Conversation

I think the dog was acting as some sort of intermediary. An interpreter, perhaps.

By popular demand, my "listening to an album for the first time so you don't have to bother" service is resumed, with Gentle Giant's 1972 album Octopus, on which my favourite track was A Cry for Everyone.

Mexican art of the early 20th century was dominated by Diego Rivera (who I looked at a few weeks ago) and his wife Frida Kahlo. Her vivid and often highly personal paintings are typically Mexican with their bold colour palate and subjects taken from both Catholic and native cultures. In The Two Fridas (1939) she painted a pair of self-portraits, one clad in traditional Mexican costume and one in a smart European style.  The two images are joined by a blood vessel between visible hearts, one of which seems to be broken. This may be a reference to Catholic images of the sacred heart of Mary, common in Mexico.

Another Mexican painter, who also used religious imagery in political works, was David Alfaro Siqueiros. He was a militant social activist who took part in strikes, demonstrations and other revolutionary activities.  He was involved in the first, failed, attempt to assassinate Leon Trotsky.  In The Devil in Church (1947) he painted a church filled with a crammed congregation of figures in identical poses, presumably "the workers", overlooked from a balcony by people in fine military and ecclesiastical uniforms, whilst a monstrous creature tears its way through the roof.