A doleful afternoon- houses and yards

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A doleful afternoon, oil on card, 12 / 15 cm - AVAILABLE

The view from my bedroom: previously visited in http://tadeuszderegowski.blogspot.com/2011/02/houses-and-yards-seen-through-gap.html

This view is larger.

A poor neighbourhood

A poor neighbourhood, oil on card, 11.7 / 14 cm   SOLD

Painted behind the Havan store, Sao Jose.

As far as painting goes, these poorer areas are considerably more interesting than middle-class condo-land. There's a variety of buildings, in a range of colours, some of which seem to be ever in a state of construction and addition and people can be seen to be doing things, their lives not shut away behind doors.

There can still be found in Brazil considerable areas of cities taken up by the sort of repair shops, little restaurants, pubs, and stores that are the subject of some of Atget's photo series. In Brazil these are always at least slightly askew and brightly coloured. I think it would be fascinating for a child to grow up in such an environment. I feel dismay when I see emerge the new Brasil of identikit shopping malls and insipid ready made condominiums.

I feel nervous painting in such neighbourhoods though, sensing a close potential for disorder (I feel much the same about Brixton in London) - although the people who approached me were pleasant (much as they have been to me when painting in Brixton too) one kindly advising me that I had left my car lights on. Some of that nervousness is present in the picture, I think.

Working from the car, observing, painting seems voyeuristic and impolite but it is safer and more comfortable: if I'd known someone in the neighbourhood to introduce me it would have been better.

Nocturne: night walkers' song

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Night-walkers' Song

 oil on card, oil on card, 11.2 / 14 cm - unavailable

The unpurged images of day recede;
The Emperor's drunken soldiery are abed;
Night resonance recedes, night walkers' song
After great cathedral gong;
A starlit or a moonlit dome disdains
All that man is,
All mere complexities,
The fury and the mire of human veins.

From Byzantium by William Butler Yeats 

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Block, windows, trees

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Block, windows, trees, oil on card, 11.5 x  8.6 cm (picture damaged and discrded)

Another grey day here.

 Thank goodness I am off to Rio this weekend.

 

 

 

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My condominium

My condominium, oil on card, 10 x 12.2 cm  NOT  FOR SALE

The condominium is largs and quite extensive. The place is quite well cared for. My picture looks somehow 1950s, I think.

Driveway to my condominium

Driveway to my condominium, oil on card, 9.5 x 7.5 cm

This is a sort of companion piece to mid-February's Houses and yards seen through a gap between blocks, both describing perhaps the almost exaggerated neatness of the condo area. It is neat, but at the same time everything is slightly wonky.

I am very happy with this picture. 

Houses and yards seen through a gap between blocks

Houses and yards seen through a gap between blocks, oil on card, 11.5 x 8.7 cm

One of the views from my bedroom window.

Symphony in grey: condominium; a new series; Whistler and music

Symphony in grey: condominium, oil on card, 11 x 15.3cm SOLD

This is a more elaborate version of the type, with quite complex poured concrete forms. It is on Madre Benevenuto, in Trindade.  As yet it is unoccupied, but I can't imagine it being more colourful when it is.

This is the first of a Whistlerian series of ten, all standard postcard size.

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I found it amusing to read this about Whistler:

"Whistler used musical terms in his paintings' titles: symphonies, arrangements, harmonies, nocturnes. According to his friend and fellow artist Mortimer Menpes, however, Whistler "had no sense of music, absolutely none." Whistler himself stated that "it is an accident that I happened upon terms used in music." He was, though, familiar with philosophical arguments maintaining that music was the highest art form, since it escaped the concrete imagery produced by language. By appropriating music, Whistler suggested that the people, places, and things in his paintings were unimportant accidents. The only part that really mattered was the effectiveness with which he organized color and line into a harmonious and therefore beautiful whole."

This is a quotation from some concert programme notes written by Kenneth Myers, and published on the Smithsonian's website: http://www.asia.si.edu/podcasts/related/jokubaviciute/progNotes.asp

 
 

Condominium life, Brazil

The letter reads:


"Notice- infringment of articles 35 and 46 of R 1, you are advised in accordance with article 67


"Occupant without a key to the entrance gate using the wall as an entrance in the absence of a nightporter*, if seen by third parties putting the security of the condominium at risk, an irregularity seen by our camaras on 17 November and 00.30 hrs. Florianopolis, 20 of November 2010"

*customarily the nightporter would open the gate.

The wall in question is about 50 centimetres high. I did have a key but I carry so many that it's easier to climb the wall than to find the right one.

The condominium is run by a diminutive fat man with a beard and glasses that seem too big for his face, who has an intense love of rules ( he is called a sindico). He has no sense of humour, but he has been fair. However, he has a bunch of sidekicks who are quite unpleasant, and who enjoy catching people infringing the rules. I guess it makes them feel somehow complete. There are many rules, so the sidekicks are generally very happy people.

I was putting my little business cards in the mail boxes in the condomium, not realising that this was an infringment of the regulations. The janitor, an old man with a lined face and a limp came to me, and said, "You know that isn't permitted. But don't worry, I didn't see anything."

So I thanked him, what a decent old guy, I thought: he warned me, but he didn't make a big deal about it.

But the following day, when I was being questioned by the Sindico about climbing the condo wall, up steps the janitor- "he was putting card in the mailboxes too", he said to the sindoco, gleefully.


So I asked the janitor, " Why did you lie yesterday? You said you wouldn't mention anything?" In response, the janitor started shouting, "go away, go away!" and limped off.

I guess he saw a chance to curry favour with the sindico (who to his credit chose to ignore what the janitor said), and if that might cause me problems, or he might have promised otherwise, so be it. The janitor has a slyness that I've seen a few a few times with people form the island: a rapacious peasant quality, in which immediate private gain is the only objective.

The little story illustrates a number of features of Brazillian life:

1. Superficality.

The janitor pretends to be my friend. Fake friendly abounds here. If you come here as a holidaymaker its charming, but once you live here and realise it's fake it loses its appeal.

2. Dishonesty.

Making promises you have no intention of keeping because it will make you seem more likable (this is especially common with invitations, and takes the form of, "what are you ding next weekend? I'm going to invite you for a  drink/ to meet my wife etc. They don't mean this at all- they are trying to be charming, but it is confusing and annoying.).

3. Rule obsessed.

I think, because their public spaces are degraded by violence, squalor, grafitti, filth, stray dogs,  sewage and violent mayhem, and they've in large part abandoned them, Brazillians become obsessive in the readily controllable zones of the home or condominium. There also might be a Portuguese element here of legalistic pedantry.

Rules are not evenly handled: the security guards in the offices I work are considerably more pleasant to some than others, depending on their status- Brazillian society is very hierarchical.

Because I ride a bicycle (I suspect) and in Brazil only students and poor people ride bikes one of the security guards thinks it's acceptable to speak down to me. Or maybe she is just a rude cow.



4. Obsession with security.

Actually. it would be pretty hard to steal anything from here at night. None of the apartments have ground floor windows, the apartments are close together and nestle about a courtyard.