That Tina Modotti Mug at MOMA - Not
Tuesday, July 10, 2018
In January
when Rosemary and I visited New York City we bought a couple of enameled pewter
mugs at MOMA with Frida Kahlo’s image on them. They were made in Mexico. We
bought them as pasalubums (Tagalog
for gifts you buy abroad to bring back to relatives and friends) for one of our
Mexican-born daughters.
I believe
that by now we should find other Mexican female icons with feminist views. One
I have written about is Nahui Olin. Another is Italian-born Tina Modotti. The
latter singlehandedly photographed in the 20s the murals (and sometimes
including the muralists) of Diego Rivera, Clemente Orozco and David Álvaro
Siqueiros. These photographs made the Mexican muralists known to Europe and the
rest of the world.
Tina
Modotti became the lover and model of Edward Weston during his stay in Mexico
when they lived on Calle Veracruz in what is now the Colonia Condesa in Mexico
City. In his diaries Weston wrote longingly and with affection of his
sentimental and photographic relationship with Modotti.
Because
Modotti had leftist tendencies far to the left she was deported from Mexico in
1930. Somehow she turned up fighting against Franco in the Spanish Civil War
and returned to Mexico where she died in 1942 (I must find out where she is
buried!).
Sometimes I
write here on how my Argentine friends who do not speak or read English miss
out on wonderful literature that is not translated into Spanish. On the other
hand I tell my friends here in Vancouver (they have no idea of who the man is)
that I have read the complete output of Alejo Carpentier whose books I found in
Spanish at the UBC Library.
Here is an
example of a book that as far as I know has not been translated into English.
Perhaps if it ever is, I might then find some mugs with Modotti’s face on them
at MOMA.
If you have
gotten this far then I dare reproduce here a photograph I took a year after I saw the cover of Modotti’s book. It is by
San Francisco artist Ottis Oldfield dated 1933. I was inspired but tried to put a modern twist to it.
