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Should I Stay or Should I Go

By Thad­deus Tripp Ressler

 

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Mex­i­co City is a cul­tur­al glut. Feet from the zoca­lo in El Cen­tro are the ruins of Tenochti­t­lan. Across the square, The Met­ro­pol­i­tan Cathe­dral in all it’s stonework glo­ry. With­in blocks there are dozens of muse­ums of all shapes and sizes. The Anthro­po­log­i­cal Muse­um, or Museo Nacional de Antropología, is a short metro ride away. I man­aged to go to four dif­fer­ent muse­ums, four church­es, and wan­der through a city park twice the size of Cen­tral Park in New York.

Thanks to my art lov­ing, itchy-foot­ed moth­er, I’ve been to art muse­ums all over the world. I was tak­ing draw­ing class­es at The Met before most kids had even been to New York. I spent three con­sec­u­tive days in The Lou­vre when I was eight, and then had to write essays mom thought up on the sculp­tures and artists I had seen. We went to so many muse­ums it some­times feel like it takes phys­i­cal effort to remem­ber all the dif­fer­ent ones. How­ev­er, I think we may have missed out by not hav­ing tak­en a trip to Mex­i­co City.

Hav­ing been to so many of the great muse­ums and cathe­drals of the West­ern World, I’ve grown a bit jad­ed. I’m tired of Euro­pean style reli­gious art, not because it’s not good. The finest of them are exquis­ite and tran­scen­dent mas­ter­pieces wor­thy of long and repeat­ed study. How­ev­er, there are only so many ver­sions of a tor­tured and dying man, or holy and pre­co­cious child paint­ings that I can take. Then there’s the postmodern art that fills most mod­ern art muse­ums. Gener­ally speak­ing, that has nev­er been able to cap­ture my atten­tion. But when I walked past an old famil­iar art muse­um style ban­ner hang­ing in front into the Pala­cio de Cul­tura Banamex, I had to give it a try.

They were doing an exhib­it on Covar­ru­bias. I had nev­er heard of the style, but I can admit that my fine art knowl­edge has def­i­nite­ly degrad­ed over the years. Once inside, I did a lit­tle sur­vey to see which way I want­ed to go. That’s when the con­fu­sion start­ed. Up front there was a huge paint­ing of an illus­trat­ed map of Mex­i­co, and behind it I could see paint­ings of Poly­ne­sia. I didn’t think much of it and start­ed my walk-through.

I walked the perime­ter first. I looked at some beau­ti­ful Art Deco style ink draw­ings, then a few polit­i­cal car­i­ca­tures. There didn’t seem to be a styl­is­tic through line to what I was see­ing though. Towards the inte­ri­or there was a whole case of Van­i­ty Fair cov­ers with a sin­gu­lar style to it. For some rea­son, that clicked some­thing in my brain. I looked down at the lit­tle name plates to the right of the paint­ings. I real­ized, Covar­ru­bias wasn’t a style, I had stum­bled my way into the exhib­it of an artist that I had nev­er heard of before. I couldn’t remem­ber ever hav­ing seen any of his paint­ings before either.

Miguel Covar­ru­bias was an artist from Mex­i­co City, born in 1904. When he grad­u­at­ed high school at the ten­der age of four­teen he start­ed pro­duc­ing car­i­ca­tures and illus­tra­tions for the Mex­i­can Min­istry of Pub­lic Edu­ca­tion. At the ripe old age of nine­teen he was sent to New York City on a grant from the Mex­i­can Gov­ern­ment. In NYC he met peo­ple that would intro­duce him to New York’s cul­tur­al and lit­er­ary elite. This would lead to the Van­i­ty Fair cov­ers that I was look­ing at a hun­dred years lat­er.

He also designed the­ater sets and cos­tumes, made giant murals of illus­trat­ed maps, and in 1930, he delved into the geog­ra­phy of the Pacif­ic and the island of Bali, pro­duc­ing some of the most illu­mi­nat­ing ethno­graph­ic work of the era. He stud­ied Mex­i­co, con­tribut­ing under­stand­ing of pre-His­pan­ic art with empha­sis on the Olmec cul­ture, and its ori­gins and influ­ences in the Mesoamer­i­can world.

He was proud of his Mex­i­can roots and cre­at­ed many paint­ings that detailed the wealth of Mex­i­can cul­ture. He paint­ed coun­try folk like the Hua­pan­go dancers to the right, and also paint­ed polit­i­cal fig­ures like the rev­o­lu­tion­ary Emil­iano Zap­a­to, below to the left. He is a painter that I will be study­ing long after I leave Mex­i­co, and is sure­ly wor­thy of your research.

The next muse­um on my list was actu­al­ly the first I’d intend­ed to vis­it. The Muse­um of Anthro­pol­o­gy, is a decep­tive­ly mas­sive build­ing. We spent four hours, walk­ing steadi­ly through, real­ly only stop­ping to take pic­tures at the very end. Even then we only got through a quar­ter of it. It is absolute­ly a muse­um that takes, and is worth, sev­er­al days to get through. I could have spent anoth­er few days there and had promised myself to go back, but as they do, things came up.

Over the entrance is a mas­sive carv­ing of the Mex­i­can eagle stand­ing on a cac­tus with a snake in it’s beak. This leads into a mas­sive “vestibule” that leads to an even more mas­sive court­yard with a fifty-five foot high foun­tain known as El Paraguas, or umbrel­la, due to it’s unique design. (below to the left)

We start­ed with the pre-his­to­ry of man, but to be hon­est, that’s the least inter­est­ing part of any nat­ur­al his­to­ry muse­um for me. Show me the civ­i­liza­tions, show me the tribes, the pyra­mids and zig­gu­rats. I want to see how we got from nomad to farmer, how we became the dom­i­nant species on the plan­et. And in Mex­i­co, that means that I want to see the Maya, the Aztecs, and the Olmecs. The Maya and the Aztecs being the ones clos­est to us in his­to­ry, we have the most amount of infor­ma­tion on them. Olmecs on the oth­er hand have a less­er known past, although it now seems that they may have been the prog­en­i­tor cul­ture of the oth­er two plus many oth­ers in the region.

The Olmecs are an inter­est­ing one, because there’s not a lot of infor­ma­tion to go on. Olmec heads range from huge to mas­sive with dis­tinct facial fea­tures and head­dress, which some arche­ol­o­gists sus­pect mean that the Olmecs could have been try­ing to depict indi­vid­ual rulers.They all have broad faces, flat noses, thick lips, and large promi­nent eyes, some­times with a slight­ly crossed appear­ance. Inter­est­ing­ly they do not look like ancient Aztecs or Mayans. They seem to have more Poly­ne­sian or African fea­tures than any of the oth­er Mesoamer­i­can peo­ple, yet no DNA evi­dence, and there has been plen­ty, traces either to the region. Com­pare them to the sculp­tures on the right, of Aztec war­riors, that show a dis­tinct­ly dif­fer­ent facial struc­ture from that of the Olmecs.

Mayans, on the oth­er hand were well known for their sculp­tures of ani­mals, priests, and gods. They made some very intri­cate and fan­tas­tic snakes thanks to their love and wor­ship of Quet­zal­coatl, the feath­ered ser­pent god. And there was of course their cal­en­dar that near­ly brought us all to ruin in 2012. It was a close call but we made it through.

Ancient Amer­i­can his­to­ry is a fas­ci­nat­ing sub­ject with a lot of new light being shed on it in recent years. In the last five years alone LiDAR imag­ing has revealed tens of thou­sands of earth­works, both vil­lage and city through­out the jun­gle reach­es of the Yucatán and Ama­zon regions. That alone rais­es the pop­u­la­tion esti­mates in the Pre-Columbian new world, by many mil­lions of peo­ple, over what was pre­vi­ous­ly thought.

Next I checked out Museo Nacional de Arte, with their “Under the Sign of Sat­urn” exhi­bi­tion going on. It exam­ines the influ­ence of the eso­teric on Mex­i­can art. The exhib­it opens with a small room filled with fan­tas­tic and sur­re­al paint­ings like these. The one to the left is called Auto De Fe, or Act of Faith, show­ing a priest pray­ing in front of a cru­ci­fix with a vaporous woman float­ing above a can­dle, while a demon-like crea­ture in the fore­ground appears to be mor­tal­ly wound­ed. The one to the right is called Alle­go­ry of Pro­fane Knowl­edge, show­ing the main­stream view of eso­teric knowl­edge, equat­ing it to witch­craft.

Then I was con­front­ed my this mag­nif­i­cent bronze. The Palmist made by an Eng­lish born, nat­u­ral­ized Mex­i­can cit­i­zen, Leono­ra Car­ring­ton. This beau­ti­ful­ly macabre sculp­ture looks like it would be right at home in a fan­ta­sy movie about gods and sor­cery. While at first it appears to be sim­ple sculp­ture, there is a lot of lit­tle details that Ms Car­ring­ton did in a way that real­ly had me wowed.

This etch­ing on paper by Alber­to Duero is titled The Knight, Death, and The Demon. It is a sur­re­al­is­tic onslaught of detail and pre­ci­sion. Out­side of the knight and his steed, no part is untouched by odd­i­ty. Even the dog in the etch­ing appears wrong and out of place between the legs of the two hors­es. It seems more a med­i­ta­tion on the evil that sur­rounds those on the mil­i­taris­tic hero­ic quests.

The rest of the exhib­it and the muse­um were fan­tas­tic, but I do have one com­plaint about the muse­ums I’ve been to in Mex­i­co, over­all their light­ing could use some work. It does the job, but there were many times that I found myself try­ing to find a spot to stand where there wasn’t glare on the oil paint, or glass. There were also a num­ber of very intri­cate sculp­tures that were just not lit in a way that did the pieces jus­tice. I know it’s a hard job, I did light­ing for film in Los Ange­les, but it’s also vital for any visu­al medi­um. I won’t harp on it, I’ll give this as an exam­ple and move on.

The Museo de Arte Pop­u­lar greets you at the front door with this wicked­ly bright and ter­ri­fy­ing Ale­bri­je. Ale­bri­je doesn’t have an exact def­i­n­i­tion but think along the lines of spir­it ani­mal. They are a very pop­u­lar and col­or­ful art form around Mex­i­co. They stem from the Zapotec and Mix­tec cul­tures where they were believed to be pro­tec­tors and spir­it guides. How­ev­er the mod­ern inter­pre­ta­tion of them came in the 1930’s from Pedro Linares, a papier‑mâché artist, who began cre­at­ing the sur­re­al crea­tures after expe­ri­enc­ing vivid hal­lu­ci­na­tions dur­ing an ill­ness. Mex­i­cans embraced them much the way they did the Catri­nas that Diego Rivera pop­u­lar­ized in the 40’s. Now they can be found in every­thing from car­toon movies to arti­san work­shops to trin­ket sell­ers in every Mex­i­can city.

One thing to keep in mind while tour­ing Mex­i­co City muse­ums is that they are a bit rul­ish about the path you take. For instance in this muse­um, you’re meant to take the ele­va­tor to the fourth floor and then fol­low the signs for which room to go in first. And the guards will polite­ly turn you around and ask you to go the oth­er way. As an anti­estab­lish­ment type this grat­ed on me until I remem­bered the pop­u­la­tion of Mex­i­co City and god only knows how many tourists come through. So, I begrudg­ing­ly for­gave them their tres­pass on my art­ful wan­der­ings.

Cir­cling in the prop­er direc­tion the muse­um start­ed with hand crafts from each of the states of Mex­i­co. Every­thing from clay fig­ures, sil­ver, cop­per, porce­lain, and wood­work. To be hon­est though I was still fix­at­ed on the Ale­bri­jes and the sur­re­al­is­tic art. Every time I saw one of the Ale­bri­jes, it put a smile on my face.

The Ale­bri­jes are not to be con­fused with the oth­er fever dream sur­re­al­ism that Mex­i­cans seem to love so much. For exam­ple the mask to the right is not an Ale­bri­je, it’s called The Pur­ga­to­ry Mask. It looks a bit hell­ish if you ask me, but what do I know.

That said though, I do love a good rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the Dev­il. I find him fas­ci­nat­ing as a char­ac­ter of lit­er­a­ture and litur­gy. Not to men­tion that his rep­re­sen­ta­tions in art are often times, in my less than hum­ble opin­ion, far more inter­est­ing than those of the heroes of the Bibles.

By the time I got to the third floor of the muse­um I start­ed to feel dizzy and nau­seous. My body had been bat­tling some­thing since my sec­ond day in Mex­i­co City. I end­ed up rush­ing through the last two floors and still man­aged to see some very inter­est­ing pieces of art. Like this one that’s meant to tell the his­to­ry of Mex­i­co, and made entire­ly of seashells.

Being an agri­cul­tur­al coun­try, whose nation­al sport is the Mex­i­can ver­sion of rodeo, Mex­i­cans ascribe an odd and pro­found respect for the ani­mals they keep. One of the ani­mals that Mex­i­cans have a bit of rev­er­ence for is the roost­er, or gal­lo. He’s meant to rep­re­sent strength, courage, and viril­i­ty. There are hats and shirts embla­zoned with the roost­er. And here are two roost­ers in bronze get­ting ready for a fight.

Mex­i­co City is a fas­ci­nat­ing city of twen­ty-two mil­lion peo­ple. It’s the sev­enth largest city in the world by pop­u­la­tion, sec­ond largest in the west­ern hemi­sphere. It stands more than two thou­sand feet above Denver’s mile. It also has over a hun­dred and fifty muse­ums, and over a dozen arche­o­log­i­cal sites with­in city lim­its with many more near­by. My assign­ment in com­ing to Mex­i­co City was to deter­mine whether it would be a mis­take to skip it. Was it worth it despite the con­ges­tion (both vehi­cle and human), despite the air and light pol­lu­tion, despite the noise, despite the price, despite the safe­ty con­cerns. I only got to spend five days in Mex­i­co City, and one of those was spent in bed help­less­ly sick, but even if I had only spent two days I can con­fi­dent­ly answer this ques­tion. Yes, it would be a mis­take to skip Mex­i­co City.

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