Comments

1
...What I didn't know was there was a lot more to the symbolism than I had ever realized. Rita proceeded to explain to me that the Divine Feminine is hidden in the image - not so hidden if you look closely - and the oval nimbus around her figure, edged in red, symbolizes the vulva and the entrance of life into this world.

After looking at the image for a long time, I realized I was witnessing the portrayal of female power in a whole new light. I've spent much of my life questioning the church's treatment of women and wondering why the female was shunned for being the evil sex. After so many years, it was refreshing to view an image of the feminine that combined the sexual and the sacred into one...
http://travelswithpersephone.blogspot.co…
2
yeah, that vagina is really easy to miss....
3
@rob! in some places, it gets even more explicit... About 20 years ago, I was in Venezuela and saw a rural shrine to the Virgin Mary where she was enclosed in a grotto constructed entirely from conch shells, all with the underside facing outwards. It made for quite a striking image.
4
nice thongs
5
It would be better if they could spell words correctly.

Or is that some kind of commentary on something?
6
@5: I know, right? I mean, Spanish, while not 100% phonetic, is still really easy to spell in. It's like these people went out of their way to make every possible spelling error. It must be the booze.
7
The misspelled words on my Howard Finster make it endearing...
8
These aren't retablos - they are ex-votos. And, @6, Spanish is "easy to spell in" if you are an English speaker, because there are very few irregularities and no diphthongs. But the misspellings in the Vilchis pieces are quite predictable in Spanish. And @5, art isn't a spelling test.
9
Sure the misspellings are predictable. Misspellings in Spanish are very predictable:
b/v mixups
s/z,c mixups (Latin America)
y/ll mixups (Latin America)
missing h's
... account for almost all misspellings in Spanish. But that's not the point. I just thought it was humorous that so many misspellings occurred. Almost like they were trying to.
10
@3, also about 20 years ago I was in Buenos Aires (roughly between their last two major financial crises, so things were pretty good at that time economically). I walked into the National Cathedral and was shocked to see a middle-aged woman on her knees, tearfully and fervently caressing the crotch of a statue of the Virgin Mary. I realized almost instantly that she was suffering from physical pain in her lower abdomen, dreading perhaps what it might mean or already knowing from a doctor, and the culture was just much more frank about the issue.
11
@8: The artists call them retablos. ?
12
@8: I know it's not a spelling test, but if you want to be taken seriously start by taking yourself seriously.

Otherwise it's just deeply embarrassing. And it's irritating for the non-gringos who actually speak & read Spanish to see a bunch of white people looking at a bunch of gibberish and feeling somehow 'improved' or something.

So I sit here and throw stones. That's all.
13
entrenamiento entretenido
14
@8: I'm with you on the spelling. "If you want to be taken seriously, spell our language right" is, um, fucked up. Do you really not take people seriously if they can't pronounce or spell English right? We have a name for that: racism.

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