Siqueiros' mural in LA

Since now I am not sure people can actually access the link, though I can, but I've saved it to my archive, I'll post the text -


quoting -
August 2, 2006


Pulling back the cover on a provocative mural
The city and the Getty Trust reach an agreement to restore Siqueiros' 1932 work on Olvera Street.

interesting stuff Osso - I enjoy seeing the artists you show as I wouldn't come across them otherwise

Oh, Vivien, Siqueiros (and I never spell his name right) was a key painter, very powerful.

I have a bias in that my first real boyfriend signed a petition for him to get out of jail and naturally I did too, at some booth in front of our student union. That was in (cringe) 1963.

That boyfriend, who I treasure in memory still, was, in retrospect very sharp and having looked him up online, still is very sharp, explored and wrote about the Sierras...

He took me to the local museum, where we saw the Keinholz (sp?) car, and much else. In a way it might have been my enchantment with him that clued me in at all to art, opened my very channelled eyes.

I loved Siqueiros then, more than Rivera and Orozco and Tamayo.
Who knows what I think now, it's been a while. I do know JL is keen on Tamayo..

I think we all have a greater knowledge of the art of our own continent - I'm much more familiar with European art than American, except for a few major names. I really enjoy seeing more and different work - will research him when life gets a bit less hectic.

I don't know why, but I havn't been getting updates, such as for this forum.
Among the great Mexican muralists, I've always preferred RufinoTamayo (as Osso notes). This was in part because he was the closest to the Abstract Expressionism that I had studied before going to Mexico City to study painting in the fine arts Academy of San Carlos. There, everyone was practicing social realism and pretty much dismissed my fondness for abstract art (popular in the U.S. at the time--1955). The great exception was the more abstract-ish art of Tamayo.

Makes me want to look up some Tamayo photos. I've done that before but it's nice to see some work again.

It's good to see you on the computer with the storm that Albuturkey is supposed to be undergoing. I don't see evidence of Dys, Ash or BBB on the puter. What's it really like there now?

No storm right here right now... storms often go just to the north of us...

Here's a Tamayo I don't remember seeing before, at the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston -

Dogs (Perros)

I'm not familiar with this "dog" picture either. One of his most famous paintings is of vicious dogs called "Animales" (1941 at MOMA).
I love Tamayo's use of color, just brilliant in both senses of the word.

You may think this odd, but I like his density...

I'd have given a link to the main Tamayo museum in Mexico, but somehow my computer has trouble with it. Artcyclopedia has a lot of places listed where his work is shown, and that may be where I got this one. Well, not may be, was, in fact.

Oh, the facing page of that which has Animales contains Dos Perros, also 1941 and also at MOMA.
Frankly, I never noticed it because it does not compare in brilliance with Los Animales.
What do you mean by "density"? Can it be put in words?
If you mean the "weight" of the figures, I agree.

Off the top of my head, rich color, rich juxtapositon - however far away; sense of thick layers even if the surface seems simple.

Am I just grasping, I dunno. I like that last dog thing better than the watermelon paintings. Or do I? Just had a run through on various museum sites and need to look harder. Many of the paintings have an icon figure which also acts as an abstract structural element. That is all beyond my purview. I mostly react to color, form, movement, as a start.

I love the color in his watercolor paintings, but that image has become cliche.

"Or do I?"
I love the honesty of your ambivalence.

I am a walking talking vascillating person. If someone challenges me at any point in time, I'll say something. Or, more likely, answer a thread question. Woe to him or her who listens...

Back to that particular dog painting.. I still like it, as it's not yet a cliche to me (wait, already).