are symbols, but there is no doubt they are also living people.  Where Diego Rivera’s composition looked staged, Orozco’s composition is less self-aware – and far more likely to pull the viewer into the piece.

 

But my favorite is Rufino Tamayo.  He combines cubism and impressionism in a mural style that causes the viewer to think.  There are no easy answers.  But he is incredibly accessible.


There are two of his murals at the Palacio de Bellas Artes.  I tried to capture one in its natural setting. 


They are best viewed from a distance.  But the lighting plays havoc with photographs.  But here it is.  One of my favorite pieces in the Mexican Muralism movement.

 

Those of us who live in Mexico have a tendency to take these murals for advantage.  They are everywhere.


But they are worth examining.  For their artistic value.  For their history.  For their politics.


And they are certainly a good starting point to discuss Mexico’s recent past.  I am certain we are about to do that.

looking in on frida

Mexico City has its share of art museums -- The Museum of Modern Art, the Tamayo Contemporary Art Museum.


And we saw none of them on our bus tour.


That does not mean it was an artless trip.  The city itself is a giant work of art -- with grand architecture dating from the colonial period through some very edgy new sky scrapers.


But that is not what most Canadians and Americans think of when we hear the term "Mexican art."  What we want to see are the names we know: Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo.


I am loth to commit cultural libel here.  But I suspect most people north of the Rio Bravo know Diego and Frida, not through extensive studies in comparative art, but in the way we know most things -- through popular culture.  In this case, Julie Taymor's Frida is most likely the primary resource.


The film is a visual tour de force.  That is how the puppeteer Taymor sees the world.  But anyone who confuses Salma Hayek with the dowdy Frida ignores the fact that Julie Taymor is a fantasy spinner.  Her Titus is a prime example.  Films that you can admire more than enjoy.


If you strip Frida of her recently-acquired feminist icon patina, she is still an enigma.  Did she start painting because there was art inside her that needed to get out?  Or was it to express her pain, her politics, her despair about everything in life?  Or did she just want to bait the artistic hook to catch herself a Diego carp?


We don't know.  She was far too good about disguising who she was.


What we do know is she left behind some drawings and paintings that can be viewed at what was one her home -- and is now the Museo Frida Kahlo.


I don't have any photographs of her work.  Interestingly, the work of the communist painter is now guarded by the forces of fascism.  At least, the license protectors.  If you want a Frida image, you buy it in the gift shop.

 

That is just as well. 


I find little of interest in her artwork.  Her technique is derivative of Henri Rousseau's primitivism.  And so self-conscious that you can imagine her muttering to herself in the corner. 


That may be because she had nothing to say that has not been said better elsewhere.


Life is two-dimensional.  Filled with disappointment.  Awash in pain.  Yawn.


I suspect if most people did not know the pieces were drafted by Frida, they could easily mistake if for the work of a seriously disturbed eighth grader.


Even though the art was disappointing, the house was not.


Located in the plummy neighborhood of Coyoacán, the house is intertwined with Frida's life.  She was born and grew up here.  Lived off and on with Diego.  Died.

Other than the bright blue color, it would be easy to think the house was rather small from the street.  But, like many Mexican homes, the façade is merely a mask.


Once you enter the gate, you are in a place that seems to be the antithesis of Frida's life.  This is a temple of hedonism.  Where all of the senses are teased into thrilling at life's pleasures.


The garden is concurrently tranquil and challenging.  Leafy.  With plenty of places to think and contemplate.  But, at every corner, there is some new sculpture -- even a mock Aztec pyramid -- to pull you into a world of wonder.


I love my garden on the laguna -- where I am typing this piece.  But I could easily wile away my life in Frida's garden.


And the house is equally grand.  Frida had the advantage of being born into a prosperous family in one of Mexico City's wealthier neighborhoods.  And the house reflects that class pride.


Open.  Rambling.  A place where a tortured soul could try to find some enjoyment in a world that continually served her one cold plate of rue after another.


Oddly, it is possible to feel her spirit more in the house and her garden than in her art.


The presence of Diego is that of a mere secondary player.  But he never allowed himself to be a true part of her life.  She was married to him (twice), but he was never married to her.


Let's talk about the rogue's work in the next post.

continued next week

I need theme music for my life.


While crossing the Pont au Change, I found myself humming "I Love Paris."  In Rio it was (yup), "The Girl from Ipanema."  I am not very original with life scoring.


On this trip around Mexico, it has been "Old Friends."


In Guanajuato, I reconnected with with my friend Vanya -- and I got to meet her father as a bonus.


When I started this blog in Salem, Vanya and her husband, Shawn, were living in Nevada at the time, and she became a regular commenter.  More than that, it turned out they had lived in the same beach house that would be my first home in Melaque.


By the time I got to Melaque, they were living in Barra de Navidad.  We spent a lot of good times together -- before they moved to Guanajuato.


Those times together were destined to make our reunion one of the high points on my first trip inland.


I had never met anyone in Pátzcuaro prior to going there.  But I did know someone.  Most of us do.  "Felipe Zapata."


His was one of the first blogs I started reading when I was making up my mind whether Mexico would be my retirement home.  Since then, we have established a regular patter on each other's blogs.  Especially now that I am on the move in Mexico.


When we met, we met as old buddies sharing an afternoon of coffee.  Having spent time in the blog trenches, we have a bit of shared existence.


I did not think I would have a similar experience in Mexico City.  After all, the only other blogger I knew there (Gary Denness) was in the process of trading in his tacos for shepherd's pie.


But the blog spirits were not content with that.  Just as I was getting ready to leave for Mexico City, I received an email from Kim G. of Boston.


You know him.  The fellow with the witty PS at the close of every comment.  Noel Coward in a banker's suit.


The email was a pleasant surprise.  Kim has been a wealth of advice and encouragement since I decided to move south.  I wish I could have put some of his advice into practice -- like selling my Salem house before I retired.


After a few false starts by trying to set up a meeting by texting, we met at my hotel.  I had boxed myself into a time corner by committing to join some of our tour members at a Cuban restaurant that night.  But we agreed we could at least meet for drinks -- Coke Light for me.


He suggested one of the hotel roof-top restaurants on the Zócalo.  It was a perfect choice.  While we sipped our drinks, we could look down on what looked like the type of movie set where the government was about to fall to libertarian freedom fighters.  (Some of us have odd dreams.)


This was another of those meetings where there were no tentative, nervous pauses.  We simply launched into conversation as is if we had been doing this type of thing for years.  Which, of course, we have.  On the blog.


We ranged over a wide field of topics.  Life in Mexico.  Investments.  Bloggers.  Personalities.  Restaurants.


I was really reluctant to leave for dinner -- where I may or may not have contracted my little stomach bug.  But I look forward to meeting with Kim again.  And with Vanya.  And "Felipe."


After all:


"Hey, old friend
How do we stay old friends
No one can say, old friends
How an old friendship survives
One day chums, having a laugh a minute
One day comes and they're a part of your lives"

dancing myself to sleep

In the two years I have lived here, I have seen more Mexican folk dances than you could shake a Veracruz boot at.


And, frankly, I am a bit tired of them.  Admittedly, most of the dancers I have seen are young and local.  But the Melaque festival in December offered up some more seasoned performers.  And they offered little more than I have seen before.


Watching white and red clad dancers do the equivalent of square dancing leaves me cold.  And I am at a point in my life I can honestly say I never do anything twice.


But I was repeatedly told by people I respect that I was wrong about folk dancing when it came to one group in Mexico City -- Ballet Folklorico de Mexico de Amalia Hernandez.  The group was supposed to be the best of the best.


So, I bit.  Or bought.  A ticket.


After all, it was going to my sole cultural outing in Mexico City, and I wanted to look forward to a great night on the town.  (I turned down an opportunity to see A Chorus Line -- in Spanish.  A Chorus Line is dated enough in English without trying to figure out how such a Manhattan-centric piece would work in Mexico City.  It didn't even travel well to England.)

 

The setting for the performance could not have been more impressive.  The Palacio de Bellas Artes (Palace of Fine Arts) -- a huge wedding cake of a building that was started by Porfirio Diaz and finished following the Revolution. 


As a result of the construction delay, the exterior is primarily art nouveau -- with jarring dashes of art deco.  Almost as if Cole Porter had been invited to accessorize a Verdi opera.


But the interior is as pure art deco as Radio City Music Hall -- its architectural cousin.  And, in one of those twists of history that makes me a believer that there are no coincidences, the mural that Diego Rivera was to have painted for the Rockefeller Center is now painted on the second floor gallery of the Palace of Fine Arts.  (It is not very good.  But more on that later.)

The stage in the auditorium is first rate art deco.  The theater is relatively small, but its proportions are just right for live performances.


With the location and the setting, I was prepared to be dazzled by the dance company.


The company is large.  And it presents a nice mix of solos, duets, and full cast numbers.


But nothing was unusual.  There were the usual colorful Aztec-type dances.  And dances from various regions (Guerreo, Jalisco, lots and lots and lots of Veracruz).  All of them performed with almost Swiss mechanical perfection.


But there was no soul.  And that was best typified by the dance celebrating the Revolution.  How can you go wrong with a chorus line of young women dancers -- all armed with carbines?  It was right out of Springtime for Hitler.

 

But the dance simply did not connect with the audience.  It felt as Latin as a Madame Mao Chinese opera.


I had hoped for a bit more.  Something that celebrated the strength of the individual.  Not one of those socialist hero pieces where the one is sublimated to the good of the many.


And then I got my wish.  I have seen the Sinaloa deer dance before.  It is usually performed by one or two dancers.  One is the deer.  The others the hunters.


In truth, it is all about the deer.  Its power.  And its terror at being hunted -- and killed.  It is the male equivalent of playing Odette.

 

This performance was outstanding.  The deer captured the audience when he burst on stage.  The piece is short.  But it was the only bit of art we were offered during the evening.


And it was worth sitting through the rest of the drivel to get to the four or five minutes that made the evening a success.


Could I recommend the performance to others?  Certainly.  As long as they have not tired of Mexican folk dances.


When I return to Mexico City, I will give it a pass -- myself.

nun but the brave

Other than the cathedral (and its Aztec annex), our tour did not visit any other churches in Mexico City.


That may be an accomplishment in itself.  You cannot swing a Canadian tourist in Mexico City without hitting another church.  Their bell towers and domes are ubiquitous.


During a bit of our free time, I decided to visit a little church that was just down the street from our hotel.


The church is not that small.  It simply seems that way because its façade is quite narrow --tucked in between the city’s modern workaday buildings.  I managed to walk past it three times without seeing it.


Iglesia de Nuestra Señora del Pilar (its official name, but popularly known as La Enseñanza from its heritage as a school for young women) is an architectural gem.  Both the façade and the interior are renowned as the pinnacle of Mexico’s Churrigueresque style.


If you are not familiar with the term, think of it as Hispanic Rococo – that hyperactive cousin of Baroque that never met a curlicue it did not like.  It is not my favorite, but the architect of this church knew his stuff.


The church's past represents a nice summary of Mexico’s checkered history with its church.  Completed in 1778, it served as a church until the government seized it as part of its Reform Movement in 1867 -- and turned it into a prison.  It then served as the home of several government agencies until it was refurbished and restored to worship in 1974.

 

I am not certain what was refurbished.  Certainly the altarpiece received some attention.  It is a true work of art.  Excessive art.  But art, nonetheless.  You could perform a good portion of The Sound of Music in front of it.


When I visited, there were a few worshipers in prayer.  That has been true of every church I have visited in Mexico.  Faith is not a Sundays-only affectation for many Mexicans.


But I saw something unusual in this church.  For a long period, priests and nuns were prohibited from wearing their clerical garb in public.  Those days are now gone.  But I have not seen very many habit-wearing nuns in Mexico.  Maybe because Mexico has the same nun shortage as the rest of the Roman church.

 

I was lucky that day.  Off the street came two nuns in updated habits.  They approached the altar and prayed briefly.  And then left.  For all I know, they are part of the order that now maintains the church.


There was something nice about seeing a church restored – and nuns going about the business to which they have dedicated their lives.


And the place is certainly far more pleasant than it would have been as a prison.