Studio 360, Kurt Andersen’s radio show on NPR about art, runs a sporadic “American Icons Series.” As I was listening to an installment about Andy Warhol on Saturday, it occurred to me that Warhol’s fame says just as much about the United States as it does about him.
Despite having only marginal artistic skills, Warhol became one of America’s best known artists by painting and then reproducing everyday images such as soup cans or a dollar sign.
While the images themselves hardly merit attention, they capture the consumerism that remains as such a major characteristic of the United States.
To understand Warhol, is to understand an important aspect of America.
Icons and Travel. What do icons have to do with travel?
Learning about icons often produces important insights about the places they are from.
In many cases, icons play a major role in shaping the perceptions of otherwise unremarkable locations. Before the Beatles, Abbey Road was just another street in England. Now it’s synonymous with one of the most popular bands of all time.
It’s with this in mind that I launch the “Latin American Icons Series.” Each icon covered in the occasional blog posts will be viewed in terms of what their lives say about Latin America.
There are several Latin American icons to choose from. Some obvious ones are Evita Peron, Che, and Pele.
Here are a few more that my Twitter friends suggested:
- @smittytabb In the literary realm Gabriel García Márquez and Pablo Neruda for sure, among others.
- @jgbrandt Simon Bolivar.
- @curiocitytravel Borges, Maradona, Gardel.
- @artistatlarge Che, Frida, Pancho Villa
- @wanderlust13 From my homeland: Gabriel G. Marquez, Fer. Botero
- @glothy Rigoberta Menchu
- @niltiac Diego Rivera, Isabel Allende, and Sandino
Other well-known Latin American artists or celebrities are on their way to becoming an icon. As @niltiac pointed out, Shakira is on the road to becoming an icon, but may not have arrived yet.
Can you think of any other Latin American icons?
Photo by blmurch (Via Creative Commons)
on Aug 13th, 2009 at 11:56 am
I look forward to reading about how these icons all effect their homelands. I personally agree with @niltiac and @artistatlarge on Rivera, Frida, Alllende, Che, and Villa. And if we are talking all Latin America, how can you leave out Castro? Have you read his book “History Will Absolve Me”? That will tell you how he effected his homeland.
Great idea for a good chain of blog posts, I look forward to reading them. My twitter name is @unomos
on Aug 29th, 2009 at 1:05 pm
Neruda was such a Chilean, such a Latin American. Check out http://www.redpoppy.net/pablo_neruda.php
about a documentary on Neruda and the bestselling edition of translations, “The Essential Neruda”
“The call for a more accessible collection of Neruda’s important poems is answered with City Lights’ The Essential Neruda, a 200-page edition that offers 50 of Neruda’s key poems. The editors and translators know how to extract gold from a lifetime of prolific writing. If you want a handy Neruda companion and don’t know where to begin, this is it.”
– The Bloomsbury Review
“What better way to celebrate the hundred years of Neruda’s glorious residence on our earth than this selection of crucial works – in both languages! – by one of the greatest poets of all time. A splendid way to begin a love affair with our Pablo or, having already succumbed to his infinite charms, revisit him passionately again and again and yet again.”
– Ariel Dorfman, Pulitzer-prize winner author of “Death and the Maiden”
” …The Essential Neruda will prove to be, for most readers, the best introduction to Neruda available in English. In fact, I can think of few other books that have given me so much delight so easily. At only 234 pages (bilingual), it somehow manages to convey the fullness of Neruda’s poetic arc: Reading it is like reading the autobiography of a poetic sensibility (granted, the abridged version).”
– The Austin Chronicle
Paz,
Mark