Last in a series–I have been so impressed by the late paintings of this relatively obscure German impressionist/expressionist that I wanted to share them. This last group is paintings of religious and/or mythological themes. To enlarge, double click on image.
This time it’s still lifes. To enlarge, double-click on image.
The following are a group of late landscapes (1912-1925) by Berlin-based painter Lovis Corinth. To enlarge one of the images, double click on it.
A couple of years ago I discovered a group of late paintings by Lovis Corinth at the art museum in Hamburg. Corinth was a Berlin painter at the turn of the century, generally associated with the impressionist movement. I had always ignored his work as precious and cheesy. But these late paintings knocked my socks off. So I looked deeper.
It turns out that he suffered a stroke in 1911 after which his work changed profoundly. Really profoundly—I’m not kidding when I say the early stuff is cheesy. From then until his death in 1925, he produced an extraordinary body of work that overlaps in interesting ways with the mature work of Kokoschka.
This is a group of his portraits. To enlarge an image, double click on it. Over the next few days I’ll post examples of his landscapes and other subjects.
Two months ago, my colleague Tim and I paid a visit to the land of mezcal. We were working with a band of young, Mexico City-based architects, artists, and idealists. Mezcal, as far as they were concerned, is the essence of Mexico.
Our purpose was to launch of a Story of Place for Mexico City. Though we were supposed to be paying attention to more important things, I was mostly aware of the food and drink. On our first morning we were taken to an old Mercado for a breakfast of tacos made from goat roasted in the traditional underground pit. From there we toured an ecological park in the ancient chinampas (floating gardens) of Xochimilco and then into a narrow cleft in the mountains where we stopped for quesadillas prepared with squash blossoms and corn smut. The open-air mountain kitchen also served homemade pulque, a sweet and lightly alcoholic beverage made from agave—the first stage in making mezcal.
That night, to celebrate more than eight hours negotiating nightmare traffic, we stopped in Coyoacan for a pre-dinner snack and the main attraction—very good quality mezcal. Spicy roasted grasshoppers and orange slices were offered as accompaniments. The mescal was clear, vaguely sweet, delicious. We tried several varieties and styles.
I warned my companions that I’m a cheap date—half a beer is my limit. They smiled and surreptitiously refilled my glass every time I looked away. Before long I certainly was high. We all were. It was pleasant, cheerful, and definitely mind altering—on the edge of hallucinogenic. It was the first time I had the experience of an alcoholic beverage as a “plant medicine.” It had a personality, a point of view about the world. Wine elevates spirit. Beer is, well, beery. Mezcal is a journey. The most surprising thing was I had no hangover the next morning. They had told me this would be so and I didn’t believe them.
Mezcal is exciting in part because it is often still produced artisanally, made in small quantities by village craftsmen using an indigenous desert plant. The agave is harvested just as it is preparing to send up a flower spike, when the sugars are concentrated in the heart. It is traditionally roasted using oak charcoal, then fermented and distilled. It carries the signature of its terroir, of the place where it was made, and is highly differentiated from region to region and maker to maker.
Because it is a high value product that can be produced in a perennial agricultural system while leaving the majority of biomass on site, mezcal has an ongoing role to play in rural economies of Mexico. Agave can be grown as an understory plant in a mixed oak savannah, making it useful economic element in a regenerative land management program that restores habitat, heals watersheds, and diversifies ecosystems. Mezcal has so much potential—as an economic driver for land restoration and rural viability, as a distinctive product with international appeal, and as a carrier of cultural traditions and craftsmanship.
