The Economics of Life in San Miguel

HOUSING and STUDIO SPACE

If you are planning to move to San Miguel for at least a year or more, do it by the beginning of 2016 if possible. Rent prices are going up fast.  Rent for a decent 2 bedroom with studio space and a patio in the middle-class bohemian neighborhoods of San Antonio and Guadalupe used to go for around $4000 pesos. Now the same size houses are renting for $400-500 USD if you rent from gringos. Most expat landlords (and there are quite a few) are setting rents in dollars rather than pesos. That’s significant because of the strength of the dollar (now at 16.40 pesos). Obviously it’s a better deal if you can pay rent in pesos, which means renting from a Mexican owner. Soon even they will be renting in dollars, or dollar equivalents.

FOOD

The cost of a good meal in a decent restaurant is going up. A full-course broiled salmon lunch used to cost 140 pesos – it’s now 200 pesos. Tikka chicken at a curry house was 95 pesos and is now 150 pesos. Chicken parmaggiano at a family-run Olive Garden-type Italian restaurant is 120 pesos, but over 200 pesos at a finer place. Wine will cost at least 70 pesos a glass, beer 30 pesos minimum. Of course there are many small family-run restaurants where you can eat good Mexican food for 50 to 100 ´pesos. A buffet in Centro charges 70 pesos for all you can eat. The one gringo-run restaurant exception is a popular place called Cafe Monet – a decent sandwich goes for 50 pesos and the daily special will set you back about 80 or 90 – they’ve held their prices down for years without compromising the quality of the food and the old world decor.

There are two major supermarkets in town, Soriana and Mega. Their prices are inching up. You and your partner will spend an average of 900 pesos per week if you buy a lot of meat, 750 if you only buy chicken and fish for four meals. Plan to spend more if you want beer and wine. A six-pack of good Mexican cerveza goes for an average of 70 pesos. Table wine from Carlo Rossi is 82 pesos; anything else from California, Europe or South America is in the 150-250 peso range.

CLOTHING

Good, durable clothing is hard to come by in San Miguel. At Liverpool, the Macy’s equivalent, you will pay 900 pesos for a pair of Dockers or Levis for men, 800 pesos for a shirt, and 800 pesos for Flexi shoes (excellent quality and made in Mexico). Women will have to pay considerably more. However, women can shop at consignment shops (there are many), but none for men for some odd reason. Every one, children and adults, can find an occasional bargain at the tianguis – a huge open market that is open once a week, and there are smaller markets in almost every neighborhood where you can shop 7 days a week.

IN CONCLUSION

San Miguel remains a relatively inexpensive place for artists to live and work, but this may not last much longer. The SOHO effect is taking hold here. Artists have made this city a truly wonderful place, and now the affluent are moving in and driving up prices. 

"We Are Sick of Frida"

Someone in town is holding an “I’m sick of Frida” fashion show. I couldn’t agree more. Some times I can imagine I hear a great cry going up from the city of San Miguel: "WE ARE SICK OF FRIDA!" Yes, we are sick and tired of the exploitation of Frida Kahlo. Time to let go and move ahead with something new. There are certainly many other equally important and interesting Mexican artists, artists such as Rufino Tamayo, Federico Cantu Garza, and Leonora Carrington .  Here's some biographical information about these artists courtesy of Wikipedia:

Rufino Tamayo (August 26, 1899 – June 24, 1991) was a Mexican painter of Zapotec heritage, born in Oaxaca de Juarez, Mexico. Tamayo was active in the mid-20th century in Mexico and New York, painting figurative-abstraction with surrealist influences.

Federico Heraclio Cantú Garza (March 3, 1907 – January 29, 1989) was a Mexican painter, engraver and sculptor. While considered to be a member of the Mexican muralism movement, his style was noticeably different, mostly for adhering to older and more academic forms of painting and sculpture. He had his most success exhibiting in the United States and Europe, but he did murals and sculptures in Mexico.

Leonora Carrington OBE (6 April 1917 – 25 May 2011) was a British-born Mexican artist, surrealist painter, and novelist. She lived most of her adult life in Mexico City, and was one of the last surviving participants in the Surrealist movement of the 1930s. Leonora Carrington was also a founding member of the Women’s Liberation Movement in Mexico during the 1970s.

Epigrams

The seriousness of an artist can be measured by the degree of his willingness to live in poverty.

A good painting should possess an element of magic, the magic of childhood.

Making art helps you redeem yourself.

Intelligence without imagination is like a bird without wings.

Do not fear making mistakes in art. Mistakes can be magic moments when the intellect slips, thereby giving up control and allowing the power of divine nature to take over, guiding your hand to greater things.

The San Miguel Gallery Syndrome

1. Artists get together and talk about how to promote and sell their work. They decide to form a group with other artists.

2. This group becomes a cooperative business venture. They decide to open a gallery and share expenses.

3. With the usual hoopla, the gallery opens. They have an opening party with plenty of wine and botanas. The artists are in high spirits and optimism runs high.

4.  A few months later, attendance begins to decline. They decide to have more openings with wine and botanas. They are spending more money than they had been expecting. Hardly any work is sold as a result.

5. Feeling a little dismayed and disappointed, they decide to advertise.

6. With advertising, their expenses go up rapidly.

7. They decide to invite more artists to join their co-op in order to share expenses.

8. More openings with wine and botanas. Very little work is sold.

9. They decide they cannot afford more parties and advertising. Attendance drops off.

10. The group decides it must do something to bring in more money. Desperate, they offer art classes. More money is spent on advertising.

11. The art classes are only moderately successful, and they struggle to stay afloat in a fiercely competitive environment.

12. The members begin to despair. Some drop out. Most of he original core members remain, determined to see it through to the bitter end. It begins to look hopeless. Finally, the gallery sinks beneath the waves with a last gasp and a whimper.

da Vinci's Birthday

Yesterday, April 15th, was Leonardo da Vinci's birthday, but there was barely a mention of it in the media. Google did not have anything on their home page. Why not, I wonder? Do they consider his work over-exposed? Then why not use one of his lesser known images, a drawing of a fetus or a machine perhaps? Seems like a strange omission. da Vinci's coming into the world was a miraculous event, and should always be acknowledged, regardless of how often we've seen his work.
Shame on you, Google!

The Hype! The Hype!

Sadly, San Miguel is changing from a city of hipsters to a city of hypesters. And saddest of all, most of the hypesters believe their own BS.

(The title of this "thought for the day" is a reference to Joseph Conrad's story, The Heart of Darkness. My apologies to those who got it.)

Being an Independent Artist, Less Secure but Free

Here’s a quote I came across in Janson’s The History of Art, and which I like exceedingly well: “To subject the artist to the impersonal pressure of supply and demand in an egalitarian society is not necessarily worse than to make him depend on the favor of princes. The lesser men will tend to become specialists, steadily producing their marketable pictures, while artists of independent spirit, perhaps braving public indifference and economic hardship, will paint as they please and rely for support on the discerning minority. . . Even the greatest masters were sometimes hard-pressed (it was not unusual for an artist to keep an inn, or run a small business on the side). Yet they survived – less secure, but freer.” (pp. 424-25) I salute those artists, like myself, whose fiercely independent spirit keeps them free despite the hardship they must endure.

More on the Branding of Art

A well-established painter here has started calling himself “a baroque artist for the 21st century,” (I thought most artists were ba-roke – ha, ha), but, frankly, I don’t see the baroque quality in his work. The Baroque movement (1600-1750) began in Rome with such artists as Caravaggio and Cranacci, and moved north, where it was exemplified by Rubens and Rembrandt. Baroque art characteristically has movement, dramatic light, and rich color, none of which I see in the painting of this San Miguel artist. (My own work seems more baroque.) Also, his paintings are devoid of perspective – the scenes and figures are presented with a flatness that I dislike and which cannot be considered “baroque” by any stretch of the term. So what we have here is another example of meaningless labeling, in order to “brand” his style. The branding of art is something I abhor, and I am quite dismayed that this otherwise serious artist, whose work I greatly admire, would stoop to that. And while I’m on the subject, he is scheduled a “pop-up” exhibit at a local gallery called The Bordello Gallery, a name I find most contemptible because of its suggestion that artists are whores. 

Outrageous Extravagance

Three hundred million dollars for a Gauguin painting seems a bit excessive. Has the art market entered a period of collective insanity? Are collectors vying for first place in the Outrageous Extravagance category? Are high-end buyers going off the deep end? The madness of artistic genius seems to pale before the madness of buying for the sake of outdoing other buyers in the game of one-upsmanship. Where and when will it stop? Would an individual artist refuse to make a sale because it is too high? Of course not. Would an artist sell a painting knowing it would be buried in someone’s private collection and never be seen by the public? Most likely. The higher the price paid for a work, the more it drives up the prices for other work by the same artist. The value of a work seems more and more to be determined by extraneous factors such as the artist’s moral depravity. Can an artist who lives a quiet life become famous for being a recluse and thereby increase the value of his work? Perhaps. But that route to fame will probably only come to fruition posthumously. And so the game of selling art gets more and more like an unstoppable runaway train.

My New Gallery

Well, I've decided to take the plunge into gallery ownership. My new gallery is called LES FEMMES GALLERY and it features my iconic images of women. At the moment it is an online gallery only. Please take a look. Here's the link http://www.lesfemmesgallery.com

Yearning, oil on canvas, by Anthony Maulucci