My walk to the sea around 10 am, Tuesday 25 October, 2022: part 2 / 4

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 My walk to the sea, part 2 / 4

 

In this second set, the streets become more urban, a little desolate even, and I feel a  disconnect with the others I pass. There are few cars: there is absence and unease. I pass blocks inhabited by the unseen. Just the presence of abandoned objects gives some sort of clue.

 

 6.

 

Street with a strange feel. 

 

 

When I say strange here, I mean I feel as if it is full of "presences". I do mean than in a supernatural sense- like ghosts or the traces of previous pedestrians. I sense something malign here.

7.

 

Peculiar looking fellow holding flower, basket

 

 

I can't say what this man is up to. The flower basket beside the blue wall is typical Canasvieiras: that is, yet another object found lying aimlessly by the side of the road. There are so many such items -mainly abandoned pieces of furniture but also odd bits of clothing (something I find unpleasant, disturbing even) - that one can't help but feel that something is going on.

 

 

 

 

 8.

 

Eruption on a pavement

 

 

The pavement has begun to disintegrate. I don't know how it has happened. It doesn't seem to be disintegrating in a way that suggests normal usage. It looks as if someone has tried to hack it up. But what is it with those pieces of tarmac?

 

 

 

 9.

 

Hole in a perimeter wooden fence
 

 

I love this peeping through thing. Who in all truthfulness can deny that they also love an occasional peep? But they, those within are inviting it. Why? Why construct a wooden fence of solid pieces then cut a little hole in it like this? Why do they want me to peep? They want to be seen but not to see the seer. 

I don't understand. 

 

10.

 

A man repairing the fence of a block, a concrete mixer/cannon in the courtyard behind

There is a fine cannon in a de Chirico painting, The Philosopher`s Conquest, in Chicago.

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Today's pre-Christmas Sale painting: Puno, late afternoon

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Puno, Peru: late afternoon, oil on card, 18 x 16 cm, 2016

Today's featured picture comes from my first Peru trip and is a loosely painted image from the lakeshore town of Puno. It was painted plein air, as were all my pochades.

 The picture attempts to capture that atmosphere described by de Chirico as stimmung.

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Pre-Christmas Sale

All the unsold pochades on this site are for sale (not just those specially"featured") at 75 pounds sterling each, or other currency equivalent. 

Postage

Normal postage can take up to three weeks so if you want your picture to arrive in  time for Christmas contact me soon unless you want to pay for express Sedex rates. Normal postage is 15 pounds sterling. Express postage is 30 pounds. 

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Thinking about New York

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I`m  getting ready for a fortnight in New York. New York is a big bold place and I want to do bigger bolder pictures so let's hope the weather is fine.

I`ve already got the pochade boxes ready. I just need to think about clothes though I`ll probably buy some there.

List 

1. CIMA  (Centre for Italian Modern Art) in Broome Street, Manhattan. De Chirico show.
2. Go to the Metropolitan Museum
3.The Whitney Museum
4. Painting in Chinatown
5. American Folk Art Museum
6. TJ Maxx- get shoes and maybe clothes?
7. Buy Art Materials from Blick
8. Eat American breakfast
9. Eat KFC
10. Painting in Central Park
11. Painting in Brooklyn.
12. Bookshipping maybe.



 I don`t believe in putting too much on my plate. 

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A visit to southern Peru: Puno; part three, down by the market

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Puno, red car, woman, oil on card, 15 x 16.5 cm  SOLD

Puno, a lady in a red skirt, oil on card, 14 x 12 cm  SOLD

This picture above, above, is one of the best from this trip. It convey's the rugged feel of the place well in the roughness of technique.

Puno, late afternoon, oil on card, 16 x 18 cm - available

I continued this way: a cross between impressionism, and art brut approach (not so much a choice as an instinct) working rapidly and directly. It has something to do with saying- these are the limits of my capacity to know, I can only see so much now, let me not pretend.

 The places depicted here are in some senses ugly, unfinished, in other senses they are places with potential, rudely muscular like many young places in Latin America,

Puno, people going about their business, oil on card, 13 x 14 cm  AVAILABLE

The last four pictures revive the sense of stimmung, the concept of  which de Chirico writes about eloquently with reference to Nietszche, and seeks to introduce into his own work. He describes(from The Memoirs og Giorgio de Chirico,  translated by Margaret Crosland, Da Capo Press, 1994):

 ...a strange and profound poestry, infinately mysterious and solitary...this extraordinary sensation can be found (but it is necessary, naturally, to have the good fortune to posess my exceptional faculties) uin Italian cities  and in Mediterranean cities like Genoa or Nice; but the Italian city par excellence where this phenomenan appears is Turin.

Does the  clear light of the Andes which resembles that of de Chirico`s Turin?

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These streets contain many incidents, and suggest the possibility of incident. They are market streets but given my aversion to people watching me while I worked, I painted the less busy streets.

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A double carrier

The double carriers worked reasonably well. There were difficulties with one: the cases have to allow for the fact that in hot weather the card supports start to buckle in the sun and take up three or four times the depth than otherwise, so it is best to compensate for this with fairly deep case frames.

 I used glue rather than blu-tac to hold the pictures. It seems more secure than the blu-tac. The pictures can be removed from the carriers fairly easily. 

These carriers allow me to take considerably more pictures home with me, and therefore open the possibility of longer trips? thus Ecuador, in January, might well be a whole month.

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Doodle showing fish block sculpture idea

This is a doodle, again made thanks to the longeurs of teaching beginners' English lessons.

It depicts various fancy fish, which have the forms, I now realise, suggestive of pastry-cutters, and a definate de Chirico-esque quality. I suppose their appeal is to do with the way in which something flexible and fluid becomes something rigid and highly geometric.

They would be carved out of hardwood and left to lie about on a coffee table; or they might be very large, also carved from wood, and suitable for a playground or town square. I shall perhaps make some manquettes later tonight from card.

The street as an event

"And then began the tour of that strange building situated in a street that looked forbidding, although it was distinguished and not gloomy. As seen from the street the building was reminiscent of a German Consulate in Melbourne. Its ground floor was entirely taken up with large stores. Although it was neither Sunday nor a holiday, the stores were closed, endowing this part of the street with an air of tedium and melancholy, a certain desolation, that particular atmosphere which pervades Anglo-Saxon towns on Sundays." Translated by Margaret Crosland, Peter Owen, London 1964

Thus begins Giorgio de Chirico's beautiful novel, "Hebdomeros".

I lost details of the passage in my memory, forgetting the "tedium" and only remembering the sense of tranquility, perhaps conflating de Chirico's text with his paintings which are often melancholy but never tediously so.

I used to detest Sundays in the UK: the sense of desolation depressed me no end, and caused me to resent the church. I believe nowadays the UK is more of a 24 hour culture so younger British readers of de Chirico will be unable to understand his reference.

By contrast, the centre of Florianopolis is dull at weekends, the shops closing early on Saturdays and remaining resolutely shut until Monday. There is not a strong work ethic here: there are restaurants which close between noon and 2pm so the staff can have their lunches. However, it is this dullness which makes for easy architectural photography, because such movement that there is assumes a special significance. I especially like the fellow fixing the pink roof at the left of the picture.

The street as stage set. In de Chirico, the street is a stage set: an idea also present in Balthus's The Street (1933):

What makes the street interesting, in contrast to the mall, is that it is a relatively uncontrolled environment. In the mall, even the climate is controlled, and the level of visual interest is in direct proportion to the lack of surprise. Sectors of the population are excluded in the mall because the shopping mall does not provide facilities to suit their pockets, or because security guards prevent their entry. And, of course, the mall excludes many functions that are offered on the street: churches, natural sights and historic monuments. This prevents the sort of chance encounters that make Balthus's picture amusing. Also, the speed and direction of movement in the mall is controlled too using escalators and lifts.

There is a revolt among the moneyed classes in Brazil against spontaneity because of the high crime rate in large cities. The street is a casualty of this revolt. Instead of reclaiming public space with improved security and reducing the massive disparity between themselves and poorer classes the bourgeoisie have retreated into their malls, condominiums and motor cars.