Ricardo Legorreta, Praemium Imperiale Laureate
October 22nd, 2011 § Leave a Comment
Ricardo Legorreta (Mexico, DF 1931 - )
Ricardo Legorreta has been awarded the Praemium Imperiale prize (architecture).
The award, given to individuals who have “shown extraordinary acheivement in the fields of architecture, music, painting, sculpture and theatre/film, recognizes lifetime achievement in the arts in categories not covered by the Nobel prizes.
Ricardo Legorreta, among Mexico’s most significant living architects, combines the traditions of Western modernism with the building culture of his native country. Vibrant color, geometric shapes, fountains, light-filled spaces, and intimate courtyards are hallmarks of his style. With more than 100 design projects to his name he has created a diverse body of work in Mexico and abroad.
Official website for Ricardo Legorreta: http://legorretalegorreta.com/
Video in Spanish: http://esquire.esmas.com/video/351377/legorreta-premio-japon
The other Praemium Laureates this year are Seiji Ozawa (Japan) Music, Bill Viola (USA) Painting, Anish Kapoor (UK) Sculpture, and Judi Dench (UK) Theatre/Film.
Related, Books:
Pedro Ramirez Vazquez awarded Fine Arts Medal
October 22nd, 2011 § Leave a Comment
Pedro Ramirez Vazquez (Mexico, DF 1919 - )
Pedro Ramirez Vazquez, architect and urban designer, has been awarded the Fine Arts Medal by the National Institute of Fine Arts, the highest award for artistic achievement in Mexico.
National Museum of Anthropology, Mexico City, DF
Ramirez Vazquez, a graduate of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Mexico, contributed profoundly to Mexico City’s urban panorama during his 6 decade career. Much of his work is founded on his strong personal beliefs in social responsibility and civil participation.
Upon receiving the medal, he said,
On this day I want to share my reflections with youngsters… practice self-discipline, ecological conservation, and originality, but keep roots, because these are permanent and do not change over time.
He is one of the most prolific of Mexican architects nationally and internationally. Some of his projects in Mexico include:
- The National Anthropology Museum (Museo Nacional de Antropologia),
- the Aztec Soccer Stadium (Estadio Azteca),
- the new Guadalupe Basilica (Nueva Basílica de Guadalupe) and the
- Museum of Modern Art (Museo de Arte Moderno) in collaboration with Rafael Mijares
Mi Gran Obra
Related:
For a fundamental list of Mexican culture
October 18th, 2011 § Leave a Comment
Mexican Mole Poblano in a traditional "cazuela" (ceramic pot)
What do these things/people have in common?
- Dia de muertos (Day of the Dead)
- Pedro Paramo (a short novel by Juan Rulfo)
- Teotihuacan (an archeological site near Mexico City)
- Mole
- La Dichosa Palabra (a TV Talk Show about education, language, literature, and poetry) and
- Enchiladas
Answer: From Fundamental Lists of Mexican Culture, 5 most mentioned elements by readers in order of popularity (10/18/11).
The project, a collaboration between CONACULTA and Este Pais, invites specialists, artists of all kinds, and the public to make lists of Mexican culture. The lists, creating a collective map of the most significant people and works of the nation, will form a guide, particularly for young people, to learn about and appreciate Mexico’s cultural heritage.
In summary, all that Mexicans should know, see, read, listen and learn, with the premise that from these fundamentals, Mexicans’ identity is formed.
To create your own list, visit: http://www.estepais.com/listas/
or just visit this site to find the many and fascinating lists created by others!
Mexican writers
October 16th, 2011 § Leave a Comment
The Vasconcelos Library in Mexico City
In celebrated Chilean author Roberto Bolaño’s 1998 novel The Savage Detectives, a brilliant but depressive group of young poets roams through Mexico City, writing and drinking at bars across the frenetic capital. Nearly all those poets, modeled on real writers, were men. Today, the Mexican literary stars frequenting the same bars are just as likely to be women.
Gabriela Juaregui
Writers like Gabriela Jauregui, the author of the critically acclaimed poetry collection Controlled Decay who is now at work on her first novel, are part of a surge of young, urban Mexican women whose talent, vision, and drive are challenging the country’s traditionally macho literary culture.
Valeria Luiselli
No longer just the domain of male greats like Bolaño, Octavio Paz, and Juan Rulfo, Mexican literature has given rise to a new class of female scribes who are racking up successes at home and abroad… “There are some times when I feel compelled to say, ‘This is also Mexican,’ ” says Jauregui, who has written poems about riding the subway in Mexico City and blue-collar workers in East L.A. who dress up in ornate cowboy outfits at night and practice roping in neighborhood parks.
Chloe Aridjis
In Chloe Aridjis’s widely praised novel Book of Clouds, the female Mexican protagonist, like most immigrants, struggles with xenophobia and cultural alienation while trying to preserve her humanity in Berlin. And Brenda Lozano’s All Nothing is an intimate, humorous portrait of a girl dealing with loss and grief. Valeria Luiselli’s essay collection, False Papers, deals with people’s relations to spaces—including her own sense of being “in between” Mexico and the United States, neither native nor foreign in either. She ruminates on the isolation of the city: “The more nights you spend in other rooms—hotels, rented apartments, borrowed beds, sofas, shared spaces—the more you will get to know yourself.”
Brenda Lozano
Getting published in Mexico is no easy feat, especially for unknown writers: big publishers tend to focus on profit-reaping established authors. A few independent presses, like the successful Sexto Piso, have published Mexican writers in Latin America and Spain. “Many young authors first get published by small publishing houses, but their presence is very small, so the books go practically unnoticed,” says Eduardo Rebasa, a founder of Sexto Piso. “However, in recent years there has been a surge in independent publishing, with houses trying to publish quality stuff, but also trying to be successful financially and create a project that is sustainable in the long term.”
Readers can count on seeing more such works, thanks to an increase in the number of both female writing students and writing collectives for women. And their stories will continue to reflect a rapidly changing Mexico, even if most of the writers call other places home.
Excerpts from Newsweek Magazine and The Poetry Foundation.
Related articles
- 10 of the best books set in Berlin (guardian.co.uk)
Returning home
October 16th, 2011 § 1 Comment
The number of Mexicans annually leaving Mexico for the U.S. declined from more than one million in 2006 to 404,000 in 2010 – a 60% reduction – Pew Hispanic Center
Prejudice, stereotypes and Mexican’s disillusionment with the U.S. is the focus of the latest episode of South Park, The Last of the Meheecans: We’re Going Back!! The character Butters, now Mantequilla, provides inspiration to Mexicans to return home where things are better.
Watch it here: http://www.southparkstudios.com/clips/399564/were-going-back (warning: vulgar language)
- Bachmann pledges border fence with Mexico (GOP presidential hopeful’s hispanophobia)
Tina Modotti (1896 – 1942)
October 14th, 2011 § Leave a Comment
Mexican peasants reading El Machete, 1928
Italian born Tina Modotti was one of the most fascinating women of the 20th century. She was a photographer, model, actress, revolutionary political activist and spy. She became famous as a result of the photographs she created in Mexico in the 1920s and her involvement in the avant garde and revolutionary movements of her time.
Glasses, platinum print from orig. negative, c. 1924
Her photographs and life offer a unique look at the events in Mexico in the 1920s, when painters like Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo were alive and many intellectuals from many countries came together. She was the photographer of choice among the muralists and helped document the work of Orozco and Rivera. In 1927 she joined the Mexican Communist Party. Between 1923 and 1930 she created a collection of sepia-tinted portraits of Mexican workers and expatriate revolutionaries that are intimate and real. As she became more political in her life, so she increasingly devoted herself to social documentation. In 1929, she photographed the women of Tehuantepec, a series that was to become famous.
Tina Moldotti
Her personal life was dramatic and turbulent. She was Edward Weston’s mistress and model in Mexico and learned the craft of photography from him; his influence is visible in her early work. In 1929 her lover, Cuban revolutionary Julio Antonio Mella, was shot and killed while at her side and Modotti was accused of his assassination. In 1930, she was arrested as an enemy of the state and forced to leave the country. She lived in exile in Europe and made her way to Spain during its civil war. After the collapse of the Spanish Republican government in 1939 she returned to Mexico. In 1942, during a taxi ride she suffered a heart attack and died at age 45. Rumors surrounding her death have never been confirmed.
By some, Tina Modotti is seen as the heroine of the workers’ movement, by others as a classical femme fatale. Still others consider her a kind of ‘Joan of Arc with a camera…. – Reinhard Schultz, Curator of Galerie Bilderwelt Berlin
Tina Moditti website: http://www.modotti.com/
Although her work is scarce, the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) in New York City has a good collection: http://moma.org/collection/artist.php?artist_id=4039
Anne Menke, fashion photographer
October 13th, 2011 § Leave a Comment
Trunk magazine's 2011 debut issue
Trunk magazine's 2011 debut issue; photographs by Modotti (left) and Menke.
Anne Menke found inspiration for these photographs in another European photographer who made Mexico her home, Italian Tina Modotti.
Fashion magazines are rarely a part of my budget, but after spotting Anne Menke’s work, I might have to change my habits.
Mini-bio from Wikipedia: Anne Menke was born in March 26, 1967 in Germany. In 1987, she finished her apprenticeship in Germany and worked as an assistant in Dusseldorf for 2 years. She opened up her own studio, then moved to Paris in 1991 and worked on her own in fashion and advertising all around the world. In 1995, she moved to New York City where she lived for several years before moving to Mexico.
She lives now between Mexico and NYC and travels the rest of the world for her shoots.
Photographs by Anne Menke, Myself magazine, France, May 2011 (source: http://mesfavoritethings.blogspot.com/search?q=mexic)
Slideshow of photographs (from 2011 Elle, Myself, Vogue, and Trunk magazines):
This slideshow requires JavaScript.
Anne Menke is represented by Serlin Associates (everywhere but in Germany): http://www.serlinassociates.com/#/annemenke
Trunk magazine’s website: http://www.trunkmag.com/
Thank you…
October 12th, 2011 § 1 Comment
Thank you. Today, I reached my October goal for subscriptions.
Good humor: Hipster Ipsum
October 11th, 2011 § Leave a Comment
Juan Jose Arreola Zuniga (1918-2001), Mexico's premier experimental short story writer.
Hipster Ipsum | Artisanal filler text for your site or project..
OK, I admit it. This post does not directly relate to Mexico City or Mexico, but Spanish does descend from a Latin language.
Yes, there it is, to the right, under the Ibero Romance box...
Here’s what I got requesting 1 paragraph of Hipster with a shot of Latin and then punching the button “Beer me” at the Hipster Ipsum site. The other option is Hipster, neat.
Messenger bag do helvetica, sartorial vice echo park ullamco tofu farm-to-table occaecat assumenda letterpress. Master cleanse yr bicycle rights butcher pariatur, ad VHS eu. VHS nulla et readymade consequat banksy aliquip. Vice readymade wayfarers cred laboris fanny pack aute assumenda. Voluptate stumptown fap, salvia keffiyeh 8-bit nisi aliqua irure tempor laborum commodo butcher yr twee. Keytar jean shorts leggings salvia sustainable nisi. Exercitation ullamco echo park butcher nesciunt cred tofu nisi.
Just thought I’d share the fun.
Writer’s Prompt/Challenge:
Write a paragraph of filler text using your own sense of humor and personal flair.
If anyone’s asking why Juan Jose Arreola is this post’s iconic image, it’s because I thought he would give encouragement and inspiration to readers who plan to write a paragraph of filler text, and serve as a personal prompt to figure out how to write Spanish character marks with an English keyboard. (His name is correctly spelled Juan José Arreola Zúñiga!)
Related articles
The Indignant among us
October 10th, 2011 § 1 Comment
This poster makes a call to Mexicans to become indignant. Get angry!
The event is part of the “World Revolution” planned to occur in many cities this coming Saturday, October 15. The poster states that people in 350 cities in 35 countries will unite on this day to protest. Here in DF, indignados will come together at the Monumento a la Revolucion.
Monumento a la Revolucion
The poster uses an image of Charley Chaplin to communicate its message. Why Chaplin, the English silent comedian most beloved in his role as the tramp, and not Cantinflas, the national actor who portrayed the impoverished campesino? Above it reads, this is what awaits you, get indignant, then the image of Chaplin eating boot leather, and below, 15 October people of the world unite in protest, in Mexico we have much to say, let’s “take to the streets”, we won’t be silent.
Organizers have planned a citizens’ assembly, live music (Hip Hop, Batucada, and Son), market stalls, picnicking, workshops and more. Should be quite a riot.
Protesters, or in the case of Wall Street perhaps “those who occupy a designated place in protest”, are called indignados in Spanish. For some reason I find this appealing; it certainly sounds impressive to the foreign ear: Get indignant! The Indignant make a stand!
Related articles
- America’s indignados (blogs.ft.com) by Gideon Rachman of the Financial Times
