Viva la vida

Frida Kahlo wrote the words “Viva la vida” – or “Long live life” – on this sumptuous painting that she completed just a few days before she died in 1954. With all the hype and commercialism that has come to immerse her in recent years, it was a real treat to be able to visit her actual home in Mexico City, where she grew up and where she died, and walk through the blooming garden and the colorfully decorated rooms, with their pictures, among others, of Marx and Lenin on the walls, and get a feel for what inspired that remarkable woman.

During my week in Mexico City, I also visited a house once lived in by David Siqueiros – another communist artist, who spent four years in jail for his beliefs – which he had given to the city in 1973 along with paintings, murals and sketches, and which is now a small museum, but where, in striking contrast to Frida Kahlo’s museum, which is one of the most popular tourist attractions in Mexico City, I was the only visitor.

Altogether, it’s been a week marvelling at marvelous art and artefacts, both from the recent past and from Mexico’s pre-columbian past at the many museums and outdoor sites that are to be found in the city. It made me realize how short the age of European and northern American domination has been and how long and rich a legacy Mexico has to build on in the future.

Walking through the Alameda on my last day in the spring sunshine and savoring the local cuisine, and then seeing another Sunday afternoon in the Alameda portrayed as a dreamy vision of Mexico’s history in Diego Rivera’s fabulous mural – yes, Frida Kahlo’s husband was also a painter – was a truly memorable experience.

Let’s hope I can bring some of the warmth and wonder of that experience back to Sweden with me. We’ll be open again at the usual hours on Thursday. Long live life.

Back To Mexico

In May 1974, when another American president was doing his best to destroy his country – and was soon to resign in disgrace for his efforts (now there’s a precedent for 47 to follow) – I spent a few days in Mexico City after visiting my parents in Guadalajara.

I can still remember how amazed I was at discovering the fabulous paintings and murals by Diego Rivera, José Orozco, David Siquieros and Rafael Tamayo that were to be found on the walls of schools, government buildings, and at the many museums that were spread around the city. It was a real morale booster in those troubling times to see the wonderful ways in which art could be used to contribute to a progressive consciousness and, not least, lift the spirits.

Anyway, I will be going back to Mexico City next week to help my sister celebrate her 80th birthday, and I look foward to revisiting the murals. Heaven knows we all can use a morale booster these days!

At the time of my previous visit, Frida Kahlo was known primarily as Diego Rivera’s wife, and was “also a painter” as a guidebook from the 1990s that I have in the store puts it, and her house was off the beaten track and I certainly didn’t know about it or her, for that matter. Now it is a very popular place and, if I hadn’t booked tickets last week I wouldn’t have been able to get in when I was there. All sold out.

So I hope you can make it through the week without Andy’s Corner being open. We’ll be open again at the regular hours on March 27.

Ten Years After

Back in the winter of 2015 I walked into what was then Gregers Antikvariat and had what might well be called a moment of truth. At the time, second hand bookstores seemed to be vestiges of the past, doomed to oblivion in the brave new world of Amazon and ebooks. When I asked Greger Antoft about the possibility of taking over his store, which he had decided to vacate after many years of operation, he told me that he now did most of his book-selling on the internet, and could just as well move exclusively into ecommerce.

As a lifelong lover of books and used bookstores, who had recently moved to Malmö, I took his words as something of a challenge and soon decided to make a go of it. Running a second-hand bookstore and, in the process, giving it a more international flavor to serve Malmö’s increasingly multicultural population, seemed to be well worth doing, especially for a newly retired professor with time on his hands.

And now, ten years later Andy’s Corner is one of four second-hand bookstores on Helmfeltsgatan, as we welcome our new neighbor, Antikvariat Artes to Malmö’s own book street, along with Bokfinken and Atlantis. So come by and browse to your heart’s content. If one of us doesn’t have the book you wanted maybe we have something even better, the book you didn’t know you needed.

The New Yorker Turns 100

One of the few remaining pleasures of American culture is the weekly magazine The New Yorker, which this year is celebrating its 100th anniversary. When I was growing up, it was always fun when a new issue came in the mail – I mostly enjoyed the wonderful cartoons – and through the years it has continued to publish fine reporting, reviews, poems and short stories, as well as the inimitable cartoons, as many, if not most of its contemporaries, have disappeared from the proverbial marketplace of ideas. Anyway, as a subscriber for many years, the magazines have accumulated and so, as a small token of my appreciation, and a way to keep them from gathering dust and in circulation, I will be giving away a free issue to all customers at Andy’s Corner if and when they make a purchase. So come and peruse the piles on the table in the front room next time you visit us.

Back from Barcelona

Yes, indeed. We are back from a memorable week in Barcelona, where we heard Grigory Sokolov at the Palau de Musica – quite an experience! – and discovered a lovely museum displaying the works of Josep Subarichs, best known for his sculptures at the Passion Facade at Sagrada Familia. Here’s a small sample and a clip of Sokolov playing Brahms, as he did last week in Barcelona. We usually play his recording of Bach’s Art of the Fugue on Thursdays at Andy’s Corner, and this week we’ll also be playing a new Sokolov cd that I got in Barcelona. So that gives you one more reason to come by the shop.

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://www.youtube.com/watch%3Fv%3D7p9MFWmF8jg&ved=2ahUKEwisypnrsN-LAxXRKBAIHeoxFnoQz40FegQIBBAI&sqi=2&usg=AOvVaw13xQI_IHCvvpYhLfmXunZr

Goodbye to Facebook

I started using Facebook when I opened the shop in 2015, primarily as a way to tell people about our events and, on my personal page, to play with new ways of expressing myself by sharing pictures and stories and songs and poems and the occasional article that I found on the internet. I knew – we all knew – that Facebook, like all the other so-called social media, as well as the countless other apps that were increasingly taking over the internet, was in it for the money and that its owners were extremely unpleasant and greedy people. But, let’s face it, it was fun to be able to use it and so I kept telling myself that I wasn’t the problem, the problem was all those other people who misused it by telling lies and fostering hatred and, in the process, bringing the world to the sorry state in which it now finds itself.

Anyway, I can no longer see the positive value of social media in any way, shape or form. And so I will stop posting on Facebook. Please comment on this blog or send me an email, or even better, come by the shop if you wish to communicate with me in the future and/or create an event or activity at Andy’s Corner. As Bob Dylan once put it, “I’ll let you be in my dreams if I can be in yours.”