Imaginary and human body in Mexican culture

Mexican dress. Picture taken at Olvera St. in Los Angeles. Personal archives

Huitzilopochtli tatoo. Internet download.

Although there are fixed elements that persist in a culture, other elements to observe are those not fixed, or semi fixed that are more periferic and commendable of change along the time, like dressing and tattoos. In seeking to understand the Chicano space, it may help to consider the body, “as the relationship to space of a “subject” who is a member of a group or society implies his relationship to his own body and vice versa”. (H. Lefevre:40) Social practice presupposes the use of the body as the realm of our perceptions. The body can be set up in a code where consensus is found only in some groups.

The Aztec "ixiptla" has been the palpable manifestation of the imaginary, in the use of the human body, not as a representation, but as alive incarnation from the god to which was represented. The rite could also be carried out by means of the ingesta of hallucinogens, this habit, only allowed to the noblemen of the tribe.

Among the rituals described in the Chronicles of the “conquistadores”, it was usual the garments on statues and the "nutritious" consumption of sacred images in the sacrifices. This ritual as a type of "ixiptla", evokes reminiscences of the Eucharistic consumption. In the rite, the god became present in a sort of hierofany: the sacred gave values to the community, direction and purpose in an absolutely narrow relationship with the human being. To the point that if the image invested of "supernaturality" did not fulfill the expectations, a person could insult, damage, break, stain, burn, cut, nail the image, according to the dimension of his anger.

The relationship of the imaginary with the body - the Baroque body -, can also be found in the use of masks, ornaments and tattoos or paintings on the skin. Shortly after the fall of Tenochtitlan in 1521, the Spanish conquerors had to instruct indigenous populations to convert them into Catholicism. The Franciscans in charge - who arrived at New Spain in 1523 - did not rely on simple verbal instruction. They understood dramatic performances would be ideal.

In the theatralizations of the indigenous converts, the garments and the scenery of mountains and buildings charged great importance as the celestial characters' frame. To reinforce the beliefs, the monks manipulated the artifice developing "special effects" with primitive machineries. The angels, the Sacred Spirit, they seemed to get off the sky and the Virgin was ascended to a cloud.... (Gruzinski, p. 91).

The current Mexican vestiments are a reflection of identity. The clothes covers with embroideries, indistinctly masculine or feminine; the table covers with embroidered cloths, the beds, armchairs and curtains with heavy stamped cloths. The favorite topic of the printing is the flowers and religious topics.

In a transmutation of the concepts, the image is consumed with skulls of sugar in the Day of All the Deads; the theatrality has been overturned by the musicians and the wrestling (free fight), the masks and the fighters' multicolored layers no longer represent the gods and warriors, but the conviction of belonging to the social group.

Then, as well as the objects transcend the spaces, the iconography is stamped in the clothes, it becomes an obtained relic of the Sacred one –saints- and then it passes over the clothes until arriving to the body covered with jewelery, the one that allows to see tattoos of the Virgin, or Aztec figures; never dragons neither arabesque that are considered part of other cultures. The tattoo becomes a currícula of life.

Triggering urban ideas from fractals

This is a study of a Roman field with crops. The picture has been through filters and a deterministic Fractal's texture has been applied.

This one is a variation of the first one. Here, we are analyzing possible lacunarities.

This fractal has been generated with Cellular Automata. Notice there is a silohuette of a Mandelbrot's fractal, dilluted in the image. The intention was to study urban density with rough edges.

This fractal was originated on the Sierpinski carpet. We have an urban grid with some local centers.

This is an analogic deterministic fractal for an African settlement. The round shapes are a simulation of the round concentration of huts.

In Urban Morphology analysis sometimes I use deterministic fractals to compare the fractal tendency of cities. The first approach is to measure the fractal Dimension D of the selected urban shape and then the analogue Fractal's D. We have to take into account that some cities are not real fractals, they have a tendency to fractality. And the most difficult property to find is Autosimilarity. Anyway, the generation of fractals is an excellent tool to trigger urban design ideas. The same applies to facades.

I'm not taking advantage of the beautiful colors palette that softwares incorporate, because in all examples I'm focused on the fractal Dimension. These fractals were not intended to be artistic.

This one is an abstract of citie's grey facades, when we look at the distance and see all towers facades superimposed. And suddenly, from a tiny opening, the sun spreads in the urban composition.

Description of Chan Chan citadels in relation to habitat practices

Aerial photograph of Chan Chan, from Google Earth

Picture of Chan Chan citadels. Internet download

Picture of Chan Chan citadels. Internet download.

The Chimú Empire (950-1440 AD) extended along the Peruvian coast from Tumbez in the North to Lima in the South. Chan Chan, located in the Moche valley, was the capital of the Empire centralizing all the services. Built in adobe, was the biggest pre-Columbian urban center in South America, currently declared UNESCO World Heritage, since 1986.

The citadels are big settlements that contain a great number of monumental buildings. Six of them were named in honor of explorers and archaeologists that worked in the place: Squier, Bandelier, Rubber, Tschudi, Rivero, Velarde, and Tello. The other citadels are denominated Great Chimú, Chaihuac and Laberinto. The small structures are the Huacas.

The civic constructions served to the aristocracy and the State, while the proletariat consisting in artisans, personal of service and farmers lived in dispersed neighborhoods outside of these monumental centers. The palaces articulated the urban space, since each king built his government place during his life and then this became monument after his death.

Michael E. Moseley and Carol J. Mackey (1973, 1974), after their investigations in 1967 and 1969, formulated the hypothesis that once the Curaca (ruler) died and buried in the ¨funerary platform¨, all its citadel was transformed into an enormous catafalque where his servants, women, court characters and priests, were sacrificed and buried to accompany him and to serve him in “the other life”. In turn, the following ruler ordered to build his own palace citadel. Presumed habit, very similar to those of their successors, the Inca.

In synthesis, Chan Chan shows three urban typologies:

1) The slums, of agglutinated rooms, without surrounding walls, dispersed without apparent order in the Western suburbs. More complex than simple cabins and associated to cemeteries of adobe chambers with double walls.

2) An intermediate tipology located among the citadels, without a specific planning, represented by enclosures with niches, of regular geometries, also with lower surrounding walls and other similar attributes to those of the monumental architecture, but of smaller scale. The biggest ones show a more rigorous planning of patios, passages and storage rooms, in comparison with the smallest of more domestic characteristics. Seemingly the use was residence of social classes immediately lower than the royalty who tried to emulate them.

3) The royal architecture of the citadels, of monumental character that, obviously did not reflect population's density, since many works were carried out by non resident workers.

Each citadel was surrounded of adobe walls of approximately ten meters high covered with a soft mortar in which intricate designs of birds were carved, mamals, fish, in two styles, one more realistic and the other one more stylized and abstract.

An interesting aspect is that there are not openings to the North, although these are the walls more exhibited to the sun in detriment of the fog; the highest walls protect against the winds of the SO coast. The combination of these walls configurate a labyrinth, and, in turn, each inhabitable structure has multiple internal walls that form an intricate space of corridors, rooms, covered with the elite's artistic expressions.

The structures of these settlements are intimately bound to the economy of their characteristic activities and their social strata. The strata between noblemen and slaves did not resemble at all to the European models, since they were seen as products of separate creations, the noblemen derived of two stars and the plebeians of two planets, what implies that both groups did not move among them. These conceptions of Andean social order were established in different material forms, the most evident are those belonging to the funeral landscape. Great part of the constructions is due to these beliefs. The sacrifices and other methods of ritual violence were imbued in the Andean cultural practices. The cosmological principles, the phenomena, the religion and the social order were connected to the exercise of the power, and it was still maintained after the death of the Curaca who was confined in his palace so that the vassals could not perceive his mortality. The lack of respect to the temples, the disobedience to the law was severely punished burying the culprit alive.

This concept where the physical and the social world correspond each other, is denominated doxa, term used by the sociologist Pierre Bourdieu in humanist instances that implies the limitation of the social mobility inside the social space; the imposition of limits for each individual like symbolic force of the political power. Some cultural objects are recognized as doxa to be inappropriate for a certain social position. Doxa contains the sense of "one's place", and the sense of ownership. The sacred landscape is also a symbolic way to establish social orders.

The form of an urban settlement is the result of how its creator glimpses its use, and the social frame sustains its sense.

The urban morphology of the citadels of Chan Chan has been born of abstract geometries with U shape patterns product of deliberate actions of the human logical-political thought, with a concrete purpose: the one of being adjusted to the growing productivity, social separation and control of both, production and society.

And what the archaeologists and anthropologists wisely point out is a geometric evolution that neither is accidental nor it arises of the application of an intentional mathematical model.

Landscape and Archaeoacoustics

Mayan Lithophone. http://www.landscape-perception.com/archaeoacoustics/

Algonkian rock painting. Picture by Paul Deveraux

There is a mysterious unity between people and their landscape. Three modes of landscape perception are: view from a viewpoint, view from a road, and view of an area. But view is not enough. Sound in some of its less familiar forms, echoes for example, must have been more mysterious to ancient people, who lived in a quieter world .

Archaeoacoustics is the discipline that explores acoustic phenomena encoded in ancient artifacts, caverns, landscape. Theoretically a pot or vase could be "read" like a gramophone record for messages from the past.

The idea was first raised by David E. H. Jones in the 6 February 1969 issue of New Scientist magazine.

The aim of archaeoacoustics is to investigate the primary sensory status of prehistoric people in relation to the landscapes they created and inhabited.

Recent work by the acoustic researcher Steven Waller in the USA, Australia and elsewhere, indicates that some prehistoric rock art panels produce echoes that act like “soundtracks” to paintings of animals, simulating the rumble of depicted animal herds, for instance, the roar of a lion or sabre-toothed tiger.

In the Palaeolithic caves it has been found that echoes from the lithophones or human voices tend to be strongest from rock wall surfaces which contain rock paintings.

The Native American tribes of the Great Lake region believed that a spirit world existed behind rock surfaces, which were conceived of as being like “membranes” between that world and this. For modern people, of course a rock is just a big stone, rock and spirit have to be separated, but for ancient people a rock can represent the fundamental act of creation, there is no dichotomy, the rock is a manifestation of its transcendent origin.

Places where rock met water were thought to be especially propitious locations for rock spirits to exist. And these are also the locations where echoes are strongest. The Indians thought that while in their ritually-induced trance states, their shamans could penetrate through cracks and crevices in the rock-face into the spirit world beyond, and also that spirits could pass through from behind it into the human world. If the shaman failed, he could be trapped in the world of spirits. Echoes would have been considered part of such traffic between worlds.

Archaeoacoustic researchers are finding that there can be other sonic properties to archaeological sites, manifested by wind, water or heat expansion sounds issuing from crevices in the rocks of natural sites which in consequence became venerated and often marked by rock art, or by blowing into holes in venerated rocks. Also, the architecture of some temple structures appears to have been deliberately designed so that percussion or wind would produce sounds providing weather warnings or even quite sophisticated “acoustic symbolism”. Examples of all these types of acoustic sites have been identified in the United States, Canada, Mexico, Greece, Britain. Archæologists have finally discovered that various kinds of acoustic effects – from eerie echoes to resonant frequencies that can affect the brain – seem to have been an intentionally planned component of a number of prehistoric sites and buildings worldwide.

“It is said in the Kabbalistic tradition that even if the tradition were lost, it could be reconstituted, because what was once true is always so.” (Arthur Verluis, p.131)

http://www.forteantimes.com/features/articles/143/archaeoacoustics_spirits_in_the_stones.html
http://www.landscape-perception.com/archaeoacoustics/

Complexity in strict Urban Grids

Street market in Mexico. Internet download from aerial pictures of Mexico

Fishermen Village in Manila. Internet download.

The general perception of the urban grid is to take it as a succession of square foundation established by law. For Buenos Aires, Las Leyes de Indias. However, the idea of strict geometry is negated by the very principle of the origins of Etruscan-Roman foundation, forming part of the rites of construction and military settlements, whose final form was under the constraints of the site. In the first part of the rite, the “augur” saw coordinates in the sky, the point where they crossed, was projected on the floor, and it became the "Center" of the city called “Templum "; his decision was the recognition of the "divine will". The templum was a diagram drawn on the ground, in a specific place, and was not a literal transposition of the guidelines advised by the scrutiny of the sky, but its character was completely analogical: it was an order in the complexity of the sky, transposed to the land through a drawing, gestures or words. The Templum could be drawn, said or gestured. The augur’s diagram was usually a circle which divided the territory into four parts by two main roads going from north to south and from west to east. The -urbs quadrata- square city, conflicted with the circle that contained it. The rest was a subdivision of the original division, which leads to the idea of recursion. For the reasons exposed above, I consider that the grid, despite being planned, can become, in some societies, a rigid idea embodied in complex form.

This happens not only in Buenos Aires, but in many complex cities which grid has been distorted by the real urban fabric. And what is more, some vernacular examples as the pictures shown, have the colorful tents and different precarious roof materials to increase the confusion. The original grid can only be understood if seen from the sky. And it is not an easy task.

To beautifully illustrate the concept, I copy here an excerpt of Italo Calvino’s“ Invisible Cities”, page 96, Cities and the Sky.

“In Eudoxia, which spreads both upward and down, with winding alleys, steps, dead ends, hovels, a carpet is preserved in which you can observe the city’s true form. At first sight nothing seems to resemble Eudoxia less than the design of that carpet, laid out in symmetrical motives whose patterns are repeated along straight and circular lines, interwoven with brilliantly colored spires, in a repetition that can be followed throughout the whole woof. But if you pause and examine it carefully, you become convinced that each place in the carpet corresponds to a place in the city and all the things contained in the city are included in the design, arranged according to their true relationship, which escapes your eye distracted by the bustle, the throngs, the shoving.(…) But the carpet proves that there is a point from which the city shows its true proportions, the geometrical scheme implicit in its every, tiniest detail.

It is easy to get lost in Eudoxia: but when you concentrate and stare at the carpet, you recognize the street you were seeking in a crimson or indigo or magenta thread which, in a wide loop, brings you to the purple enclosure that is your real destination”.

Sound in the analysis of urban morphology

Spectogram version 16. Image downloaded from http://www.visualizationsoftware.com/gram.html

The perception of the space structures in 3D and superficial in 2D, is given fundamentally through the vision, but also through the rest of the senses that indicate us the qualities of that space or surface.

The term “haptic” is used in psychology to indicate the tactile thing, the own perceptions, the use of the senses in general. The spaces that are lived from the haptic perception are understood in their details.

Could we wonder, until what point we can advance in our urban morphology mensurations? To take mensurations we need a previous representation that can be a visual, auditory, tactile construction, etc. In the case of a visual construction, it is indispensable to keep in mind that although the object has its intrinsic characteristics, the observer has different sensations according to the way in that the light is distributed on the object or in that the objects distribute the light in the space.

The great advance of softwares in different disciplines allows us to think that we will not find limits to intelectualize the use of the space and the forms that are contained in it. Any situation of the environment can transform it in an analyzable image and in consequence it is commendable of being measured in its physical and perceptual aspects. All the places have a character emerging of the construction forms, production ways and consumption that can change in time. Each detail is significant. As well as we find landscapes that are characterized by their acoustic modality and textures, the same thing happens inside housings.

In an investigation that considers the use of all the senses in the habitat, one can also appeal to the study of the sounds that wrap us and see which are the images that derive of them and their fractality grade. It is a new arisen study field that facilitate and deepen the morphological comparisons. These ¨acoustic images¨ of an urban environment, defined as the relationship between the sound of the environment and the urban forms, are similar to the study of ¨sound of color¨. In the practice, the fractal forms of the spectra sound are measured in different areas that will be affected according to the cornices, open areas, quantity of windows, etc.

The analyses of spectra of sounds are graphic of fractal images. The image shown here belongs to the crack of a door. As well as the habitat filled with hierarchically related objects, the sounds also collaborate in the fractal perceptions.

There exist softwares that inversely, allow the import of graphics jpg. instead of the sound file that should correspond to it. Repeating the experience of taking different morphologies, regular, irregular, diffuse, etc, in aerial pictures of format jpg and with discharge of colors, the software reads the pixels interpreting the different tonalities of gray and they are translated into a graph of noise that will be more or less rough, according to the complexity of the input picture. It is very similar to the interpretation of histograms, and with the help of an expert, the results can be very rigorous.

If we tried to interpret the use of the color of a certain community, these softwares would also be adapted and we would be able to infer if the tendency to fractality in a given environment is even tied to such an use of the color.

I consider it indispensable to refine the analysis of the urban morphology by all possible means available, going beyond the mere description of the place and of the pattern that structure the streets.

The urban forms characterize to the sound and their perception; each urban space consists of a certain sound character that will be printed in the collective memory, the identity of their inhabitants, in their emotions. This local sounds, can be analyzed and represented, a sound entity is the consequence of the environment sound. It is possible then to identify the differences among cities by means of their typical sounds, among other qualities.

New meanings in the ritual of the piñata game

Esta foto pertenece a mis archivos personales. Realmente me impresiona porque parece que las piñatas, en su reunión estuvieran vivas.

This picture belongs to my personal archives. It really impress me because the gathering piñatas, seem to be alive.

I took this picture in a room next to the other piñatas. I called it ¨The death of Elmo¨. Elmo seems to be treated as a human body. Imagine the situation, everything in abandonment around Elmo. The tools are like surgery utensils.

The definite quality of architecture is to be inhabited, and the specific human habitat relies upon its historical character. In the many ways humans occupy space to inhabit, organizational, social, political, symbolic and ritual issues have a role in this said space and define essential features of our personal and groupal identity.

There is a set of interrelations between spatial configurations and activities or behaviors that the group develops in different densities.

Densities in habitat appear to be organized according to a wide range of parameters: spatial densities about closeness of bodies and their varying occupation of space, utensils, ornaments or temporal densities. In habitat, we also find focalizations on persons, on sites and objects at very different scales.

We will indicate and briefly illustrate some ways of intended explorations in the domestic scale, precisely in the field of Mexican and Chicano habitat.

Mexican culture has very interesting rituals, as the ¨Dia de los Muertos¨, quinceañeras, posadas, pastorelas, the ¨game¨ of the piñata. Let us deepen in the last one.

Piñatas are centerpieces of birthday parties, specially in México and Southern California. Although breaking a piñata at children´s parties is very much a tradition among Hispanics, the fun game has spread throughout the entire United States since the 1960’s. Children gather almost piled up, trying to break open the piñata in order to enjoy the candies that fall from its inside. The piñata is the focus, the motivation to organize the children´s game space.

The history of the piñata is filled with folklore and legend. Historians point to China as the country of its origin. Marco Polo discovered the Chinese beautiful figures of cows, oxen or buffaloes, covered with colored paper and adorned with harnesses and trappings. When the mandarins knocked the figure hard with sticks of various colors, seeds spilled forth. After burning the remains, people gathered the ashes for good luck throughout the year.

Marco Polo passed this custom to Europe in the 14th century, which spread from Italy to Spain. The Spanish used a clay container called ¨¨la olla¨, the Spanish word for pot. At first, la olla was not decorated. Later, ribbons, tinsel and fringed paper were added and wrapped around the pot. At the beginning of the 16th century when Spanish missionaries arrived to America, the piñata was employed as one of many tactics used to lure the indians into accepting Catholicism. However, indigenous peoples already had a similar tradition. To celebrate the birthday of the Aztec god of war, Huitzilopochtli, priests placed a clay pot on a pole in the temple at year's end. Colorful feathers adorned the richly decorated pot, filled with tiny goodies. When broken with a stick, the goodies fell to the feet of the god's image as an offering. The Mayans, played a game where the player’s eyes were covered while hitting a clay pot suspended by a string. The missionaries brightly utilized these games for religious instruction. They covered the traditional pot with colored paper, giving it a fearful appearance. The decorated clay pot represents Satan who often wears an attractive mask to attract humanity. The most traditional style piñata has seven points, each with streamers. These cones represent the seven deadly sins, “pecados”: greed, gluttony, sloth, pride, envy, wrath and lust. The ten pointed piñata symbolizes the sins that come from breaking the ten commandments. There are two interpretations for the original candies and fruits inside; they represent the temptations of wealth and earthly pleasures but also the forgiveness of sins and a new beginning.

Here´s my youngest daugther trying to break open a piñata. Personal archives.

Before attempting to hit the piñata, the person must cover his eyes, symbolically to protect himself from being enticed by the piñata (the devil). The stick which is used to break the piñata represents and symbolizes love. It is supposed to destroy the sins by hitting and breaking the piñata into pieces. The blindfolded participant represents the leading force in defying evil, the faith, that must be blind. People gathers near the player and spin him around to confuse his sense of space. Sometimes the turn numbers thirty three in memory of the life of Christ. Charity is seen in its eventual breaking, everyone shared in the divine blessings and gifts.

Today, the piñata acts as signs both denotative and metaphorical. It has lost its religious symbolism and most participate in the game solely for fun. It is now integrated into sign systems for different modern groups or sets of readers, with few intersections with history, but not identically. As shown by sociological and anthropological studies, ¨classic¨ urbanism still lacks sufficient tools to identify and explain phenomena of cultural value.

The most recent researchs are only beginning to clarify the nature of rituals and their complex interactions that lead to different ways of organizing space and shape the environment by individuals and groups. Among the subjects being studied we will mention the following: the importance of the motivations, the role of symbolic and cultural criteria, as opposed to physical and material aspects of the environment.

The question of inhabiting takes a primary role in the way and the space within which people can build their own identity and culture itself. It is the substance of everyday freedom .
Best source in mexconnect.com:
http://www.mexconnect.com/articles/459-history-of-the-pi%C3%B1ata

Parallels between Francis Bacon's painting and the Jewish Museum in Berlin by Libeskind

 Portrait of George Dyer talking. Francis Bacon. Internet download

Three studies for a crucifixion. Francis Bacon. Internet Download.

Francis Bacon (28 October 1909 – 28 April 1992) was an Irish-born British figurative painter. His artwork is known for its violent or nightmarish imagery, which typically shows room-bound masculine figures isolated in glass or steel geometrical cages set against flat, nondescript backgrounds.

When people think of Francis Bacon, most of them feel the torment of torqued, wailing, screaming, headless, chinless figures, from world and his personal history.

The sense of Human tragedy and bestial elements are shown ambiguous by their respective deformation. We would fail while trying to deduct the prior morphology of the bodies by logic. They are not communicating anything intelligible. The distorted figures lay in glaringly lit rooms, which suggest both the luxury apartment and the execution chamber. The space is perceived more at the psychic than logical level.

The paintings deal with the loss of self, but the construction of self is made by the view of the other. The painting needs an interaction of all participants.

Bacon’s works, specially when he uses triptychs are seen as narratives, one story follows the other in temporal spatial continuity. The scenes belong to the same fabula.

It is difficult to see what part of the painting is hurting the observer so deeply; but other works of art, literature, architecture, produce the same effect:

Distortion of bodies or deconstruction of the standard body (standard building-writing)

Disolution of boundaries

Pains and screamings

Play with life and death

Importance of the image of the subject who has to die. In contrast, this is the representation of real life.

Mortification of the viewer.

Here we see a parallel with the Jewish Museum building designed by architect Daniel Libeskind in Berlin. It is intended to be in the form of a deconstructed Star of David. The only windows are the angular slits on the sides of the building, so sharp that are felt as scars or injuries. The surface of the building is covered with polished metal facing; there is no door into the exhibits (entry is through a tunnel from the Baroque building of the former Berlin’s Superior Court next door) which reminds me of the steel and glass “non place” of Bacon’s spaces.

Museum of the Jewish by Daniel Libeskind. Internet download.

The "axis of the Holocaust" intersects with the "axis of exile." It represents the deportation of the German Jews which first began in 1940. The "axis of Exile" leads outside to the garden of 49 stone columns, where there is no exit from the garden. Holocaust’s history is understood by walking through one hallway to the other. This is its narrative.

Axis of Houlocaust

The whole building is designed to be scary, the visitors are provoked with the war “horrors”. There are no guided tours and visitors may walk about freely, although there are attendants on duty, ready to answer any question.

One of the towers, the Holocaust Tower, is completely an empty space in dim light with no windows. The metal door to this tower is very heavy and an attendant stands outside, ready to assist visitors with opening the door, as it would be easy for someone to panic while inside.

The Memory Void tower is empty except for the "Fallen Leaves" which represent the Jews who were murdered in the Holocaust, in iron silohuettes with screaming faces.

Detail of Pope's screaming head, by Francis Bacon. Internet download

"Fallen leaves" in the Memory Void Tower. Internet download.

Detail of "Fallen leaves". Internet download.

The works of Francis Bacon and this particular Museum have signs that produce meanings in the interactions with the viewer. These signs are often in details which include representational elements: body parts, “fallen leaves”, dress, gazes, etc. but also distortions in their elements, bodies, space and architectural geometries and their representations. In Libeskind’s geometrical cage is even more notorious for being a deconstructivist building attached to a historical barroque one. There is a conceptual relationship between this building and Bacon’s paintings, with the authors’ personal histories also embodied in them.

Adjacent barroque building. Internet download

http://www.scrapbookpages.com/berlin2002/JewishMuseum/JewishMuseum01.html