Mexican Ceramics-Black-front view

Mexican Ceramics-Black-front_0717.JPG, originally uploaded by objects_avaenlle.

The Visual Front, Posters from the Spanish Civil from UCSD's Southworth Collection

Amazing collection and entire history of the Spanish Civil War, quite an impressive collection.

Posted. Biblioteca Nacional's Posters of The Spanish Civil War

Los Carteles de La Guerra Civil Española.

El Archivo General de la Guerra Civil Española conserva una de las mejores colecciones de carteles de la guerra civil existentes en el mundo. Especialmente rica y completa respecto a los producidos por la República, ha sido ampliada posteriormente con la incorporación de otros carteles significativos editados en su día por el bando nacional. Dichos carteles ya se dieron a conocer a través de la publicación en formato CD-ROM realizada por el Ministerio de Cultura en dos volúmenes (el 1º de ellos en el año 2002 y el 2º en 2005). En la actualidad la colección consta de 2.280 carteles que pueden ser consultados a través de esta base de datos.

The Spanish Archive of the Spanish Civil war is one of the best collection of the Civil War in the world. The special rich and complete collection of items produced in the Republic, has growth with the incorporation of significant other editions.
These posters became available on CD-Rom as a result of the efforts of the Minister of Culture. Produced in two volumes, the first volume was created in 2002, and the second volume in 2005. The collection consists of 2.280 posters which you can examine on their web site.

The bold,simple,striking, powerful Posters are definitely worth a look.

Pin-up girls, wrestlers, beauties and cuties

Comical, kitsch, nostalgic, Mexican tatoo artist, Dr Larka gives us 50's Mexico with a twist.

Dr Lakra is a tattoo artist living and working near Mexico City. In his parallel activities here, however, Dr Lakra transfers his draughtsmanship onto the idealised figures in 50’s Mexican magazines. Pin-up girls, wrestlers, beauties and cuties are tattooed and 'enhanced' in ink with bats, demons, spiders and the faces of pouting vixens. Like pertinent graffiti, the relative innocence of another era is politicised and the images are infused with a relish for the diabolical. Beautification or social identification, the works are a carnival of the grotesque. Kitschy erotica, ancient ritual, and hallucinogenic visions are fused in a collage of ideologies.

A click on the title to glimpse a few more works from the selection of works from the Saatchi Gallery, UK.


image courtesy of http://www.deutsche-bank-kunst.com/art/images/471/63.jpg

Hispanic Cultures of The World. What does this encompass culturally ?

Hispanic culture, From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Hispanic culture is a term used to identify the cultural production found in Spain and in the countries that were part of the Spanish Empire, including Mexico, Peru and other countries that were formerly part of New Spain and the Vice royalty of Peru.

In Latin America, portions of the Caribbean, the Philippines and Equatorial Guinea, Spanish cultural influences are significant. This includes to some extent those parts of the United States (the Southwest and Florida) that were also originally colonized by the Spanish. Hispanic nations share many of the same customs, traditions, language, food, art, and religion, though each country has its own unique culture and particularities.

Moreover, with globalization and migration, elements of Hispanic culture are now found more widely dispersed still: there are size able Hispanic communities in most major cities in North America (including New York, Chicago, Toronto) and Europe. Hispanic food, music, and dance are also increasingly popular outside the Hispanic world.

Hispanic.

Hispanic
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Countries where Spanish has official status.

Situation in the United States of America:

States of the U.S. where Spanish has no official status but is spoken by 25% or more of the population. States of the U.S. where Spanish has no official status but is spoken by 10-20% of the population. States of the U.S. where Spanish has no official status but is spoken by 5-9.9% of the population. Countries and regions where the Spanish language is spoken without official recognition, or where Spanish-based créole languages (Chamorro, Chavacano, Papiamento, Portuñol, etc) are spoken with or without official recognition, and areas with a strong Hispanic influence.


Hispanic (Castilian Hispano, Portuguese Hispânico, Catalan: Hispà, from Latin Hispānus, adjective from Hispānia, the Roman name for the Iberian Peninsula) is a term that historically denoted relation to the ancient Hispania and its peoples. However, when the modern day country of Spain was created in the 15th century, it inherited the term, and thus, since then, 'Hispanic' is also related to Spain, its people and its culture. In this process, Portugal was excluded from the term, despite the fact that the territory that it nowadays covers was also in the former Hispania[1]. Instead of Hispanic, Portugal adopted the word Lusitanic for the same purposes (in reference to the former Roman province of Lusitania, which was a part Hispania; ultimately, pertaining to the Lusitanians, one of the first Indo-European tribes to settle Europe). With the expansion of the Spanish Empire, the peoples from Spain spread all over the world, creating new colonies and giving rise to the Hispanophone. This expansion was mainly concentrated in the Americas, especially in what is called Hispanic America, which comprises all those countries from the Americas that once belonged to the Spanish Empire and where the Spanish influence is still present.

These countries, inherited the cultural and ancestral legacy of the Spaniards, and in consequence, their peoples and their cultures are also considered as Hispanic. Nowadays, the peoples from Hispanic America who live in the United States have developed their own identity with an Hispanic substrate, and are also considered Hispanic[2]

Overcoming Tourism

Vintage Barbie In Mexico

Overcoming Tourism by Hakim Bey

In the Old Days tourism didnt exist. Gypsies, Tinkers and other true nomads even now roam about their worlds at will, but no one would therefore think of calling them «tourists».
Tourism is an invention of the 19th century-a period of history which sometimes seems to have stretched out to unnatural length. In many ways, we are still living in the 19th century.

The tourist seeks out Culture because -in our world-culture has disappeared into the maw of the Spectacle culture has been torn down and replaced with a Mall or a talk­show- because our education is nothing but a preparation for a lifetime of work and consumption-because we ourselves have ceased to create. Even though tourists appear to be physically present in Nature or Culture, in effect one might call them ghosts haunting ruins, lacking all bodily presence. They're not really there, but rather move through a mind­scape, an abstraction («Nature», «Culture»), collecting images rather than experience. All too frequently their vacations are taken in the midst of other peoples' misery and even add to that misery.

Recently several people were assassinated in Egypt just for being tourists. Behold .... the Future. Tourism and terrorism:-just what is the difference?

Of the three archaic reasons for travel - call them «war», «trade», and «pilgrimage» - which one gave birth to tourism? Some would automatically answer that it must be pilgrimage. The pilgrim goes «there» to see, the pilgrim normally brings back some souvenir; the pilgrim takes «time off» from daily life; the pilgrim has nonmaterial goals. In this way, the pilgrim foreshadows the tourist.

But the pilgrim undergoes a shift of consciousness, and for the pilgrim that shift is real. Pilgrimage is a form of initiation, and initiation is an opening to other forms of cognition.

We can detect something of the real difference between pilgrim and tourist, however, by comparing their effects on the places they visit. Changes in a place-a city, a shrine, a forest-may be subtle, but at least they can be observed. The state of the soul may be a matter for conjecture, but perhaps we can say something about the state of the social.

Pilgrimage sites like Mecca may serve as great bazaars for trade and they may even serve as centers of production, (like the silk industry of Benares) - but their primary «product» is baraka or maria. These words (one Arabic, one Polynesian) are usually translated as «blessing», but they also carry a freight of other meanings.

The wandering dervish who sleeps at a shrine in order to dream of a dead saint (one of the «People of the Tombs») seeks initiation or advancement on the spiritual path, a mother who brings a sick child to Lourdes seeks healing; a childless woman in Morocco hopes the Marabout will make her fertile if she ties a rag to the old tree growing out of the grave; the traveller to Mecca yearns for the very center of the Faith, and as the caravans come within sight of the Holy City the hajji calls out «Labbaïka Allabumma!» ­ «I am here, O Lord!»

All these motives are summed up by the word baraka, which sometimes seems to be a palpable substance, measurable in terms of increased charisma or «luck». The shrine produces baraka. And the pilgrim takes it away. But blessing is a product of the Imagination-and thus no matter how many pilgrims take it away there's always more. In fact, the more they take, the more blessing the shrine can produce (because a popular shrine grows with every answered prayer).

To say that baraka is «imaginal» is not to call it «unreal». It's real enough to those who feel it. But spiritual goods do not follow the rules of supply and demand like material goods. The more demand for spiritual goods, the more supply. The production of baraka is infinite.

By contrast, the tourist desires not baraka but cultural difference. The pilgrim ­ we might say - leaves the «secular space» of home and travels to the «sacred space» of the shrine in order to experience the difference between secular and sacred. But this difference remains intangible, subtle, invisible to the «profane» gaze, spiritual, imaginal. Cultural difference however is measurable, apparent, visible, material, economic, social.

The imagination of the capitalist «first world» is exhausted. It cannot imagine anything different. So the tourist leaves the homogenous space of «home» for the heterogenous space of «foreign climes» not to receive a «blessing» but simply to admire the picturesque, the mere view or snapshot of difference, to see the difference.

The tourist consumes difference.

But the production of cultural difference is not infinite. It is not «merely» imaginal. It is rooted in language, landscape, architecture, custom, taste, smell. It is very physical. The more it is used up or taken away, the less remains. The social can produce just so much «meaning», just so much difference. Once it's gone, it's gone.