Vide Cor Meum
Thursday, October 29, 2009
Portraits in almost B&W
Vide Cor Meum
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
V
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
Sunday Walk
Sunday Walk (painting) by Leonora Carrington 1999.
Her importance, lies partly in that she - along with artists such as Leonor Fini and Remedios Varo - opened up a new, and more female, strand of surrealism: in Mexico, Leonora and Varo dabbled in alchemy and the occult, and the work of both was rooted for a time in the magical and domestic elements of women's lives. "One of the extraordinary aspects of Leonora's work is how she draws on so many different inspirations, from the Celtic legends she learned from her nanny, through the constraints of her upper-class upbringing, to the surrealism of Paris in the 1930s - and then to the magic of Mexico," "Her work is evocative of so many things, and it's enormously complex: she hasn't had a massive output because her technique is so meticulous and the work so detailed. She certainly wasn't a Picasso who could churn out several pictures a day; her work would take many months, even years."
Monday, October 26, 2009
Zoo Entrance
Sunday, October 25, 2009
Gratitude
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Friday, October 23, 2009
East / West
Have a great weekend!
Thursday, October 22, 2009
Local News / New Taxes: Internet ...
Enrique Galván Ochoa. La Jornada 21/10/2009.
En agradecimiento a sus votantes de todo el pais, el PRI y su aliado el PAN, les regala mas impuestos, IVA, impuesto sobre sus quincenas, internet y cable, etc. Asi que cada quince dias al recibir tu sueldo, al pagar en el super, al pagar gasolina y practicamente todo, acuerdate y agradece, al fin de cuentas seguiras votando por los mismos una y otra vez. Todo esto, ya lo sabemos, es resultado de la apatia, de tanto futbol y television. Asi que bravo, adelante y no cambies de canal, total unos pesos menos para tu familia. En algo somos buenos los mexicanos, somos los perfectos esclavos!
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
Tina Modotti
Assunta Adelaide Luigia Modotti was a beautiful woman, a minor star of the theater and silent film, and a political radical. She was born in Italy in 1896 and lived in San Francisco and Hollywood, then in Mexico City of the 1920s and in Berlin of the early 1930s.
For a brief seven years, Tina Modotti, as she is known, also was a fine-art photographer. She made still lifes appear as political symbols and flesh-and-blood women seem to be emblematic monuments.
But when she had to choose between art and devotion to the communist cause, she chose the cause. "I cannot solve the problem of life by losing myself in the problem of art" she wrote. First, though, she produced a visual legacy of beauty and strength.
Some have suggested that Modotti was introduced to photography as a young girl in Italy, where her uncle, Pietro Modotti, maintained a photography studio. Later in the U.S., her father briefly ran a similar studio in San Francisco. However, it was through her relationship with Edward Weston that Modotti rapidly developed as an important fine art photographer and documentarian. Mexican photographer Manuel Alvarez Bravo divided Modotti’s career as a photographer into two distinct categories: "Romantic" and "Revolutionary." The former period includes her time spent as Weston’s darkroom assistant, office manager and, finally, creative partner. Together they opened a portrait studio in Mexico City and were commissioned to travel around Mexico taking photographs for Anita Brenner’s book, "Idols Behind Altars."
In Mexico, Modotti found a community of cultural and political avant guardists. She became the photographer of choice for the blossoming Mexican mural movement, documenting the works of José Clemente Orozco and Diego Rivera. Her visual vocabulary matured during this period, such as her formal experiments with architectural interiors, flowers and urban landscapes, and especially in her many lyrical images of peasants and workers. Indeed, her one-woman retrospective exhibition at the National Library in December 1929 was advertised as "The First Revolutionary Photographic Exhibition In Mexico." She had reached a high point in her career as a photographer, but within the next year she was forced to set her camera aside in favor of more pressing concerns. [ Wiki ]
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
The Twist
Monday, October 19, 2009
The Liquid Clown
"A person needs a little madness, or else they never dare cut the rope and be free."
Nikos Kazantzakis
Sunday, October 18, 2009
Quietly / En Silencio
(" La felicidad es como una mariposa, cuando la persigues, siempre esta fuera de tu alcance, pero cuando te detienes en silencio, puede posarse sobre ti.") Nathaniel Hawthorne
Saturday, October 17, 2009
Clouds through Windows
Friday, October 16, 2009
JM
The Doors of Perception is a 1954 book by Aldous Huxley.
The title comes from William Blake's The Marriage of Heaven and Hell:
"If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite.
For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things through narrow chinks of his cavern."
Thursday, October 15, 2009
Monastery
Cuernavaca is the capital of the state of Morelos. The construction on its cathedral began in 1533 to serve as a shrine to the adjacent Franciscan convent. There is an open chapel with vaults with gothic ribs built between 1536 and 1538 next to the cathedral. It is still possible to see pieces of mural paintings from the sixteenth century in the cloister of the convent. The chapel of the Third Order whose facade was built in baroque style and which has a beautiful altarpiece made of carved wood is located in the atrium.
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Street Mural
Sign: Misc. La Esperanza [Miscellaneous The Hope] Miscellaneous, old stores or minimarkets not in use anymore, displaced by big chains of stores. The image of the Virgin of Guadalupe and the name Hope don't help against 'progress'.
Monday, October 12, 2009
Streets
From The Wisdom of the Heart by Henry Miller.
Sunday, October 11, 2009
Columpio Sonoro / Sonorous Swing
Columpio Sonoro / Sonorous Swing by Vicente Rojo (Sculptor) 2005.
Vicente Rojo Almazán es un pintor y escultor mexicano, aunque nacido en 1932 en Barcelona, España, ciudad en la que hizo sus primeros estudios de escultura y cerámica.
En España hace sus primeros estudios de dibujo, cerámica y escultura en 1946 en la Escuela Elemental del Trabajo.
Llega a México en 1949, reclamado por su padre, el cual residía aquí como refugiado político desde el fin de la Guerra Civil Española.
Vicente Rojo es sobrino del general Rojo, el más acreditado jefe de las tropas de la Segunda República Española que se opusieron al golpe de estado protagonizado por el general Franco.
Trabajó en el suplemento México en la Cultura de la oficina de ediciones del Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes; asimismo colabora con la Revista de la Universidad de México y la revista La cultura en México (1962-1974) de la Revista Siempre!.
Obtenida la nacionalidad mexicana, estudia pintura en la escuela de arte La Esmeralda y realiza durante estos más de cuarenta años una amplia obra en pintura, diseño gráfico y en fechas más recientes escultura.
Exponiendo en numerosas ocasiones en México y eln el extranjero a partir de 1958, en 1991 es galardonado con el Premio Nacional de Arte y el Premio México de Diseño, habiendo participado en el diseño gráfico de diversas publicaciones culturales como la Revista de Bellas Artes, la Revista de la Universidad, UNAM, Plural, México en el Arte y el periódico La Jornada, entre otros.
Cofundador en 1960 de la editorial Era, de la cual forma parte en el consejo editorial y como director de arte. Miembro de la llamada generación de la Ruptura, es una figura importante y destacada dentro de las artes estéticas de este país y su figura es altamente respetada por colegas y círculos intelectuales en general, siendo considerado uno de los artistas más importantes del abstraccionismo en México.
Friday, October 9, 2009
Arboreus
Ahh, Happy Weekend!
Thursday, October 8, 2009
The Crossing
Crossing the street.
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
Rural Scenes
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
Nectar
Monday, October 5, 2009
Shame
May 22, 2006 Issue Copyright © 2009 The American Conservative.
While the country’s poor flee, Mexico’s elite take care of themselves.
By George W. Grayson
Mexico City—A watchword of Mexican politics is “Show me a politician who is poor and I will show you a poor politician.” In accord with this adage, many Mexican officials enjoy generous salaries and lavish fringe benefits. Even as they live princely lifestyles, they and their fellow elites pay little in taxes and refuse to spend sufficient money on education and health care to create opportunities in Mexico—a country that abounds in oil, natural gas, gold, beaches, fish, water, historic treasures, museums, industrial centers, and hard-working people. Rather than mobilizing these bountiful resources to uplift the poor, Mexico’s privileged class noisily demands that Uncle Sam open his border wider for the nation’s “have nots.”
Mexico’s establishment also keeps quiet about the salaries and benefits that its members receive. Private-sector executives are especially secretive. Thanks to Forbes magazine, however, we know that Mexico leads Latin America with ten billionaires, including telecom mogul Carlos Slim Helú, the world’s third richest person with $30 billion. And an increasing amount of data is available on the earnings of public officials. The numbers show that Mexico’s governing class is enriching itself at the country’s expense, with exorbitant salaries and bountiful perks. Remember, these are “official” figures. Most politicians have ingenious ways of fattening their bank accounts.
The salaries of top Mexican government officials match or exceed those of comparable figures in Europe and much of the rest of the world. President Vicente Fox ($236,693), for example, makes more than the leaders of the U.K. ($211,434), France ($95,658), Canada ($75,582), and most other industrialized countries (POTUS earns $400,000).
The 500 members of Mexico’s notoriously irresponsible Chamber of Deputies, which is in session only a few months a year, each made $148,000 last year in salary and bonuses—roughly on a par with Italian and Canadian legislators and substantially more than their counterparts in Germany ($105,000), France ($78,000), and Spain ($32,311), where living costs are markedly higher. Other legislators in Latin America receive substantially less; for example, those in Bolivia earn $28,000 for a four-month session. Legislators in the Dominican Republic take home $68,500 for six months of service.
Even better work, if you can get it, is to be found in the judicial branch of the Mexican federal government. In 2005, the 11 justices on the National Supreme Court of Justice—equivalent to the U.S. Supreme Court—received $311,759, compared to $194,200 for their American counterparts. (The U.S. Chief Justice earns $202,900.)
State-level Mexican officials are amply rewarded as well. Salaries and bonuses place the average compensation of Mexican governors at $125,759, which exceeds by almost $10,000 the mean paychecks of U.S. state executives ($115,778). Narciso Agúndez Montaño runs Baja California Sur. Although his state has only 424,041 residents, he earns $277,777. This is $100,000 more than the salary of Arnold Schwarzenegger, who governs 36,132,147 Californians.
And so on…
Sunday, October 4, 2009
Señora Ciclista / Lady Cyclist
Señora Ciclista / Lady Cyclist. 2005.
From the exhibition on Paseo de la Reforma.
Friday, October 2, 2009
Shadows of Molango
Thursday, October 1, 2009
Theme Day: Contrast
Isla Mujeres [Women Island], Cancun. Mexico
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