Smithsonian.com

It’s not a particularly new idea, but the Palau de la Virreina in Barcelona is staging an exhibit that traces the crass commercialization of “Guerrillero Heroico.” The description of the show claims Alberto Korda’s iconic 1960 photograph of Ernesto “Che” Guevara is “the most reproduced image in the history of photography.”

The exhibit tracks the ways in which the image of a communist freedom have been used to buy and sell all manner of things–among them beer, soda and tacos. The commercialization of “Guerrillero,” and the unintentional irony that inevitably ensues, have fascinated me for a long time.

My most recent brush with this image and its contradictions came a few weeks ago, when an American friend living in Venezuela e-mailed telling me she had just set up a new business, venezuelamania.org.The idea came to her after she had spent a year in Caracas seeing street vendors selling hats and t-shirts that pair the Che image with photos of Hugo Chavez, Venezuela’s controversial president. She figured she might be able to market t-shirts and hats in the States and Europe, and the Web site was born.

“No, I’m not trying to spread a message or fight capitalism,” she wrote. “Actually, I’m capitalizing on capitalism.”

Much of the merchandise is made in China, to add another layer of strangeness. The marketing of a single photograph has truly turned Che into a populist hero.

Check out Tuesday’s NY Times for the amazing story of a woman who found a stolen Rufino Tamayo in an Upper West Side trash pile. I enjoyed Gawker.com’s take on her story.

Like other (alleged) finders of priceless artwork, Elizabeth Gibson could be termed a tad … eccentric.

One night about five years ago, I was out in Westwood, California, home to UCLA and its Armand Hammer museum, among other things. We were at a sanitized burger joint, one of those establishments that makes me start humming “Little Boxes” as soon as I step in. A girl I didn’t know well, not from L.A. but attending UCLA, told me she was disappointed with the city, my hometown, of which I’m admittedly protective.

“There’s no architecture here,” she said simply. “No architecture!” I sputtered. “No architecture!” I screeched, flouncing around in the garishly colored booth we were sitting in.

She’d hit a nerve.

The L.A. I knew and the L.A. she knew were clearly two different places. And though L.A. can be derided for many things, its architectural history is not one of them. Love them or hate them, the Taj Mahoney (Our Lady of the Angels Cathedral), the J. Paul Getty Museum and Frank Gehry’s Disney Hall are just the latest examples of what the city is willing to try, and L.A.’s architectural legacy is not linked to public buildings alone. Ironically, “Little Boxes” describes plenty of L.A. area neighborhoods perfectly, but there are some great residences in L.A. on the architectural and design forefronts.

As the Los Angeles Times reports, Sam Watters, at least, agrees with me. Though, according to the article, L.A. can be derided for the obliviousness it displays toward its architectural history. “ ‘That’s the thing about L.A., compared to the East Coast: We don’t just tear down our treasures. We toss out all written records about them as well,’ he says. ‘In the East, they kept bills for every seed, awning or doorknob ever purchased.’ ”

L.A. originals have been gutted or torn down for years, and Watters has attempted to stanch the bleeding by publishing the two-volume history, Houses of Los Angeles.

The Times describes Watters as chafing at the notion that “everything was just a copy of what had been built before somewhere else. ‘Untrue,’ says Watters.” I heard in his tone the echo of my indignant foot stamping from five years ago, and thanks to him, now I have the books to back it up.

A quick post to alert you to a very interesting discussion taking place on another blog, Errol Morris’ Zoom, hosted by the New York Times.

You might remember some of Morris‘ films–he’s most famous for The Thin Blue Line, and The Fog of War, which happens to be one of my favorite movies. The Times has charged Morris with “uncovering the hidden truth of photos,” and he’s taken the responsibility quite deeply to heart, with in-depth discussions of the space between the idea and the reality.

His post from last Tuesday weighs in at about one gazillion words, but don’t let the length deter you. His measured study of two famous photographs of “The Valley of the Shadow of Death,” taken by Roger Fenton in 1855, during the Crimean War, is totally engrossing. Times readers respond with their takes on the theories Morris presents, and they have just as many insightful comments as he does.

In a not-so-unexpected move, the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles agreed last week to return 40 pieces from its antiquities collection to the Italian government–pieces that Italy claims were looted and then sold to the Getty.

The museum claims it had no knowledge it was buying any looted objects. But the blog Looting Matters points out that when the Getty acquired the Barbara and Lawrence Fleischman collection 1996, which included Italian antiquities, “92% of the objects in the exhibition catalogue of the Fleischman collection [had] no indication of find-spot.” According to Looting Matters, 13 pieces from the Fleischman collection have been returned to the Italian government. (More…)