International migration, extracts from the novel Texas.

James Michener, TEXAS

These five short extracts from the novel Texas, by James Michener, describe the awful conditions in which mexican migrants who cross Rio Grande to get to the US, commonly called wetbacks, arrive to the "land of opportunity" at the hands of illegal organisations that leave them to die on their own.

The story is told by an external narrator who however describes everything from the immigrants' point of view. That way, we can see migration the way migrants themselves live it, we are on their side. These people cross Rio Grande swimming, get put into a trunk like animals sent to slaughter, pay an amount of money (fifty dollars) which is huge to them, and then they finally see their hopes broken when the organisation which was illegally helping them to the US plays a trick on them and they find themselves alone in the desert, without any food or water. The heartless sugglers simulate a problem in the motor to make them leave the truck and then flee to avoid any responsibility over their lives. In less than one day most of the wetbacks die, even one of the main characters, Manuela, for a stronger shock in the reader. This scene causes a great impression as the characters die sentence after sentence untill less than half the group still survive in a desert where even a knowledge of plants and survival techniques are unuseful.

This document talks about people who have to endure torture just to move from one place to another in order to have a better life. Il is a criticism to the huge difficulty of mobility through selective borders, where the authorities, by closing the access to the US, end up failing to stop migration and allowing the kind of abuse described in the novel to happen every day. Wetbacks and other illegal international migrants are left behind in the globalised world, forgotten by the open borders that let everything in, everything except people 

OUTSOURCING/OFFSHORING

In this cartoon drawn by Matson for the St Louis Post in July 2012 we can see Mitt Romney, a republican politician and candidate to the 2012 presidential election, standing in the middle of a desert island representing the Cayman Islands'tax haven, with a big trunk full of money to bury, with his name on it (he is offshoring his own money). In the background we can see two other tax havens: Bermuda and Switzerland. On the left side there is a boat called "Believin'in America" and, sitting on it and looking at him with admiration, Romney's grandchildren , according to their speech bubble. Romney explains to them why outsourcing and why offshoring and his grandchildren say "You are so smart!" "You should be president!"
The cartoon criticizes a thorough hypocrisy, because Romney himself said several times during his campaign that he would protect american jobs and capital while his own company,  Bain Capital, invested in businesses that were pioneers in ousourcing jobs, and was funded with money placed in Panama for example. Here he is seen as a master of offshoring and outsourcig, and what is bitterly ironic, appart the that he is admired for doing that, is that his boat is called believin' in America, an idea completely imcompatible with what he really does for America.




This simple cartoon from the website geek & poke was created in 2008. It is divided into three boxes where can see two office men talking about an upcoming new offshoring. first the man oo the left explains that they have to move country because their workers wanted even more that the thousands of  jobs the company created, then the man on the right asks why, so he is answered that, surprisingly,  they wanted to get paid, "unbelievable".
 It is again a very bitter humour. The reason why western companies make their products in foreign countries is because those countries have no workers'rights whatsoever, to spend much less money on wages. So if workers legitimately want their money they aren't useful anymore, but they are not supposed to ask for money in the first place. What the cartoon shows is another case of hypocrisy: companies justify their action saying that they are developing poor counries, but what actually happens is they shamelessly exploit local people.


These two cartoons tackle an issue very much related with the otion of spaces and exchanges. There are real spaces involved in outsourcing and offshoring: the company's country of origin, the destination countries for the outsourced working functions and the tax havens are some of them, and these two activities are all about exchanges. there is an economical exchange with tax havens and the country that hosts the outsourced function, a physical exchange of products that were made in one country and are sent back to be sold in the country where the company originally comes from, an exchange of knowledge when the new workers are trained...
Offshoring and outsoucing are a characteristic exchange in the increasingly big space of the globalised world.

Spaces and exchanges

International migration: the movement by people from one country to another with the intention of settling temporarily or permanently in the new location.

Hybrid/ mixed language: a language that arises through the fusion of usually two source languages, normally in situations of thorough bilingualism (Meakins, 2013), so that it is not possible to classify the resulting language as belonging to either of the language families that were its sources.

Technology transfers: the process of transferring skills, knowledge, technologies, methods of manufacturing, samples of manufacturing and facilities among governments or universities and other institutions to ensure that scientific and technological developments are accessible to a wider range of users who can then further develop and exploit the technology into new products, processes, applications, materials or services.

Outsourcing/offshoring: offshoring is the relocation, by a company, of a business process from one country to another—typically an operational process, such as manufacturing, or supporting processes, such as accounting. Even state governments employ offshoring. Outsourcing sometimes involves transferring employees and assets from one firm to another, but not always.Outsourcing is also the practice of handing over control of public services to for-profit corporations.

Brain drain: the emigration of intelligent, well-educated individuals to somewhere for better pay or conditions, causing the place they came from to lose those skilled people, or "brains."

Globalised trade: the exchange of capital, goods, and services across international borders or territories. In most countries, such trade represents a significant share of gross domestic product (GDP). While international trade has been present throughout much of history (see Silk Road, Amber Road, Salt road), its economic, social, and political importance has been on the rise in recent centuries.

Ecotourism: a form of tourism involving visiting fragile, pristine, and relatively undisturbed natural areas, intended as a low-impact and often small scale alternative to standard commercial (mass) tourism. Its purpose may be to educate the traveler, to provide funds for ecological conservation, to directly benefit the economic development and political empowerment of local communities, or to foster respect for different cultures and for human rights.

Human trafficking: the trade of humans, most commonly for the purpose of sexual slavery, forced labor or commercial sexual exploitation for the trafficker or others. This may encompass providing a spouse in the context of forced marriage, or the extraction of organs or tissues, including for surrogacy and ova removal. Human trafficking can occur within a country or trans-nationally. Human trafficking is a crime against the person because of the violation of the victim's rights of movement through coercion and because of their commercial exploitation.

Arms trafficking: also known as gunrunning. It is the illegal trafficking or smuggling of contraband weapons or ammunition. What constitutes legal trade in firearms varies widely, depending on local and national laws. Although arms trafficking is widespread in regions of political turmoil, it is not limited to such areas, and for example, in South Asia, an estimated 63 million guns have been trafficked into India and Pakistan.

The suppression of gunrunning is one of the areas of increasing interest in the context of international law.

Illegal drug trade: the exchange of illegal drugs for payment. The illegal drug trade is a global black market dedicated to the cultivation, manufacture, distribution and sale of drugs that are subject to drug prohibition laws. Most jurisdictions prohibit trade, except under license, of many types of drugs through the use of drug prohibition laws.A UN report has stated that "the global drug trade generated an estimated US$321.6 billion in 2003."

Rural-urban/urban-rural migration: rural-urban migration is a population shift from rural to urban areas, "the gradual increase in the proportion of people living in urban areas", and the ways in which each society adapts to the change. It predominantly results in the physical growth of urban areas. Urban-rural migration is the departure of people from cities to the countryside with the intetion to flee urban stress and pollution.

Relief organisations/Aid agencies: Organisations dedicated to distributing aid. Many professional aid organisations exist, both within government (AusAID, USAID, DFID, EuropeAid, ECHO), between governments as multilateral donors (UNDP) and as private voluntary organisations (or non.governmental organisations (Oxfam,ActionAid, Doctors without borders...). The international Commitee of the Red Cross is unique in being  mandated by international treaty.

Student exchange programs: a program in which students from a secondary school or university study abroad at one of their institution's partner institutions. A student exchange program may involve international travel, but does not necessarily require the student to travel outside of his or her home country. For example, the National Student Exchange program (NSE) offers placements throughout the United States and Canada.

Global cities/ global cultural events:  a global city is a city generally considered to be an important node in the global economic system. The concept comes from geography and urban studies and rests on the idea that globalization can be understood as largely created, facilitated, and enacted in strategic geographic locales according to a hierarchy of importance to the operation of the global system of finance and trade.

Global warmig: Gobal warming is the observed century-scale rise in the average temperature of the Earth's climate system and its related effects. Multiple lines of scientific evidence show that the climate system is warming.More than 90% of the additional energy stored in the climate system since 1970 has gone into ocean warming; the remainder has melted ice, and warmed the continents and atmosphere. Many of the observed changes since the 1950s are unprecedented over decades to millennia, and this change comes without a doubt from human activities.

School shootings in the USA

On the day of April 20, 1999, in Columbine High school, Colorado, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, two senior year students, planned and performed a bombing and a shooting that caused 13 deaths and injured 21 people. Luckily, some of the bombs they had set for that morning did not explode. Nevertheless, the Columbine High massacre remains the deadliest school shooting ever performed in the US, and perhaps the better known.

-It is interesting and particularly appalling to note that the bombing and the shooting were very carefully planned for over a year of secret video reports and schedules on paper.
-The initial plan was to blow up the school at 11:17 that morning, with several bombs set for that time inside the building which never exploded. Bombs set inside cars in the streets did explode though.
-They had then prepared 99 Molotov cocktails to light them inside the school.
- It all ended with the most fateful and unfair outcome: both Harris and Dylan committed suicide the very same day in the school library.
- the current library is called "Hope Columbine Memorial Library"



Harris and Dylan inside the cafeteria (survelliance camera shoot)



A swat team investigates in front of the main gate


Students visit a  memorial set for the victims of the Columbine shooting


I have never watched any movies which deal with the subject of school shootings so I cannot decide which one tackles the issue best. However, from the list given in the website "a Columbine site" the one I would find most interesting to discover is probably Bang bang you're dead, which apparently tries to find some of the reasons why a teenager would come to the point of killing his fellow students.

The reasons most commonly given to explain the abnormal recurrence of this kind of shootings in the US are:

- Violence as a revenge, resulting from years of bullying
-Plainly a lack of consideration for human life
-The criminal having witnessed or suffered from violence at home
- Mental health issues
   And llast but not least...
- The easy access to guns in the US

The US gun culture

This is a poster for one of the many campaigns against gun violence led by the Brady Center in the US since 1974.
What fist strikes the eye is a gun; quite a modern one, with the US flag stamped on it. It is here without a doubt the symbol of the US gun culture.
Then we automatically start to read the text above that gives some comparative information about people killed by guns in one year in various developped countries. These go from 17 to 200. The last country on the list is the US, and there, the statistic number changes dramatically: 9 484 deaths from gun violence. This last sentence is put forward with a bigger font size, so the difference is given more importance. Right below, in an even bigger and thicker font size we can read "GOD BLESS AMERICA", the traditionnal moto of the United States.
In the bottom left corner there is the logo of brady campaign, that gives information about who made the poster, but is also a guarantee for the numbers given.
This poster plays on two levels. With the statistic numbers (17 people in Finland, 35 in Australia etc.) it gives, on the one hand, objectibve and precise information about the impact of gun violence in the US compared to countries just as rich and developed. The numbers speak for themselves, the difference is alarming as it is. On the other hand, there is the intention of making the poster even more shocking, with strategical changes in the font sizes, and especially , with the gun that makes us see the very object that is causing all those deaths, and with the symbols of american pride: the moto and the stars and stripes related to that death rate. The point of having these two symbols of american culture appear in the poster is to hint that the problem is caused by the American mentality, that guns and "God bless America" are in close relationship. It is a clear reference to the second Amendment of the US Constitution.



This slightly older poster for the exact same campaign consists in pretty much the same thing.
One notable difference is the choice of the gun, giving a more traditional one that can then be a part of the American symbols along with the flag and the moto.
The numbers and some of the countries chosen as examples are different but the effect is the same.
A notable change howewer is the number of gun-related deaths in 2004: 11 344, as opposed to 9 484 around 2013, when the other poster was published. We can notice that gun violence in the US nowadays is dicreasing, but is still a major problem.





These compared graphs made by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime show (based on the latest statistics made on each country between 2004 and 2010) the place the United States occupy in the rating of gun violence compared to the top ten most violent countries, and then the American gun-related death rate per 100 000 people compared to the most developed countries'.
If we look at the first graph there seems to be no major problem with guns in the US. In the gun violence ranking the United States come in 26th, with a gun-related death rate less than a quarter as high as the top ten most violent countries'. But then again, it is only predictable as the US are a very rich and developed country, with a very high HDI. It is precisely based on their Human Development Index that the countries in the second graph are classified. We can see that the US there comes in third, so we are making the second comparison with nations which have a social context much more similar to the US's. The violence rate then goes from not being very alarming at all to being exceedingly higher than the other developed countries'. Even the second on the list, which is Switzerland, has a violence rate exactly four times lower than the US's. These graphs show that there are much more violent nations than the US, but beyond this, if we look at the US in its own social context, it is an abnormally violent contry.



This cartoon drawn by the Pulizer Award winning cartoonist Steve Sack for the Star Tribune (Minneapolis) is an open criticism to the gun culture in the United States. Two Characters are standing in front of the Capitol, the famous US Congress building in Washington, one of them a member of  Congress, representing the political power, the other from the gun lobby, representing the economic power of gun trade. While a long blood stain crosses the image and goes up the stairs, signifying that there has been a shooting in Congress, the gun lobby is giving Congress a large amount of money. This money goes, no doubt, to keeping guns legal for sale for anyone as they have always been in America. While shootings kill hundreds of innocent people, Congress and the gun lobby work together for it not to change. The smile on both faces and the sentence: "now, where were we before we were so rudely interrupted..." underline with irony the indifference, or even cynism of these people, whoose interest above and beyond anything is money. In this cartoon sack is telling us that, nowadays, the lethal US gun culture lies on dishonest agreements between the political power and the gun lobby, who are thus partly responsible for fatal shootings.



This second cartoon by Dave Granlund is just as critical with the US gun culture as the first. It is divided into two parts. On the left we can see a statue of a man from the eighteenth century holding a shotgun, probably to hunt, to fight in the indepencence war or to protect himself from any danger. This would be a representation of the "Second Amendment (part of the constitution that defines the right to keep and bear arms) as defined by the founding fathers" of the US. On the right there is another man, a real one, from the twenty first century, standing on a pile of ammunition boxes, in military clothes and with at least four guns on himself. This would be the "Second Amendment as defined by the NRA (national riffle association)". This second part is a clear hyperbole.  What this cartoon tries to say is that the current vision of the Second Amendment, the one  the NRA puts through, the one that nowadays is taken into consideration to make laws, is an abuse of what this amendment was iniccially ment to allow and ensure. Gradually the US would have gone from the first to the second vision of the Second Amendment, from ensuring one's own safety (and invading native americans in the West...) with one weapon to threatening everyone eslse's with an abusive and somewhat paranoid use of guns. The Second Amendment wouldn't then justify by any means the huge gun culture existing in the US, which would be a product of the NRA, the biggest and most important part of the gun lobby, not even an official authority, which we saw paying Congress for their interests to be mantained in the first cartoon. The US gun culture as seen in this cartoon doesn't respect but abuses the US constitution.

Quiet pills

Several weeks will go by.
Winter will come.
I'll still be hiding in the same room
With its two large windows.

I've never been safer, never lonelier.

Hollow bricks and translucent glass will keep me warm.
You will feel alive.  They will be cold,
And happy,
For I suppose things will have changed.

The world looks different from inside.
It has shrunk, it is shrinking
And in the end I alone will remain
And it will make no difference.

But the sun was shining yesterday,
And your flowerbeds looked nice.
Were you there?                                                                                                                                           ... ... ...

Several months will go by,
And spring will come.
I'll still be peering through the keyhole
Of my bedroom door.

I've never had such a feeling of emptiness.

You will tell me about the lush trees
Or the kids playing on the lawns
And from here,
I'll be longing for change.

I cannot look at the outside.
Not anymore.
And I expect it will someday dissappear
And I'll be swallowed up by void.

But you came to visit this morning.
You left a note on the desk.
I didn't see you.
I overslept.

Tim Burton bio

Tim Burton was born in 1958, in the city of Burbank, California.

He remains without question one of the greatest original film directors working in America today.

 Indeed, his talent and originality have kept him at the top of the profession where he occupies a very special place, somewhere between the mainstream and the avant-garde, in that region of cinema occupied by artists whose worldview is so unconventional that it attains popular appeal.

In 1989, Tim Burton directed the hugely famous Batman which, although his very personal film, was one of the most watched movies of all time and gave him unprecedented recognition in Hollywood, considering the originality and adventurousness of his previous films (for example Beetlejuice in 1988).

Edward Scissorhands (1990), another hit, saw him at the peak of his creating powers and established a fruitful working tandem with actor Johnny Depp who played in his 2005 film adaptation of Roald Dahl’s book Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and who became one of his most esteemed since their first film together.

In 1992, Batman Returns was a much darker film than the original, a reflection of how much creative freedom Tim Burton had won (seen as Warner Bros were reputedly unhappy with the final result).

And even though Ed Wood (1994), his loving tribute to the life and work of the legendary ‘Worst Director of All Time’ Edward D. Wood, Jr., was a box-office disaster, it got some of the best reviews of Burton’s career.

In fact, Tim Burton is known both for his dark, quirky-themed films like Sleepy Hollow, Corpse Bride, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, or Dark Shadows (2012) and for blockbusters  such as Pee-Wee's Big Adventure, Batman, Planet of the Apes, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Alice in Wonderland (2010), one of his most recent films, which became the fifth highest-grossing film of all time.

Burton has directed 18 feature films as of 2014, and has produced 12 as of 2012 (among which the very nice stop motion tale called The  Nightmare Before Christmas in 1993).

All in all, Tim Burton’s films consistently challenge the spectator’s eye, push forward the bonds of filmmaking and bring to life previously unthinkable characters (like Edward Scissorhands).

Taken as a whole, his work consists on the confrontation of the fantastic and the real, and the consequences of these two worlds intermingling.

Big Fish, Burton’s 2003 effort, is no different. And yet, somehow, it is not really the same.

On the surface, it would appear to have all the characteristics of a classic Burton film: a magic screenplay, fairy-tale characters, flights of imagination, forces of nature (as well as the supernatural), far-fetched situations and vastly imaginative visual style and imagery. The movie is, in fact, packed with fanciful episodes that it begins to feel like a loose adaptation of The Odyssey, told from the mouth of an aging character named Ed Bloom, a story-teller and dreamer who sees the world with beautiful eyes. 

London Calling and the different forms of power

In 1979 The Clash released their third album, London Calling that contained a song with that same name:

  The clash is a British punk band created in 1976 and dissolved in 1986. Its members were 4: Joe Strummer, Mick Jones, Paul Simonon and Nicky Headon; so simply a singer a guitarist a bassist and a drummer. Their music is not only punk but also a mix of ska, reggae, funk and rockabilly.

About the song London Calling, the first thing to know is where the title comes from. In the Second World war, when the BBC radio broadcasted in occupied countries the announcer often identified himself on air by saying "This is London Calling". The title itselfself clearly bears this meaning, this idea of fight against oppression and of facing danger, but a danger of a very different nature. 

The song starts with that idea of war with "now war is declared/and battle come down". The kind of war the band is announcing is explained by the next two lines. It would be a fight lead by "the underworld", some hidden silent force that has been growing under our feet. It is no other than "you boys and girls", the young, who live in this "underworld". The first stanza is then obviously about a recurrent topic in punk music: the empowerment of young people. But against whom are they fighting? Being punk it needed to be the establishment, seen trough the violent image of the "truncheon thing" that policemen hold and hit with. They don't seem to be afraid of it, because they metaphorically use the ring of that truncheon as a "swing", in a play on words with the musical genre of swing, and a humorous image to make fun of the police. They would be comparing the authorities' tools of repression with children's games, making them look ridiculous, something they needed the year Margaret Thatcher, the iron lady, won the elections. In this first verse there are two lines that seem to be out of place: "London calling, now don't look to us!/That phoney beatlemania has bitten the dust.". But looking closely we can see a warning about how this youth should act for change and lead the fight, and that is not blindly following musical idols for the sake of doing it, which is what they seem to think about the "revolution" caused by the Beatles in the 1960s and the bands all around the world that still copied their style in the 1970s, but doing things by itself. What allows to follow this interpretation is another couple of lines right at the beginning of the second verse:"London calling to the imitation zone/forget it, brother, you can go it alone!". It takes that idea of imitation that is implicit in beatlemania making it even more clear that they want to see the opposite, subversion, and then uses the second person to talk to every individual in that imitation zone to tell them that they have the capacity to act "alone". When at the end we can hear “yeah, I was there too/ and you know what they said?/ well some of it was true!” it really sounds like something someone would say about a revolution. The song starts out encouraging rebellion among young people, and by repeating "London calling" every two lines in some kind of partial anaphora, it gives the text a regular rhythm that goes together with the almost military rhythm of the music, apart from making it quite catchy. Repeating constantly these two words is also a reminder of where the message comes from. London is in this song the centre of a communication with the whole world, “the far away towns”, so it’s the place where everything that is said comes from.

Moving on to the chorus, it is clear that suddenly the message conveyed changes. The four lines of the chorus, slightly different from one another, show an apocalyptic panorama where human weakness against the power of destruction of our own universe, and at the same time our own power of destruction, are strongly felt. It is just a list, a descendent gradation of ways humanity could be destroyed, and the inspiration for this is simply the news in 1979. There is first of all a reference to a scientific theory that predicted our interglacial era would at some point come to an end, “the Ice age is coming”. Then on the opposite side, following the theory of an explosion of the sun that would engulf the Earth they say “The Sun’s zooming in”. The line “The wheat is growing thin”, a witty pun with the verb to grow, takes inspiration in the massive and particularly serious food shortages that NGOs and even the UN were trying to deal with at that time. So another apocalypse could be famine.  Further down we hear that “London is drowning”. That alludes to the concern about the river Thames causing floods that year that resulted in the construction of the Thames barrier in 1982. It’s not something that could destroy humanity but it sure would have been a great local disaster and cause many deaths. The chorus doesn’t only talk about how nature, with strength infinitely bigger than humans’, could end with our kind but also how we humans ourselves could be our own doom. There are two references to nuclear disasters in the chorus: “a nuclear error” and “meltdown expected”, probably both references to the Three Mile Island nuclear accident earlier that year, and reflections of the fear of a nuclear war at the beginning of a tense period in the Cold war. There is also a reference to the various oil crises the world had lived throughout that 1970s decade. The band imagines the collapse if “engines stopped running”, again, not apocalypse but a huge, socially dangerous crisis. The accumulation used in this chorus makes the feeling of anxiety grow stronger progressively.

That apocalyptic situation the chorus shows us, either caused by the power of nature, either provoked by humans themselves, sheds light on the verses and gives them a meaning that goes beyond the obvious subversive empowerment. Apart from explaining images like zombies of death, always a nice thing to include in a song for punk bands, it can make us see “the underworld” as some kind of dark safe place where survivors live, and the war not only as an almost metaphoric way to describe a fight against establishment but also as a disastrous consequence of a previous disaster that we need strength to face. The song then becomes an encouragement to survive the world and its hardships, set in this hypothetical time. Lines like “Quit holding out, and draw another breath” go in with that sense of a call to inner strength and courage, in a dangerous world where you “don’t wanna shout”. When in the final two lines of the chorus, after scaring us with the worst that could happen the singer declares “But I have no fear/’Cause London is drowning and I live by the river”, with that contradictory “’cause” that should be an “although”, he himself is showing his bravery, that consists in staying calm even when everything is falling apart. At the very end he goes even further and asks “and after all this, won’t you give me a smile?”, encouraging us, maybe with a touch of irony, to try and not let the most terrible things bring us down completely. London would also be calling at the power of our mental strength.

London calling is about three different forms of power. First there is the power of youth that gives change a chance through rebellion. Then there is the power of destruction that exists in the great forces of nature like the Sun, the climate or the earth and its products, but also within humankind that likes to play with fire. And last but not least there is another human power besides self-destruction which is courage along with the ability to cope with terrible things. We have seen three forms of power but there is only one location of power, in this case the power of communication, and it is London, just as it was in the Second World War. 

"Pop Art myths" review

The art exhibition "Pop Art myths" took place at the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museun (http://www.museothyssen.org) located in the Paseo del Prado, in the city of Madrid, between June 10 and September 14, 2014.

It Showed works by more than 20 renowned pop artists essentially from the United-States, featuring the legends of Pop that are Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein. But it also has a big selection of European Pop artists, notably British artist Richard Hamilton, Mimmo Rotella from Italy, Alain Jacquet from France, Wolf Vostell from Germany and two Spanish Pop groups: Equipo realidad and Equipo crónica. The show is unfortunately over now and is not going to travel to other cities.

Roy Lichtenstein Look Mickey, 1961 National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

                                                                                                                                                                                        

From the entrance Hall of the exhibition a bright yellow curved wall that welcomes the viewer already gives the general feeling of the show. It is a vibrant colourful compilation of collages, posters, huge comic book style paintings and strange readymades that awaken curiosity and sometimes even laughter. The title is not betrayed, founding myths of Pop Art were found on the walls of the Thyssen Museum. The exhibition was a great chance to see the 1961 Look Mickey painting by Roy Lichtenstein in real life, Some of Warhol's works on Marilyn Monroe or his Campbell's Soup paintings, and even one of Hamilton's "slip it to me" pins, for the viewers who didn't know them yet. But to anyone willing to look a bit further what was really worth seeing is the extension of Pop art outside the US and the way European artists brought Pop to their own culture, which could be seen for example through the living room by Equipo crónica, a tribute to Velazquez. The exhibition’s rooms were classified by themes like “interiors and still lifes”, “portraits” or “urban eroticism”, an organisation that gave logical order to the crowd of artists showed, but that was sometimes difficult to follow as so many Art works could not fit into one category. A very interesting room to look at was “history painting”, with works about Cold War and dictatorships that showed the connection of Pop artists with their time beyond consumer society, a political view that is too often forgotten along with the dialogue of these artists with the work of great masters, also showed in the "Art about Art" room.  The exhibition lacked however consistency on the side of photography limited to the bits of photos that could be found in collages. That flaw could be balanced by  taking a look at another museum in Madrid, the Reina Sofia (on a Sunday to get the tickets for free) were, simultaneously, a monographic exhibition on Richard Hamilton was showing, with a room full of his artist friends' polaroids.  Just as any other Pop Art show, "Myths of Pop Art" had a very strong capitalist society atmosphere, with numerous representations of mass consumerism goods like coke, Brillo soap pads and Hollywood film posters.

Andy Warhol
Heinz ketchup box and billo soap pads box, 1964
Mugrabi Collection

As a grade 12 High school student in Art and literature and I think I tend to feel very close to the youthful aesthetic of the comic book style paintings and the references to cinematographic art. Because I am so young but yet very interested in art I would consider myself an only mildly experienced viewer, nothing close to an expert. So when it comes to preferences I mainly play by ear. Being Spanish, it was to me a very nice surprise to find at the show national artists whose existence I knew of but that I had never thought of as Pop artists, so I payed special attention to them. My sensitivity is also on the side of the historical works shown, which refer to a past pretty close to our time that I did however not live myself, and that thus awaken some kind of fascination. It was one of the inexplicable yet fascinating works found in the history art room that particularly caught my attention:

Öyvind Fahlström
Red Seesaw,1964
IVAM, Institut Valencià d'Art Modern

 Fahlström's Red seesaw is a piece of Pop Art in every way.  It could be, I think, a great example to illustrate a definition of this movement. First of all the technique is original and innovative, because it's a mix of many disciplines: a montage with painted wood for the seesaw and painted paper mache for the frogs, collage and painting  on cardboard and steel wire to make some things pop out. Also the colours are bright and it very much represents American society in the 1960s. What strikes first is the compilation of humorous images of popular American culture like president Richard Nixon dancing with his vice president Spiro Agnew, dressed as a girl, a policeman with a huge hand, or the statue of liberty with a baseball bat (Fahlström lived in NY at that time), and absurd objects like what seems to be the pope, the flag saying "suck cats", the flying cat, the guinea pig and the pig's head. What lays behind however is much less humorous, as it is a clear metaphor of the fragile political balance in the US at the time of the 1968 elections and the Cold War. The image of the balanced seesaw shows an unstable situation and most importantly a tie between two rivals, the communist red frog on the left and the capitalist blue frog on the right. As it mainly shows the American political crisis, there are no communist images and most of the little cardboard images are on the blue frog's side. Nixon's dance with Agnew is probably a teasing critic to his electoral choices, and the policeman could represent the repression of anti Vietnam war protests on the streets. To continue around the Vietnam war, the baseball bat in the hand of the statue of liberty, looking towards the left red side certainly symbolizes the US's violence in that war. The cat flying on a bottle could be a funny way to talk about the space race, and would explain the "suck cats" flag on the red side. The symbols and jokes in that seesaw are so many and can be divided into so many layers that every little cardboard image could be analysed like this. That is why the more I look at that seesaw the more I laugh, and the more I understand the sharp political criticism it holds. To the hilarious irony that makes it in my opinion incredibly clever and meaningful (which originally is, I think, the purpose of Pop Art), there is a part of mystery added. Some images like the choice of the frog for the two sides of the cold war, the pope or the monkey remain inexplicable to me, maybe because I don't have the cultural tools to understand them, maybe because Fahlström wanted to remain partially cryptic. In any case it is also that part of misery that makes it so attractive to me. it feels in some way like an enigma. That touch of enigma added to the incredibly attractive Pop aesthetics, the dynamic format, the satire, and the apparently absurd jokes makes Fahlström's seesaw a fascinating piece of art that is strangely enough very little known. 

Sadly, as I said, the show is over and is not going to travel anywhere else. However, many of the Art works shown at the exhibition can now be found at the IVAM (Institut Valencià d'Art Modern), in the city of Valencia, Spain, where they belong. Some of them are the Red seesaw, a couple of Equipo crónica's paintings and a "slip it to me" pin between other Hamilton pieces. 

R.E.M. worksheet

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1kL9nMlolm8wMaZk5Yk05_XISxHK82EMv4FerlO9I6Eg/edit?usp=sharing