Found It!

Dear Reader,

As I'm sure you are aware, some things in life just make more sense in a pair: socks, peanut butter & jelly, nerds and pocket protectors, etc...

I think I pair well with ______________.
a) Barrett
b) a nice California Pinot Noir
c) excess verbiage
d) art
e) all of the above

Obviously the answer is (b), but the subject of this post will be (d) ART!

We all knew that I was going to find a way to work art into the blog. Let's not kid ourselves. So resign yourself to learning something, sit back, and enjoy the pictures. I will only give a pop quiz if I think you aren't paying attentionl

There were 3 great Mexican muralists: Rivera, Siqueiros, and Orozco. Guadalajara is lousy with Orozco murals, so of course I had to check them out. Here are a couple of my favorite pics of them.

Hidalgo was a main character in the Mexican war for independence and is depicted here giving his famous speech. It takes up the whole ceiling above a large staircase, so he's two stories tall.



This is the "man on fire" which is part of a giant series that fills a giant building. The series depicts pre-colonial native practices and Spanish conquest scenes.



The thing I like about Orozco and these particular works is that (to me personally) he's not preaching any particular belief or "ism." He seems to be focused only on the humanity of these situations. How are the people affected? The worth of any idea or belief (Christianity, fascism, communism, ancient tribal custom) is directly connected to how it affects real people. Any idea or belief that is used as an excuse to control or hurt others is portrayed as disfiguring or disgusting, no matter how good the people's intentions were, native or European. Moral: Be a decent person or Orozco will fill a building with paintings blaspheming you, no matter what you said you stood for.

On a lighter note...here's a Mexican fairytale. A group of wizards were all in love with the same mortal woman and fought over her. Unfortunately for them, she didn't want a magical boyfriend. After she rejected them all, they turned themselves into different pieces of furniture in her house just to be near to her. And each piece of furniture was supposed to meet a different need that she might have: one to listen to her, one to hug her and hold her when she needed it, one to offer wisdom, one to offer love, etc. Can you tell which chairs were for which purpose.







My teacher told me that this one was obviously love because he was trying to get her out of her pants. Giggle

I'm discussing with one wizard how there has to be a better way to get a girl.



Look out for the squid people. AAAAHHHHH! Totally different museum and sculpture series, but I dig 'em.



To end on a serious note...I'm not nuts about this one visually, but the words at the bottom are awesome.


"THE STRONG DO NOT KILL"

Peace, kindness, and great art to you all,
Megan