Monthly Archives: March 2010

Visitors in Mexico!

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Friends have come to visit, and having the pleasure of showing Merida to them makes me realize what a special place it is. Mexicans have a saying, “Nothing ever happens in Merida,” and it is meant in the best possible way. The city is a peaceful haven even within the safe, well functioning Yucatan peninsula. The turmoil and issues in the other parts of Mexico don’t seem to reach here.
Today we are going to walk around the city center and look at the cathedral, the beautiful candy colored facades that hide dark rooms and spacious courtyards, and the bustling plazas with their vendors, pigeons, and children.


Maybe later we will stop at the market for a bite to eat, or at least some churros (my favorite) before dinner.

Magdalena Murua: Can you spot Archie?

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Magdalena Murua, Constellation

I can’t. The serpentine pattern created here seems inextricably entangled, and the various colors are muted by the white background and the small size of the circles. Done with comic book paper punched into tiny holes, the artist creates compositions with thousands of tiny circles. Murua had a few works up at Pulse art fair in the same vein. At times the comic book source material is more prominent, but here it is subsumed in the form, and I quite like the overall effect.

Warhol’s Urinal and Tales of Other Piss Pots

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A great article at the Economist follows the fortunes of Duchamp’s urinals from the first (which seems to have been misplaced) to the editions that came out in later years.

Editions of Duchamp’s urinals are multiple and hard to track–meaning you could buy a fake Fountain. Unlike Andy, who traded a few paintings for an authentic urinal, now you be losing a few million over something that may or may not count. As the article ends by speculating, wouldn’t Marcel Duchamp rather enjoy today’s situation:

One wonders whether the Dada master, who challenged the notion of the authentic artwork, might not be amused by the way these questionable “Fountains” muddy the waters of his current market. “My production,” he once said, “has no right to be speculated upon.”

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