(The 2004 book “ Paso del Nortec” collected a lot of this work.) This particular oversight feels especially galling: Palm Springs lies only three and a half hours from Tijuana. Most surprising is that there is no mention of Nortec, the Tijuana collective that upended electronic music - and design - by incorporating the signifiers of northern Mexican culture into their work. (Good news: They’re playing at the Teragram Ballroom on Nov. And artsy cumbia acts like Sonido Gallo Negro have made bold design an essential aspect of their album covers and their unusual videos. Rock bands from the 1990s like Molotov and Café Tacvba have long featured strong design on their album covers - in fact, members of the latter met in school while studying graphic design. In the 1970s, artist Jaime Ruelas became a veritable cult figure for the futuristic designs he conjured in the fliers he created for bands of all stripes. But otherwise, Mexican musical culture goes largely unrepresented. Which means that this very broad design survey has gaps for lack of space.Īn installation alludes to Mexico City’s famous outdoor musical market, Tianguis del Chopo. The Architecture and Design Center is a small space, located in a former bank building designed by E. You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times. (These were later collected in an artist book published by Gato Negro Ediciones.) Another corner, focusing on design and women, features an installation of the poignant photographs of Anai Tirado, who recorded the names of femicide victims painted on barricades erected by Mexico City authorities during protests in 2021. Tools and placards collected by Taller de Letras, an archival initiative linked to the Red de Reproducción y Distribución (who created the kiosk shown at the top of this post), display the buoyant, hand-painted lettering employed on magazine stands, shops and eateries around Mexico. One corner of “Eso es la vida” explores vernacular traditions such as sign painting. And I found myself charmed by an excerpt of a 1965 film the artist created in collaboration with director Juan José Gurrola, in which he drew patterns on the surface of a film that tracks a figure as he moves through Mexico City. Other book covers he designed reflect his interest (and hand) for hard-edge abstraction. On display is a first edition of Gabriel García Márquez’s “One Hundred Years of Solitude,” which featured a cover designed by abstract painter Vicente Rojo (who died in 2021), bearing a pattern inspired by early 20th century Mexican illustration and vernacular sign painting. Also explored are the memorable designs for the ’68 Olympics created by Pedro Ramírez Vázquez, Eduardo Terrazas and Lance Wyman - along with the massive protests the Olympics Games generated in Mexico.Ī 2018 animation by contemporary designer Fernanda Ruiz shows the number “68” reverberating to audio of the gunfire from the moment when the Mexican military began to fire on unarmed student protesters in Tlatelolco - which remains one of the most infamous massacres in modern Mexican history.īut more intriguing are the avenues of Mexican design history that have been less explored (at least within the United States). Kett, the show includes work by Posada - including a remarkable lotería game board, crafted around 1910, that features a wild mix of images: a devil, a scorpion, a burning building. “Eso es la vida/This is life: Graphic Design from Mexico,” now on view at Palm Springs Art Museum’s Architecture and Design Center, offers a broad overview of Mexican graphic design from the turn of the 20th century to the present. And the stylized logo for the Mexico City Olympics in 1968, which fused Modernism with the repeating lines of Huichol yarn paintings, has likewise influenced countless designs since - including the logo for The Times’ Latinx Files (which appears in the email version of the newsletter). The woodblock prints of José Guadalupe Posada, known for depicting Mexico’s political classes as a funereal parade of skeletons, have become part of global popular culture. And its influences have extended well beyond its borders. When it comes to graphic design, there are few places with traditions as deep, as rich and as varied as Mexico. I’m Carolina Miranda, art and design columnist at the Los Angeles Times, thinking of all the civilians - and offering a small arts break: Graphics, Mexican-style In a calamitous week, I am finding it impossible to unplug from my various newsfeeds, which in addition to the conflict in Israel are still cluttered with the despair of Armenians fleeing Nagorno-Karabakh and the conflict in Ukraine.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |