Steps

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Steps

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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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Estrada Geral do Ribeirão da Ilha, Florianópolis; Brazillian architecture

Estrada Geral do Ribeirão da Ilha, Florianópolis, oil on card, 8.5 /10 cm  SOLD


 

Strip development along a highway: Brazilian architecture continues to astonish me in its sheer ugliness. You probably won't realise this if you look at books on Brazil because they are so selective.

You'll get even less of an idea if you look at books on this country's architecture, which will concentrate mainly on colonial stuff, the few remaining 19th century eclectic pieces, and showcase  buildings by Neimeyer and his pals.

Brazil's architecture is remarkable for it's general nastiness: ill planned, with no feeling for nature, nor sense of scale, with buildings constructed without consideration to their neighbours and no consideration to urban planning.

Moreover they are often very shoddily made. There are, naturally, one or two exceptions: a fancy art gallery here, a posh block there, maybe the odd grand private house: these serve to emphasise the mediocrity of the main.

I haven't come across any equivalent to the sort of simple, elegant mass housing seen in Scandinavian modern, or British Georgian.

The disdain for nature, surely Brazil's greatest asset, is amazing. There are almost no gardens or parks here worth speaking of, and those which survive from Burle Marx's day, say, are poorly maintained. Even large houses rarely have gardens.

With all this, I feel that I am stating the obvious, but the obvious sometimes needs to be stated. I sense an parallel to criticising Brasilian architecture in the position food critics found themselves when consuming food in Britain in the fifties.

Pelotas: a celebration in photos

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Pelotas is a fine place to spend a few days if you love architecture, specifically of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. The place is in a reasonable state, with some buildings well resored. There is some of the usual Brazillian grafitti and negligence, but it isn't too bad, and it feels generally safe to wander about. The splendid Guarani Theatre (above) has fine sculptures.

The city is founded round a central square and grids deriving from it, on a sight slope.

 

The building of most obvious interest to foreigners, because of its unusualness for Brasil is the Anglican Church, (pictured above) one of three I saw in the Pelotas and Rio Grande and just over100 years old, and recently, rather nicely restored.  The custodian is very pleasant about showing one around. 

 

The central square contains a fountain and a monuments, including this relief celebrating Garribaldi, and an old fellow selling sweets. (below).

There is a rather grand central market featuring this unusual clock tower:

 

The city contains a large number of residential buildings, some in pretentious- or glorious -19th centrury eclectic styles, others are more modest but similarly containing charming details, art noveau or deco, or various combinations thereof:

 

 

 

 

Charming old paving tiles:

I stayed at the abominable Rex Hotel, which is very centrally located, dilapidated, run by sour-faced hags and a fine place for mosquito-hunting, if that is your bag.

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Well, that is a selection of pictures for you: there are many other buildings both modest and grand that I haven't shown.

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Nine photos celebrating the wonderful interior of Zaha Hadid's Maxxi gallery, in Rome

These photos are of the entrance area; the galleries themselves are less interesting.

A modern building; absence of gardens in Santa Catarina

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A modern building, oil on card, 13 x 9.8 cm

 

 

 

 

 

One of the UFSC research centres in Itacorubi. Like many I don't much like modernist architecture, beacuse it seems rarely to integrate happily with nature- always giving that landed spaceship effect.

 This is one of the things I miss most about the UK: the gentle integration of architecture with the landscape, the excellent quality of much architectural design, and the beautiful orchestrations of gardens and parks.

 It's ironical that a country like Scotland, with its short growing season season, and difficult climate should boast so many beautiful gardens, and Brasil, which offers such abundant possibilities, should have so few. I suspect this is a miserable legacy of Italian- Portuguese colonisation.

 

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Courtyard

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Courtyard, 6.8 x 10.8 cm, oil on card  - available

This is the contemporary Brazillian equivalent of those courtyards found in apartment blocks in Paris or Budapest: strange, silent places; half public, half private.

Apartment blocks here usually consist of blocks grouped together which are then enclosed by fencing to create a secure space for cars and occasionally for swimming pools and other residential facilities such as children's climbing frames or tennis courts. There is little that is charming about the architecture, and there are seldom gardens: a very narrow idea of functionality is represented.

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I used to enjoy the glimpses of private gardens from suburban trains in London: the gentle private civilization that the orderly street view disguised.

The Highway- a photographic series

Highway located near CIC, Florianopolis

The highways are probably the finest pieces of architecture in modern Florianopolis.

Painting is not the best way to represent them- at least, not the sort of paintintg I do, which is much to equivocating, too muddy.

My camera, a Lumix DMC TZ5 is an excellent small camera, but has certain limitations- extreme contrasts of light and dark, and extreme colouristic contrasts cause it to lose detail or to distort colour. The zoom lens is excellent, but it cannot be changed.

Urubici: female taste; architecture; 10a Festa Nacional das Hortaliças; Gauchos

Urubici is essentially a single long, straight road with a grand church (see yesterday) at one end and not much at the other and forested mountains all around. It is a cold place for Brazil, and usually gets a tiny bit of snow every year. The population is a mixture of Portuguese, German and Latvian descent, mainly.

We stayed at the Urubici Park Hotel: as before this was enjoyable though they seem to have difficultiues answering emails regarding reservations.

The hotel features a good deal of handicraft work. Indeed, horror vacui seems to have overcome the owner, and every space in the hotel was filled with a hand made affirmation of nature's goodness- though sometimes God gets an affirmation too. I do not know quite why all this horrifies me so.

The Lord is my shepherd: mural on the second floor opposite the stairs.

The manager is a woman: female taste has this peculiarity: this insistant cheefulness, this need for surface decoration. The coming of Easter has obviously excited the manager's creativity, and lent her the opportunity to transform the hotel so it resembles a giant kindergarten.



Throughout Brazil, women - usually those whose children are grown - meet to make such items, which invariably involve representations of flowers and small animals and pieces of cloth. The items are sold in specialist handicraft shops, or exchanged as gifts. I believe such behaviour is not uncommon among the female sex in other countries too.

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The town of Urubici features, most interestingly, a small number of attractive Art Deco villas. As I associate this style with seaside towns and cinemas, it seems slightly odd to me in this rustic setting. They are painted in the same ice-cream colours of their cousins in Miami and Southend on Sea. And then there is the main church itself, which I featured here yesterday, which while not strictly Art Deco in my book, is has some of the colourful geometricity associated with the style.

Classic Deco "Sun Motif" as stained glass window.

Such art deco styled buildings can be found also in Florianopolis. I wonder if they are all the product of the same architecture studio?

Some of these buldings are covered in tiles, Portuguese style:

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This being Brazil, there is no shortage of religious venues. There has been a veritable wave of new evangelical churches flooding Brazil (Mormons, in pairs like policemen, can be seen patrolling Florianopolis dressed in their trademark black suits despite the heat. I befriended a pair and tried to corrupt them with alchohol: they befriended me and tried to corrupt me with religion: neither side won). This represents disillusion with Catholicism, and a desire for North American cultural values- these new churches are not shy to link material and spiritual success and the style of their pastors is "charismatic".

Saturday night is a slow night, even in Brazillian evangelical churches. Note the tie: evangelical pastors dress like businessmen.

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Other local features are some rock carvings (representing quite what is anyone's guess), a trout farm, and various waterfalls.

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The Festa Nacional das Hortaliças is a celebration of vegetables:

A particularly impressive display.

There was also, perhaps more excitingly, a rodeo, rock bands and various tents selling country things and a funfair. The rodeo brought a host of Gauchos: rodeo isn't really a Catarinese thing: it's really part of the culture of Rio Grande do Sul. They have a traditional costume of scarves, baggy trousers, hats and knives worn at the belt.








Gaucho culture is much more macho than the culture of Coastal Santa Catarina, which is notable for its gentleness. The police issued some warnings about the knives, and I felt something rough and confrontational in the air.

Two Gaucho ladies.