Pintur-as

Izidorio Cavalcanti

2012-01-23T13:31:00.000-08:00

I went to visit some art galleries in Porto (more photos soon) and found this amazing sculptures by the brazilian artist Izidorio Cavalcanti at Por Amor À Arte gallery. These are broken glass objects (a vase, a bottle, etc) mended with an improbable material, a thin white thread. The result is unexpected: a hardworking, delicate, and utterly hopeless attempt to overcome a big loss (the broken object) with a beautiful fragile embroidery. So good!
Click images to enlarge.

A trip to Lisbon

2012-01-20T12:33:00.000-08:00

Random photos from a trip to Lisbon on January 2012.

Rap and art criticism, if you know what I mean.

2012-01-19T02:36:00.000-08:00

I recently found this videos on youtube, "Art Thoughtz" by Hennesy Youngman. This one on Damien Hirst. Good ideas. Listen, internet!

And this one about beauty in art ("...basicaly art is about beauty"). Pay atention to the frame at 2.13/2.14:

A quote from another video, on curators: "Camile Paglia is a man who has somehow convinced the world that he´s a woman"

"Stone Matress", a short-story by Margaret Atwood

2012-01-17T03:25:00.000-08:00

It´s in the Dec.19& 26 issue of "The New Yorker" and it´s excelent. Who said feminist literature was boring? Here.

Mia Brownell

2012-01-16T10:14:00.000-08:00

Fruits painted in the detailed style of old dutch still-lives, but following the molecular structure of biomolecules. I like them. Oil on canvas.

Concrete and pebbles table

2012-01-15T14:27:00.001-08:00

I made this table with white concrete, pebbles and sand from the beach, an old road sign and the base of a stall.

I found those two terracota pieces on the beach. I suspect they may be old fishing nests wheights, but I´m not sure.

Totem

2012-01-14T14:14:00.000-08:00

Olinda Gil gave me this totem. She spent her chilhood in Moçambique, and you can see the african influence in the colors she uses.

SEGO Y OVBAL

2012-01-11T12:29:00.000-08:00

I saw some photos of graffitis by this mexican artist and I instantly became a fan. See more here.

I finished painting the desk

2012-01-06T09:10:00.001-08:00

Acrylic and spray on wood. This is for a school tv studio. With a desk like this, the viewers may look at it instead of paying atention to the program...

Painted desk

2011-12-30T15:33:00.000-08:00

I´ve been painting this desk. It´s not finished yet. I´ll post the final photos soon.

Gregory Bateson was right

2011-12-23T07:42:00.001-08:00

I became an ecologist after reading Gregory Bateson´s "Steps to an Ecology of Mind"

Painting

2011-12-21T08:21:00.001-08:00

Whale Vertebra

2011-12-14T13:48:00.000-08:00

Up in the mountains

2011-12-14T13:44:00.000-08:00

Suzanne Oldewarris

2011-12-09T12:56:00.000-08:00

Suzanne lives most of the year in Portugal and travels to Holand in winter. Besides reading, cooking and partying, Suzanne makes this fine paintings and collages:

Persimmon fried in butter

2011-11-28T13:40:00.000-08:00

I just invented this and it´s delicious. I pilled and sliced a hard persimmon and then fried it in butter until it became soft. I finnished it before I finnished typing this...

Mushrooms

2011-11-27T06:42:00.001-08:00

Yesterday in the afternoon I went to pick mushrooms in the forest.

There weren´t much, either edible or not, because the autumn rains came too late this year. Finnaly I found these Lactarius deliciosus.

I drove back home in the sunset.

I fryed the Lactarius tempura style and they were deliciosus.

.......oooooooooooooo........THE END.......oooooooooooooo.........

And now, for something completly diferent...

2011-11-27T03:15:00.000-08:00

...a short-short story I wrote a long time ago. I translated it into english, with the precious edditing of Resa Alboher and Dean Thomas Ellis.

ARSUAGA

A short short story by Jaime Braz

On Friday I met Arsuaga at the café Ordorika, across the street from the the old Teatro Ricardo Cortazar. He arrived five minutes after the appointed time. He hung his umbrella on the coatrack by the door, talked to the waiter and came to my table. We shook hands and he sat down.
-Sorry I’ve kept you waiting. Last Wednesday I wasn’t able to give you more details. I know that your organization also cares for the Basque country and I´m sure you will not refuse my request. It requires little from you but it will certainly yeld many benefits and save many lives in the years to come. Please don´t look at my lips. I don´t suffer from any muscle paralysis, thank God. It´s just a precaution in case we are being watched by someone who can read lips, and probably we are, but regardless he won’t even know I´m speaking Spanish to you. You can answer me in Spanish. What I want to ask you is very simple: it´s absolutely necessary for the police to strenghten their patrols in the Eguzki gorge, along the rural road between Olabe and Lizarrusti, on the last weekend of this month . The deterrent effect of a police presence in that zone, at that time, will be vital. I´m certain it will be easy for you to abide by my request. Your organization has access to high-resolution satellite photographs that can spot very small objects on the ground. All this technical prowess is very useful, no doubt, but it is of no use if the resolute power of our minds cannot divine the moral consequences of even our smallest diurnal actions within the diffuse moral spectrum that governs our actions.
The waiter delivered a cup of cafe au lait. Arsuaga paid his bill and mine. He poured some sugar in the coffee, stirred it with the spoon, took a sip and continued:
- So, what I´m asking you to do is very simple and I´m sure you can do it with little difficulty: strenghten the police patrol in the Eguzki gorge, this month on the 25th and 26th. That´s all.
I took out a small notebook from my coat pocket to jot down a note. Then I noticed that Arsuaga had gotten the dates wrong and I told him:
- I just noticed the last weekend of this month, Saturday and Sunday, falls on the 28th and 29th. Did you get the dates right?
A few seconds later Arsuaga answered me with a question that left me astonished:
- But isn´t this 1956?
My agenda was open to the pages of Saturday 28th and Sunday 29th. I turned it for him to see. On top of both pages it was written 1998. He looked at the pages for a long time, then he took another sip of coffee and fixed his gaze towards Portugalete and the greyish green hills with the top covered by a blanket of clouds that was hanging over Bilbao. I saw his face in profile. He must have been sixty-something. His grey hair was the colour of his raincoat. There was a sad and stubborn resignation in his eyes. Finally he stood up and excused himself while he shook my hand:
- I´m sorry I’ve wasted your time. Now there´s nothing we can do. It was all my fault. At any rate, allow me to thank you for your time. Good night.
I saw him snatch his umbrella at the door and leave the café. On the sidewalk he turned right and I never saw him again.
The officer who had introduced us told me Arsuaga was an excellent professional with an enviable track record, and that he would retire in three months. In spite of that I remember him as a loser, bent under the weight of the failure of what might have been his last assignment , in which I should have played an important role.
The next day I spent all morning and afternoon at the Bilbao Municipal Library, going through the press from the autumn of 1956. I browsed all the magazines and newspapers I could find, both local and national. From such an arduous task I gathered little relevant information and nothing conclusive. I found no news about any incident at the Eguzki gorge. On the 27th of September there was a general strike in the Bilbao shipyards that ended with a bloody repression by the police. On the 7th of October a train derailed in Arzak, quite far from Eguzki. I decided not to return to the library because I realised that the task before me, besides being huge, was in vain. It´s impossible to know when occurred, or what exactly were the consequences of the actions committed in the Eguzki gorge, in that weekend in the autumn of 1956, that Arsuaga so desperately wanted to prevent. Maybe the bloody consequences that he feared hadn’t even happened yet.
On the following Sunday I took the plane back to Buenos Aires.

(the plot of this story was dreamed up on the night of the 6th to the 7th February 1998)

Leonel da Silveira

2011-11-24T11:55:00.000-08:00

These are works from my portuguese-french-australian friend Leonel da Silveira. Most people have one, some two, cultural references, being born and raised in one country then, eventualy, migrating to another... He´s the only person I know that can claim three cultural backgrounds, and he´s equaly at ease with many aspects of portuguese, french and english languages and cultures. Besides being an artist, he used to fly helicopters and he´s probabily the most cultured person I know (literature, visual arts, cooking, history, classic music, cinema, etc.).
All 50cm by 50cm, acrylic and colage on wood. Click to enlarge:

Photos from last weekend

2011-11-23T06:40:00.001-08:00

I should have brought this pine roots home. A natural ready-made sculpture of two fighters on the floor:

In the dunes by the sea there are lots of these shrubs that produce slightly acidic and sweet edible white berries, this time of the year. I remember eating them in my childhood. They are called "tamarinhas".

A couple of meters to the right, in the previous photo, I found this old portuguese coin!!

Domingos Bagage

2011-11-22T12:48:00.000-08:00

Last weekend I went to Nazaré and met this 93 years old street artist, Sr. Domingos Bagage. He writes this poems and carves them in limestone on the seafront promenade. He has published at least one book of poems. He told me that sometimes he dreams up a poem, then tries hard to remember it in the morning. I adviced him to have a notebook and a pencil next to his bed. Click to enlarge and enjoy:

Let´s dance... or surf

2011-11-18T07:20:00.000-08:00

While the time hasn´t arrived for us to give our souls back to the Creator and our bones to the ground, LET´S DANCE:

or LET`S SURF A BIG WAVE:

Pied bleu

2011-11-17T03:36:00.000-08:00

I went to look for mushrooms in the forest, this morning, but there aren´t many yet. Brought six Pied Bleu (Lepista nuda):

Pregnant Praying Mantis

2011-11-11T10:15:00.000-08:00

I like Praying Mantis, they look like creatures from another planet. Tonight I just saved this female from drowning in the rain. She was laying on the sidewalk (12ºC) bearly able to move, and I brought her inside, cleaned the water from her body with a tissue paper, and put her in a box. I hope she will be able to lay her eggs soon. If she does, I´ll take care of the eggs and I´ll watch the little praying mantis when they are born next Spring. My little step-sons and daughters...

This insects are good pest controls in the garden. In the USA you can buy eggs, watch them hatch in June, and release the little insects in the garden. Some people keep mantis as pets, feeding them flyes, aphids and a variety of bugs.

Art to be seen in Porto right now

2011-11-08T11:34:00.000-08:00

Isaque Pinheiro at Galeria Presença. Big pieces of Pop art directly from the saw-mill:

Pedro Lucena at Gallery Anemona. You should see this live. The details are awsome:

Street art in Porto

2011-11-07T08:09:00.001-08:00

Art for free

2011-11-07T07:50:00.000-08:00

Last saturday, 5, in the street Miguel Bombarda, Porto, right in the midle of art gallery district, I saw this painting on a wall by Alexandre Rola. I saw it at around four pm and read the label saying it was for free. I didn´t take it down right away. Some two hours latter (and hundreds of people passing by) it was still there and I decided to bring it home. Thank you Mr. Rola!

Arte Conceptuale Bruta-2

2011-11-01T09:05:00.000-07:00

Another project for a radical conceptual exhibition.
The same artist as in the post below anounces an exhibition of his paintings. The guests arriving at the much antecipated opening notice that what is shown on the walls are not paintings but photographs, and they say it to the artist. The artists inicialy denies, but, as the protests mount, eventualy cofesses that those are realy photographs. Things calm down and the public enjoys the art, sipping wine and eating the hors-d´ouvres that were laced with small amounts of castor oil. Cameras placed in the gallery and outside, film as the first guests start to feel the simptoms of constipation and shitting themselves in their pants and dresses.
The artist tries to sell the video to Tate Modern, MOMA, and some other museums of modern art.

Arte Conceptuale Bruta-1

2011-11-01T02:27:00.000-07:00

Project for a radical conceptual exhibition.
An artists anounces an exhibition of photographs. On the opening day, people notice those are not photographs on the walls, but paintings, and try to elucidate the mistake. The artist insists, against all evidences and against everybody, that those are realy photographs, not paintings. A big discussion begins with shouts and insults. Eventualy everybody leaves and the exhibition is removed. The artist will mention that exhibition in his curriculum as "photographs". The few people who´ll bother to desagree will only have some inconclusive photos and films, made in the opening night, to suport their claims. It will forever be considered an exhibition of photographs.

Henrique Oliveira

2011-11-01T01:41:00.000-07:00

Sculptures and paintings by the brasilian artist Henrique Oliveira. Amazing.

Street art in Covilhã

2011-10-29T01:48:00.000-07:00

Lots of recent activity in this town, streetartwise, due to this guys:

VHILS embelished a wall:

There was a german tv crew making a "Making of" film:

Beautiful tiles by Diogo Machado. From a distance they look like tradicional portuguese tiles, but looking closer they show interesting new motives. Click to enlarge:

These walls, painted gold and blue, are near a barroque church:

Discurso de Leonard Cohen en la entrega de los Premios Príncipe de Asturias

2011-10-25T13:59:00.000-07:00

Steve Jobs meets St. Peter

2011-10-25T02:47:00.000-07:00

This ilustration is beautiful:

I was featured in this book

2011-10-24T11:47:00.000-07:00

I like how my paintings look in a book.

Barroca do Zêzere

2011-10-23T11:19:00.000-07:00

Last Saturday I went for a walk along the river Zêzere, passing near some big mines where they extract mostly wolframite. Big heaps:

Some chemical reactions in the stones form this beautifull paterns. This is unintended landscape art. Click to enlarge:

Near Barroca do Zêzere we went to see this petroglyphs. Notice the head, neck and front leg of an horse on top, and another head bellow. The hand is pointig to the head of the first horse:

Ten thousand years and one day later, the following Sunday, the portuguese street artist VHILS and his crew started carving this face in a wall, in Covilhã. (I´ll post more photos soon):

Algarve Gin Tonic

2011-10-20T07:15:00.000-07:00

Now, witness the birth of a classic!
You saw it first here!
A couple of years ago portuguese authorities launched a campain to promote Algarve as a tourist destination for english speaking folks, they anglicizing the name of the province to "Allgarve".
To name this variation of gin tonic I invented, I also decided to anglicize a name of a town in Algarve, called Almancil.
So, this Gin Tonic is called ALLMENSILLY !!!!
It´s a simple recipy. You just add carob flour to your usual gin tonic, and it tastes delicious!
The ingredients:

Mix a small spoon of carob flour with ice.

Add gin and stir.

Add the tonic.

You should try this at home.

A walk down art gallery lane, in Porto

2011-10-15T06:35:00.000-07:00

In Porto I found this new art gallery, anémona, showing this beautiful pieces by the young brasilian artist Marta Emília. She glues small pieces of painted paper to get this intricate, some organic and some geometric, paterns. The titles of the collages come from the lyrics of brasilian songs.

I particularly like this one titled "Brocal Dourado". It is detailed like an embroidery or a lace and it also reminds me of those colorfull underwater scenes from the coral reefs. Excelent.

In Galeria Presença, I saw this amazing sculptures by Pedro Valdez Cardoso. I like the clash between tribal art and the luxury fabrics (and not so luxury stuff like dusters and pins):

In the same gallery there was this piece by Alexandre Farto:

Works made by João Leonardo with cigarette butts he collected during a stay in Germany, from April 2010 to May 2011:

Some street art:

Mutant boots

2011-10-06T11:12:00.001-07:00

I just invented these. Click to enlarge:

Death is the turn on the road

2011-10-06T06:02:00.000-07:00

Death is the turn on the road
Death is just not being seen.

Fernando Pessoa

Recently, within a couple of days, fate or some spirit diligently working to organize for me the zigliotrilionmegabites of information out there, presented me with two coinciding references to death. First, while surfing the net, I learned about this movie on one of my favourite movie directors: Meeting Andrei Tarkovsky, by Dmitry Trakovsky.
Excerpts from reviews:

"The young filmmaker Dmitry Trakovsky sets out in search of his favorite director's legacy.He attempts to come closer to the meaning of one of Tarkovsky's most enigmatic beliefs... that death doesn't exist. What he sets out to achieve is to find out the ways in which Tarkovsky is still alive, and that's why the movie's single act of formal daring may be its beautiful, if misleading title. Instead of "searching" or "remembering" Tarkovsky, this new documentary hints boldly at his persistent, real, and this-wordly presence. The latter may manifest itself in memories others have of Tarkovsky, but it also finds a material dimension in his son Andrei Andreevich. Finally, and most poignantly, the filmmaker points to numerous people whose life choices were forever altered by encountering Tarkovsky's films. As we're watching the serious, unsmiling and yet serene face of a young Orthodox monk, as he's declaring Tarkovsky's work as the single most decisive factor in his choice of becoming a man of cloth, it's hard not to think of Tarkovsky as still living through the existence of this man."

Soon after I read this article by Larissa MacFarquhar in the Sept.5, 2011 issue of "The New Yorker" about Derek Parfit,

"...thought by many to be the most original moral philosopher in the English-speaking world. He has written two books, both of which have been called the most important works written in the field in more than a century. Parfit´s first book, "Reasons and Persons"...was dense with science-fictional thought experiments, all urging a shift toward a more impersonal, non-physical, and selfless view of human life. When, in the process of a zygote´s cellular self-multiplication, does a person start to exist? Or when does a person, descending into dementia or coma, cease to be? There is no simple answer - it is a matter of degree.
Parfit´s view resembles in some ways the Buddhist view of the self, a fact that was pointed out to him years ago by a professor of Oriental religions. Parfit was delighted by this discovery. Sometime later he learned that "Reasons and persons" was being memorized and chanted, along with sutras, by novice monks at a monastery in Tibet.
It seems to a friend of Parfit´s that his theory of personal identity is motivated by an extreme fear of death. But Prfit doesn´t believe that he once feared death more than any other people, and now he thinks he fears it less.

My death will break the more direct relations between my present experiences and future experiences, but it will not break various other relations.

Some people will remember him. Others may be influenced by his writing, or act upon his advice. Memories that connect with his memories, thoughts that connect with his thoughts, actions taken that connect with his intentions, will persist after he is gone, just inside diferent bodies.

This is all there is to the fact that there will be no one living who will be me. Now that I have seen this, my death seems to me less bad.

Paul Bakker´s wooden sculptures

2011-09-05T06:03:00.000-07:00

Just in the mail today, all the way from Cairns, Australia.
Muito obrigado, senhor Paulo!

A Poem

2011-09-01T09:37:00.000-07:00

How to put in words the song of birds,
How to define the taste of wine?
I tried to write down what I feel for you,
Ended up with a poem that looks like poo.

The little plastic bottle takes a nap in its own cradle

2011-09-01T06:38:00.000-07:00

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Two carrots in love

2011-08-05T06:56:00.000-07:00

They were born and grew up together and made a vow to die together in a pot of soup... (Spring 2011-Summer 2011)

And love lies bleeding in my hand:

Thoughts of the day

2011-08-05T01:29:00.000-07:00

A scarecrow with a crow sitting on top is the perfect metaphor for the failed work of art.
Alzheimer must feel like a constant flow of jamais vu.

Eu gosto é do Verão

2011-07-29T07:50:00.000-07:00

I made this side table yesterday, with white concrete, an old metal chair frame, some wire and sea sand and pebles. The name of the table means "I prefer Summer" and it´s from a classic summer song.

In this photo there seems to be some optic ilusion with the floor tiles...

doodling

2011-07-28T04:29:00.001-07:00

(not sure if I showed this before...)

2011-07-27T04:17:00.000-07:00

Click to enlarge :

Curiosity enriched the cat´s experience...

2011-07-23T03:59:00.000-07:00

...and, to the dolphins, it ended up bringing back some ancient memories buried deep in the collective unconcious of the species, from milions of years ago, when they had fur and walked on four legs.

The Master and Margarita

2011-07-19T06:38:00.000-07:00

Last June I started reading this wonderful book by Mikhail Bulgakov. I was half way through it when, in a friends house there was this documentary, on ARTE TV, showing the young Roling Stones in studio recording the song "Sympathy for the Devil". I didn´t pay much attention to the documentary, as there was a conversation going on about something else. As the band rehearsed time and time again, I kept hearing the famous lyrics:
"Please allow me to introduce myself
Im a man of wealth and taste
Ive been around for a long, long year
Stole many a man´s soul and faith
And I was round when Jesus Christ
Had his moment of doubt and pain
Made damn sure that Pilate
Washed his hands and sealed his fate
Pleased to meet you
Hope you guess my name
But what's puzzling you
Is the nature of my game
I stuck aroundS St. Petersburg
When I saw it was a time for a change
Killed the czar and his ministers
Anastasia screamed in vain ...etc"

The references to Pilate, the cruxifiction of Jesus, ST. Petersburg and the soviet revolution, made me realize there was some relation between that song and Bulgákov´s book.
A search in Wikipedia showed I was right. Mick Jagger said in an interview that he was partialy inspired by this novel to write the song.
It was one of those funny coincidences...

The saga of Jean-Luc Patachou

2011-07-12T01:34:00.000-07:00

"We are responsable for the beings that we seduce."
(Nous sommes responsables pour les êtres que nous séduisons)
Marguerite Yourcenar
(this is the kind of sentence that hits you the first time you read it, and stays in your memory, becomes part of who you are. Notice she didn´t say "human beings", she talks of beings in general, and that includes people and cats and dogs and birds...)

Jean-Luc Patachou is a bird of the species Serinus serinus, that I found on the road, on June the 27th. He had fallen from the nest when he could not yet fly, maybe pushed by his brothers, or may he just felt, in his little restless soul, an urge to go and explore the vast world. Anyway, he was in a dangerous situation, because that was a busy road, with lots of cars passing by, not to mention children, cats and dogs. Thousends of little birds die every year, and I also know the recomended procedure, when you find a bird that has fallen from the nest, is to put him back on a safe branch of a tree or shrub near by, so that his parents can keep feeding him. But in the case of Jean-Luc, the trees near by were tall, I couln´t see any nest from the ground, he was restless and wouldn´t stay on a branch, and the place was not a quiet place at all. So I decided to bring him home and feed him, and release him in the wild when he could fly and feed himself.

I fed him a protein rich mash that I made twive every day, cruching rice, wheat, yolk and albumine from boiled eggs, bits of raw salmon, grasshoppers and other insectcs, letuce, figs, etc. in a mortar, then feeding him with a seringe. Notice his full belly after a meal:

It´s always good to have a shoulder where you can lean on.

Cleaning his feathers on the computer.

For two weeks I couldn´t leave home and I had to get out of bed at around seven to start feeding Jean-Luc. It´s a lot of trouble raising a son.

I tought him how to eat seeds

Here´s Jean-Luc eating alfresco,two weeks after the rescue:

And here´s a sparrow next to Jean-Luc:

Now I hope Jean-Luc will find some of his species to live a happy life.

A painting from 2005

2011-07-09T13:49:00.001-07:00

News from the nest

2011-06-21T11:24:00.000-07:00

The three Turdus merula have grown:

Me on Newchemicalhistory

2011-06-17T15:20:00.000-07:00

Some of my paintings can now be seen on this site: New Chemical History.
Thank you very much Kieran Guckian.

Alentejo

2011-06-16T05:03:00.000-07:00

Saturday, 11th I ate this for lunch (sopa de beldroegas). I didn´t eat all that cooked garlic.

Then I went to hang this exhibition at Monte dos Seis Reis.

In the afternoon after some glasses of excelent wine from Monte Seis Reis, I took a nap outside, surrounded by this views:

Too much beer

2011-06-15T07:49:00.000-07:00

When you drink too much beer, you end up doing things that later you´ll regret...

A Nest of Blackbirds

2011-06-15T06:09:00.000-07:00

I just took this photo of young blakbirds (Turdus merula) that were born in my garden.

Thesis-2

2011-06-15T05:45:00.000-07:00

By allowing the sky to appear fragmented, airplane trails played an important role in the arising of abstract art.
(...yes, I know abstrat art existed long before airplanes started leaving trails in the sky. But I still think this would make for a good post-doctorate thesis on art history)

Thesis-1

2011-06-15T05:38:00.001-07:00

By allowing reality to appear fragmented, mirrors played an important role in the arising of abstract art.

This morning

2011-06-12T09:02:00.001-07:00

The next four photos were all taken in the morning of June 12th, 2011.
Click to enlarge.

My latest two paintings

2011-05-28T02:29:00.001-07:00

The final version, after some minor changes:

Celeste Olalquiaga

2011-05-27T11:32:00.000-07:00

I bought this book in a catalan bookstore in Madrid, across the street from Círculo de Bellas Artes, a place I like to visit for the coffee, the exhibitions and the general atmosphere. Having a catalan bookstore in such a central place in Madrid shows that democratic Spain has come a long way since Franco. I can understand about 95% of writen catalan. Some of the books on sale in that shop are in spanish, as was the case with this one. I was imediatly atracted by the beauty of the cover and the sides color purple, then intrigued by the title, and finnaly seduced by the writing. It´s a wonderfull book and I became an instant fan of Celeste Olalquiaga.

From a review: " The Artificial Kingdom is the first book to provide a cultural history of kitsch, an immensely popular aesthetic phenomenon that has always been disdained as "bad taste," or a cheap imitation of art. Proposing instead that kitsch is the product of a larger sensibility of loss, Celeste Olalquiaga shows how it enables the momentary re-creation of experiences that exist only as memories or fantasies. Simultaneously exposing and celebrating this process, Olalquiaga gives us a bold, trenchant analysis of what and how we see when we look at kitsch.
Tracing its beginnings to the nineteenth century--when industrialization transformed nature into an artificial kingdom of miniature scale--Olalquiaga describes the at once exhilarated and melancholic atmosphere where kitsch came to life. In an arresting mix of theory and anecdote, she examines objects from both the past and the present, probing the fluid boundaries between reality and fantasy, and finding in kitsch a phenomenon as relevant to our own time as it was to the era that made it a massive experience."

Mars-1, Artist :: Off the Hook

2011-05-25T09:25:00.000-07:00

Mars-1, Artist :: Off the Hook

My latest painting

2011-05-25T08:59:00.000-07:00

Like the previous one, this is also oil on wood, some 35cm across. I cut my profile on an old seat from a chair. On the right of this painting you can see a bungaloo made from recicled parts of cars, the top and the sides, joined together in the shape of a tortoise shell. Some parts would be window glasses, instead of metal, to let the light in, and they would open to ventilate the place. Imagine a camping site in a forest, with bangaloos like this...In my surrealist paintings I like to include projects of objects or structures that could be built in the real world.
The shape on the left was the first element I thought of for this painting. I got the idea by looking at this painting I have, by Robert Bellm.
I was looking at it from a distance, without my glasses on, and in a dim light, on the left side I percieved what looked like a huge floating structute, a gut-like baloon, that I imagined the color of terracota, with paterns similar to the ones used in tradicional portuguese pottery from Nisa.
This is an example of criativity workig according to the principle "order from Noise" that I described earlier.

I tryed to alter the left side of photo to make visible what I perceived there, but I couldn´t. Try to look at it with the eyes half closed, or change the brightness in your screen.

Two new booklets from Paul Bakker

2011-05-20T11:30:00.000-07:00

...arrived in the mail with great art and interesting stories. Take a look. Click photos to enlarge:

Thank you Paul!

Poetry and filter bubbles

2011-05-20T03:32:00.000-07:00

This facebook thing, having started in a university campus, always seemed like a kid´s or a teenagers´ business to me.
In the New Yorker issue of May 16 2011 there is this poem by Sherman Alexie:

"Welcome to the endless high-school
Reunion. Welcome to past friends
And lovers, however kind or cruel.
Let´s undervalue and unmend

The present. Why can´t we pretend
Every stage of life is the same?
Let´s exhume, resume, and extend
Childhood. Let´s all play the games

That occupy the young. Let fame
and shame intertwine. Let one´s search
For God become public domain.
Let church.com become our church.
Let´s sign up, sign in, and confess
Here at the altar of loneliness."

By the way, listen carefuly to what Eli Pariser has to say:

Synchronicity. The last two cases that happened to me.

2011-05-15T10:23:00.000-07:00

Sometimes strange coincidences happen: twice in the same day or within two or three days, from two diferent, unrelated sources I come upon some curious peace of information that I completely ignored so far. For instance, I may read something interesting on a book, and shortly after see it mentioned again on a documentary on tv. I guess this kind of coincidences were first described by Karl Gustav Jung, who called them Synchronicity .
In the begining of May, while I was reading the article by Jonathan Franzen on the April 18 issue of "The New Yorker" magazine, "Farther away, Robinson Crusoe, David Foster Wallace, and the island of solitude", I experienced my lattest two cases of synchronicity. The writer begins by describing the trip he made last January to an isolated island off the coast of Chile, Masafuera, also known by the name of Alejandro Selkirk, after an eighteenth-century Scottish adventurer who lived there alone for four years. His story probabily inspired Daniel Defoe to write "Robinson Crusoe", "...the book generaly considered to be the first English novel".
Just two or three days before, I had seen an episode of "Full Circle with Michael Palin" on BBC Prime where Palin shows his trip to the exact same island. Then I had learned for the first time about this island, about Alexander Selkirk, and how his story probabily inspired Daniel Defoe to write "Robinson Crusoe".

On the night of Monday, 9, I read, on the same article: ""...David, (David Foster Wallace, a fellow writer and friend of Franzen, who had commited suicide in 2008) whose vocabulary was as large as anybody´s in the Western Hemisphere, took a deep breath and letting it out, said, "I´m suddenly realizing that I´ve never actually known what the word ´paragon` means."" Franzen was describing a funny and embaracing story.
Though I had some clue, I decided to look for the exact meaning of that word the next day, and then went to sleep. Next thursday the word paragon never entered my mind again until in the afternoon, when I was watching the movie "Stranger than Fiction", that a colegue of mine had rented. There is a scene, filmed in a swimming-pool, showing Dustin Hoffman sitting in a bench whose brand, writen in words so big you cannot miss them, is PARAGON.

The birth of an orange

2011-05-07T08:34:00.000-07:00

...as seen through the Hubble telescope!
Some months ago I bought an orange that seemed to be giving birth to a baby orange. I decided to paint it in my series of odd planets.
This is oil on wood, some 35 cm across. I recicled old wooden chair seats and cut my profile thrice. So this is a kind of self-portrait.

As there is no gravity in space, and no up and down, this paintings can be hung upside down or any position in between:

Robert Hughes

2011-05-04T02:55:00.000-07:00

Robert Hughes is an australian writer and art critic. He is an erudite in art history as one can see in that collection of essays "Nothing if not critical", where he also exposes the "mad honeymoon that followed the marriage of art and financial speculation" at the end of the XXth century.
His memoir starts with the description of a bloody, near fatal car crash he sufered in Autralia in 1999. In the following months he spent in the hospital, he says sometimes he had nightmares in spanish! His books are realy worth reading.
On youtube you can watch some interviews with him, and most of his series made for tv.
American Vision:

The Mona Lisa Curse:

Paul Bakker

2011-04-08T11:03:00.000-07:00

I just received in the mail, all the way from Australia, this booklet by Paul Bakker. It is mainly about cats and dogs. I hope some day Mr. Paul Bakker will write about his live in Australia, Indonesia, Iran, Portugal, Holland, etc. He has been through some stange experiences, some dramatic, some fun. He´s very good at telling stories. Thank you Mr. Bakker!
Clik photos to enlarge.

BioArt

2011-04-07T12:29:00.000-07:00

BioArt is a fascinating discipline mixing art and science. Here´s a small contribution that I thought of today. Click photo to enlarge.

Tiffany Bosic and that ineffable feeling

2011-04-05T12:35:00.000-07:00

Tiffany Bosic is a young american painter living in California, who paints very beautiful, detailed, allegoric and surreal flora and fauna, like scientific illustration with a twist. Reading an interview with her in this blog that goes by the exalted name "My love for you is a stampede of horses" (for both, see links on the left), I came across this reference to a feeling I used to have while half-asleep, a very pleasant one. I had never commented it with anyone, as it is so dificult to explain. Here is what Tiffany said, refering to this painting:

"I created the sphere of mice painting that I just mentioned, to try to describe what I call the "big little dream", where everything seems microscopic and larger than the galaxy at the same time. It's the 4 am dream that some people get."

If one tries to put it to words, "everything seems microscopic and larger than a galaxy, at the same time" is a good try. I would add that one does not feel the body in the normal way, but it rather seems to be light and vibrating. And no, this altered state of mind is not drug induced.
I´m sure Carl Gustav Jung must have writen about it. If anybody knows about, or experienced it, please contact me.

New painting, March 2011

2011-04-02T08:20:00.001-07:00

Museo Vostell Malpartida

2011-03-19T05:01:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I went to visit Cáceres and the Wolf Vostell museum in nearby Malpartida de Cáceres. Some photos taken outside, as they don´t allow photos inside. Great art worth a visit. I once saw Vostell in Lisbon. He was standing in front of me to buy a train ticket, it must have been in the eighties.

This street in Cáceres is named after a guy who, aparently, became famous for being a "thinker". I like the laconic reference. I would like to see streets named after men and women whose claim to the vague imortality of toponimic would be prosaic activities or states of mind, like, for exemple, "John Stuart, nose picker", "Mary Jones, laugher", "Victor vassilovich, moustache trimer", "Anne Bologne, chicken peas cooker", etc.

This reads Espanha in hebrew: ספרד
This signs on the sidewalks mark some historic sefardic routes in spanish cities near the border with Portugal.

This is a beautiful stone arch around a door in Cáceres historic center (casco viejo).

Porous Walker´s Great Ready Made Art

2011-03-03T01:53:00.000-08:00

Mixed media ready made art he did in the city of Napa, California:

A day on the beach

2011-03-01T14:17:00.001-08:00

I found this decomposing corpse of a big sea turtle on the beach. See the ball pen to have an idea of the size. Probabily it was killed in some drift net...

Fossils:

Some improvised landscape art:

Leonel da Silveira

2011-03-01T11:42:00.000-08:00

Last weekend I went to visit my friend Leonel. He´s an australian, born in Portugal. He was a pilot in portuguese air force, then went to live for some years in his beloved France, then went to Australia, married and became a citizen. At a certain time he had a job flying helicopters to some islands, over the Great Coral Reef. A job he says one should pay to do...
Now he lives in his home town, Monte Real. He once told me, quoting some french writer, that "we are all refugees from childhood".
He not only travelled, but read extensively in three languages, and he´s what Henry Miller, in "The books in my life", calls a "living book". He knows a lot about portuguese and world history, food, art, literature, and a big etc. He painted and made collages, some of which you can see bellow. He also colects random objects for aesthetic reasons. It´s always a previledge and a pleasure to talk to him.
Click images to enlarge.

Solipsism

2011-02-19T13:28:00.000-08:00

The most poetic, radical and beautiful declaration of solipsim:

"I AM JUST A DREAMER BUT YOU ARE JUST A DREAM"

Mel Kadel

2011-02-17T11:21:00.000-08:00

I love this girl´s drawings on coffee stained paper. More here: Mel Kadel and here.

A painting by Paul Bakker

2011-02-11T14:25:00.001-08:00

Wide Open Space

2011-02-11T11:25:00.001-08:00

Serra da Gardunha:

Art in Space!

2011-01-30T08:56:00.000-08:00

I just send this email to NASA:
"Hello there!
I was wondering, besides your missions concerning the advance of science, health and technology, why not do some art too?
It would be cheap and easy: you would just give some white sheets of paper to the next astronauts on ISS and some water soluble, non toxic paints (a small amount would do), and let them do some watercolors in orbit. I imagine they could put some drops of diferent colors and sizes floating and then "catch" them in the sheet of paper, with diferent angles and diferent speed. Or any other process they would invent, taking advantage of the lack of gravity. That would make a good hobby for the astronauts, they could film it, and, back on planet Earth, make an exhibition and sell the watercolors.
Best wishes"

Akira Beard

2011-01-29T01:18:00.001-08:00

Akira Beard is a nice young american painter. He makes this excelent portraits with text. This one just arrived in the mail yesterday:
(click photos to enlarge)

PORTO. Rua Miguel Bombarda Art Walk. 22.1.2001

2011-01-27T02:35:00.000-08:00

Chronicle of a flight of imagination fully anchored in reality.

Last week-end I accepted a lift from a friend and traveled to Porto. Saturday after lunch I walked to the rua Miguel Bombarda, where most of the city art galleries are located, to see some art, not sure if they would be open. I asked for informations in a café and was told that at about 4pm there would be oppening exhibitions in all galleries! Unexpectedly I was in for a real art feast (plus cookies and port wine). The people in charge of the galleries were kind enough to let me take photos at the art. That afternoon I felt like an amateur Alan Bamberger.
Next are some photos (I should have taken more, but the battery in my camera went out) of that memorable day. Scrol down and click to enlarge.

Among the art galleries there was this temporary shop on the second floor of an old building, selling good quality, formerly very expensive clothes at a fraction of the original price. I bought this shirt with a quote by JFK inside the collar! (It can´t be seen outside). Is this conceptual art, or what?

Outside looking in.

Outside looking out.

These are paintings by Rogerio Silva. They remind me of Neo Rauch, but without the feeling of threat and latent violence from lands of central Europe. I like them.

I saw this drawing by walter hugo mãe.

This photo was taken in rua Miguel Bombarda. Aparently the show in this gallery was a blast.

Fractals for housewives. This could be the name for an avant-garde film.

The famous stairs inside the famous Lello bookstore.

On the streets of Porto.

Street art from the early XXIst century, in and around rua Miguel Bombarda.

Street art from the early XXth century.

This mix media paintings by Pedro Quintas are great. He took photographs of the paint tins in his studio, printed them on canvas and painted on them.

My pick of the day are this geometric clean wooden scupltures by Jeanine Cohen. They hang 1cm from the wall, and the inside surfaces are painted with vivid colors that project a soft glow on the white wall, as if they had small lamps (people kept looking for some small light bulbs against the wall). They remind me of Mondrian, and I would definetly like to have one. They look better live.

A painting from 2005

2011-01-20T04:32:00.000-08:00

This one is diferes from my ususual style...

Castelo de Vide e Salgueiro Maia

2011-01-16T06:31:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, saturday 15/01, I went to Castelo de Vide, a beautiful old small town. I visited João Barreta, a man who makes cork and wood handcrafts. I first saw this sculpture called "Vidas" (Lives) that represent a man´s live from cradle to tomb:

I bought him a small (40cm) sculpture of Capitão Salgueiro Maia, a man who participated in the militar coup that ended dictatorship in Portugal, in 1974. He was born in Castelo de Vide, was motherless from a very young age (his mother was hit by a car, in Lisbon) and was raised by his grand mother, who was a neighbour of João Barreta. The sculptor told me he was almost like an old brother to Salgueiro Maia. I always thought this militar was a good person. Not one of those plastic revolutionaries Van Morrisson sings about
"Have you herad about the plastic revolutionaries
The ones who take the money and run,"
He was not a rich bougeois oficer, like others who partook in the same events. His dificult childwood, and the lost of his mother so early , probabily tought him compassion towards his fellow citizens and disdain for the riches of this world.

By the expression in his face, he seems very worried:

Other photos:

Elizabeth Gilbert on creativity

2011-01-07T09:51:00.001-08:00

"Por vezes volto para casa quase a correr, a mente tão saturada de ideias e impressões, que tenho de me apressar para escrever alguns apontamentos...Estas experiências, que acontecem repetidamente, só me convencem de que "nós" não criámos nada, mas que "algo" o cria por nós, através de nós, e, se estivéssemos realmente sintonizados, faríamos o que Whitman sugeriu: criar as nossas próprias Bíblias. E, quando a terrível "máquina-mente"começa a trabalhar, o problema é como receber tudo o que me chega pelas ondas."

Henry Miller in "O Big Sur e as leranjas de Jerónimo Bosch", pag.110

Doodling

2011-01-05T16:17:00.000-08:00

KERALA

2011-01-02T07:48:00.000-08:00

This is a painting from 2000. Kerala is an Indian state where I would like to live.

Christmas gelatin pudding

2011-01-01T12:06:00.000-08:00

Last Christmas night, at my aunt Ana Maria´s, there was this gelatin pudding and some pomegranates on the table. I started to pill a pomegranate to put the red arils next to the gelatine, because the colors matched and they should taste good together. Then I noticed that the arils, with their poliedric faces would stick to the surface of the gelatine pudding, defying gravity. It looked great. The gelatin was of the passion fruit variety, but I think you can also use strawbwrry, red berries, or any other shade of red or pink.
An instant classic was born: the Christmas gelatin pudding with pomegranates.
A HAPPY 2011 EVERYBODY!

Two objects of beauty I received for Christmas

2010-12-25T12:52:00.000-08:00

A glass and Steve Martin´s latest novel. The cover of this book is very beautiful, with a texture similar to canvas.
I ordered the book late November, from Amazon, and I received it on Christmas eve.

Today I came upon these two images

2010-12-22T15:09:00.001-08:00

Photo by Brett Costello, of Jessica Watson, aged 16, as she approached the Sydney harbor after completing a 7 months long voyage around the world:
(click images to enlarge)

"The Voyage of Life Old Age", by Cole Thomas, 1842, oil on canvas. Part of the "Voyage of Life" series:

Beetle

2010-12-15T04:00:00.000-08:00

click to enlarge.

A (almost) ready made sculpture

2010-12-12T07:32:00.000-08:00

With a mat, a small woden bench and a lamb`skull:

Voilá!

(next, I´m going to contact The MOMA NY, Saatchi and Tate Modern.)

Thought of the day Dec, 10, 2010

2010-12-10T07:46:00.000-08:00

Why are there no double or triple flush toilets on sale? Huumm?

Thought of the day

2010-12-06T03:48:00.000-08:00

It just ocured to me: the fact that the names of all continents outside of Europe start with an A (America, Africa, Asia, Australia) is well fit for lands called "The New World", and might be more than a coincidence. They all start with the first letter of the alfabet and it echoes the Ahh of amazement the european navigators utered when they first saw those places.

Eating meat and fish without killing animals.

2010-12-05T12:45:00.000-08:00

Yes, it´s possible. Realy pork, veal, tuna, sardine, etc. in big slices, not any tasteless soya substitute. And complying with the buddhist norm of "Save all sentient beings", avoiding any sufferings to animals.
I had this idea some years ago and I guess I read about it last summer in a magazine or newspaper. I made a drawing: click to enlarge

In this way we would get blocks of diferent meat and fish, even from small fish, like eels and sardine, like those blocs of ham or paté. There would be no suffering, because no animal would be born nor killed, there would be no nerve cells and no nervous sistem to feel pain. Just muscle cells and tissue. The constant flow of water, oxigen and nutrients (vitamins, aminoacids, glicose, etc.) would work like a blood stream for the membrane with stem cells designed to produce muscle.
In this way one could have big slices of sardine or eel for sushi, and not just the small ones one gets from the actual fish.
There is another idea I had some ten years ago, also concerning biotechnology and food. I told this one to my students that went to university, hoping they would develop the idea: have olive trees produce olives in infructescences (clusters of fruits, like for instance, the grapes) instead of isolated small fruits that are so dificult to harvest. You would have to identify, extract and intruduce in the olive trees DNA, the gene that some plants have to make infructescences. Easier said than done, I know.

A personalized walking stick

2010-11-28T03:05:00.000-08:00

This is a strong, artistic, personalized walking stick Suzanne offered me. The objects atached refer to my interests when I wander in the fields or the seashore:

How I came to be featured in russian Esquire magazine

2010-11-12T13:58:00.000-08:00

On April, 14, 2009, my birthday, I was just expecting to get three or four phone calls from close relatives (I don´t care much for birthdays, mine or other people´s), and it was a complete surprise when the mobile phone rang and a guy from across the Atlantic, from New York City, asked me if I was interested in having some photos of my paintings published in the May issue of russian Esquire magazine. He was a brazilian, the international editions editor for Esquire, and he was contacting me because the russian editors were interested in some of my paintings from the odd planets series, to illustrate an article about an astronaut. I first thought the article was by some russian astronaut, but it turned up to be about the american astronaut Sandra Magnus who spent four months aboard the International Space Station. The actual article consist of entries from the diary she kept while in orbit. The russian editors had seen my paintings in my old death site whose contact wasn´t working anymore (it has been updated). The brazilian guy must have googled my name and found the site and the phone number of a Tourism office in a small town in Portugal where I had an exhibition. It was from them that he got my mobile phone number. Being brazilian sure helped doing the talk.
The russian editors had specific quality requirements for the photos. Two of the paintings were no longer with me: Planet Cabage was in Holand, and Planet Melon was in Porto. I emailed the owners asking them to have the paintings photographed by a professional and the photos sent to me as soon as possible, because I had a very tight schedule. I took Planet Boob, that is still with me, to a professional photographer. I managed to send the photos in time to be published.
The guy in New York sent me a 200 usd check from Hearst Corporation, and promised to get me a couple of issues, as soon as he received them from Moscow.
In May, June, July, I kept visiting the russian Esquire oficial site to see if my paintings were realy published, but the site was not updated. I decided to contact some russians readers in the site forum, and eventualy one sent me photos of the pages in the magazine featuring my paintings. In May I also contacted some friends in London and Amsterdam asking them to search for russian Esquire, but it seems the magazine is not sold outside of russian speaking countries. In September 2009 I finaly received two issues in the mail.
I was very happy that, for a month in 2009, I was a tiny little bit famous in a huge territory that expands from Vilnius to Vladivostok.

That´s Nick Cave in the cover:
Clik photos to enlarge.

On the right it´s writen "Quentin Tarantino":

KOCMOC reads COSMOS, that one I know...

Russian Esquire magazine is famous for a very innovative graphic quality. Notice the fake hairs on this pages:

Notice the elongated legs in this photo of Nick Cave. Latter the same year, ellongated legs in the photo of an american actress published by a western magazine, caused some controversy. But the russians did it first.

Look, another painting from 2006

2010-11-10T00:42:00.000-08:00

I started reading a literary critic by Joseph O`Neil on the December 05 "The Atlantic" magazine, and I was so impressed by the first paragraph, found it so well writen, so concise and revealing, that I decided to put it on a painting. I was inspired by those naive, goody two feet pictures with a beautifull landscape and a poem. The little dots in the middle are flocks of birds. Click to enlarge:

A painting from 2006

2010-11-04T03:20:00.000-07:00

I like this small painting (20x40cm), though I feel it´s incomplete...