Paintings from New York and Chicago- conclusions

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Some thoughts on my trip

I enjoyed visiting the USA but, as East Africans say, I enjoyed it but not  very much.

A number of things come together for me to say that. Apropos Chicago, the flatness isn`t agreeable, The city turns itself from the lake. It has an endless grid plan which is inimical to walking. Walking matters, it`s a way of connecting with a  place, and if walking isn't agreeable or is dangerous , the city usually isn`t worth visiting.

While the food in supermarkets is excellent, cheaper food in restaurants otherwise is relentlessly awful. It isn`t even served on plates or using proper cups. The service system in restaurants - in which waiters are paid a tiny wage and essentially work for tips  - makes them both obsequious and annoying. And, of course, if someone is only working for tips, then they are unlikely to do anything that isn`t going to be paid- such as giving directions. The tipping system is dreadful because it makes people petty and mercenary. 

People look bad. Almost everyone over the age of forty in Chicago is obese. There is no sartorial distinction between adults, children men or women. They all dress horribly, like giant babies in logo festooned stretchy romper suits. The use of shining white trainers and tube socks is dreadful, especially on older people. 

Specifically,  black people I met in Chicago were friendly and pleasant. Others were so so. But few people seemed very happy. They weren't that happy in N.Y. either. Perhaps that`s why they often weren`t very personable.

There is an officious way of speaking to people in the USA, and I encountered it in many small situations at immigration and in public transport especially. And they also have a robotic way of giving have a nice day pleasantries- they have a whole series of these vacuous catchphrases- (is there a list somewhere that you are expected to learn?). I spoke to very few people as I was painting in the street in Chicago- this is unusual. New York is much friendlier despite fairly frequent experiences of it`s world-renowned rudeness. 

There is a lack, in Chicago, of the sort of idiosyncrasies that make travel amusing- people dressed in individuated ways, shops or cafes serving things which are at all surprising, or people selling curious stuff on the road (the exception being some yard sales I passed). When I was there the huge pop festival, Lolapallooza was taking place and I was struck by the huge number of identikit teenagers streaming down to the park.

Of course, much of what I have just written is obvious but almost everything about the USA is very obvious. .

The transport system in Chicago was clean, efficient and pleasant to use. The grid plan, so monotonous- is fabulously easy to navigate. The subway in NY is grim- unclean, badly signed, with few staff. 

There are fine parks in Chicago. There are nice old suburbs too. 

There is also a huge problem with violence- when I was there in the fist weekend 35 people were shot.

Frank Lloyd Wright 

I visited two Frank Lloyd Wright buildings- Robie House and Oak Park- both are far smaller than I imagined and somewhat fussily styled. Photographs of these buildings are deceptive. To see these buildings you have to go on guided tours. These are tedious and overpriced.

Pictures

Four Manhattan pochades

Working on  bigger pochades- which is something I`ve been pursuing over the last four months or so- works well with the bullying hugeness of North American urban architecture. So for that reason I might well go back. I worked very steadily, getting up early and coming home to cook dinner and watch the USA`s dismal television which consists mainly of adverts for medical products occasionally interrupted by low-intelligence programmes and news about shootings.

I took out very few different paint tubes- five or six. This makes the kit lighter to carry and easier to use. The style I am chasing is about simplicity and speed, not detail.

In West loop, building on Madison (detail)

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Paintings from Chicago- Part 3- West Loop

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In West Loop, building on Madison    SOLD

 oil on card, 19.5 x 24.5 cm

I'm pleased with this picture, which captures something of the massiveness of blocks in Chicago.

Chicago- Madison, a bar, oil on card, 20.5 x 17.2 cm  SOLD

I could have done a lot more work in this area and more to north the of here, where there are fine old warehouses.  

Something for the future, maybe.

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Paintings from Chicago- Part 2- in the Loop

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Chicago, view up West Congress Parkway   Available through NO 31 Gallery
 oil on card, 21.5 x 17.2 cm

The Loop is a showcase of huge modern and modernist buildings. Sometimes this is very visually impressive, when the light glints off glass or creates vast shadows

 I was moved on from on working long a canal walkway as the area belongs to some financial corporation. I had that feeling about a lot of Chicago, as if there wasn`t an intimate relation between inhabitants and owners. There is no street life. The shops on ground level aren`t interesting, just the usual dull chains. There are immense corporate sculptures by Miro and Picasso. It's interesting how the magnification of their works robs them of curiousity. They just become something to fill a void and signify something like "success" or "wealth"  . 

There is a giant, bullying Trump building- there are various other monstrosities each higher than the last. Grandeur is expressed in glass and metal- older buildings use stone, with enlarged pseudo renaissance motifs, or Art Deco. The tendency to massiveness functions well at a distance but close up the effect is often simultaneously intimidating and bland. 

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Paintings from Chicago- Part 1- out of the Loop

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Wicker Park, overground railway, oil on card, 20.5 x 23.6 cm

unavailable

The paintings from Chicago divide into Loop, West Loop and non-Loop.

Chicago is constructed on a plain extending from Lake and based on a grid system of great regularity with large blocks. It has a fine overground railway system and there are magnificent old factories and warehouses- I`d love to work more with them if I`m ever back in the city. These large, usually cubic, buildings, stark in the sun, are ideal for developing a simplified style based on flat planes of colour. 

Chicago, Western Avenue, railway crossings and warehouses

 oil on card, 18 x 16 cm -   available

This, above, represents the bolder style -much influenced by Sironi and I am very pleased with it.

View down from an apartment on Madison, oil on card, 23.2 x 20 cm

Japanese Garden, Lincoln Park, oil on card, 18 x 22.5 cm - unavailable

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Some things I liked at the Art Institute of Chicago

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James McNeill Whistler, Trouville (Grey and Green, the Silver Sea), 1865

This desolate Whistler is large and rather more striking than it perhaps appears here...

Monet, Étretat: The Beach and the Falaise d'Amont, 1885

There are a huge number of Monet's- I especially loved this one, with it's jewel-box colouring and wonderful sense of a vista.

 Beauford Delaney, American, 1901–1979, Self-Portrait, 1944

Tarsila do Amaral, City (the street), 1929

Hanns Kralik, Out My Window, 1930

Edward Hopper, Nighthawks, 1942

Chaim Soutine, Landscape at Cagnes, c. 1923

This big museum is big- very big. The impressionists- especially Monet and Cezanne, are very well represented. 

But otherwise the works do not come together to tell a coherent story. 

It seemed as if the pieces had been purchased in huge lots and then the curators left to make sense of them, which they did so by hanging furniture and paintings together. Often this is rather unsatisfactory as the furniture gets in the way of the paintings- this is particularly the case in the American section.  

The modern and contemporary sections are much more satisfactory, free of bric-a-brac.

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Painting in Trindade/ the blocky style - blocks, Trindade

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Blocks, Trindade, oil on card, 20.5 x 25 cm   available

Painting in Trindade

There are an increasing number of new blocks, none of which have much aesthetic merit or even interest. But I am trying to find something in the patterns of their facades. The older architecture isn't that interesting either, to be honest, but there are one or two older houses which have a certain charm. 

It's good to work around here, to walk to destinations and to feel that one is discovering ones own neighborhood. 

I'm working larger. I want boldness, a poster-like quality, like those famous Deco posters used for tourism advertisements- I'm preparing for Chicago which I shall try to paint in a broad and audacious manner.

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The Blocky Style
or
 fat crude lively pictures... 

The pictures here are larger than I have painted for a while and the idea is to construct a new style

The features of the new style are- 

1. thick outlines describing elements

2. clear colours

3. limited colour range

4. simple geometrical shapes 

5. cheerful storybook atmosphere.

To assist working on a larger scale I reduce to palette to four colours- a blue, white, a yellow and a warm dark colour such as a red or brown. This makes mixing easier. I use big fat brushes too. It might end up looking a lot like Sironi but less sad.

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Planning a trip to Chicago; travel guides

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Lonely Planet`s 8th Edition, 2017

These Lonely Planet guides are excellent. Of course there are innumerable other sources, especially online, of reviews and recommendations but many of these are extremely partial.  Also, I find there something reassuring about having a book rather than an electronic device. It puts one`s mind to rest to know that the item you are reading can`t simply disappear or change instantly, nor disappear from sight when your battery dies.

 Admittedly, some of these guides can be heavy to lug around- a solution being to remove and carry only the sections relevant for your particular trip. My Peru guide has been thoroughly dissected so that each geographical area is a detachable pamphlet. 

I`ve found this series of guides (along with The Rough Guide) to be very reliable.

They are not geared to rich mid-Western Americans like Fodors, nor to tick-box sightseeing like Eyewitness, nor are they exclusively for save-tuppence-ha`penny-a-night-in-this-fleapit backpackers. They aren`t aimed at millionaire  archaeology nerds like Baedekers either (I have a Baedekers to Turkey which seems incapable of recommending a hotel that doesn`t cost 300 US$ a night) though they contain good basic notes on all sights likely to be of interest to the general reader.

The Lonely Planet books are written with a ironical sense of humour too (perhaps attributable to their British origins), and are a pleasure to read. Fodor`s guides are stiflingly self-important.

Anyway, with this book in hand I now feel ready  to conquer Chicago.  

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My Peruvian Adventure- Lima; conclusions; next?

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Lima

Lima, tabernacle, oil on card, 21.2 x 17.5 cm  SOLD

Lima, a block near the courts, oil on card, 17.2 x 19 cm  available

This building near the courts reminded me of the Flatiron in New York. 

Lima, a view of a street in the centre, oil on card, 17.7 x 18.5 cm -  -unavailable

This picture has not photographed well. There are some colour combinations that the camera is very poor with. But it is a good picture with a nice Dufy-ish feel, albeit more tightly composed.

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I spent almost a week in Lima and painted only three pictures. But they are all good: the colours are original and they are unfussy and confident. I stayed in the centre and in Miraflores too. I went to Miraflores because I am a softie and a rotten traveller and the filth of old Lima started to depress me. But Miraflores is also a bit depressing in its blandness and provides nothing much worth painting. I know because when I`d set myself up to work on something I found after some minutes that I could scarcely focus on the motif so glazed with boredom had I become. It was as if nothing in Miraflores told or suggested any story, it was so blandly, nicely, suburban.

Lima proper is very rich architecturally (if in need of considerable restoration), with a more splendid variety of buildings by miles than I have seen in any other Latin American city including Rio, Santiago and Salvador.

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Travelling and painting in Peru 

You come home and within two days its as if you had never been anywhere at all.

Peru is mostly good to paint in. The people are not generally criminals and they don`t harry you sleazily as is the custom in North Africa. They are mainly polite, good-natured and a little shy. That includes the children who are neither nasty and sly like British children, vicious like the stone-throwing prodigy of Arabia, nor like the fat Ritalin-addled slobs you get in Donald Trump`s USA (Brazilian children are also mostly amicable- at least, the children of the lower orders are. The children of the Brazilian bourgeoisie are as revolting as their adult peers, spoilt and self-regarding and forever glued to their moronic smart-phones).

There are dogs everywhere, however, and these are sometimes aggressive. I had to rescue a schoolgirl in Ayacucho from a pack of about six of them. She was traumatized and went back home crying. Occasionally the dogs are covered in sores. I frequently saw pigs too, some of them enormous and shamelessly slothful.

Hygiene is not, generally, a high priority among Peruvians. Restaurants rarely have soap and towels, and the streets reek of urine. There is litter all over the place.

I sometimes found the food to be so poor as to be repulsive, created as it generally is by stewing the innards of uncertain animals for long periods of time. Salad is a rarity. The breads are weird- round and cardboard-y. There are some salty cheeses. Cakes are more impressive in their appearance than taste, which also has the aspect of cardboard. Ceviche is not worth making a fuss about- it`s acidic and gives one a belly-ache. For dinner fried chicken with chips is compulsory but it`s rarely any good and you feel sad after dining. The coffee, which is mainly instant or some concoction made in advance in a tureen, isn't much to look forward to. Milk is uncommon.

 The light is soft and sad and not bad at all but equally it is not remarkable as it can be in Italy on a golden evening or when here in winter it is clear and crisp and the sun is low casting such blue shadows. It didn't rain much at all and I managed to work most days. The landscapes I found did not often convey a grandeur though except near Tarma. I was stymied by the road blockage out of Ayacucho as that route might have given me more dramatic perspectives. I also missed the beauty of tall trees. 

In architecture Peru is quite harmonious. Their modern buildings do not, as in Brazil,  disturb so hideously the older constructions (really Brazilians should be very ashamed of their architecture and how cruelly they have treated their heritage). And the older constructions in Peru are often of considerable interest and merit. 

I met few other travelers and those few I met (4 x French) were unfriendly to the point of rudeness. What a pointless nation the French have become! Anyway, being alone is quite agreeable- my own company is very good.

Conclusions

Some of the paintings are good, some repeat themes. The average size of pictures is greater than in previous trips and I won`t work larger, at least not for a while. Anyway, there are maybe as many as ten paintings I am unequivocally happy with, which isn't a bad number (but what is the right number?). The business is capricious and I am not sure one ever really gets better at it.

Where next?

Chicago and New York. I like to go to a western country after having spent time in an undeveloped country.  Maybe about 9 days in each of these cities? Also, I like Uruguay and want to go back there in winter as the light is so good.

I have only just returned and I am desperate to get another  solid period in which I can do some work.  I hate the bittiness of previous journeys- in fact I am angry with myself for permitting such short essays. And with distant trips one loses days here and there just travelling and finding ones bearings. 

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