Walking the streets of Guanajuato, Mexico, I happened to pass the Museo Iconográfica de Don Quijote on free entry day. Why not? Maybe I was just in the right mood, but what I found inside was astonishing. So many beautiful representations of the Knight of the Sad Countenance! The first room was a nice introduction, and the next two rooms had me near tears. Powerful variations. Romantic (a la Goya), realist, existentialist, things in the German expressionist vein. And the color palettes of the paintings. Pastel patches reminiscent of Paris, burnt orange-red Mexican backdrops, everything. Sculptures in subdued classical and overwrought baroque. Then more paintings – cartoonish ones, sci fi ones, ones that seem to emerge from graphic novels or from a pulp fiction romance of the American West. Weird cubist ones, soft rounded figures in a naïve folk style. And the spaces. Beside the classical museum-format rooms, a Spanish-style courtyard braced by rock solid columns formed a center, with a room to the side like a topsy-turvy chapel. Then a postmodern painting, opaque in meaning, and a modernist sculpture, stretched, fragmented, monumental in size but struggling with itself for coherence. So many shades of Cervantes’s character that all of human nature and human history and human paradox seemed expressed through this one man, imaginary but so multifaceted and universal that one suspects he is more real than the shadowy, ephemeral beings who pop into being and evaporate into nothing after 60 or 80 years. And the art itself. It was as if Don Quijote were a perfect lens through which all of the styles and periods and possibilities of art came into focus. I didn’t notice if any famous artists were curated here (although I later heard that they were indeed) because I was too absorbed in the images to bother to look for the temporal names of the creators.
The only weakness, from my point of view, was the lighting. Given the magnificent range and beauty of the pieces, the lighting did not maximize the power and nuance of the objets d’art, nor of the architectural space itself, to best effect. Also, I would have liked to see a bit more of Sancho, maybe more reflections on Sancho detached from his master.
Despite the niches for improvement, this small museum was one of a handful of my favorites from around the world. I could spend all day there going deeper and deeper into the thought and emotion, the pain and the beauty of lived experience, as conjured up by the madman of La Mancha. At the very least, anyone interested in all the possibilities of portraiture should make a pilgrimage to this beautiful city and this museum.
(Forgive the low-end cell phone photography.)
xxx
I love this post. Looks like a great museum to visit.
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Yes. Unassuming on the outside, wonderful on the inside.
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So glad you stopped by my Don Quixote post! I enjoyed seeing more Quixote art here on your post–am still amazed at how far and wide this book travels.
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Delightful. A long time since I visited your blog, which I regret, A pleasure to reencounter you. I particularly enjoyed the contemporary version with the bicycle and the depiction of Dulcinea with the Knight between her fingers.
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Nice to see you again, Brad. Yes, those are interesting for the wit of composition, but the ones that go for the melancholy pull more emotion out for me.
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I understand that from your post, and agree. Frankly, just wanted to let you know that someone actually looked at your photos. The old Knight has sparked imaginations for centuries.
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Hahaha. Muchas gracias, amigo!
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De nada.
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Love those paintings…
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Yes, they were wonderful — intriguing, funny, moving, everything.
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The man with the book…is just captivating. I saved the pic. Thanks great post
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Thanks. It’s nice to know people are reading and liking 🙂
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I know how you feel…It makes it worthwhile to find more like minded people.
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Me too. Digging your blog, as we used to say 🙂
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I was born in 67 and I wish I would have come of age in 67 instead of the 80s…I can’t imagine what it would have been like listening to Sgt Pepper when it first came out
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Thank you by the way for digging my blog
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I love your post. The museum is so interesting and it’s such a pleasure to learn about.
Thank you.
Also, thank you for reading my literary post.
Joanna
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