Slim pickings

When I was starting out as a reporter, one of the first interviews I ever conducted was with Robert Hughes, who at the time was the art critic for Time magazine. I am paraphrasing the outspoken Australian, but one of the things that he said to me was, "Man, if there's anything about which it's all right to be elitist, it's art."

I mention this as a warning. This post may expose me as a snob.

A few months ago the new headquarters of the Museo Soumaya, owned by Carlos Slim, the wealthiest man in the world, opened to great fanfare on Boulevard Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra 303 near Polanco. Some lauded Slim because he is charging no admission fees to the museum. I would submit that each time we pay our outrageously priced telephone bills, we can see not only the museum's subsidy but the price of Slim's art collection.

If you have never been to a museum before -- as is perhaps the case with some of Soumaya's more humble visitors -- it is a truly marvelous place. But if you are a regular museumgoer, not only in Paris or New York, but here in Mexico City, the word for the collection is underwhelming.

Slim has amassed a little of everything but nothing much of great interest. There is Mexican art here, from pre-Colombian to twentieth century. But you can see greater works in any number of museums in the city, including el Museo de Antropología, el Museo de Arte Moderno, el Museo Nacional and el Palacio de Bellas Artes.

Slim has also collected inferior works by great artists, and works by inferior artists that are stylistically similar to great ones. For instance, if you have never seen a Van Gogh, one of his least interesting paintings is on display here. If you have never seen a Dali, here's one of the numerous kitschy melting clocks he produced at the end of his life.

Slim perhaps could not afford a Seurat, so he bought a pointillist work by Louis Gaidan. I admit it: I had never heard of him either.

No Matisse odalisques available? How about a nude by also-ran Henri Lebasque, who, according to Wikipedia, was Matisse's friend?

The collection is, above all, inoffensive, and includes more sculptures by Rodin than exist anywhere outside of Paris, several Renoirs, and some examples of what I would call cigar box art.

The subtext of the Museo Soumaya -- what we are are really looking at when we visit, and what is most notable about it -- is that it is a monument to the power of money and a cautionary tale about its limits. If it is an old maxim that money cannot buy happiness, the Soumaya emphasizes that it cannot buy taste, either. What it can buy you is a lot of ... stuff.

That is why the most interesting exhibition hall is the one that exposes the trappings of wealth.

For instance, here is a display of silver spoons -- perhaps the very ones that Slim was born with up his -- never mind.

Here is another of gold coins. Can't you just imagine Carlos genuflecting before them, amassing them in a pile, picking them up and letting them run through his stubby fingers?

How about this: certificates of stock of Carlos's father's original holding company. Talk about fetishism.

The interior of the building is in the form of a spiral -- an homage if you are polite, or a ripoff if you're not, of the Guggenheim Museum in New York.

Here is the exterior. The sign on the left indicates that Slim's neighbors are already complaining.

A new book about the failed drug war

My friend Ioan Grillo is a British journalist who has lived in Mexico for ten years. As a reporter he has obsessively covered the drug-related violence here, and just published a book about the failure of the so-called drug wars, called El Narco: Inside Mexico's Criminal Insurgency. The book has received excellent advance notices from Publisher's Weekly,  Kirkus Reviews and Library Journal. I have only just begun to read it -- so far it's a real page-turner. Obviously, I tend to wait until I have finished a book to write about it here, but as Ioan starts a tour today, I wanted to post his dates in case he will be appearing in a bookstore or other venue near you.

Today, October 23, he is in Austin at the Texas Book Festival at noon at the C Span tent on Congress Avenue between 9th and 10th.

Tomorrow, October 24, he is at Brazos Bookstore in Houston, 2421 Bissonette, at noon.

On the 25th he is at Vroman's in Pasadena, California, 695 East Colorado, at 7 pm.

On the 26th, he is in San Francisco at the World Affairs Council, 312 Sutter Street, 6 pm.

New Yorkers: you have to wait until November 28, when he will be at the Half King, 505 West 23rd Street, at 7 pm.

Household saint

In his heyday in the 1950s and 1960s, the masked El Santo (The Saint) was probably the most famous wrestler in Mexico, if not in all of Latin America. In addition to his matches, which he fought worldwide, there was a comic book about his exploits, and he also starred in a series of over fifty B-pictures with titles like Santo vs. the Mummies of Guanajuato, Santo vs. the Vampire Women and Mystery in the Bermudas. Throughout his career he never lost a match (which would have required him to take off his mask in public). Although born in Hidalgo state, El Santo came to Mexico City as a child, and learned his chops in Tepito, a notoriously tough neighborhood that has been the breeding ground for many wrestlers and boxers. This statue, on the edge of Tepito, is a gift to the neighborhood from his son, another wrestler known as El Hijo del Santo (The Son of the Saint). Fans regularly leave wreathes in El Santo's memory, although he has been dead since 1984.

Shopping center city

The first shopping mall in Mexico City, the enormous Plaza Satélite, opened in 1971. In the past decade or so, the trend has been to build smaller malls in any neighborhood where the market will bear them. With slight variations, all Mexico City malls look alike and have the same stores, skewed toward younger consumers. Many such shops are branches of multinationals with headquarters in Europe -- stores you see in much of the world, such as C&A, Mango and Zara. (That last is part of the Spain-based Inditex Group, with more than 3,000 stores in 65 countries, including the Berksha, Pull and Bear and Oysho chains.)

For most of my life,  I had the New Yorker's contemptuous view of malls: loathsome eyesores for unfortunate hicks who live on the peripheries of cities and cannot even buy a newspaper without getting into their cars. However, after so many years in Mexico City, I can sort of understand the chilango's comfort in shopping centers. One of the principal sources of stress in the city is traffic, which makes it so complicated to get back and forth from anywhere. Since so many malls have sprouted, they are easy to get to. Some take comfort in their uniformity and predictability, and that once inside the bubble, their consumer needs are met -- needs that, before the appearance of the malls, were largely undiscovered. I understand the social status issues as well. Malls give certain chilangos the sense that they are part of an affluent contemporary universe.

Y tu mamá también

Toward the end of Nelson Algren's novel A Walk on the Wild Side, the hapless protagonist Dove Linkhorn finds himself in a New Orleans jail cell with an old con called Cross-Country Kline, who advises him that "life is hard by the yard" but "a cinch by the inch." Kline also suggests that "money can't buy everything. For example: poverty." The older man's advice is frequently quoted, reduced to three maxims: "Never play cards with a man called Doc. Never eat at a place called Mom's. Never sleep with a woman whose troubles are worse than your own."

I like poker, but the opportunity to play with a man called Doc has never presented itself (unless some shark was lying about his moniker). And let's just say that it has not been easy to find women with troubles worse than my own. But I tend to agree with Algren about restaurants called Mom's. They just don't inspire confidence.

And that goes for the abuelas too. There are plenty of them here in Mexico.