Jalisco Culture Secretary Myriam Vachez has been drawn into an oddball controversy over a diamond ring created by U.S. conceptual artist Jill Magid from the ashes of Mexico’s most famous architect, Luis Barragan, a native of Guadalajara.
The story, which first ran in The New Yorker magazine in early August, has shocked many Tapatios, including renowned architect and artist Fernando Gonzalez Cortazar, who described Vachez’s decision to allow Magid to exhume Barragan’s ashes from the Rotonda de los Jaliscienses Ilustres as “sick.”
Vachez has defended her position, saying there was no legal impediment to prevent Magid last September from removing 500 grams of Barragan’s ashes from the monument in downtown Guadalajara, as she had written, notarized permission from the architect’s nephew.
Other family members say Hugo Barragan was not the closest relative to the late architect and are demanding the ashes be returned.
That might be difficult as they have been compressed into a 2.02-carat diamond “engagement” ring, now on display at the Kunst Halle Sankt Gallen in St. Gallen, Switzerland as part of Magid’s show titled “The Proposal.”
As the New Yorker revealed, this unusual story has many twists and turns, with Magid’s motivations going much further than creating a simple piece of conceptual art.
A profound admirer of Barragan, the artist came up with the idea to turn his ashes into a ring to offer in exchange for the return to Mexico of the architect’s massive professional archive, owned by Italian architectural historian Federica Zanco and housed in vaults in Birsfelden, Switzerland.
Zanco – also a fan of Barragan – obtained the archive in 1995, allegedly as a gift from her Swiss businessman husband, Rolf Fehlbaum, in lieu of an engagement ring. He had reportedly paid the widow of Barragan’s business partner, Raul Ferrera, around $US3 million for the archive, which, according to the New Yorker, included “all author rights and documents, movies, drawings, designs, sketches, mockups and originals of work.”
With the support of some of the late architect’s family members, Zanco founded the not-for-profit Barragan Foundation and set about producing a catalog of the body of work – a task that has yet to be completed. She did, however, publish a book on Barragan in 2000 featuring items from the archive.
Ostensibly, the aim of the foundation is to preserve the archive and assist scholarly researches into Barragan’s life and work. The New Yorker suggests that Zanco is fiercely protective about access to the archive, routinely rejecting petitions from architects, students and museum staff members to see the body of work, as well as related photographs taken by Armando Salas Portugal.
Zanco says Magid’s obsession began in 2013 when she refused the artist, who was working on a project about Barragan, access to the archive and permission to reproduce his works featured in her book. Magid’s subsequent show on Barragan, “Woman with Sombrero,” was careful not to infringe any copyright laws but pointedly displayed the prickly correspondence between the two women.
In May this year, Magid finally met with Zanco in Switzerland to offer her the ring and make her “proposal.” The proposition was rejected but remains open, she told the New Yorker, whenever Zanco is “ready to open the archive to the public in Mexico.”
Quoted by the New Yorker, Zanco expressed skepticism that the Mexican government would care for the archive as lovingly as she does. Her strict control of the archive, she inferred, also stems from her fears that Barragan is “becoming the Frida Kahlo of architecture.”
Her concerns may have some substance. Barragan, the 1980 winner of the prestigious Pritzker Prize who died 28 years ago, is considered a national treasure although many of the houses he designed lie in abandon. Only his personal home in Mexico City, the Luis Barragan House and Studio, is preserved in any proper condition, and was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2004. As recently reported by this newspaper, a house he designed on Guadalajara’s ritzy Avenida Vallarta – now covered with graffiti – will soon be turned into a taco restaurant.
In the wake of the New Yorker article, newspapers in Guadalajara have largely concentrated on Vachez’s role in granting permission to Magid to exhume Barragan’s ashes. Gonzalez Gortazar has demanded her resignation, saying she has made the Jalisco government look “ridiculous.”
Acclaimed author Juan Villoro responded to the New Yorker article with his own piece in national daily Reforma, describing the episode as “grotesque recycling” and “a melodramatic, necrophiliac trick.”
Magid’s exhibit, “The Proposal,” moves to the San Francisco Art Institute in September.