Realism

Courtesy of Apocrifa.com.mx

When he told the newspaper La Jornada that his work isn’t meant to scandalize, perhaps the painter Daniel Lezama was being disingenuous. It is, after all, laden with Mexican iconography – the flag and its colors, the Virgin of Guadalupe, the most popular soccer teams – interlaced with nudity, implicit incest, blood and violence. The most disturbing aspect of Lezama’s work is how close it mirrors present reality. Here, in a detail from his painting La gran noche mexicana (The Great Mexican Night), he mixes women who protested nude on Paseo de la Reforma, one of Mexico City’s central boulevards, with a concert that pop singer Juan Gabriel gave in the zócalo, the central square.

Lezama is unusual in contemporary Mexican art. For one thing, he not only paints, he actually knows how to paint. (Painting tends to be treated with contempt here, while the installation is all-encompassing.) A provocative and disquieting exhibition of 40 of his works is on view at the Museo de la Ciudad de México (The Mexico City Museum) on Calle Pino Suárez in the centro histórico until the end of May.

Minnellium

Queens of a certain age here are beside themselves because, as part of her world tour, Liza Minnelli will shortly set foot on Mexican soil after a ten-year absence. Among her activities will be a concert at the Auditorio Nacional in Mexico City on April 28. One hopes that the fragile diva, who has been giving it all she's got for over 40 years, will not collapse and fall off the stage, as she did in Stockholm four months ago.

Then again, presumably the Swedish queens of a certain age who attended that performance will now have a story to tell their grandchildren -- or at any rate their grandneices and grandnephews -- which they would not have had if the concert had gone off without a hitch.

What I wonder is whether the 70s superstar has any idea that throughout Mexico there is a chain of boutiques that almost, but not quite, bears her name. The stores in Mexico City have been around for as long as I can remember. The clothing that they sell might be considered fashionable, or even glamorous, depending which turnip truck the beholder just climbed out of.

Mexican soul food, part two

This photo was taken the other night at about three in the morning at a hole-in-the-wall taco stand on calle Bolivar, a street known for its myriad cantinas. Various different meats had been swirling in that deep fat since approximately one in the afternoon. For the uninitiated, they include slabs of suadero (a cut of beef from the lower part of the rib), extensive tubes of longaniza sausage, festively curling tripes and chunks of pork marinated in chile – all sizzling in the same deep grease. After you place your order, the murderous-looking taquero daintily dips the tortillas in the fat before heating them in the center of the grill, chops the corresponding meats with which to fill them, and voila. Before serving, he’ll ask if you want the tacos garnished with “vegetables.” (He’s referring to chopped onion and cilantro.) The traditional accompaniment is a water-based soft drink known as Boing, which comes in various fruit flavors. The one in the photo is mango.

Sign language

Much of public space in Mexico City has been raped. Enormous billboards are not only in your face on the inner-city highways, they hover over the main boulevards, and even in residential neighborhoods are painted on the sides of buildings or hang like banners over balconies and terraces. Others are pasted on walls hastily constructed beside empty lots.

Much of this signage is illegal, but tolerated. From time to time the city government makes a big noise about how it will soon be clamping down, but the efforts are largely limited to the expulsion of hot air. Even more occasionally the Ministry of Urban Development appears to believe that it is doing its civic by taking an action that would surely provide semiotics professors with material for at least a class: They paste large signs over the offending signs that make clear in bold type that they are there unlawfully. Thus, one eyesore partially covers another.

Magic carpet

Changes of season may not be as dramatic in Mexico City as in northern climes, but they definitely exist. This is a jacaranda tree. It flowers briefly in Mexico City, beginning in February. By the end of this month the lavender blossoms will have disappeared.

This is what the street looks like when the blossoms fall. That's why this is my favorite season in Mexico City.