Belles Artes

     "Meet me in front of Belles Artes", she said. I am always early, so to absorb some time I found a seat in the sun opposite one of the sculptures of Pegasus. Waiting is good. You have time to observe. The floor of the plaza and the facade of the art deco palace reflected the bright sun however I like the sun even when it hurts.  
 
     
     Pofirio's Dream, it could be a courthouse really,, is ironically home of some controversial post revolutionary murals. Names of paintings like El Hombre Controlador del Universo, Katharsis, La Nueva Democracia, and Nacimiento de la Nacionalidad fly in the face of the only real mexican emperor after Cortez. Diaz exiled himself soon after the first stones were placed. He never saw the finished product. 

 
El Hombre Controlador del Universo by Diego Rivera
Katharsis by Jose Clemente Orozco



La Nueva Democracia by David Alfaro Siqueiros


 
Nacimiento de la Democracia by Rufino Tamayo

      I thought to myself, has this building actually sunk 4 meters since it was built? It must have sunk evenly,, and they must have lowered the plaza accordingly to accomodate its slow-motion submerging into the jelly like subsoil. It isn't in the same rough shape as the albeit much older Metropolitan Cathedral which is separating into parts each sinking in a different direction. Though it was sturdy enough to survive the 1985 earthquake. 
    The limestone floor of the plaza is the same stone as the mountains in Zumpahuacan near Tenancingo. It is embedded with fossils, caracols and squiggles testimony to a sea of life long ago forgotten, heat tempered and memorialized in slices. I turned and peeked over my shoulder taking in the Latin American Tower like an erect pointed warehouse. When I turned once again towards the Palacio my gaze was gripped by the facade. I never really saw the columns supporting the entrance of Belles Artes. The patterns in the stone are like branches. About five feet off the floor there are polished bands testimony to the countless passing hands that have brushed  the columns to a yellow sheen. There was an advertisement for an exhibit by the french photographer Robert Doisneau entitled Las Bellezas de la Cuotidiana. Doisneau, I mused. I began to think about the many times I have used a line by him concerning the making of art. For me it became a code to be followed. "To indicate is to create and to describe is to destroy." I have found this always to be true.This does not imply that the overall work cannot be descriptive,, just comprised of myriad indications. Take Canaletto's paintings of Venice for example. The painting below on the left is accompanied by an amplified section of two figures in the foreground. The painting itself seems extremely detailed but if one examines the figures closely one sees how just a few wispy brush strokes with good coloring created them. 

 I know this is apoor digital image of one of Canaletto's figures that look so detailed from a disatance but look closely they are formed by just a few deft brushstrokes. This excerpt from one of his paintings is postage stamp size.

Don't wear your heart on your sleeve too much either. Perhaps that is what has always vexed me a little about the works of Diego Rivera, but not those of Rufino Tamayo. Although Rivera had a sensual painterly touch, Rivera's themes were unambiguous. Too much description in any art form shaves the perfection we experience in teasing,,, even if we don't realize at first we are bein teased. Take this enigmatic line by Thomas Mann: “Distance in a straight line has no mystery. The mystery is in the sphere.” Or this By Emily Dickinson: "Hope is the thing with feathers."  Or the conundrum of composition in  this painting, Reclining Baptist, by Caravaggio:      
 

A rich phrase or a painterly highlight in just the right place signals the reader or the viewer towards something, it shouldn't haul them to an end. 
     Back to Belles Artes. I switched my glance towards the people in the plaza. Almost everyone was searching their microscopic cell phone screen for something,,, perhaps waiting for Godot to post a message. A beautiful fleshy morena walks,, no she waddles in a special way.  There is a drunk, who looks just like Diego Maradona, with long brilliant curly hair and an ill fitting black formal suit. He is on the prowl for an audience, bothering a small group of women next to me.  He salts all his remarks with juau juau. I try to ignore him. To the women he says, "Son las tres muy juapa de frente,,, tres cuatro de frente." In a round about way,, and not too round about, he is telling them they are well endowed. At this point the young women not knowing where he will take this make a graceful exit. I look the other way avoiding any eye contact with him for that is just an invitation. He turns to the left and ambles on,, the hunter gatherer in search of food.