flight of the calder

The dashing Pablo León de la Barra has a great series of posts on his latest trip to the homeland at the CFTAR blog.

The latest one features a series of before and afters of the Mexico City Camino Real Hotel (1968), detailing the tragic refitting of the interiors in NAFTA moderne style (paradoxically, by the original architect, Ricardo Legorreta, no less).

It's particularly disheartening to see a once stark and dramatic lobby that was presided over by an electric-orange spider-like Calder turned into a tacky snack bar.

Pablo reports that the sculpture was eventually auctioned at Christie's and sold to some Portuguese fellow with better taste and sense of historical and aesthetic merit than the sad lot of Mexican barons that now handle the hotel.

So goes modernity in Mexico.