20220103 Shep as author
Rueda, a good friend to this blog, often goes out of his way to share beautiful things he and his wife have seen in their travels. More than that, Rueda always finds something nice to say while visiting with our commenters.
Let's follow Rueda's good example
If you have something beautiful to share, please do! More's the better if you've actually been to the place to have experienced the beauty for yourself, but even if the image is aspirational, or just on a list of places you'd like to go, please share!
Here are a couple of my favorites.
Padre Hidalgo,
seen here driving out the Fascist and Communist enemies of Mexico,
by Jose Clemente Orozco,
at the old government palace in Guadalajara.
Mexican culture & art fascinates me. After learning the language it was natural to read their histories in their language. So of course I became familiar with figures like Padre Hidalgo and knew well of Orozco's disdain for "-isms". In 1988 I had a three day layover in Guadalajara. I hired a local driver/guide for those days. He properly sized me up and insisted I needed to visit the old capital buildings. There was no expectations that I would see this work, although I was familiar with the image. Upon entering a stairwell, there he was above me. Padre Hidalgo, banishing the enemies of Mexico. This was the first time any piece of art had ever moved me. The work itself is not beautiful, but the ideas are. A kind-natured Criollo priest chasing evil from Mexico by sheer force of will. This story has a sad end, but the audaciousness of that moment in history, when this man squared off against raw political power, comes to me whenever I am in that stairwell. What a heady life this priest lived.
Every time I am in Guadalajara I go to the old capital to visit the Padre.
Art is not always "art". Sometimes engineering is art. As a child who benefited from education grants during the space race I developed an appreciation for aircraft. The forms that were demanded by the physics needed for an aircraft to function using technology available from 1920 through about 1990 were almost invariably beautiful in their own right. Even unskinned aircraft, just bulkheads, spars, stringers and ribs, show strength and movement. Add to this an understanding of history and then it becomes easy to be overwhelmed by the beauty present the first time someone like me enters a gallery at the National Air & Space Museum. My favorite uncle gave me aviation books and a subscription to Air and Space as I was growing up. I didn't know the beauty of it all would be coming together until entering that first gallery, that first time, with my wife. I was dumbstruck, overwhelmed with emotion, as my eyes fell directly on history I knew and loved.
That first gallery has changed a lot since that visit. Some of these aircraft were in that first gallery, although this room is much newer.
Different things are beautiful to different people. Share something beautiful here. It doesn't have to be real. Sometimes the aspirational representation of a concept is beautiful to think about, even if the image that prompts the thought is rendered with no great skill. Let us know if your post has a beauty beyond the visually obvious.
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