May 14, 2008
How to write about an exhibition you haven't attended
Matthew Bliss, Beyond Abstraction, May 3rd-June 2nd (extended until the 8th!) at Sharada Gallery, Rhinebeck, NY
I met Matthew only once in a cold February day in New York City; my memory of this event is not an accurate but a cinematographic one: I remember it as if it were the scene of a Wim Wenders movie, a gritty urban environment, the streets dirty with the recently melted snow and the feeling that this could only have happened in this particular place - a geographical appropriateness. In the back of a yellow cab, like members of an underworld in a country where art was forbidden, Matthew carefully and almost in stealth extracted from a canvas bag a small sculpture that fitted the palm of his hand, a restless hand, anxiously showing a treasure. And there it was, a sturdy object that despite its small scale was the antithesis of flimsiness and that looked the more minute in its creator's long and elegant fingers. And it quickly disappeared back into its case.
Probably because of the secretive and intimate atmosphere I associate with this encounter, I imagine that in order to see this exhibition you'd have to whisper a password to get through the door, like a speakeasy. You climb down a few steps and there is a room, darkened and damp as a wine cellar, where flickering lightbulbs throw a blanket of yellow light over the exquisite little sculptures set in holes cut into the walls. They would possibly be lit from below casting long shadows on the rugged walls, adding a hint of drama. Exit this Boltanski's The Candles inspired stage and back to the most natural gallery setting, the ever-ubiquituous white cube. I start imagining that each sculpture has the right to its own white pedestal, high enough for the viewer not need to bend over to examine it more carefully but not as high as to leave the work at eye level either. Somewhere in between, a perfect height to see the sculpture from the front but still have a good grasp of its depth and dimensions.
These assemblages could pass for objects trouvés, industrial debris from a giant contraption, abandoned and corroded by the elements and the relentless action of time. Better even, they could be attempts at its reconstruction, the plans being lost and its aim forgotten.
Oh. Soft jazz should be playing.
As for the drawings and watercolors, they would be hanging in a small back room with a skylight. The false Rothkos, more simulacra than forgery, should be here in a contrarian stance to the Rothko hall at Tate Modern, as if Man Ray had come by and solarized the entire room. Rather than a somber and meditative atmosphere reminiscent of a chapel, a room evocative of a joyful and bright afternoon in the sun drenched roof of a house in Alexandria, a blue sky dome stolen from Klein, where the Quartet's characters would be contriving dissertations on the philosophy of love.
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March 26, 2008
Actually, this makes sense.
What do artist Jeff Koons and prostitute Ashley Alexandra Dupré have in common? Both can be had for a hefty price through the Emperors Club. Citing a report on Artnet, Le Monde's Harry Bellet discovers that the escort service, which counted the former New York governor Spitzer among its clients, also offered contemporary artworks through its online site. "Emperors Club was not satisfied with providing women to our financial elites but also took an interest in contemporary art," writes Bellet. "Their business, Emperors Publishing Media Group, owns a site called Emperors Club Contemporary Art, which is responsible for providing its clients with works by renowned artists like Jeff Koons, David Salle, and Richard Prince." Emperor's Club describes itself as "a highly informative venue through which you may acquire exceptional contemporary art directly from a group of highly selected artists, dealers, galleries, and members." Members are required to earn at least $450,000 per year. Sotheby's and Christie's logos appear on the site's page, although, according to Bellet, the auction houses insist that they were not informed about the posting. But auction houses are not the only ones to be roped in to the Emperor's Club experience. "The site offers images of artworks, each accompanied by a notice usually taken from the best sources," writes Bellet. "A painting by Jeff Koons is accompanied by a review by critic Jerry Saltz." -- from ArtForums's news digest
It's all about aesthetics, no? And power. And prostitution. Which has everything to do with the art market these days, Jeff Koons being one of the great meretrices. But I always thought that it was part of his artistic manifesto. No need to take it literally.
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March 03, 2008
Visual Greguerías
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by Chema Madoz, spanish photographer
(a Greguería, invented by Ramón Goméz de La Serna, is an aphorism based on a decontextualized metaphor, à la Dada)
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February 09, 2008
São Paulo Stripped Bare by the Aesthetes, Even
Last year, the Brazilian city of São Paulo outlawed billboards, logos, posters or any kind of advertisement in the streets or even on buses.
(from the wonderful Flickr set by Tony de Marco documenting the process)
This year, the famous São Paulo biennial will showcase an empty exhibition space:
(Biennial Pavillion stolen from Frieze)
Considering the fact that there are almost two hundred biennials around the world working on similar issues, showing the diverse art practices which constitute the territories of the current visual language, it seems necessary to ask: How does the São Paulo Biennial evaluates this cultural phenomenon, propagated through the so-called peripheral countries or in regions of political or cultural tension? What is a biennial's role in the era of globalization? What role do biennials play for the cultural, tourism and event industry? What contribution to the discussion proposes the São Paulo Biennial based on its experience, being the third oldest organization of this kind and the first outside the hegemonic centers?
In El Pais, an interview with the curator, Ivo Mesquita:
Hay una frase de Beckett al final de Esperando a Godot: 'We are nummbed' (estamos embotados). Y es lo que me parece. Doscientas bienales, ferias, revistas, premios, más arte... No estamos mirando. Estamos perdiendo el sentido de la mirada".
****
(I have a feeling they are actually light years ahead of us all)
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January 27, 2008
The weekend's little pleasures
But a great deal of nonsense is written about characters in fiction - from those who believe too much in character and from those who believe too little. Those who believe too much have an iron set of prejudices about what characters are: we should get to "know" them; they should not be "stereotypes", they should "grow" and "develop"; and they should be nice. So they should be pretty much like us. A glance at the thousands of foolish "reader reviews" on Amazon, with their complaints about "dislikeable characters", confirms a contagion of moralising niceness. Again and again, in book clubs up and down the country, novels are denounced because some feeble reader "couldn't find any characters to identify with", or "didn't think that any of the characters 'grow'". -- James Wood in the Guardian, last Saturday.
This is pretty much an elaboration of what Nabokov said on his Literature lectures. They're also both as truculent:
Or, and this is the worst thing a reader can do, he identifies himself with a character in the book. This lowly variety is not the kind of imagination I would like readers to use. -- Nabokov, Literature Lectures
*****
Taking books out of boxes.
*****
Her image accompanied me even in places the most hostile to romance. On Saturday evenings when my aunt went marketing I had to go to carry some of the parcels. We walked through the flaring streets, jostled by drunken men and bargaining women, amid the curses of labourers, the shrill litanies of shop-boys who stood on guard by the barrels of pigs' cheeks, the nasal chanting of street-singers, who sang a come-all-you about O'Donovan Rossa, or a ballad about the troubles in our native land. These noises converged in a single sensation of life for me: I imagined that I bore my chalice safely through a throng of foes. Her name sprang to my lips at moments in strange prayers and praises which I myself did not understand. --Arabya in Dubliners by James Joyce
*****
Roi Vaara, Artist's Dilemma, 1997 (my pic of the London South Bank Centre February leaflet)
Which illustrates perfectly why the cult of the author who researches extensively and writes realistically is actually very non-artistic. A novel is one thing, literature is quite something else.
*****
Um homem que se passeava nu na Praça de S.Marcos em Veneza foi salvo no último momento de ser preso por atentado ao pudor, por um bando de pombas que o vestiram completamente de branco.
As autoridades marítimas investigam o misterioso desaparecimento da linha do horizonte ao longo de toda a costa atlântica.
Levaram-no ao Serviço de Urgências. Perdera a fala subitamente. O médico que o assistiu veio a apurar que ligara as cordas vocais entre si para conseguir escapar da sua prisão interior.
Extractos de A greve dos controladores de voo de Jorge Sousa Braga
(esperando que o Jorge Sousa Braga não se zangue) Here's a probably poor translation:
A man who strolled naked on St. Mark's Square in Venice was saved at the last moment from being arrested for indecency when a flock of doves dressed him in white.
The maritime authority is investigating the mysterious vanishing of the horizon along the whole Atlantic coast.
They took him to the Emergency Room. He had suddenly lost his voice. The doctor who attended to him came to the conclusion that he had tied together the vocal cords to escape his inner prison.
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December 26, 2007
Francis Bacon, Oedipus and the Sphinx (after Ingres), 1983
This Bacon is, for some unknown reason to me, hanging on a far off corner in the new Modern Art Museum in Lisbon. And that's about the extent of my criticism of this fantastic new venue in my home city. It's a great painting - even despite the annoying powerpoint-like circles and arrow -, it's highly valued commercially these days and it's a great example of one of Bacon's greatest influences: Greek tragedies, fury waiting behind the door and all, as an impending doom over Oedipus' head as he answers the riddle. Commercial value shouldn't be a curator's main concern unless he works for the Sotheby's showroom but, please...
Unlike Ingres, Bacon chose to portray a submissive Oedipus, presenting his hurt foot as if it was an offerend. The name Oedipus can either mean "swollen feet" or "to be aware of one’s feet."
*****
OEDIPUS: You were a shepherd, just a hired servant
roaming here and there?
MESSENGER: Yes, my son, I was.
But at that time I was the one who saved you.
OEDIPUS: When you picked me up and took me off,
what sort of suffering was I going through?
MESSENGER: The ankles on your feet could tell you that.
OEDIPUS: Ah, my old misfortune. Why mention that?
MESSENGER: Your ankles had been pierced and tied together.
I set them free.
OEDIPUS: My dreadful mark of shame—
I’ve had that scar there since I was a child.
MESSENGER: That’s why fortune gave you your very name,
the one which you still carry.
--Sophocles, Oedipus Rex
****
Maybe because I just finished reading Nureyev: the Life, when I look at the muscled figure in the painting with the bandaged foot, I can't help thinking of the ballet dancer's feet, crippled from decades of obsessively intense training. Also:
"One of these snaps, showing a gaunt Rudolf with his head turbaned in a towel, was given by Joule to Francis Bacon, who was so taken by the image that he stuck it to the wall of his chaotic studio. ... As the old master painted from photographs, Joule thought 'Maybe, just maybe' but Bacon returned the snapshot a week before he died saying 'You have it back. I know I'll never paint him.'. In the artist's archive, however, there are early photographs of Rudolf that he 'Baconized' with daubs and swirls of paint." -- Julie Kavanagh, Nureyev: the Life.
****
Ingres, Oedipus and the sphinx
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October 17, 2007
Clues
"I saw a rhinoceros there, just such a one as Hans Clerberg had formerly showed me. Methought it was not much unlike a certain boar which I had formerly seen at Limoges, except the sharp horn on its snout, that was about a cubit long; by the means of which that animal dares encounter with an elephant, that is sometimes killed with its point thrust into its belly, which is its most tender and defenceless part." ---Rabelais, Gargantua and Pantagruel, published in 1532 in Lyon
****
Portrait of Johann Kleberger by Albrecht Dürer, painted in 1526 in Nuremberg
During his sojourn in Nuremberg, in 1525-26, he had Dürer paint his portrait and, after having married the daughter of Willibald Pirckheimer - Dürer's friend - he returned to Lyon, where he acquired various properties. He gave enormous financial donations to the city, as in 1531 when, during the plague epidemic, he gave 500 livres to benefit the orphans of the plague victims. He was called le bon Allemand, and a monument was erected in his honour, of which a replica still exists today. -- source.
****
Drawing of a Rhino by Albrecht Dürer, 1515, Nuremberg
The inscription on the woodcut, drawing largely from Pliny's account, reads:
“ On the first of May in the year 1513 AD [sic], the powerful King of Portugal, Manuel of Lisbon, brought such a living animal from India, called the rhinoceros. This is an accurate representation. It is the colour of a speckled tortoise, and is almost entirely covered with thick scales. It is the size of an elephant but has shorter legs and is almost invulnerable. It has a strong pointed horn on the tip of its nose, which it sharpens on stones." -- source
****
A trace of Dürer in Rabelais, Salomon in 1943
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August 21, 2007
by Bronzino, National Gallery, London
"Venus holds an apple in one hand, and an arrow in the other. What does that say: I tempt you, and I have a wound for you. And look at all the secondary figures - the raving figure of jealousy behind Cupid, speaking so clearly of despair, of love despised and rejected; the little figure of Pleasure who is about to pelt the toying lovers with rose leaves -- see at his feet the thorns and those masks of concealments and cheats of the world, marked with the bitterness of age; and who is that creature behind the laughing pleasure - a wistful, appealing face, a rich gown that might almost blind us to her lion's feet, her serpent's sting and her hands that offer both a honeycomb and something beastly - that must be the Cheat - Fraude, in Latin - who can so prettily turn love to madness. Who are the old man and the young woman at the top of the picture? They are plainly Time and Truth, who are drawing aside the mantle that shows the world what is involved in such love as this. Time - and his daughter Truth. A very moral picture, no?" -- What's bred in the bone, Robertson Davies.
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August 17, 2007
The death of Peter Fechter
At midday on 17 August, 1962, Peter Fechter and Helmut Kulbeik, two teenage citizens of the GDR, jumped from a ground floor window on Zimmerstraße, Berlin, into 'the death strip' - an area of no-mans land leading up to the Berlin wall.
As they reached the wall, ignoring orders from the GDR guards to halt, they were fired upon, with a total of twenty one shots. Helmut made it over the wall to safety but Peter was hit a number of times in the back and abdomen.
Seriously wounded, he lay a few yards short of the wall shouting for help. Having seen what had happened, hundreds of citizens of West Berlin gathered, shouting demands at the GDR guards and American soldiers to help Peter, though they did nothing.
After fifty minutes of calling for help, his calls fell silent. More than an hour after the attempted escape, GDR guards finally removed his dead body from the death strip.
Out of an impulse I signed up to go see this event being re-enacted this Saturday at an undisclosed location. I'll have to show up at the ICA door in the morning and a pack of us will be taken there by bus - not blindfolded I hope. Now I'm dreading it. Considering I have gun phobia and always get out of movie theaters with clenched fists, sore jaws from all the tension and puffy, swollen eyes from all the crying after watching any war movie, what the hell was I thinking? I suppose that's the upside of being brought up in a catholic country no matter how much of an atheist you are: the idea that sacrifice will be rewarded gets imprinted indelibly on your soul.
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August 07, 2007
Small Grand Tour
Went on an art fair marathon this last weekend visitng Kassel and Munster for Documenta 12 and the Sculpture Projects, respectively.
Not very impressed by either, I must say. Documenta was an amalgam of stuff with no curatorial guidelines that I could identify and the sculptures were nothing memorable to me. Anyway, always fun to find out on a friday night that my cell phone stopped working, my flight was late, the man at the rent a car insisted that 70% of europeans speak German so why would English be the lingua franca taking him 30 minutes to give me the car keys, the hotel I booked on a quaint town near a forest was closed at 1 am and no one would come to the door, that I had no map of Kassel so randomly drove around looking for an hotel, found a laptop case (with a laptop inside) in the middle of an empty street and finally found a shitty hotel that turned out to have one of the best buffet breakfasts I've ever had. I love breakfast.
The funniest thing was this Gonzalo Diaz piece entitled "Eclipse". You'd go into a drak room and a circle of light was projected on the wall, over a silver square. When I came in, about 4 people were looking at it from near the door. I obviously stood there. Nothing happened and they left. Another row of people came in and out. And then I thought "What eclipse? There will only be an eclipse if I walk in front of the damned light." So I did. And found that something was written on the square and hurriedly summoned all the germans behind me - looking at me in disapproval for my obvious lack of respect for the work of art - to come and read it. Apparently it says something like "You have arrived to the core of Germany because you are reading the word art in your own shadow". And then people started taking turns to do the same I did. I complained to the guard outside that there should be some instructions but now that I think of it... nah!
Someone told me that there was a great sound piece at the Munster Sculpture projects under the bridge over the Aa. I went there. Waited for it to start. It was a woman singing. Meh.
HIghlight of the weekend: The Museum for sepulchral culture in Kassel. Beautiful museum with a great collection of tombstones, coffins and funeral props in general. Also houses a beautiful collection of prints and drawings on the theme of death. If you're into that sort of thing. Which I am. It was founded by the Study group for cemeteries and memorials. How do I join this thing???
More pics of the trip here.
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July 12, 2007
If I hear the word "Organic" one more time I'm going to puke. Too much sculpture appreciation.
*****
Favorites: Doris Salcedo and Zadok Ben David. So much for British art.
Then again, I'll include Judith Dean's Field. Fake land art. Bronze.
****
Can't live without Circus Ponies Notebook Software ("Organization for Creative Minds") anymore. So glad I got a Mac.
****
How to spot an IT consultant in an art class at a sculpture park:
"The title of the sculpture is Oracle. What does this remind you of?"
"Databases?"
"Greek mythology."
"Ah, right."
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July 09, 2007
Celebrity Spotting (kind of)
Went to the Art Car Boot Fair on Sunday. A strange fair on Brick Lane in which artists sell weird items - Tim Noble & Sue Webster were selling signed toilet paper rolls -for symbolic prices. Among others, I spotted Gavin Turk presumably haggling over prices of his signed car boots and Bob+Roberta Smith painting letters on wood.
Gavin Turk is the fellow that got himself thrown out of art school because he submitted one single piece for his graduation show which was a metal plaque to hang on the wall saying "Gavin Turk studied here". Bob+Roberta Smith is in fact a man and not a pair. He paints signs and banners and launched an amnesty on bad art in 2002.
I got myself an Ian Monroe sticker but when I got home I realized the bastard - who is very nice and chatty, by the way - had signed it in the back and I wanted to stick it to my laptop. So now I am the proud owner of an unsigned piece by Ian Monroe and also of a star shaped bit of paper - signed.
Other than the general craziness and drunkenness going around the funniest stand/car was the one where you could shoot a spinning diamond skull and win prizes if you hit the big diamond on the forehead. There was also a fake diamond covered skull for sale for 1000 pounds. And a Kunst Clown. And people selling puzzle pieces by the ounce. Very weird and strangely frivolous.
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July 04, 2007
Gormley
I'm not fond of Antony Gormley's work (for reasons a blog post is too short to contain) but Event Horizon, a major work that consists of casts of his own body on top of various buildings of London, sure makes cute pics.
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July 02, 2007
Several works from the National Gallery are hanging in the streets of London - it's the Grand Tour initiative and it's hoping to lure more visitors into the museum.
Holbein's Ambassadors is particularly fun since this public display makes it easier to see the anamorphic skull. It isn't easy to come this close to a painting in a museum.
I'm just sorry no one has defaced any of them. Artistcallt speaking, of course. Where are the Banksys, the Duchamps? Why hasn't any one stamped an HP logo stencil on it? Tss.
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June 22, 2007
An interview with Bacon is online over at the always wonderful UBU web.
"What do you gain by throwing paint directly at the canvas?"
"I only did that in a few paintings...I was sick of the look of them, I just threw a lot of paint on them..and they turned out well...I quite like them."
"I only paint portraits of myself because there's no one else around."
There's nothing like getting to know the deep philosophical and aesthetic choices of the artists through their own voices.
Apart from the bit where he seems to get drunker and drunker, I particularly liked the whole idea of wrestling with the canvas and the reason he gives to paint couples having sex: "because it's when they generally talk less and I'm not a conversational artist". The very last part is very gossipy, with Melvyn Bragg trying to extract an "I love S&M, do you want to see my dungeon?" confession from him in a rather insistent yet subtle way (if you disregard the number of times the word "pain" is used).
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June 21, 2007
(from the Marjetica Potrc exhibition at The Curve, Barbican)
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June 20, 2007
London
I moved to London temporarily where I'll be busy busy busy drowning in paintings, sculptures and written assignments.
The view:
*****
Made it to the White Cube gallery today and saw "For the love of God", the latest Damien Hirst. I loved his work when I first got to know it but by now it just seems too much mainstream/marketing stunt to me. He's no longer an enfant terrible but he insists on being outrageous. And however I try to cooly dismiss him, he keeps surprising me. Yes, it's just a skull covered in diamonds, big deal...but the fact is that it's really exciting. A group of people is let in a dark room where you can't see anything but the skull in a glass case, cleverly lit. We were allowed 2 minutes inside and we were advised to circle it. It was like a religious ceremony, 8 adults walking around a skull that shined with all the colors of the rainbow, like a tribe performing a ritual dance around a totem pole. Everyone was gaping for is a truly beautiful, strangely seductive piece. And the whole dark mystery setup just adds glamour to the bloody thing. Argh, 4 days I've been here, mostly surrounded by Americans, and still I have used the expressions "Bloody hell", "That's rubbish" and "Loo" way too many times.
(also saw Richard Hamilton himself at another gallery, an old man wearing a long white beard and levi's jeans chatting with an employee)
*****
So much to blog about, so little time.
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May 23, 2007
The Queen of England posing for Lucian Freud (photo by David Dawson)
The photo is actually much better than the portrait. I can't help giggling at seeing her majesty wearing this glittery diamond covered crown in the badly lit, dirty and slightly run down corner of the studio. Looks like conceptual art to me. Just think, the power some artists attain. The queen succumbs to the vanity of having her portrait painted by the most famous painter alive
and submits to his conditions. Just one century ago, painters would fight for the honor. That's a lot to think about. But I'm too lazy.
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May 22, 2007
I wanted to write about...
...the centennial of Hergé and how despite being a Tintinophile I am also a contrarian. Hergé used to say that there was no place for sex or women in Tintin's male friendship world. So I started a post on Tintin porn parodies only to realize this site has a fantastic compilation of bootleg Tintin albums from the 80's and Arte channel aired a great documentary called "La vie sexuelle de Tintin". I also found a couple of bloggers or website owners who got sued (and condemned) for promoting "illegal" Tintin album versions. Which made me want to blog about copyright, civil liberties, the moustache on Mona Lisa, the power of dead people's wishes over the creativity of the living and trash Belgian law but I'm too lazy.
(Roy Lichtenstein is allowed to throw a Matisse painting on Tintin's living room)
...Elias Canetti's Auto da Fé and how if were this book edible it would leave a bitter-sweet taste on my mouth. It's a wonderful bizarre and funny novel, a chimera born of crossing Lynch with Ionesco with a german twist. Alas, the version I own seems like someone pasted the results of Babel Fish "German to English" translation into it (my book says the translation was supervised by the author). Here I am holding what could be one of my favorite novels of all times, wondering if this will be the final trigger to upgrade my current tourist babble german language level. Which made me want to blog yet again about the difficulties of translation, the wonder of learning a new language, post an hilarious excerpt of the novel when the main character tries to convince his books to go to war and faces the opposition of buddhist texts and of Schopenhauer who suddenly found the will to live, quote Walter Benjamin, add an excerpt of Saramago's Baltasar & Blimunda and show you how crappy the english translation is but I'm too lazy.
...Gilbert & George's downloadable art and how the open source paradigm should invade every corner of knowledge, cadavres exquis, the recent trends on how art can be an effective political and social integration tool, how weird that most art reviews I read are favorable and hardly ever anyone dares to say that - although Gombrich says there is no such thing as a bad work of art - that red canvas with a bit of newspaper glued to it brings nothing new and is a lame attempt at originality, the New Yorker article on Banksy and how even the most wannabe rebels give in to money and vanity despite maintaining their anonymity, the Hopper exhibition at the MFA in Boston, the underrated value of art in the developing world and Maslow's hierarchy of needs but I'm too lazy.
...my plans for the second semester of 2007, Cavafy's poems, Socrates' "know thyself", healthy doubts, status quo, Ecclesiastes, Ovid on fishing, missing oneself, the Bloomsbury group, low cost airlines, auction houses, journalism, aging, optimism, adventure, excitement and romance but that would be too personal.
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March 03, 2007
Vanitas vanitatum omnia vanitas
Paula Rego was commissioned by the Gulbenkian foundation to paint a Vanitas - a symbolic still life reminding us of the fleeting condition of life. It's also supposed to be the companion of a short story where the eponymous collector laments that despite his collecting of still lifes, he never managed to buy a Vanitas.
The tryptich is like a novel, there's a narrative that rises in intensity as it progresses.
I find this tryptich very upsetting. For me, it's not a Vanitas at all. All the symbolism is there: skulls (some of them reminiscent of Posadas' calaveritas and mexican day of the dead sugar dolls), withering flowers, a clock to remind us of the passage of time, a guitar and dolls symbolizing the temporary nature of enjoyment...
But I can't help thinking that the woman in yellow is a self-portrait. The central painting shows us her looking defiant, angry even. The body language of her crossed arms is saying "leave me alone". She seems to be awaken from the sleep that overcame her in the previous panel, suddenly aware of what those objects on the table meant: "What? Me? Die? Never!". And while she looked unaware of pending death on the first painting, on the last one she has snatched the sickle away from the grim reaper and looks menacing at us, a macabre glare. What I find upsetting is that the menacing look she's giving me should be directed to "Death". Or is she just saying that her paintings are her way to immortality? Anyway, it feels like Paula Rego has won.
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March 01, 2007
Infinite Library
"The universe (which others call the Library) is composed of an indefinite and perhaps infinite number of hexagonal galleries, with vast air shafts between, surrounded by very low railings. From any of the hexagons one can see, interminably, the upper and lower floors." -- The Library of Babel, Jorge Luis Borges
(too much Borges lately)
Book Cell by Matej Krén
It's right there, upon entering the modern art museum. A tower of books with a passage through it. Cute, I thought. As I walked in I felt like Alice falling down the rabbit-hole, only this was an infinite tunnel of books - an illusion created by cleverly placed mirrors. Fighting vertigo, it became one of my favourite art installations of all time.
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February 28, 2007
Silence is underrated
"Don't talk unless you can improve the silence." -- Jorge Luis Borges
*****
"Nestled deep in the postcard-perfect French Alps, the Grande Chartreuse is considered one of the world’s most ascetic monasteries. In 1984, German filmmaker Philip Gröning wrote to the Carthusian order for permission to make a documentary about them. They said they would get back to him. Sixteen years later, they were ready. Gröning, sans crew or artificial lighting, lived in the monks’ quarters for six months—filming their daily prayers, tasks, rituals and rare outdoor excursions. This transcendent, closely observed film seeks to embody a monastery, rather than simply depict one—it has no score, no voice over and no archival footage. What remains is stunningly elemental: time, space and light. One of the most mesmerizing and poetic chronicles of spirituality ever created, INTO GREAT SILENCE dissolves the border between screen and audience with a total immersion into the hush of monastic life. More meditation than documentary, it’s a rare, transformative theatrical experience for all."
A lover of silence myself, I enjoyed this documentary immensely. I'm not sure if its even a documentary: there's no soundtrack or voice over, just a succession of short clips and beautiful images of the french Alps. But what made it truly remarkable was that it was the first time in my life where there was almost complete silence in a room ful of people for nearly three hours.
I understand the need for solitude and withdrawal but I frankly don't understand it as a way of life. Especially to be closer to God as one monk admitted. A life of ascetism in a high peak in the Alps is nothing to brag about. What else is there to do? Try to find God while waking up every day to go to work, be underpaid, try to raise a family and make ends meet, resist the temptation of getting yurself into debt to buy symbols of status, find what makes you happy even if it's not what is socially prescribed, be good unto others although they don't really seem to care, be immune to marketing strategies and, if you're a believer, still have faith in God despite all the difficulties. Now THAT is a challenge. Withdrawing from society is plain cowardice.
Silence is the key to find solitude in the middle of others. Silence allows us to think deeper and, if you're a believer, it's the way to listen to God. I've been thinking how it's getting increasingly more difficult to find silent places in cities. My favourites were museums but somehow the old rule of keeping silent doesn't seem to apply anymore. I find catholic churches too grim. I can't get any peace of mind staring at the sight of a crucified man. There isn't one shop, cafe or public place in general that doesn't have some background sound, the dreaded muzak most times. Most of my friends and family can't arrive home without immediately turning on the TV or the stereo even if they're not paying attention. I have my own pet theory that all this is related to fear. Fear of thinking. It's easier to limit your interaction with the world to hearing and seeing and not giving it much thought. If you are constantly bombed with sounds and images, there's a relief from not having to think, from not having to face the probable emptiness.
You know when you eat something that tastes so good that you have to close your eyes so that nothing else can interfere with that sensual pleasure? The same goes for a beautiful work of art; I want to enjoy it in silence, the needed silence of contemplation which allows beauty to be perceived as a religious experience.
*****
Amused by the huge line of people at the Gulbenkian Foundation. There's an exhibition of jewelry by Cartier and I was doing my usual anthropological stunt by observing all these well dressed middle aged couples and groups of women. By the way they looked completely lost as where to buy tickets or how they spoke loudly on their cellphones giving directions to friends on the best places to park around there, I'm sure they had never set foot on the museum before. A strange setting. Reminded me of Bianca Castafiore. I may be a bit prejudiced but I can swear I saw a glitter of greediness on those eyes or whatever it is that makes people appreciate gems and gold. A woman who started mindlessly chatting with me about how she was anxious to see the Cartier exhibition was startled when I said I was not going there but to the museum instead. And even more startled when I said that no Cartier jewelry can beat the Lalique collection which is in the permanent exhibition.
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February 23, 2007
Notes to self
“As a matter of fact, he almost never takes the liberty of being himself unless someone builds up his confidence and leaves him alone in an empty room,” Jean-Paul Sartre wrote in a 1957 essay, “The Venetian Pariah.” For Sartre, Tintoretto is an avatar of existential anguish, who was both behind his time—as the last native-born master on a scene ruled by a cosmopolitan élite—and ahead of it, as the ideal artist for a rising bourgeoisie that was too intimidated by the pomp of the ducal republic to recognize itself in his demotic trashings of aristocratic decorum. Intellectuals of the era, while in awe of Tintoretto’s gifts, scolded him for being too fast, careless, and insolent; when Vasari credited him with “the most extraordinary brain that the art of painting has ever produced,” it wasn’t meant as unalloyed praise. (Vasari also called him the medium’s “worst madcap.”) --- PETER SCHJELDAHL in the New Yorker
Go see the Tintoretto exhibition at the Prado and the Portraiture in the age of Picasso at the Thyssen. Go, go, go to Madrid.
*****
Go visit Venice despite your long standing prejudice against a city that can only stink with that much canals. The biennale starts in June.
*****
Graffiti on a wall, an ejaculation, spatters of bird droppings and chewing gum flattened on the pavement, inarticulate curses - "every body has prombles woste then mine" reads one hopeless message they found scrawled on the street and incorporated in a picture. Gilbert & George's London is more than a backdrop. It teems with life and dirt, shock, surprise, boredom and beauty. Their retrospective is as relentless, cumulative and varied as anyone could ask for. You exit winded - you've seen too much. Like the city itself, the show is uneven and sprawling, and goes from dark to garish, sexy to monstrous. Their best and worst are here - and which is which, one keeps on asking, and what do we mean by best and worst? Good filthy or bad filthy, raving mad or just raving? Are they brave or are they bores? They provoke ambivalence. The contrariness and contradictions are essential to their art, and to our responses to it. --- Adrian Searle on The Guardian
Go visit the Gilbert & George exhibition at Tate Modern. It ends in May! Go, go, go to London.
*****
"Hay is a tiny market town in the Brecon Beacons National Park, It has 1500 people and 41 bookshops."
Go to Hay-on-Wye! Someday.
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December 23, 2006
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December 14, 2006
Amadeo Amadeo
There's a fantastic exhibition going on in Lisboa at the Gulbenkian Foundation! A very complete showing of Amadeo de Souza Cardoso's works, some of them held in private collections and unseen by the public until now. Fell in love with his drawings.
***
Amadeo de Souza Cardoso was a Portuguese modernist painter; he went to live in Paris in 1906 and was friends with Modigliani and Brancusi. He participated in the famous Armory Show:
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December 12, 2006
Wabi Sabi
"Imperfection is in some sort essential to what we know of life. It is the sign of life in a mortal body, that is to say, of a state of progress and change. Nothing that lives is, or can be, rigidly perfect; part of it is decaying, part nascent. In all things that live there are ceratin irregularities and deficiencies which are not only signs of life, but sources of beauty. To banish imperfection is to destroy expression, to check exertion, to paralyze vitality. All things are literally better, lovelier, and more beloved for the imperfections which have been divinely appointed." -- John Ruskin, On Art and Life
-----
It just came to me the memory of reading a Roman Polanski biography, that description of the moment he got the news of Sharon Tate's murder and couldn't stop thinking about a little scar she had on her knee and how he wouldn't see it ever again.
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November 06, 2006
Itsy Bitsy Exhibition
My friend AP and his latest outdoor painting experiences at Quinta do Alcube...
I'm going to start charging a rent for this :)
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November 01, 2006
Fontana
I remember the first time I saw a Fontana - a spatial concept one. It was at Berardo's collection, here in Portugal, and I admired the boldness of it, a creative destruction, the turning what could be a painting into a sculpture, the possibility of dimension, the birth metaphor, etc. A breakthrough in aesthetics and art language as great as Malevich's white square.
"Spatial concept"
After roaming around some modern art museums around the world and seeing Fontanas like this all over (there are many from Lisbon to New York, London or Buenos Aires), I couldn't help thinking that this guy had been running a great business; whenever he needed a new car he just had to get some canvas, sometimes not even bothering to paint it, and slit it open in any direction. There are things that have meaning if you only make them once.
And just last year I saw this work by the brazilian Nelson Leirner at the MALBA. So clever, I'm such a sucker for witty art. I remember saying, "look, he put a zipper on Fontana!" while laughing. Very nerdy.
"Hommage to Fontana"
He made a series of these and tried to sell them at their production cost. He says: "If anyone now asks me if I make art, I reply: 'No, I make a product.' I have no wish to be an artist. Society wishes me to be one. If someone wishes to call me an artist, he can, but I’m not an artist. I’m the head of a business."
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October 31, 2006
The Pequod Meets the Jeroboam. Her Story,
Frank Stella (Moby Dick Series)
"It seemed that the Jeroboam had not long left home, when upon speaking a whale-ship, her people were reliably apprised of the existence of Moby Dick, and the havoc he had made. Greedily sucking in this intelligence, Gabriel solemnly warned the captain against attacking the white whale, in case the monster should be seen; in his gibbering insanity, pronouncing the White Whale to be no less a being than the Shaker God incarnated; the Shakers receiving the Bible. But when, some year or two afterwards, Moby Dick was fairly sighted from the mast-heads, Macey, the chief mate, burned with ardor to encounter him; and the captain himself being not unwilling to let him have the opportunity, despite all the archangel's denunciations and forewarnings, Macey succeeded in persuading five men to man his boat. With them he pushed off; and, after much weary pulling, and many perilous, unsuccessful onsets, he at last succeeded in getting one iron fast. Meantime, Gabriel, ascending to the main-royal mast-head, was tossing one arm in frantic gestures, and hurling forth prophecies of speedy doom to the sacrilegious assailants of his divinity. Now, while Macey, the mate, was standing up in his boat's bow, and with all the reckless energy of his tribe was venting his wild exclamations upon the whale, and essaying to get a fair chance for his poised lance, lo! a broad white shadow rose from the sea; by its quick, fanning motion, temporarily taking the breath out of the bodies of the oarsmen. Next instant, the luckless mate, so full of furious life, was smitten bodily into the air, and making a long arc in his descent, fell into the sea at the distance of about fifty yards. Not a chip of the boat was harmed, nor a hair of any oarsman's head; but the mate for ever sank."
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October 30, 2006
In March the gypsies returned. This time they brought a telescope and a magnifying glass the size of a drum, which they exhibited as the latest invention of the jews of Amsterdam. They placed one gypsy woman at the end of the village and set up the telescope at the entrance of the tent. For the price of five reales, people could look into the telescope and see the gypsy woman an arm's length away. "Science has eliminated distance" Melquíades proclaimed "In a short time, man will be able to see what is happening in any place in the world without leaving his own house".
---G.G.Marquez, One hundred years of solitude
+++++++
from Signs that Say What You Want Them To Say and Not Signs that Say What Someone Else Wants You To Say by Gillian Wearing
+++++++
Image and sounds are not enough to shorten distances.
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October 26, 2006
Rigo is in Lisboa! How funny, the artist I "found" in San Francisco last July is suddenly paining murals here - for the first time I think.
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October 25, 2006
Adam Cvijanovic, Love Poem (10 minutes after the end of gravity), 2005 (detail)
I need to go to the new Saatchi...
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September 25, 2006
I was reading on Spiked how ballet is slowly dying in the UK because of political correctness and general mass hysteria about child molesting:
"One problem is the virtual ban on teachers touching students. Child protection policies now mean that male tutors touching female dancers is ‘virtually prohibited’; students need a letter from parents in order to permit limited touching in certain circumstances; and classes must be observed ‘to make sure that there’s no indiscretion"
And suddenly all the corrective pushes & turns & smacks in the bottom I got from the now director of the Portuguese National Ballet Company Ana Caldas ("Have you ever seen a ballerina with her tush sticking out?!?!?!") when I was younger came back to my memory. I wonder if I can still sue? :D
(this was all a lame excuse to go dig for my old ballet shoes and take a photo, of course)
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September 13, 2006
El Bosco
The Mimara Museum in Zagreb, Croatia has a painting by Bosch which seems to be either a cropped replica or study for the central panel of the triptych held at the MNAA in Lisbon, Portugal: "The temptations of St. Anthony". I had never heard of it before and never saw it mentioned here, where this Bosch painting is one of the most emblematic paintings of our museum.
Mimara Museum, Zagreb
MNAA, Lisbon
The Mimara version looks like a fake to me :)
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August 14, 2006
The Heart of the Mission
"El Corazón de la Missión is part mobile public art project, part site-specific performance, part tourist attraction and all serious fun. Guillermo Gómez-Peña —the renowned writer, border activist, performance provocateur, reverse anthropologist, and NPR commentator — has scripted and narrated this 80-minute tour to take you deep into the heart of the Mission, the place he has called home for almost 15 years. From Dolores Park to Clarion Alley and the 24th Street Corridor, ride shotgun with Gómez-Peña as he honors the Mission’s ghosts, from fallen labor leaders of the 1930s to testosterone-driven low-riders of the 1980s, and celebrates the ever-evolving social, cultural and political sensibilities of his favorite neighborhood in San Francisco."
****
R. got us tickets for a Mission tour organized by Galeria de la Raza - an awful name, I know, but apparently "raza" doesn't have a nazi connotation for latin americans. I didn't realize it was performance art until, shortly before hopping on the bus, a woman dressed in what I imagine to be a mexican hooker outfit tried to sell me vaginal enhancing cream while Gómez-Peña read a subversive statement that I couldn't follow since the woman was by then offering me a threesome and it was hard to concentrate on politics at that point.
We got on a pink and green bus with a mexican kitsch designed dashboard, were offered tequilla shots while Gómez-Peña's assistant sat on the participants laps and threw her skirts over their heads.
All this was accompanied by the pre-recorded narration of the tour by Gómez-Peña and the presence of the man himself. A discourse on immigration, american imperialism and the cultural mix of the city with a touch of sarcastic humour that made it an interesting experience.
Never heard the Mission being called "Chilli-con Valley" before but it is a very funny pun.
---
At one point the artist's assistant asks "Are there any Americans here?" and a choir of voices go "Yeah!". She goes on "What do you feel at the sight of the American flag?". The responses varied from "Shame", "Disgust" to "Anger". If it sounds strange to you, bear in mind that San Francisco is known to republicans as "that leftist enclave". She grabs her skirt, pulls it up and shows her american flag panties in a sexually meaningful pose: "What do you feel now???"
---
We stopped by at Clarion Alley - a street known for its beautiful murals and drug peddlers - and Gómez-Penã and his assistant tried to convince everyone that going down the alley naked would be a true and faithful experience to the culture of the Mission. Two couples almost promptly volunteered. While they undressed in the middle of the street I looked behind me and just across from us there was a police station.
Naked Man: "Come on, come naked with us...."
Me: "Well, I would but the police is just right there, isn't this dangerous?"
Naked Man: "This is San Francisco!"
Me: ...
Naked couple #1, the Assistant, Naked Couple#2 and Gómez-Peña.
Of course, by the end of Clarion Alley there was a group of people, immigrants and prostitutes among them, gaping in amazement at the sight.
-----
After going to an art gallery - where the same couple got naked again for no apparent reason other than "This is San Francisco" which prompted the artist showing there to get naked himself and run around the gallery - , we stopped by at a "true immigrant's bar" where some latino men sitting at the bar or playing pool, not looking that hospitable, suddenly stopped to see why was a weird group of turists invading their space.
Me: So, are you guys going to get naked again here?
man previously naked : Nah, not here.
woman previously naked: I don't know...they've got pool tables....
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August 04, 2006
American Gothic
Art Institute of Chicago
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May 07, 2006
Edward Hopper
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April 17, 2006
Chemistry by Ignasi Aballí at the Fundação de Serralves, Porto
(stickers on a window)
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December 08, 2005
Depressed princesses and wizards
"The tradition of a deadened, lethargic woman aroused from her numbness by a man's call was well under way in the nineteenth century: suffice it to recall Kundry from Wagner's Parsifal who, at the begginning of Act II and Act III, is awakened from a catatonic sleep(first through Klingsor's rude summons, then Gurnemanz's kind care), or - from 'real life' - the unique figure of Jane Morris, wife of William Morris and mistress of Dante Gabriel Rosetti. The famous photo of Jane Morris from 1865 presents a depressive woman, deeply absorbed in her thoughts, who seems to await a man's stimulation to pull her out of her lethargy.
(...)
The philosophical name for this depression is absolute negativity, what Hegel calls 'The night of the world', the subject's withdrawal into itself. And the link between this depression and the indestructible life-substance is also clear: depression, withdrawal-into-self, is the primordial act of retreat, of maintaining a distance towards the indestructible life-substance, making it appear as a repulsive scintillation." - Slavoj Žižek, The Metastases of Enjoyment
Paula Rego, "Snow White choking on the apple" - which, had I painted it and would have entitled it "where's a Heimlich manoeuvre specialist when you need one?" :-)
This also reminded me of Bruno Bettelheim's interpretation of fairy tales and how all of them seem to be directed at conditioning women's behaviour ("Waiting for Prince Charming" Syndrome, etc.)
And how I immediately associated the description of the Dementors in Harry Potter's books with the symptoms of depression:
"Dementors are among the foulest creatures that walk this earth. They infest the darkest, filthiest places, they glory in decay and despair, they drain peace, hope, and happiness out of the air around them. Even Muggles feel their presence, though they can't see them. Get too near a dementor and every good feeling, every happy memory will be sucked out of you. If it can, the dementor will feed on you long enough to reduce you to something like itself...soul-less and evil. You will be left with nothing but the worst experiences of your life." - J.K.Rowling, Harry Potter and the prisoner of Azkaban
( maybe this is the Jane Morris photo he's talking about)
Note to self: will have to post about that annoying habit people have nowadays of saying "I'm depressed" when they're just sad.
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November 28, 2005
Arpad & Vieira
Vieira da Silva is probably my favourite Portuguese-born artist. There is a museum with her and Arpad Szenes' works near where I work. I sneaked there the other day on my lunch break to see a temporary photo exhibition. Special photos: portraits of artists on their studios. From Braque to Picasso, from Vieira to Miró.
I've been fascinated with Vieira and Arpad not only because of their brilliant paintings but also because of how I perceived their relationship; realizing how their respective works intertwined and by looking at photos of them together. I've seen photos dated from the 30's to the 80's. 55 years of living together and in all of the photos we can sense this marvelous cumplicity, like art was a special bond that made them inseparable companions.
As a Portuguese artist, Mario Cesariny, said: "Arpad Szenes e Vieira da Silva são a mais bela história de amor e pintura que jamais conheci" - "Arpad Szenes and Vieira da Silva are the most beautiful love and painting story I've ever known."
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November 04, 2005
Avoir l'apprenti dans le Soleil
Or how to make the viewer uncomfortable wit this total incoherence between the pictorial and the verbal image. The absence of the usual complementarity between image and written word leaves us perplex. The title, or signifier of meaning, and the object, the signified meaning, do not produce a sign, a way to understand.
Duchamp later explained that "To have the apprentice in the Sun" is the caption of a drawing that represents an ethical cyclist climbing a hill which is reduced to a line". He also said that art shouldn't just be visual. It should also increase or desire to think and understand. It carries us to the land of metaphors.
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April 20, 2005
Xul Solar
"A man well versed in all disciplines, curious about each and every mystery, father of alphabets, languages, utopias and mythologies, host of paradises and infernos, author, pan-chess player, and perfect astrologer in indulgent irony and generous friendship, Xul Solar is one of the most peculiar events of our times" - Jorge Luis Borges
Xul Solar was one of my great "finds" from this last trip to Argentina. I loved his paintings and enjoyed his fabulous creativity through his imaginative inventions which range from
* Languages - Pan Criollo, a mix of spanish and portuguese, and Pan Lingua - "a system to communicate and link mathematics, music, astrology and the visual arts in unexpected combinations with untold creative potential"
* Religions and divinatory methods - firm believer in Astrology, Tarot, I Ching, Buddhism and reincarnation
* Games - Pan chess or non-chess, "whose indeterminate rules were simultaneously a group of musical notes, a dictionary for the creation of new languages"
I particularly liked this modified piano, where the original keys were substituted by colorfoul ones, "to accompany the music of his paintings".
More about Xul Solar on the Wikipedia, Words without Borders and Museo Xul Solar in Buenos Aires
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January 09, 2004
Manuelin in Tomar
The manuelin style is a regional version of the gothic style. It developed in Portugal around 1500(during king Manuel reign, hence the name), during the times of the great portuguese discoveries. Its main characteristic is the use of maritim elements in the decoration of buildings.
In the Convent of Christ can be found the supreme example of this style: the Chapter Window.
Seen more closely, the decoration is a bit surreal. The armilar sphere (an astronomical instrument which is still a symbol of Portugal) is placed next to rocks, seaweeds, sailing ornaments and even a belt (a marine version of the Order of the Garter of which King Manuel was a member).
Below are more details:
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November 03, 2003
The Cemetery of Pleasures
Only in Portugal would you have a Cemetery of Pleasures and a Holy Ghost Bank.
The cemetery of pleasures (Cemitério dos Prazeres) is named after Our Lady Of Pleasures: now, THIS is an oxymoron (a contradiction in terms).
I'm interested in funerary art, especially in gravestone symbolism. This cemetery is very rich in symbols whether they are religious, masonic, profession-related or heraldic.
I took some pictures of a few interesting ones. This one is the from the mausoleum of a newspaper co-founder:
Another crafts and professions symbols:
A painter
A merchant (Hermes, the greek god of commerce)
A physician
A musician
The general's own little fortress :-)
The woodworker bench is his own grave!
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