Inks Equity violence this gives us new eyes to look at the violence of the past. That is the feeling that makes "José Clemente Orozco. Painting and truth", the exhibition coordinated by Miguel Cervantes in San Ildefonso. Among its many surprises, the formidable portraits welcome, the harsh, uncomfortable but hilarious cartoons antimaderistas, fierce and tender watercolors of life brothel, sits a series of small paintings in ink and pencil originally titled "Horrors of revolution. "
are part of a group of fifty or sixty works Orozco started painting shortly before his second departure from Mexico to the United States (November 1927) until about 1930, when the success of these inks and lithographs of his subsequent beat contracts of its three famous murals in the country: Pomona, College New School for Social Research and Dartmouth College.
The genesis of these drawings are curious. Knowing that he had withdrawn to continue Orozco murals in high school, and critical journalist Anita Brenner, one of the great literary love Mexico and pretended to an American collector was interested in drawings that the artist had begun to carry on their memories of the Revolution.
Orozco gave some of them and went to New York, where she had no time to regret the ruse because, warned by Brenner, Alma Reed, the famous "Pilgrim", another passion of Mexico would take in more of a sense under his mantle, promoting his work among wealthy friends, exhibitions and even in the Delphic Studios Gallery, which would open for that purpose.
Since his arrival, after settling on the Upper West Side, Orozco continued to represent vividly the images he had witnessed around 1915 in Orizaba, while working in La Vanguardia, the journal of the famous "Red Battalions", directed by "Dr. Atl.
In his "Autobiography" Orozco left over that experience memorable paragraphs: "The tragedy tore everything around us. Troops were on the tracks to the slaughter. The trains were blown up. The shot on the porch of the parish unhappy pawns Zapatistas that Prisoners of the Carranza fell. It used to killing people, the most ruthless selfishness, the glut of senses, pure animality and openly. Small populations were robbed and committed all sorts of excesses. Trains coming from the battlefields in the station emptied Orizaba its cargo of troops wounded and tired, exhausted, shattered, sweaty, ragged. "
in San Ildefonso inks display this cruel reality that achieved revolutionary myth smooth and even ennobling. A hanged hanging from a pole while two men sleep with their rifles, a treacherous knife (picture repeated in Orozco) has pierced the breast of a naked woman lying under a maguey with her husband, an unfortunate pawn EZLN an eerie procession follows the bed of a shot, in a precarious hospital room, including weeping women and ragged blankets are piled the wounded, maimed, blindfolded, blinded, dying, guns and knives in the "Battle" are prefiguring of "Guernica" in several other categories ("Tears" and "War") the main characters are Mexican women who cover their grief with their shawls, prostrate, kneeling , pleading, resigned. Orozco
infinitely gracious of them but not idealize the "people." They often depicted as the noisy carnival of generalote murderer, surrounded by soldiers obstinate and panting whores.
Among all inks, two particularly impressed me: "Rape", which occurs in a bedroom mirror and shattered furniture, where a revolutionary cascorvo, after satisfying his appetite, fits awkwardly pants while another begins his brutal act on the same, desperate woman, and "The Return", perhaps the most poignant for its key Rulfo theme: a man returns home to report to two women, maybe his mother and his sister's death of a loved one who has only been a theft of clothing.
What was the source close to their sensitivity to pain? At age 21, an experiment with gunpowder had exploded in his hand, and to prevent gangrene was decided to amputate. In the commemorative book of the exhibition is an excellent test that recovers Tibol Raquel Orozco harrowing testimony about his physical limitations, "everything, absolutely everything, I have to do with one hand!". Had anticipated the revolution in his own body.
will say that revolutionary violence was lucid, social, heroic. It will say that those hundreds of thousands of deaths (and their widows and orphans) chose that destination to redeem a country mired in poverty, injustice, inequality or oppression. Was it really so? Orozco's vision (As in "Los de Abajo", a novel illustrated by these dates) Revolution was not the lush, idyllic utopia Rivera, and the dynamic Siqueiros historic ascent, but the drama of a good people killed in an incomprehensible, loud and wild "party of bullets."
will say that the current violence is not lucid, socially or heroic. It's true. But will the mythology of the Revolution planted among us a disregard for life that went dormant (placated by a vast and efficient system of domination, not by a genuine rule of law) to emerge again in our time. Many things built in the 20th century but not a culture of legality, which was the backbone of Mexico liberal. Therefore, the ending of the monopoly of power (where restoration is undesirable and perhaps impossible), we returned to the source: violent minorities delivered "to the killing, the most ruthless selfishness, the glut of senses, pure animality and openly ".
When we get out? When the law and justice take root among us, when the majority harboring peaceful, silent and suffering, where respect reigns of individual life.
Enrique Krauze
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For those who believe that he had never experienced violence as now. Even with all the crime we have, our generation lives better than ever before.
Whenever I am more convinced that the Revolution was the worst thing that could have happened to this country. Mexico undoubtedly had many problems with Porfirio Díaz, urging democratic change, and only with an armed uprising could topple him. But what happened between 1913 and 1920 was a disaster. The remedy was worse than the disease. Would take almost 30 years for productivity in 1910 the country had recovered. To give an idea of \u200b\u200bthe magnitude, the recent crisis in late 2008 that lasted a whole year, 2009, we need only one year, 2010, to regain the previous level.
Y Revolution took a dictator, but only to bring us another dictatorship that lasted over 70 years and still we still hanging with governors who use public money for personal gain and his group. And a Congress, a party-that do not release the power and form a monopoly that restricts participation. What served the revolution then? It's just a myth created by the PRI to justify their hold on power.