Posts Tagged ‘colour’

Mexico will always hold a spe­cial place in my heart. It was the first country I trav­elled to on my own, and I did so rather impetu­ously, at a time when I was an emo­tional basket case on the verge of a nervous break­down. I showed up late at night car­rying only a vague address of a woman who didn’t seem aware I was coming, car­rying nothing but a little kid’s back­pack and a know­ledge of Spanish far more rustic than I have now (which isn’t saying a much). I had a hand full of fresh new stitches and nerve damage. Everyone who knew me was pretty con­vinced I’d either come back dead or land myself in jail.

Col­ourful build­ings, replete with seem­ingly arbit­rary paint­ings along the walls, are just so common a part of the visual cul­ture even in Ensenada, where I lived (mostly) for my time in Mexico. Just walking the streets makes me want to start painting in vibrant colours.

Instead, Mexico fixed me. My exper­i­ence there is a big part of why I’m so driven to travel now. I have long wanted to return to Mexico, but I’ll admit I think a large part of my ori­ginal infatu­ation with the country was an emo­tional one—I wanted a chance to see the country itself, rather than just seeing how it changed me.

What I dis­covered, living in Mexico for three months, was a place that never stopped sur­prising me.

There’s this story about French poet (and Sur­realist pioneer) André Breton coming to Mexico, and asking a car­penter to build him a table. The car­penter requested a drawing to follow. Breton draw a quick sketch of a table, ren­dering it in three dimen­sions, that way you would once you’re older than, say, six, and under­stand a bit better that very little—beyond paper and anor­exic models—in the world is flat

The car­penter, of course, came back with a tri­an­gular table with two legs shorter than the other two.

Some­where along the highway between Mexico City and Oaxaca, I found this giant advert­ising struc­ture built into the hill. This is, in case you’re won­dering, in the abso­lute middle of nowhere, and it must be about twenty feet tall. Like their flags, appar­ently Mexico likes its ads giant. I also saw a man on an open truck, seated at a rifle mounted on the cab roof, and thought this the far more bizarre ele­ment on that ride.

This story came up a few times in dif­ferent con­ver­sa­tions with people. So did stories of a remote spot in the jungle near Xlitla. There, an eccentric British millionaire—who kept boa con­strictors as pets—built a sur­realist garden, com­plete with a stairway leading to nothing and some­thing titled “The House on Three Floors Which Will in Fact Have Five or Four or Six”. In Tijuana, there’s a giant naked woman built by a sculptor who lived in her with his wife and chil­dren. Try as I might, I couldn’t find her any­where; everyone I met in Tijuana had never even heard of her. And of course there’s Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, living around the corner from Trotsky in Mexico City, and a whole slew of sur­realist writers and artists. Sal­vador Dali, appar­ently, at one point said that he hated Mexico. He couldn’t, he said, return to a country that was more sur­real than his own paintings.

I became fas­cin­ated with the sur­real in Mexico, and the more inter­ested in it I became, the more I noticed it. Almost everyone I spoke to about it had some­thing to con­tribute, and a lot of people started to point out strange things to me, just so that I’d notice them. Much of the sur­real in Mexico, I think, lies in the jux­ta­pos­i­tions. The country still retains ele­ments of its ancient cul­tures in a way many others don’t, but adds in the over­whelm­ingly oppressive influ­ence of the Spanish con­quista­doras, who quite lit­er­ally built their Cath­olic churches atop the Aztec pyramids.

I think this was Aztec, but I don’t quite remember. The clean lines and bold col­ours are used throughout all sorts of Mex­ican art, both pre and post Colom­bian. Somehow it man­ages to be ornate without sac­ri­fi­cing a sense of sim­pli­city. The col­ours used are so super-saturated that they verge on fluor­es­cent and clashing, but again, somehow it works. I saw these sorts of colour schemes every­where, espe­cially in the folk art in Oaxaca, which used intensely bright col­ours on little sur­realist animal sculptures.

I read some­where that Mexico is actu­ally one of the most Cath­olic coun­tries in the world, and it doesn’t really sur­prise me. Cath­oli­cism is evident every­where, from the altars set up in the most unex­pected of places to to the pro­ces­sions marching down the streets singing during various Christ­mas­time hol­i­days. I’ve taken to drinking a lot of tequila straight—like scotch, which you can do in Mexico because tequila isn’t fire­water here unless you buy the lighter-fluid kind for six dollars—when these things happen, and just wan­dering out into the crowds to see what on earth is going on. My favourite was the first day of the Virgin of Guada­lupe fest­ival, where there was a huge feria, with food and amuse­ment park rides and gaudy images of reli­gious fig­ures to be pur­chases,  set up around the church (which was lighting off fire­works, of course). On the steps on the church, a priest was throwing holy water on the heads of the amassed throngs.

But Cath­oli­cism in Mexico is dif­ferent from Cath­oli­cism in other places. Here, there are hol­i­days that don’t exist any­where else. There are saints and revered fig­ures that don’t exist any­where in any liturgy, or in fact in any country other than Mexico at all. Santa Muerte is a prime example of this. She’s quite likely one of the most revered “reli­gious” fig­ures in Mexico, espe­cially by the crim­inal and lower-class ele­ments, but she’s actu­ally shunned by the Cath­olic church.

In spite of this, people build massive shrines to her, and many pray to her more reli­giously than the any properly-sanctioned non-secular hero. Again, this goes all the way back into the country’s Aztec roots. The con­tinued infatu­ation in Mexico with death has roots all the way back into the ancient pre-Columbian soci­eties, who can­ni­bal­ized their friends, sac­ri­ficed their young, and built elab­orate graves for their deceased.

An elab­or­ately pre­pared crypt, found in a hole in the floor some­where in the amazing useum of Anthro­po­logy in Mexico City.

Throughout so many things I saw while I was there, the skull or skel­eton motif recurred con­stantly. It’s one of the unshake­able real­ities of Mex­ican imagery, and I think a part of what draws me to Mexico as well. I was so excited for Día de los Muertos, and rather dis­ap­pointed when I dis­covered there weren’t huge parades of people in cos­tume those days in Ensenada (in Mexico City or Oaxaca, both of which I vis­ited later, the story would be quite dif­ferent, but Ensenada, while it has its charms, is not Real Mexico.)

Far from being a morbid interest, this infatu­ation with death often comes as a cel­eb­ra­tion of life instead. Far from grisly, the imagery is most often car­toonish, playful, or replete with bright col­ours. Skel­eton fig­ures are often presented as a bride and groom, per­haps mocking the insti­tu­tion that is so highly revered in Mexico. There’s a syn­thesis here between the ancient and the rel­at­ively new Cath­olic tra­di­tions, and they meet in strange and unex­pected ways.

Having lived in Mexico for nearly three months, I started to notice how incred­ibly rich the visual nar­rative of the country is, and that there are cer­tain ele­ments that recur con­sist­ently, no matter what you’re looking at. For me, the bright colour palettes, the con­tinual images of death, blood, and viol­ence, are as much a part of Mexico as the tacos.

I came to Mexico hoping to answer the riddle—to figure out where all the sur­real rooted from. I learned a lot, and I saw a lot, but ulti­mately, I think I ended up leaving with more ques­tions than I had when I first arrived.

I have no idea what this vehicle is used for, if any­thing, but I like it. The hand-painted typo­graphy every­where was really lovely.

Please note: this week I’ve been totally swamped with work-work-work-work, and since I’m still in a cast and typing the four thou­sand emails a day that run my busi­ness often makes me frus­trated and dizzy, I am utterly exhausted. I wrote this art­icle some time ago, and while it doesn’t have any­thing to do with design per se, it’s all about pretty things (shoes!) and we all know how I feel about that. We will return to your regularly-scheduled install­ments of rel­evant posts next week!

There’s some­thing about a pair of heels. They’re instantly classy. They work with everything, they make your legs look great, and they can turn the scrub­biest ensemble into a kick-ass outfit. A beau­tiful pair of shoes is a magical creature that will trans­form you into a soph­ist­ic­ated lady-about-town, even when you’re just run­ning out to the gro­cery store in your pyjamas and bedhead.

But when you live in a cli­mate that changes every hour, and the side­walks are almost always covered in ice (or snow, or mud, or random bits of gravel, or some com­bin­a­tion thereof), wearing heels can be haz­ardous to your health. As a girl who never wears flats and rarely suf­fers for it, I’ve picked up a few tricks and tips along the way.

(more…)

The Good: Digsby is gor­geous. I love the gigantic fluor­es­cent “down­load” bar that gets OS-specific after you click on it. I love their coming soon page, too, although I might have pre­ferred to find an actual download.

The Bad: No more Digby. I’m trying hard not to think about it because it makes me sad. Why aren’t there more beau­tiful & clever, highly sat­ur­ated things around? (I am hap­piest in tech­ni­colour). I don’t under­stand why “reality” is so inter­esting. There’s enough reality right out­side my door; I’d rather the fantasy when I’m looking to get out of my head.

and the Ridicu­lous: Minggl thinks “b3k 4w5″ isn’t a valid postal code. It took me three tries to figure out they wanted me to cap­it­alize it. Ser­i­ously? Canada Post will deliver my mail if I forget the majority of the address and scrawl it upside down with a six-inch-wide marker, but some web app that isn’t ever going to send me mail can’t val­idate a lower­case postal code?

Also, why are all web apps named by dys­lexic five year olds now? I miss real words.