A trip to Chile: Santiago

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Marin, Bario Italia, oil on card, 21.5 x 25 cm - available

Santiago

I stayed in Barrio Italia, a neighborhood of turn of the century villas and more recent, terribly over-sized blocks, which have an "anyplace" quality. However, the neighborhood is quite attractive in a self effacing way, with tree lined avenues and some small cafes. My picture is from one such street. 

However, there is a problem in Santiago, notably air pollution. Pollution is so bad that after a few hours wandering around I started to develop cold symptoms- a runny nose, a headache and watering eyes. The city could be quite a good cycling city as it is fairly flat but only if they find a way of dramatically improving air quality.

The centre of the city has rather been taken over by protest. There are anarchist posters, some rather striking, around the university but the monuments around the art museum are also heavily defaced and the effect is not attractive. 

Talking generally, almost all graffiti is profoundly depressing: the blunt egoism of the maker, the imposition on public space, the destruction of architecture, the sense of lawlessness that it creates and, usually, its usual utter mediocrity.

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My summer trip: Chile

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Araucania

Chile: Araucania

There is a direct flight from Florianopolis to Santiago, and it is considerably cheaper to go there than  Quito. So I shall make my way there then hop down to Temuco and the lakes (Villarrica and Pucon).  It is a shame to, again, jilt Ecuador, but I have to be careful with my finances.

The scenery is rather find with volcanoes, forests and beautiful lakes, and I think it will have a pleasant temperature and a fine place to work.

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I reread my piece on Santiago from three years ago and it seems prescient. 

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Santiago

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Graffiti in  Barrio Brasil

Santiago

I immediately felt depressed in the crowded city. Indeed, I felt that I had made a mistake to come, the place filled me with such an oppressive greyness, the sky grey and everyone dressed in grey or dark blue or black and they shuffled about like zombies. The service style was anonymous, and the goods expensive and there was that weird sadness everywhere, as if the place and its inhabitants were silently undergoing some  terrible, nameness calamity. 
The city is like a composite of European architecture, all very respectable and looking the part of a capital and rather dull. If you wanted to make a film noir featuring an unspecific city then it would serve well as the Andes are not visible on dull days. I had a dismal kebab. Looking for an art shop I went into a mall of several stories containing shops servicing alternative culture:  tattoo parlours, game shops, t-shirt sellers, jewellers and so forth..  But there is as much that was restricted about this alternative culture as the "official" culture it seeks to oppose: its symbols, which are occult clichés or taken from the marijuana smoking culture of Bob Marley, or the world of Hell's Angels, are tired and as blandly international as the products in high street stores .

The metro was unbelievably crowded. I returned to my place a hostel called La Casa Roja, a huge mansion with a pleasant social atmosphere in Barrio Brasil, a likeable neighbourhood of nineteenth century squares and avenues.

I spent a day wandering round the museums. Particularly satisfactory was the Museum of Pre-Colombian Art, which features these magnificent sculptures:

According to the Pre-Colombian Art Museum Website: These remarkable wooden statues were placed on top of tombs in ancient Mapuche cemeteries. They reflect the spirit (am) of those buried there and are intended to assist them in their journey to the afterlife. Chiefs and great warriors were sent to the East after death, to roam among the volcanoes of Kalfumapu, the “blue land.” All others went to the West, to eat bitter potatoes beyond the sea.

I enjoyed the Museum for Contemporary Art, especially these two pieces:

The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters, Carlos Isamitt, 1940, oil on canvas, 76.4 x 85.8 c

San Fernando Alley, Juan Francisco González,  oil on canvas, 31.2 x 41 cm

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Valparaiso revisited

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From Stanfords Library Series, 1912

I was so impressed by Valparaiso as a painting city that I'd had, since my visit there back in June, 2012, the idea of returning to do more paintings. So I'm returning in early April.

In many ways it's an ideal painting city: not too big and set on many hills with splendid views, great crumbling 19th century architecture and and that Tom Waitsian atmosphere of abandon. The light was clear and the people weren't annoying.

I have a feeling that I'll visit relatively few totally new places this year, there being so much pleasure in revisiting the old and capitalizing on the benefits of hindsight and the knowledge of the place that I've garnered, There is also considerable pleasure in seeing if one has advanced in any way creatively too.

But revisiting is an art in itself. If one revisits too soon, and one might as well never have left. What is nice is for ones memory to have blurred a little and for the place or oneself to have changed sufficiently to incur surprise,  to discover other perspectives, and feel delight, 

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Flowers from Santiago, Travel

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 Flowers from Santiago, red background, oil on card, 12 / 14 cm   SOLD

Thanks to the rain, I stayed in and painted these flowers in the hostel..

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Travel is largely detestable, as, of course, might be said about life in general. It is valuable, I find, to hold in mind Thoreau's wisdom: "the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation". One would prefer not to be one of the mass, of course, but I guess there is consolation to be found in knowing that one is not alone.

Travel offers a different version of detestableness, in which the loathsomeness of the overfamiliar and routine are replaced with the hatefulness of what is strange, dangerous and or merely foreign. The traveller also has to endure a sense of passivity and gratitude for not being robbed and raped at every street corner they pass (though it is true that in compensation we gain a corresponding sense of relief: "super, the ATMs work", or "we managed to find the hotel", "the bill's correct, we did have two beers!", as if these are remarkable).

I tend to take the view that the nastiness of the unfamiliar has at least the virtue of being interesting and therefore life affirming, whereas the vileness of the routine is frequently life-reducing, in that often something eminently likable- say the view of the sea from the top of Hanover Street, Edinburgh- becomes, by visual ennui, robbed of charm- much as love affairs become rotten in the forced, relentless proximity of marriage, and ones object of desire transforms inexcorably from prince or princess into banal but necessary irritation.

On a more practical note, the British Foreign Office has a wonderful site in which they publish information about foreign states and any incidents of note to those intending to travel to them- in other words a litany of official harassment, terrorism, crime and war.

 This site serves to confirm the usual prejudices about "abroad": to generalise: Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian - fine, ditto Northern Europe; latin - probably ok; anything else be wary.

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Santiago, Chile

Nine from Santiago

I've  been pleasantly surprised here  The city is quite elegant, not too large. The architecture is perhaps a little anytown, with little that I can see that might not be found in any other capital: neo-classical and eclectic late nineteenth century with non-descript modern filling in the gaps, but it is generally well maintained with little mess or graffiti, and the city is well planted with trees.

Santiago: Palacio de Bellas Fine Artes: the blue umbrella, oil on card, 14.5 / 12.5 cm - available

The people seem pleasant enough, pleasant tempered and gentle,dark haired, round faced. I detect a latent conservatism to them. The school girls wear rather odd over socks over their stockings as part of their winter uniforms, but I can't see other notable idiosyncrasies. There some soldiers on horseback in olive uniforms- elegant.

The city is grid  plan, with occasional crookedness.  I stayed in Bairro Brasil, close to the centre, much peeling nineteenth century and some elegant or fashionable bars, though in the main the city is old/fashioned feel, so that shop displays are quaintly, sometimes sadly simple and the concept of self/service seems unknown, so goods are kept behind a counter and you have to ask for what you want from an assistant.

It rained continually for my first two days, making painting trying. On the third, however, it was dry enough to climb Cerro San Cristobal and look down.

 Santiago, from above, oil on card, 14 / 13 cm  unavailable

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Not long ago I received some criticism, that the paintings were grey, and that I was "timid with colour". Like most well directed criticism this stung, and instinctively I resented it- it is so often the case that  I, perhaps we, resent and reject criticism most when it is justified.

But with a few days on I decided to try to face the challenge of the criticism, and I have been using colours with more boldness, and less concern that the effect might be vulgar.

The hostel has some wonderful flowers, and I`ve been painting these, in a sort of impressionist style, trying not to over mix the paints and using lighter  grounds. They are brighter and more cheerful. I shall post these these later.

Santiago, Praca Brasil, a red umbrella, oil on card,  oil on card, 13.5 / 11 cm  NOT FOR SALE

Back from Chile

16 from my Chilean trip.

Back after a week escape from this little apartment, from teaching English and rotting. 

Overall, I'm very happy with the trip. Chile is beautiful and fairly well organised. Santiago is elegant and comfortable to work in: Valparaiso is rather slummy, but is full of architectural interest.

 It was a pity that it rained so much on my first couple of days, restricting me to working from cafes or  the eaves of buildings, but I was able to do a couple of still lives on the worst days.

I stayed in hostels, which offer the strangest of communities: gap-year British teenagers, American and Canadian loners, Australians on extraordinarily long world trips, Germans sitting alone, and a fair smattering of friendly French. The atmosphere is very friendly: easy come, easy go.

I feel sufficiently inspired to contemplate a longer trip to Bolivia.