Salon recommends

David Byrne on Mexican street graphics and more of our favorite books

Published September 30, 2002 9:57PM (EDT)

What we're reading, what we're liking

Sensacional!: Mexican Street Graphics by Juan Carlos Mena, ed.
This collection of advertising art photographed on the streets of Mexico is a jolt of pure, crude visual pizzazz at a gloomy gray time of year. There are the pulchritudinous babes and bulging strongmen common (in one form or another) to all advertising in these paintings and signs, but the best images seem to be the result of amateur artists' forays into the whimsical. Two medics carry a gasping shoe on stretcher (to the cobbler who commissioned the sign, presumably), a couple of grinning pigs boil up a man in a pot, an octopus in an armchair avails himself of eight modern comforts, including a newspaper, a beer and a slice of buttered bread. Soaps, perfumes and mysterious "powders" promise to give their purchaser absolute power over the opposite sex. And, of course, there are tacos, tortas (sandwiches) and an awful lot of chickens, one of which considerately butchers his own kind. Of the five essayists contributing to the book, David Byrne is the most bracing on the subject of why "bad" art has suddenly become "good": "Sophisticates like myself ... think that by imitating the look of something "real" we might actually become more real ourselves." Picante!

-- Laura Miller

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