Zapata Was Here

Zapata Was Here (Aqui Estuvo Zapata) is the name of a new cultural venue in downtown Cuernavaca, located in the former Moctezuma Hotel, the building stands out among its neighbors. It’s constructed entirely of un-plastered brick. Between 1911 and 1916 it was Emiliano Zapata’s headquarters, that is, whenever he was in control of Cuernavaca.

A photograph of Zapata taken in its courtyard in front of a brick wall at the base of a stairway holds the distinction of being the most frequently viewed photo of a Mexican.

Last Friday, on the anniversary of the Revolution, I climbed the stairway where Zapata posed. I was on my way to a talk by Sicilian photographer Ferdinando Scianna. His exhibit “Lux in Arcana: Ferdinando Scianna’s Baroque” opened this month (Nov. 14 to March 20) in Mexico City’s San Carlos National Museum.

The famous photo of Zapata was printed on the outside of my invitation but it seems to have been there to accompany the name of the hosting institution, not the topic of the lecture. Though generous in crediting other photographers’ work, Scianna made no reference to the portrait of Zapata.

I asked Scianna to elaborate on the difference between a painter’s portrait and a photographer’s portrait. Without mentioning Zapata’s portrait, I learned more about it than if he had projected it on the screen for analysis.

“Not many photographs of people are portraits. A portrait implies that the person being photographed is conscious of the photograph, knows about it, dialogs with the photographer and willingly poses. When people interact in this way they have an effect on one another.

“Let’s use Rembrandt as our example of a painter. Probably the most important portrait painter of all time, he also painted many self-portraits. When we see his portraits, even if we don’t know the subjects, we recognize them as his. Through his art Rembrandt gives us the presence of a person in his painting. He may have painted the portrait in the span of a month or a year — going back to the same image many times to end up with the final result — he brings that image out from within himself and offers it to us.

“A photographer, on the other hand, may spend a day, even a month, preparing a portrait of a person — telling him or her ‘angle your body this way or that’ or ‘turn your head a bit more.’ All this done before the moment the shutter is released. Regardless of the time invested preparing the photo it is still the product of an instant. In that moment the feeling — entelechy — has to be deposited in the image of that person.

“When photography works it is the miracle of an encounter which can be published and which a third-party can recognize when lining up the eye, mind, and heart. That’s complicated. Not all photographers are good portrait photographers. Nor are great photographers necessarily good portrait-takers. A good portrait photographer has to have passion for people — empathy. That could seem to say that one can only make good portraits of people one likes. However, making portraits of people the photographer detests also requires empathy. Some portraits can be manifestations of hate, others of love. Good photographic portraits tell us much about the person portrayed — just as they tell us about the photographer.”

The photograph of Zapata meets Scianna’s criteria of a great portrait. No wonder photography historian John Mraz says this photo has become a revolutionary icon. Mraz adds, “The image is of intriguing complexity and represents a startlingly graphic depiction of triumph. Zapata is dressed with the sash and sword that General Manuel Asúnsulo wore as a symbol of his status as the authority in Cuernavaca.” Asúnsulo headed the 1911 revolutionary assault on Cuernavaca but was killed shortly afterwards.

By wearing Asúnsulo’s sash and sword, Mraz explained, “Zapata was demonstrating the prerogative he’d acquired to determine who would govern the city and the state of Morelos. Wearing these emblems could also represent an attempt on Zapata’s part to legitimize his movement. He and his campesinos had been portrayed in the Mexico City press as cruel and ferocious savages. Zapata may have been attempting to counteract that mindset, presenting himself as a professional soldier, with the rank of general, and thus deserving of political recognition.

Seventeen years later, Diego Rivera would use this photo to paint Zapata in Cuernavaca’s Cortez Palace. The photo is in black and white but we assume the colors of the sash were the state colors of Morelos. Rivera uses the tri-color, thus promoting Zapata as the leader of the nation.

The portrait is attributed variously to the German Hugo Brehme or to U.S. photographer F. Wray. It is interesting that Zapata posed for a foreign photographer, perhaps because of his aversion to Mexico City’s press.

Zapata certainly made his statement in the portrait, but what was the photographer’s message with campesinos hunkered in the stairwell?

Marvelous Marjory

Some 30 years ago, I got called to do a deathbed translation of a will. The will was written in complicated Spanish. The man, who still needed to sign it, understood only English and French.

I translated the part I read into English. My co-translator, legendary Marjory Mattingly Urquidi, could have translated it into either.

It was a long, complicated, and many-paged will, suiting the drama in the home of the dying man. Marjory and I divided up the pages. I’d translate one page, she’d translate the next. I was relieved when she received a page listing the bottles of French wines. She pronounced everything perfectly. I’d have been lost.

That event has been a memory that has stuck with me. I’ve often wondered if Marjory’s memories would coincide with mine, even whether she would remember me.

Last week, Carol Hopkins and I enjoyed a long interview with this fascinating, beautiful, and articulate woman who has lived nearly a century (b. 1922) and been part of Mexico since coming here as a young 21 year old.

Marjory got her first taste for international adventure as a 16 year old when she traveled to France as part of Vermont’s famous Experiment in International Living.The French military mobilization forced her home, sailing to New York on the last passenger voyage of the S.S. Normandy “with only a rucksack, but with a taste for international living and culture that has lasted my lifetime.”

After studying French in college Marjory planned on doing graduate work in France but the war was still on. She met a young Mexican diplomat at a State Department sponsored meeting at West Virginia’s Greenbrier Hotel. He invited her to travel to Mexico. The relationship didn’t last but her life was never the same after that.

She was very good with languages. Spanish came easily and she was soon immersed in the Mexican National Archives working on her Columbia University master’s thesis, “Origins of the Mexican Labor Unions.”

“Mexico was a gorgeous, exciting, city when I arrived in 1943. Carlos Fuentes described it perfectly,‘Where the air is clear and transparent.’ Beautiful Porfiriato mansions lined Reforma. I lived in a basement apartment of one of them. Art was happening everywhere.”

Marjory met Víctor Urquidi (Víctor Luis Urquidi Bingham 1919-2004) while doing research in September, 1945. They were married in November. Marjory described Víctor as “brilliant, of high integrity and ambitious; though never for himself, only for Mexico. He was already a well-known economist and a bright star in Mexico’s constellation; these were exciting times in Mexico.”

Victor worked for the National Treasury. “I drove him to work at the National Palace each morning and picked him up in the afternoon. We lived in San Angel and the drive took only 20 minutes. Imagine!” At that time Diego Rivera was working on the murals at the National Palace. Marjory described walking past his scaffoldings with her son Joaquin in tow. “He’d look down and greet me with, ‘Que niño tan bonito.’ Rivera was not attractive but had the charm of a man who knew he was something very special.”

Marjory translated books throughout her professional life. Most are in the field of economics. For skilled translators like Marjory it’s not enough to translate the information into another language, they transform a book into a readable account that flows as if it was originally written in the second language without deviating from the content of the original.

Perhaps her most impacting translation followed being called to Mexico’s presidential residence, Los Pinos, on Aug. 31, 1982. Marjory and three other translators were sequestered in a locked office suite without telephone contact to the outside but with plenty of food and coffee. They were not allowed to leave until their assignment was completed.

It was a literal, word-for-word translation into English of President López Portillo’s 65-page, single- spaced, state-of-the-nation speech to be delivered the following morning. On page 57 he announced the nationalization of the banks and the imposition of currency exchange controls. The translators were released at 5 a.m., but it was not a banking day and there was no way Marjory could use the information she’d acquired to protect even her own finances. Later that morning the president read his speech to a full session of Congress.

Some of Ms. Urquidi’s favorite memories are of traveling alone throughout the world. Her memories of Afghanistan, Iran, India, and Pakistan pre-date today’s conflicts.“I saw amazing sights … sadly some no longer exist.”

We were struck by Marjory Urquidi’s lack of affect. Though she’d been in the heart of Mexico’s power elite she remained in touch with her roots and continues to live a simple life. She’s outlived most of her old friends but continues to make new ones.

Marjory’s recall of events of the past seven decades seemed so amazing that I confess to fact-checking some of them. I needn’t have bothered. Unfortunately the one thing she seems to have forgotten is meeting me. She remembered the signing of the will, the translation, many other details; my presence wasn’t one of them. Oh well. I guess I didn’t exude Rivera’s charm.

Reflecting on Porfirio Díaz

Thursday is the 100th anniversary of the death of President Porfirio Díaz, who ruled Mexico for thirty years between 1876 and 1911. With only one exception, he was re-elected every four years during that time. However, he is not a president you see honored by many statues or street names.

For most of the 20th century Díaz was called a dictator or tyrant. He has been described as heavy-handed, iron-fisted or sometimes both. His long rule is the reason for Mexico’s fierce constitutional ban on re-election to public office. For this Díaz did get streets named for him. Nearly every town in Mexico has a street named “No Reelección.”

Faced with the armed insurgency of the Mexican Revolution of 1910, Díaz presented his resignation to the Chamber of Deputies on May 25, 1911. In a four-paragraph, single-page typed letter, he even used the word “revolution” as the reason for his resignation.

Though there is little public adulation of Díaz, there is recognition of him in strange places.

General Porfirio Díaz is one of the officers listed as being taken prisoner by the French on an oval-shaped monument in Puebla’s Zócalo. The monument honors the “exemplary surrender of the Army of the East under the command of General Jesús Ortega,” to French General Élie Frédéric Forey on May 17, 1863. Díaz somehow escaped from the French army and continued fighting against the French Intervention under President Benito Juárez.

Though the Mexicans did not defeat the French, Díaz emerged a military war hero. He remained loyal to President Juárez through Maximilian’s reign but had developed presidential ambitions of his own.

In an 1876 coup, soon after death of Juárez, Díaz assumed the presidency and was president for 30 of the next 34 years the period known as the Porfiriato.

Despite having made his military fame fighting the French during Maximilian’s short-lived Mexican Empire, Díaz was a great admirer of everything French. Think Porfiriato when you see the French- style buildings in downtown Mexico City. 

Their steep metal roofing was a 19th century European design to assure snow would slide off easily — hardly necessary in tropical Mexico.

In fact, the most spectacular and beautiful buildings in Mexico City’s Centro Histórico were either built or started during the Porfiriato. The domed Monument to the Revolution was really meant to be the dome over the center of the legislative palace the opus magnus Díaz was constructing.

Porfirio Díaz is one of the most easily recognizable figures in Mexico’s 20th-century murals. I have no doubt Díaz would have been delighted with his portraits as immortalized by Diego Rivera and David Alfaro Siqueiros. Both were members of the post-revolutionary mural art movement. They intentionally ridiculed Díaz’ vanity; the satire would have been lost on him.

Rivera portrayed Díaz prominently in the murals in the National Palace’s central staircase his chest covered with medals and wearing a white-plumed hat just as Díaz portrayed himself in his official presidential portrait.

Siqueiros’ mural in Chapultepec Castle would certainly have filled President Díaz with pride sitting in the presidential chair seemingly oblivious to the swooning crowd of top-hatted members of high society pressing in around him while swirling women dance in front of him.

The railroads became the signature trademark of the Porfiriato. Twenty thousand kilometers of track were laid during his tenure. Telegraph lines, paralleling the tracks, served as the long arm of the Díaz administration’s control over the rest of the country.

Reliable, scheduled long-distance transportation became the norm during the Porfiriato. The president himself traveled the length of the country in the presidential railroad coach. He personally inaugurated public works projects of French design, many of them railroad related. Any city on a railroad line has buildings dating back to the Porfiriato ― if only the train station.

Though there was very good material progress during his tenure, pressure built up in society. Díaz’s long term in office meant little turnover at all levels of government and left little opportunity for young lawyers to advance in government positions. A closed dictatorial system left middle-class professionals and business owners increasingly marginalized and in search of alternative forms of government.

Rapid capitalist transformation of the rural countryside meant increasing the size of the haciendas and mass dispossession of land, water and traditional rights of Mexico’s rural villages.

The ensuing Revolution was one of the first wars in which trains served as troop transports. In fact

a steam locomotive and a coal car are an outdoor display at the Museum of the Revolution.

And, it was aboard a train that Díaz would set off on his exile to Paris. Díaz rode the train from Mexico City to Veracruz where, after having coffee at one of my favorite restaurants, La Parroquia, he departed aboard the Ypiranga into exile to France. He died at 85 years of age on July 2, 1915, and is buried in Paris’ elegant Mountparnasse. General Gustave León Niox, who Díaz had fought against in Mexico, walked in Díaz’s funeral procession.

Writing an icon

This week a wonderful cultural blend is happening in Cuernavaca. A group from Southern California is joining with Episcopalians in Cuernavaca to learn the Russian tradition of icon painting while visiting places with Mexican iconic art.

They are not actually coming here to learn to paint icons, they are coming to learn to write icons. Workshop participant Mike Roeder, an icon collector and scholar himself, explained “the verb ‘to write’ an icon has been adopted by English speakers partly because icons in the Orthodox or Russian tradition depict various aspects of the life of Christ who is also known as The Word. Iconographers are expressing ‘the word’ in their work and thus iconography is a cross between painting and writing.

The Russian language has many words for paint but Russians use the verb to write to mean ‘to paint meaningfully.’   Russians would say that icons are theology expressed in line and color.  Icon, in the original Christian sense, meant a visible image of the invisible – God.”  Creating an icon is a spiritual discipline as well as an artistic effort.

Early Christian icons dating to within 100 years of the life of Jesus have been found in Egypt and Crete.  As Christianity spread iconography also spread east and west, growing particularly strong in the Byzantine Empire. Icons are written to tell a story in an unfolding of dark to light… ignorance to truth.

The workshop is taught by U.S. iconographer Teresa Harrison. Teresa has been painting icons for over 20 years and has a large commission installed in St. Dunstan's Episcopal Church in Houston, Texas. She learned from Philip Zimmerman, a Pennsylvania icon writer in the Eastern Orthodox tradition, and from master iconographer Ksenia Pokrovsky, a self-taught Russian iconographer who was instrumental in reviving icon painting after repression during the Soviet era.

I’m delighted to take the group to places to see both ancient Mesoamerican and modern Mexican iconic depictions. I’m especially delighted to hear from workshop organizer Carol Hopkins, my collaborator on Charlie’s Digs, that people were turned away because the workshop was filled—a welcomed change from a couple of years ago when it was harder to attract people to travel to Mexico. I think this bodes well for the resurgence of tourism in Mexico.

Mexico is appropriately rich with icons. In Cuernavaca’s Cortez Palace participants will see and follow Diego Rivera’s iconic story of Mexico from the conquest to the Revolution.  At Xochicalco’s Pyramid of the Feathered Serpent the story will unfold depicting Quetzalcoatl as patron god of a meeting of astronomer-priests gathered to adjust the Mesoamerican calendar.

Mexico’s famed Anthropology Museum also tells a story. I particularly like the way one can wend from room to room following Quetzalcoatl. He’s first portrayed as The Feathered Serpent, then transforms from god to person and then to god-person.  Cuernavaca’s Cathedral, which is housed in a 16th century Franciscan church and monastery, reveals the story leading to the martyrdom of Mexico’s first native-born saint -- San Felipe de Jesus.

The workshop, held at the La Mancha B&B in Cuernavaca, begins each morning with prayer and celebration of the Eucharist. Then following breakfast the group will discuss various facets of icon writing, the history of icons, and the spiritual implications of icon writing.  Participants will “write” their icons mostly in silence or accompanied by Gregorian chanting.

Participants from the U.S. are residents of Southern California.   Those from Mexico are members of St. Michael’s Episcopal Church in Cuernavaca.  The workshop is also coordinated by The Reverend Tamara Newell, formerly of Christ Church, Mexico City and retired from St. Michaels. Reverend Newell was the first female Episcopalian priest ordained in Latin America.

At the workshop several different icons are being written.  In honor of Mexico’s beloved Guadalupe some have elected to create icons of Our Lady.  Mike Roeder is working on John the Baptist.  Others are focusing on St. Francis, and several who have walked the Camino de Santiago Compostela are writing St. James. Others are reproducing the beautiful, mysterious 6th century icon of The Sinai Christ, housed at St. Catherine’s in Egypt at the base of Mt. Sinai.

Ms. Harrison says “Iconography has spread the Christian faith for centuries; it’s fascinating to be in a culture where a different form of iconography has been used to maintain a cultural history of its people.  I’m grateful for the opportunity to come to Mexico with dear friends and share the experience with residents of Mexico.”

In further conversation with Ms. Harrison I discovered that our paths had previously crossed in of all places Barranquilla, Colombia where we attended the Karl C. Parrish Elementary School at the same time.  My only incursion into oil painting was in Mrs. Rozzano’s fourth grade class.  My painting from that class hangs to this day in my study.  Can Teresa’s love for art be traced back to Mrs. Rozzano?

You are invited to meet the workshop’s iconographers at St. Michael’s and All Angels Church in Cuernavaca, at 10 a.m. Sunday, January 12 when their icons will be presented and blessed.

A taste of Paris in Mexico

A new metro station opened in Mexico City last Saturday. It will be a station that even those leery of riding the subway will want to visit. It’s this year’s Days of the Dead altar at the Dolores Olmedo Museum in southern Mexico City, presented hand-in-hand with masterpieces of art on loan from the Musée de l’Orangerie in Paris.

This exhibit came about because relations between France and Mexico have been mended by the current administrations in both countries. In exchange for lending Mexico the paintings from France’s national collection, 75 paintings and drawings by Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera are on exhibit in the Musée de l’Orangerie.

This convergence will be capped by French President Hollande’s visit in early 2014 — the 50th anniversary of the visit by General Charles de Gaulle.

“Masterpieces of the Musée de l’Orangerie” is made up of 30 paintings by 11 impressionist and modernist painters. They will be on exhibit until Jan. 19, 2014. The exhibit features paintings by Paul Cézanne, André Derain, Paul Gauguin, Henri Matisse, Amedeo Modigliani, Claude Monet, Pablo Picasso, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Henri Rousseau, Chaim Soutine, and Maurice Utrillo.

In recent years Days of the Dead altars at the Olmedo Museum have been dedicated to the art and crafts of different states in Mexico. This year’s extravaganza goes a step further. As a visitor you’ll enter the altar through Paris’ Montmartre metro station. After a few twists and turns you’ll emerge into Paris of the early 20th century, populated by life-sized skeletons going about their daily activities.

Pay close attention to the scenery. You’ll see it again in the paintings in the exhibit or you’ll recognize it as taken from paintings by the French masters. Maurice Utrillo, in skeleton form, is painting “Notre Dame.” The finished painting is the last one in the exhibit. You’ll also see the paintings he would sell to fruit and vegetable vendors along the Seine. Look for Chaim Soutine painting in the butcher shop — one of his favorite topics. One such painting is in the exhibit.

Don’t miss La Calaca Catrina — an elegantly dressed female skeleton. It is an emblematic figure in Mexico’s Days of the Dead made popular by Mexican cartoonist and satirist José Guadalupe Posada. Diego Rivera came to know her by purchasing copies of Posada’s broadsheets on his way to class at the San Carlos Academy in Mexico City. Later Rivera incorporated her into in his mural “Dream of Sunday afternoon in Alameda Park.” In it, Rivera as a boy holds her hand while Posada stands the other side of her. In the Parisian scene you’ll see La Calaca Catrina on a street corner accompanied by Posada, now also a skeleton.

Exiting from the “metro station” you’ll be in the Olmedo Museum’s extensive gardens. You’ll see peacocks on each side of the path and dogs of metallic color, the descendants of xolitzcuintle dogs, that stand so still it is hard to distinguish them from the sculptural portrayals of dogs in their pen.

“Masterpieces of the Musée de l’Orangerie” is in the museum’s main building. It begins with Claude Monet’s “Argenteuil” and ends with Maurice Utrillo’s “Notre Dame.” The five galleries between those two are filled with paintings on loan. Museum director Carlos Phillips said “there hasn’t been a foreign art exhibit in Mexico with as many paintings of this quality in the last 50 years.”

Stepping through the doorway beyond the last painting will put you in a 1900s Parisian café. Choose a table and sit down. One of the servers will bring you a menu. But instead of food on the menu there are names of artists and art supplies to choose from. The museum invites you to create whimsical scenes based on the work of the artists you’ll have just seen — and save them in photos. Hats of the time period are available on a hat rack.

Niches in the wall are large enough for two or three people to stand in and are framed as if they are paintings hung on the wall. In them you’ll find masks, dresses, and tuxedos.

The entire experience is a delight. Where else could you enjoy the whimsy of creating your own art a few steps from a staid art gallery, combined with Mexicans’ ability to laugh at death, all set amid lovely gardens?

The only thing that brought a bigger smile to my face during my visit to the museum last Thursday was hearing Marie-Paule Vial, director of the Musée de l’Orangerie, talk about the Mexican collection on display in her museum.

She said: “All over Paris people are talking about Diego, talking about Frida. The surprise for the French public isn’t in discovering Frida. She’s already well known through film and exhibits in Europe. But through the exhibit at Musée de l’Orangerie we’ve been able to show Diego’s work on canvas.”

Hard for many in Mexico to accept. For years I’ve been hearing that “Frida is known because of her husband.” Fitting of the French though — didn’t they refer to JFK as “Jackie’s husband?”

Rivera at the Cortés Palace

Eighty-four years ago today artist Diego Rivera was polishing both a speech and a pistol.  He was making sure everything was ready for the Communist party meeting two days later where he would expel a prominent party member.  It was all part of the theatrics that Rivera loved.

Writer Hayden Herrera describes the events at that Thursday, October 3rd meeting -- yes, 1929’s calendar was the same as this year’s.  “Diego arrived, sat down, and took out a large pistol, and put it on the table.  He then put a handkerchief over the pistol and said: ‘I Diego Rivera, secretary general of the Mexican Communist party, accuse the painter Diego Rivera of collaborating with the petit-bourgeois government of Mexico and of having accepted a commission to paint the stairway of the National Palace of Mexico.  This contradicts the politics of the Comintern and therefore the painter Diego Rivera should be expelled from the Communist party by the secretary general of the Communist party, Diego Rivera.’”  Having proclaimed himself expelled he stood up, removed the handkerchief, picked up the pistol and . . . smashed it!  It was made of clay.

Recalcitrant Diego Rivera went even further.  In December of that same year he accepted the commission to paint the walls of the Cortez Palace terrace with the history of Cuernavaca from the conquest to the Revolution of 1910.  It was a gift of Dwight Morrow and his wife Elizabeth to the city they enjoyed so much while he was U.S. ambassador to Mexico.   Planning to be away for most of the following year the Morrows even lent the Riveras their weekend home in Cuernavaca.

In the National Palace in Mexico City Rivera painted the leaders of the Mexican Independence movement in a crowd. But the Cortez Palace in Cuernavaca was the headquarters of all three branches of the government of the state of Morelos. There was no way around it--he had to paint a prominent portrait of independence fighter José María Morelos.

There are statues of José María Morelos all over Mexico.  He is easy to identify, Morelos always wore a bandana tied over his head.  He had bandanas for every occasion – silk bandanas, embroidered bandanas, simple cloth bandanas.  Like ten percent of the population at the time, Morelos was Afro-Mexican.  It seems he wore the bandana to cover his Afro-textured hair.

Most artists are reluctant to depict Morelos accurately. We come across his portrait every day on the fifty-peso bill, but we’d be hard-pressed to think the person portrayed on that bill had any African ancestry.

When it came to painting Morelos into his mural, Rivera resorted to more theatrics.  Before applying color to the portrait of Morelos he invited the governor, his cabinet, and the press to view the mural and listen to the artist himself describe the scenes.

On the scheduled day Diego described the portion of the mural he had painted so far and what the rest, which was only outlined, would contain.  Then, pointing to a pillar in the center of the long wall, he said, “I’ve reserved this important spot for a portrait of José María Morelos, a man of universal stature!”  Rivera’s well-rehearsed friends started to applaud. The governor joined in.  Before the applause died down Rivera bellowed “His face could be anyone’s!”  His friends cheered and stood up.  The governor did too.  Rivera wrapped up his talk and sent his audience home.  He had gotten what he wanted from them.  If Morelos’ face could be anyone’s, why not have it be that of the artist himself?  And if a self-portrait of the artist, then it should be the artist’s skin color.  It was only Morelos’s hands that were accurately painted.

The rest of the year-long project transpired smoothly until close to the end.  While Diego painted his wife Frida Kahlo was a daily visitor.  She was always generous with praise of content and historical accuracy.  That was except in the very last scene he painted.  In it Emiliano Zapata dressed in white peasant’s clothing holds his white horse by the bridle.  Frida reportedly shrieked when she saw it.  “Diego, what are you doing?  Zapata had a black horse.  His horse was legendary.  There are songs and poems about Zapata and his black horse.” 

Rivera replied: “I like white better than black and, besides, a white horse will go better with his white pants and white shirt.” 

It became a heated argument that also involved the horse’s heavy legs. Diego came down from the scaffolding, tossed his palette down the hallway, and as he kicked over the scaffolding shouted, “Frida, you paint the horse!  But it must be white.”

The horse remained white, but Frida drew the horse’s legs the way she thought they should be.  Diego would later tell his friends, “I had to correct that white horse of Zapata’s according to Frida’s wishes.’”  Good that he did because it has become the best-known scene in the Cortez Palace series of murals. 

'Modern Impulses' at the Olmedo Museum

We are the beneficiaries of the turnaround in strained relations between Mexico and France. The Dolores Olmedo Museum has loaned its whole collection of Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo paintings to the Musée d'Orsay in Paris.  Taking their place is "Impulsos Modernos, Pintura en Mexico 1840-1950" (Modern Impulses, Painting in Mexico 1840-1950) -- an exhibit designed to be loaned to France in 2011 in exchange for impressionist paintings. Plans for both exhibits came to a screeching halt when President Sarkozy cancelled France’s planned “Mexico Year.”  With the recent changes in administration in both countries, cultural exchanges have resumed.

Curator Miguel Cervantes Diaz Lombardo inaugurated the new exhibit last Saturday. He explained that "Impulsos Modernos" spans a little over a century (1840-1950) of Mexican art .  It focuses on 65 pieces of portable easel art by 43 artists.

Curator Cervantes told us “The Revolution brought Mexico a new identity charged with nationalism -- a new conception of what Mexico had been, and was. Jose Vasconcelos, [1920s Secretary of Public Education] was extraordinarily important in developing Mexico's renowned post revolutionary mural art movement dominated by Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco, and David Alfaro Siqueiros.  Less appreciated, a modernist easel art movement paralleled the mural art movement."

As if the wonderful "Impulsos Modernos" exhibit weren’t enough, it gives us a fresh reason to return to the remarkable museum housed in Dolores Olmedo’s Xochimilco residence, the gorgeous Hacienda La Noria.  Olmeda’s will left La Noria and its contents to the people of Mexico.

Since opening in 1992, the Olmedo Museum has been home to an impressive collection of Mexican 20th century art -- including 145 pieces by Diego Rivera (1886-1957) and 25 by Frida Kahlo (1907-54).

At age 11, Dolores Olmedo (1908-2002) accompanied her schoolteacher mother to the Secretariat of Public Education (SEP) building, encountering Diego Rivera working on murals there.  Upon introduction, Diego requested permission to paint the young girl, and her mother agreed.  In an undated interview published after her death Olmedo, known to her friends as Lola, acknowledged to Elena Poniatowska a secret she’d kept for decades.  The model for the nude in the mural on the staircase of the SEP building was a very young Lola!

Olmedo had a lifelong friendship with Rivera culminating in him leaving Olmedo head of a trust that contained many of his and Frida’s most valuable works as well as control of Casa Azul, Frida’s birthplace and home.

Lola was an amazingly successful businesswoman.  She transformed the purchase of an old brick factory into a megamillion dollar construction industry. She transformed herself into one of the most powerful and influential people in Mexico.  A product of post-revolutionary Mexico City, she was a friend to several presidents and spent her life at the heart of the 20th century Mexican art renaissance.  Most artists featured in the exhibit were contemporaries of and indeed acquaintances of Doña Lola. 

Mexican artists adapted the European art trends of surrealism, cubism, impressionism, realism, naturalism, modernism, while giving them a Mexican flavor.  "Impulsos Modernos" takes us through these trends in chronological order.

It is an empty exercise to think of many of the post-revolutionary artists without thinking of their political affiliation. The Syndicate of Artists and Engravers formed during the Mexican Revolution stated that to be truly revolutionary, art must include a social statement in addition to being something of beauty -- a statement usually reflecting the member artists' Mexican Communist Party affiliation.  Easel art had much less obvious social statements than murals -- sometimes none at all, or just a subtle inclusion of a red star as Jesus Guerrero Galván (1910-73) did frequently. 

Rufino Tamayo (1899-1991) and Gerardo Murillo (1875-1964), better known as Dr. Atl, were notable exceptions.  Tamayo was quoted saying "art only needs to be something of beauty," but in his last years frequently said he had been a socialist all his life. 

Dr. Atl embraced the other end of the political spectrum -- fascism.  Shunned for years by other artists, he has made a strong comeback based solely on the quality of his work -- especially his aerial views of his favorite subject, volcanoes.  In order to work quickly in cramped helicopters or single engine planes, Dr. Atl developed Atl Colors that give his paintings in "Impulsos Modernos" a  sweeping fresh texture quite unlike the other artists work on display around them.

The last room in the exhibit features surrealism and includes paintings by an adopted Mexican, Leonora Carrington. Curator Cervantes chose to end the period with surrealism, stating “surrealism led directly to abstract art.”  The advent of abstract art seems to be the end of the nationalist period of Mexican art. 

I hope word of this exhibit -- open through August 25 -- leads you to the Dolores Olmedo Museum. The Olmedo Museum reflects Lola’s passionate love of Mexico and the arts.  Her impressive pre-Hispanic collection, beautiful gardens and menagerie of living animals create a vibrant museum.  You won’t be disappointed with your visit.

The legacy of Rufino Tamayo

As he finished his five hour interview with Angelica Arenal, widow of artist David Alfaro Siqueiros, the editor of Excelsior newspaper asked:  All my readers will want to know:  whose fault was it that you are in this hospital bed?"  If she hadn't had weights hanging from all her extremities I'm sure she would have patted him on the arm when she answered, "Young man, it was nobody's fault but my own.  What else could I have expected of the most nefarious street corner in Cuernavaca?  The corner of Diaz Ordaz and Rufino Tamayo?"

Angelica's husband, David Afaro Siqueiros (1896-1974), liked to say "I won".  He lived longer than the other big name Mexican artists of the 20th century.  Jose Clemente Orozco died in 1949, Diego Rivera 1957.  Siqueiros even outlived members of the younger generation of artists such as Frida Kahlo (1954) and Jesús Guerrero Galvan (1973).

But the real winner was Rufino Tamayo (1899-1991).  Tamayo wasn’t on Siqueiros' list.  He didn't adhere to a basic idea proposed by the Sindicate of Artists and Engravers formed during the Mexican Revolution: truly revolutionary art should not only be something of beauty, it should contain a social message as well.  The clearer the message, the better the art.  For Tamayo art only needed to be something of beauty.  Many members of the post-revolutionary art movement considered him a lacky sold-out to the government.  In the meantime, Tamayo's paintings, usually not available in Mexico, were purchased in Paris or New York for twenty-five thousand dollars or more.  That’s not to say that Tamayo didn’t make waves with his art.

I remember a particularly well-planned set-up Tamayo crafted.  At a cocktail party in 1988 in Cuernavaca, Tamayo approached Governor Lauro Ortega with "I see you're building a new Palace of Justice."  With that prompt, Ortega launched into his spiel about how the State of Morelos should own its buildings, not pay rent. 

Tamayo offered the governor a portrait of Father Morelos to hang in the new building. Absolutely free.  Governor Ortega accepted right then and there. 

In the privacy of his studio, Tamayo painted.  As the date approached for the inaugural ceremony he put off the portrait's delivery date and only gave the architects the dimensions of the framed canvas.  "Put up the curtain to cover the painting and drive the nail into the wall.  I'll have it ready in time."  Tamayo personally delivered the painting wrapped in a sheet, slipping it behind the curtain minutes before the distinguished guest, President de la Madrid's arrival.   With fanfare the President pulled the drawstring.  The curtains parted.  And there was the portrait of a black man wearing a clerical collar and a bandana over his head!  Caught off-guard, the President said, "it's missing the plaque with the names of the painting and the artist."  It was a reporter who shouted, "What have you done to our hero?"  To which Tamayo replied in a voice loud enough to be heard by everyone present, "It would be an act of racism to not be proud of him as he was." With that he turned his back on the assemblage and departed.  Touché, Siqueiros.  

As Mexico's best known artist, Tamayo traveled the world in his nineties in the nineties, with awards lavished on him wherever he went.  In many interviews he repeated, "I've been a socialist all my life.  I just didn't think my political views should be part of my art."  Indeed Mexico City's furthest-to-the-left daily newspaper owes him a debt of gratitude for lithographs and paintings he donated for fundraising to get the newspaper started.

In the 1970's, Rufino and his wife Olga offered their large collection of other artists' contemporary art to the Mexican people if an appropriate building were built for it.  The nation donated land in Mexico City's Chapultepec Park and an award-winning museum was built.  Though named Tamayo Museum, it hasn't been a place to see much of Tamayo’s work, just as Oaxaca's Tamayo Museum does not house his work either -- it features his and Olga's collection of prehispanic art.  

Now, however, for a short time we can enjoy a very special treat.  Mexico City's recently remodeled Tamayo Museum is hosting two "chapters" of Tamayo's paintings.  The first, "Tamayo/Trajectories," will run until November.  Forty-seven paintings, mostly from private collections both domestic and foreign, many exhibited for the first time, are arranged by topics:  still-lifes, female nudes, male nudes, portraits, landscapes, and scenes from Mexicans' daily lives.  There is even a watermelon section.  Tamayo was a great painter of watermelons, his slices are usually positioned on a tabletop.  Other Mexican artists enjoy arranging watermelon slices as a star -- a red star with the colors of the flag.   

There is a magic to Tamayo's landscapes and cityscapes.  In his unusual style, which lacks clearly outlined figures, Tamayo suggests a setting which we as viewers complete in our own mind and, in doing so, we realize it is a scene only seen in Mexico.    

Don't miss it.  When Chapter 2 opens, Chapter 1's paintings will have already been returned to their homes.  Texts and informational material is in both Spanish and English.

A one-stop mural shop

The areas around the National Autonomous University of Mexico’s (UNAM) Rectoría (administration building) offers a unique view, where one can see monumental art by different artists, all of it created in the same time period: 1952.

Five years ago this grand array of art and architecture was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site as "an outstanding example of the application of the principles of 20th Century modernism merged with features stemming from pre-Hispanic Mexican tradition . . . . one of the most significant icons of modern urbanism and architecture in Latin America".

Approaching the Rectoría from the south on Insurgentes Avenue, David Alfaro Siqueiros' tile mosaic is the first of the artistic statements to come into view.  Be it on canvas or murals, Siqueiros liked texture in his art.  On the south side of the Rectoría he took a bold step towards his goal of producing three-dimensional mural art by including curved surfaces of faces, arms, hands, and pencils emerging from the wall.

Three-dimensional mural art sounds like a contradiction in terms, but Siqueiros achieved it a decade later in the Siqueiros Polyforum, when he incorporated metal sculpture into his mural art.

An untiled smaller Siqueiros mural on the north side of the Rectoría is less attractive, but has a clearer message.  The hand, fingers, and pencil point to a list of dates:  1520, 1810, 1857, 1910, 19??, referring to the conquest of Mexico, proclamation of independence, laws of reform and new constitution, revolution, and the next social upheaval.  Back in 1952 who ever thought we would live to see the year 2000?  The open-ended date has been restored many times after students painted in the date of the next upheaval. 

Just north of the Rectoría is the library building designed and decorated by architect and muralist Juan O'Gorman.  As it was a library building, O'Gorman put in very few windows.  Except for vents in the stairwells and translucent onyx in the lower-floor reading rooms, the entire building is covered on the outside with natural stone mosaic.

The west and south sides of O’Gorman’s library are visible from the Rectoría.  The west portrays the university shield and university life.  At first glance, the shield appears to be framed by a double-headed eagle; however, it is two different majestic birds. The Aztec eagle of the Mexican shield and the South American condor are on either side of a map of Latin America--the western hemisphere sans Canada and the United States.  The letters BN and HN in the top corners are abbreviations of the collections housed in the building:  Biblioteca Nacional (national book library) and Hemeroteca Nacional (national periodicals library). 

On the south side of the library building O'Gorman gives us views of European life.  In two large circles he presents the European views of the universe.  Ptolemy's theory positions the earth in the center of the universe, contrasting with Copernicus' revolutionary theory where the earth is one of many planets in the solar system, all part of a much larger universe.  

The opposite side of the library building portrays the Aztec view, with the island of Mexico-Tenochtitlan as the center of the universe, connected by canals to the rest of its known world. 

Each side of the library building is a perfect rectangle.  A cardboard box could have been the maquette for its design.  It has become the emblematic building on the university campus, photographed in every Spanish language textbook you've ever had.  

When proud Siqueiros -- upset over being eclipsed by young upstart Juan O'Gorman – was asked what he thought of the library building, he replied "Juanito has given us a "gringa vestida de China Poblana,"”  He implied it could have been a building taken from Manhattan and just dressed up Mexican -- as the China Poblana.  (The China Poblana wasn't Chinese at all, but likely a captive slave brought from India as a child, who, because of her intellect and beauty, became a sensation in Puebla during the viceroyalty period.)

Across Insurgentes Avenue lies the university stadium.  Its stone mosaic is Diego Rivera's rendition of the university shield flanked by athletes.  Under it all is Quetzalcoatl, the feathered serpent.  The stadium was refurbished for the 1968 Olympic games and a dish for the Olympic flame was added above Rivera's mosaic.  The shallow chromed dish always makes me think of another artist; James Metcalf.  

Born in New York, Metcalf died earlier this year in Santa Clara del Cobre, Michoacan.  As a sculptor and metallurgist his search of ancient techniques led him from Paris to Mexico where he found them in Santa Clara.  Craftsmen there were using a pre-hispanic design of bellows and technique for shaping copper ingots heated in charcoal fires to produce the copper kettles used throughout Mexico known as "cazos de Don Vasco".  

Shortly after the conquest Vasco de Quiroga allowed copper production to continue in Santa Clara, but insisted it be to produce a Spanish designed kettle.  By applying ancient techniques to produce modern design, Metcalf put Santa Clara del Cobre "on the map" of artistic metallurgic production and was commissioned to make a hand-hammered copper bowl for the flame in Olympic stadium.   

Hopefully you’ll be on the UNAM campus someday soon.  Enjoy seeing these very different works by three of Mexico’s great muralists.  

Mexican art and customs in Manhattan

I began last week's column with a whimsical line about Frida returning to Cuernavaca's Brady Museum from Beijing.  I emailed it to The News while seated in a pew in Trinity Church located in the heart of New York's Financial District.  I knew I was pushing my welcome by plugging my computer into a church electric socket and using a portable wi-fi to connect to the Internet.  Still, it was the quietest and most comfortable place I'd found in which to work, while camped at Liberty Park, a block away.  As I clicked 'send' I smiled to myself at the thought of referring to Kahlo's self-portrait as Frida.  I would top that minutes later.

As I stepped out of Trinity Church onto Broadway at Wall Street I suddenly realized I was stepping out into a scene in Diego Rivera's mural in Mexico City's Palace of Fine Arts -- the one in which Rivera gives us a view of Wall Street with Trinity Church at the end of a chasm of buildings.  The street sign in Rivera's mural indicates the corner of Wall Street and 2nd Avenue.  Second Avenue has been renamed, but the scene is very much the same today as when Rivera painted it in the 1930's; even to the point of having police presence.

No longer on horseback, blue uniformed NYPD officers are now mounted on motor scooters.  By riding them single-file, bumper-to-bumper, they confine the Occupy Wall Street marchers to the sidewalk.  Nonetheless the demonstrators carry signs much like those portrayed by Rivera in the mural intended for, ultimately rejected by, Rockefeller Center.  

Rivera wisely added a clause in the contract he signed with the Rockefellers.  If, for any reason, he were not allowed to finish the mural he would still be paid in full.  Nelson Rockefeller adhered to the contract and, with the received payment Rivera re-painted it for free in Mexico City.  I suspect it's the only mural in public space in Mexico in which all the text is in English; no Spanish is used.  

It was a fascinating week I spent at Liberty Plaza.  On Saint Michael Day's eve I delivered four pericón crosses sent by Cuernavaca's Sergio Mendez Arceo Foundation to be tied to trees at the four corners of Liberty Park.  They were to protect the park, which has become the epicenter of one of our biggest ongoing, and growing, news stories.  Even though the custom of posting pericón crosses predates Christianity in what is now Mexico, I had feared they would not be well received because of the religious connection, in people's minds, between crosses and religion.  

I was surprised and gratified with the welcoming cheer from the occupiers.  Reverence is a hallmark of the Wall Street occupier.  Before each march a moment of silence is observed; frequently there is a respected prayer.  Indeed, last Friday Kol Nidre, the opening of Judaism's holiest observance, Yom Kippur, was held in an esplanade across the street from Liberty Park as police looked on. 

Respecting the NYPD's prohibition of using microphones the readings and songs were relayed though the crowd by what has become known as the “people’s mike.”   Speaker’s words are repeated, relayed, until the whole crowd hears.  It is a reverent process.  Even if one disagrees with the words spoken, they are repeated faithfully.  Observant Jews do not use vehicles or the subway on Yom Kippur so, after the service, many of them crossed the street and camped in Liberty Park.  There they slept side-by-side with Moslems, Christians, Buddhists, and atheists.  I had goose bumps thinking about what it would mean for the world if this could be a new model of reconciliation.

I remembered another connection with Mexican art and New York City upon taking a short walk from Wall Street to Battery Park.  From that southernmost tip of Manhattan I could see the Statue of Liberty.  Mind and memory took me back in time to the day I visited Ana Pellicer in her home in Santa Clara del Cobre, Michoacan -- the Mexican village world-famous for its production of hand-hammered copper.  

It is France, not Santa Clara, that produced the largest piece of hand-hammered copper, the Statue of Liberty, gifted to the United States in 1886.  Perhaps as an attempt to salvage some of Mexico's prestige in the field of hand-hammered copper, Mexican sculptress Pellicer produced, in Mexican style hand-hammered copper, a necklace and earrings in proportion to Liberty herself.  She requested permission of the National Park Service to hang them on Lady Liberty for one day during the Statue's hundredth anniversary celebrations.  Permission was denied.  Not accepting defeat, Pellicer displayed them in a Manhattan art gallery.  I had felt privileged to see them in her living room with the necklace hanging from the ceiling, going down to the floor, back up to the ceiling, over and over again.   

It was delightful to think of these three Mexican contributions to New York City.  Even though Rivera's and Pellicer's were rejected, they stand nevertheless -- perhaps more prominently for having been rejected.  And the pericón crosses?  Last I checked (which was last Tuesday) two were still there.  The police only seemed to have spotted -- and removed -- the two on the Broadway side of Liberty Park. 

A new face of Mexico's Palace

There are still a few more days left of a special treat in the National Palace.  The Salones Presidenciales, surrounding the Patio de Honor, on the second floor of the southwesternmost part of the Palace will be open to visitors until the end of this month.   

Interestingly the Gate of Honor is not the central gate, it is the southern entrance facing the Zocalo.   That southern end of the Palace is the presidential portion of the building, built on the location of Emperor Moctezuma's Palace.

Television cameras have given us glimpses of the Salones Presidenciales when special ceremonies are held but rarely have the rooms been open to the public.  The furnishings and decoration are truly palatial and maintained in tiptop condition.  On one of my recent visits I watched a staff person dusting, using a fine-arts paintbrush.  The chandeliers are resplendent and the carpeting, upholstry, wall coverings, mirrors, paintings all in excellent condition. 

As an interesting architectural design, the presidential reception room's northernmost window is also the access to the presidential balcony over the central, main doorway to the Palace.  This is the balcony from which the president gives the shout of Independence on the night of the 15th of September recalling Father Hidalgo's Grito de la Independencia in 1810, and where the president reviews the military parade the following morning; famously the balcony from which Rigoberta Menchú greeted the crowd shortly after being notified she had been awarded the 1992 Nobel Peace Prize.   

The plaza overlooked from the presidential balcony is officially designated Plaza de la Constitución though universally known as the Zocalo -- a strange name for a plaza.   In proper Spanish zocalo refers to a pedestal for a statue.  One explanation for the use of the word to refer to a plaza is that a viceroy ordered a statue of the King of Spain erected in the plaza (or a president ordered a column erected honoring independence from Spain) and only the pedestal was built.  The statue or column was lost in transit.  People started using the pedestal as a point of reference.  "I'll meet you at the pedestal", or "my house is four blocks north of the pedestal."  Soon the whole plaza was referred to as the pedestal; resulting in plazas all over Mexico being called pedestals.  There is another explanation for the word zocalo, and the one I prefer.  Mexico’s great author, Carlos Fuentes, has a hobby of documenting words used in Spanish which are of Arabic origin.  He maintains that 25% of Spanish vocabulary comes from Arabic and theorizes that the Arabic word zuc, market, is the root of zocalo.  Fuentes points out that Mexico City's market was located in the southwestern quadrant of the plaza, and that there was a title awarded to the person in charge of the market:  Señor del Zuc.

The Constitution of 1917, which rules Mexico today, guarantees the right of the people to demonstrate in a public place without the need for any type of permit -- making the Zocalo is a frequent location for a Mexican innovation in demonstrations:  the plantón.  A round-the-clock demonstration which may go on for weeks or months, usually in front of a government building.  In the case of the Zocalo, if the tents, banners, and demonstrators face the National Palace, their demands are addressed to the federal government.  If facing south, to the Federal District (Mexico City) government.  

I had often wondered if demonstrators' demands could be heard inside the Palace, and their banners noticed.  From outside, looking up through the second floor windows where only ceilings are visible, the Palace seems worlds away.  From the inside, however, despite the beauty of the rooms and furnishings, the windows attract the insider like a magnet and leave no way to ignore what is going on in the Zocalo.  This feeling can only be experienced by actually being in those rooms. 

Through the centuries many powerful, important, and famous people have walked through the Presidential Reception Room.  One of the captions describing the room speaks of the ceiling beams and says they date back to the viceroyalty period of Mexico's history.  Though there was serious damage to the Palace in 1692, I like to think that looking up at the polished beams gives me the same view that Juana Ramírez de Asbaje (1648-1695) enjoyed when as a young woman she glanced up while serving on the staff of the vicereine as a lady-in-waiting.  Little did she know that many of us visiting the room today would carry her portrait in our pockets, on the 200 peso bill.  

As a dessert to this wonderful visual banquet, upon exiting the Palace, you'll walk through the botanical garden.  

Enjoy.      

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Access to the National Palace is along the north side of the building.  There are two strict security checks.  Lockers are available for rent.  The Salones Presidenciales are the last part of an extensive exhibit.  If you don't have time for the whole exhibit, tell the security guard at the bottom of the main stairway -- just after entering the National Palace, that you want to go directly to the Diego Rivera murals.  Follow the murals up the stairway and along the hallways.  When you get to the last one keep on walking straight ahead -- that will take you into the Salones Presidenciales.  Be sure to be there before 4:00 p.m. -- start the entrance process by 3:30.