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| Graffiti on the Pier in Santos |
For the
past weeks I have been a happy (and well-fed) tourist in Brazil. I hope my blogs – which I am finally able to
start posting; internet coverage in the Amazon is flakey at times – describing
the places I visited and the experiences I’ve had will encourage others to
visit Brazil. You will not be
disappointed. Traveling in Brazil is
quite straight forward and safe even if your language skills are not that
great. And the effort is so worthwhile.
Together
with my sister and brother-in-law, who were first time visitors to this amazing
country, I’ve spent my time exploring familiar and unfamiliar places. My husband Jeff met up with us in the Amazon but
while we visited places further south, he continued his scientific studies of
that biggest of all rivers. We left Rio about a month ago for a short
visit to Piracicaba – the upstate São Paulo town where my husband is a visiting
professor. Of course we spent a little
time at our friends’ nearby charming goat farm.
From there we traveled almost 4000
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| A happy white goat |
kilometers by car, plane, boat, bus
and foot. Although I have lived in and
visited Brazil many times over the past 32 years, this trip juxtaposed multiple
new aspects of three very different Brazilian states: São Paulo, Minas Gerais
and Pará. We visited two cities – the
very big, São Paulo, with its 23 million inhabitants and the smaller state
capital of Belo Horizonte in Minas Gerais; several thriving towns – Guarujá,
Santos, Santarém; and a diversity of small villages, each with its own unique charm
– Pereque with its fishing fleet, Ouro Preto, and Alter de Chão.
We were in highly urban, cosmopolitan places; and remarkably rural,
often very poor places. We hiked in the
Amazon rainforest; we marveled at perfectly manicured tropical gardens and
complete wilderness; we swam in the Atlantic Ocean, the Tapajós River and in black
water igarapés (small, groundwater-fed forest streams); we visited museums and
galleries, street art installations, churches and landscapes full of contemporary
and baroque art of every kind – sound, sculpture, video, photography, paintings,
and graffiti. We explored the history,
culture and ecology of Brazil. We saw many
types of birds and animals including botos – the pink Amazon River dolphin. We ate like kings and queens with culinary
experiences that ranged from downhome neighborhood bistros to fresh grilled
tambaqui (a large delicious Amazon fish) on a remote beach to fine dining at restaurants
that should be or are internationally famous.
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| The fishing fleet at Pereque on a grey day |
When
my sister left, she told me that their visit to Brazil was a trip of a
lifetime. I have to agree. I will post
several blogs over the next few weeks focusing on the highlights of our visits.
During this time we also experienced national and local elections in the United
States and Brazil. Like many of our
friends in both countries, we feel the magnitude of the challenges and
divergent political perspectives that both of these huge countries face.
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| Museu do Café, Santos |
Our
tourist trip began with a drive from Piracicaba around the immense urban
development that is the world’s third largest city, São Paulo. Our destination was the offshore beaches of Guarujá for a few days of
sun. But the sun refused to
cooperate! While we had one day of
relaxing on white sandy beaches, we spent two less sunny days hiking primitive beach
trails and exploring the adjacent city of Santos. Santos is the largest port in South America
and it is one of the oldest. Like
Guarujá, Santos is an island and can, as a result, accommodate a very large number
of cargo ships. Our first destination
was the Museum of Coffee, a 1920’s building in the colonial historical
center. The building is appropriately
described as eclectic and is the former Brazilian Coffee Stock Exchange. It includes of course, a coffee bar where we
drank the best cup of espresso I have had in Brazil. Coffee was the nineteenth century source of
wealth to the state of São Paulo and the museum was full of interesting
exhibits and objects about coffee’s golden age.
For someone who loves coffee and owns not one but two gigantic Italian
espresso machines, the museum’s celebration of the delicious dark brown bean was
greatly appreciated. Afterwards we visited Santos’ beachfront and
explored the commissioned graffiti art on a large waterfront pier.
The pier was restored to commemorate the 100th
anniversary of immigration and contributions of Japanese Brazilians. A lot of people don’t realize that there is a
big Japanese Brazilian population in Brazil – although you might guess it from the
popularity of sushi! Graffiti is a well-developed
art form in Brazil – a far cry from its random origin as spray paint scribbles. We saw extraordinary examples of commissioned
and non-commissioned graffiti in many places but the pieces on the pier in
Santos were among my favorite. In the
1930s Brazilian surfing began in Santos when Oscar Gonçalves pioneered the
sport, but by the sixties and seventies the beaches had become too polluted to
use. More recently the pollution was
cleaned up and the city built beautiful gardens along the mosaic beachfront boardwalk
and established a publically funded surf school. On the day we visited, we saw surfers of all
ages and met the man who runs the surf school.
This school has a program that teaches children and people with
disabilities, including blind people to surf.
It is an impressive operation for a town that I had been told is a dirty
commercial port.
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| A Surfista Sculpture in front of the 1st Public Surf School in Brazil |
Our
next stop was the big city itself, São Paulo.
We stayed in a central and safe neighborhood, Jardim Paulista. After checking into our hotel, we walked to a
neighborhood bistro for a meal of Brasilian style gnocchi made out of manioc
instead of potatoes with filet mignon in a Madeira and mushroom sauce. The place was classic Brazil, full of folks
from the neighborhood enjoying Thursday dinner out. I know why.
The food was delicious and the service impeccable. Colorful signed and unsigned futebol (soccer)
jerseys from famous professional teams and less famous local clubs hung from
the ceiling. The waiter told us that
many futebol players eat at the restaurant and give them their jerseys to
display.
The
next day, despite the fact that we were in a gigantic urban center, our
breakfast (café de manha) included a farm offering of traditional cakes, corn
breads and farm eggs as well as tropical juices and fruits, sliced ham and
cheese, pão ƒrança (little French rolls), and coffee with hot milk. After breakfast we walked about 2 kilometers
to Ibirapuera Park the site of the 31st Bienal de São Paulo. The walk was through a bustling mostly
residential neighborhood and felt safe.
The hotel concierge had told us not to worry about safety during the day
and of course we used the same urban awareness that we use in big cities anywhere in the world. The park reminded me of
a smaller Central Park – it is a well used and well kept green space in the
middle of a dense urban area, complete with small lakes, sculpture gardens,
fountains, flowering trees, athletic fields and several world class museums. The Bienal
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| The interior ramps at the Bienal Pavilion |
is a celebration of contemporary
art housed in a purpose built pavilion designed by Oscar Niemeyer – arguably
one of the twentieth century’s most accomplished architects. The building is typical of Niemeyer
structures – it is concrete and white; it sits above the ground as if floating
in air; its interior is massive, airy and compelling with sinuous galleries
that beckon the visitor to explore. The
theme of the 31st Bienal is “Como Falar de Coisas que Não Existem” or
in English “How to speak of things that don’t exist”. The Bienal includes more than 250 works by over
a hundred invited international artists. The exhibits express in multiple different art
forms the challenge of living and yet still working in the midst of conflict;
imagination; and community transformation.
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| Graffiti on the Public Bathrooms in Ibirapuera Park |
I loved staying in the urban center
of São Paulo and going to the Bienal. I
am no expert on art but the Bienal was an experience to remember. It is ridiculous to speak in hyperbole –
fantastic; surprising; awesome; stunning – all words are inadequate to describe
the Bienal reality. It is the experience
of being in the pavilion with its harsh concrete spaces and the brutal feeling
of the unfinished cement walls contrasting with art of all kinds. En route to the pavilion, we walked through a
skateboard area in the park. The
skateboard area is purpose built – itself a huge expanse of smooth concrete
with a roof held up by cylindrical columns.
Young teens were inline skating and boarding in organized chaos,
practicing new routines and signature moves.
It reminded me of the warm ups before ice skating competitions when all
the competitors twirl and jump together, respecting the rhythm and space of the
others. Graffiti murals decorated the
walls of central public bathrooms, commissioned pieces of the most basic urban
art form – a great introduction to the Bienal itself.
Inside the Bienal, we wandered through spaces that
continuously opened up to a new artist or collaborative installation. Individual
works range from more traditional paintings and photographs to sculptures;
videos; tactile environments; found objects and experiential displays – a
complete mishmash of styles. I remember
flashes of art, virtually all artists I had never heard of but will now look
for – Halil Altindere’s video of disenfranchised youth in Istanbul; the grainy
photos of Tony Chakar mixed with his poetry and Baudelaire’s – found faces revealed
in the background of other images; the sharp incisive photos of poverty in
Salvador and Bahia, stark interiors, deserted streets, empty fields; Jo Baer’s
paintings and Anna Boghiguian’s honeycombs, her drawings and poetry – the City
of Rivers; Bruno Pacheco’s luminous paintings of the English uplands and wooly polka
dotted hats; a violent collage about an international tragedy – the street
murder of young men; Juan Downey’s painted maps of Continental Drift and the
Amazon basin; and Walid Raad’s open frames of stories never told and yet
forgotten. This is just a partial
inventory of the art we saw – one video, which consisted entirely of interviews
with Jews either out in the open or still living in secret in São Paulo made my
heart ache for the pain our world imposes on those who believe in something
else. That night we walked to a nearby
Argentinian restaurant and ate meat that melted in my mouth and watched tango
dancers undulate in the spare space.
The next day we visited Brazil’s largest and most well known
art museum, MASP or Museu des Artes de São Paulo. Despite my life long love affair with
impressionists, I found most of the painting very traditional after seeing the thought
provoking pieces at the Bienal. The MASP
building itself is impressive, set on multiple levels high above traffic-choked
arterials. When we stood on the MASP
terrace on famous Avenida Paulista – São Paulo’s 5th Avenue – we
counted six layers of urban infrastructure (arterials; viaducts; pipes; wires; public
and private buildings) looking only down.
Inside, the familiar warmth of Renoir greeted us on cold cement
walls. We saw Vuillard and Monet, Turner
and Constable. The one featured contemporary
artist, Julian Schnabel was not to my liking.
His work did not offend me but was not attractive enough to interest
me. It was perhaps only notable for its
outsized size. Curiously the only
Schnabel we liked was printed as a small poster on the back of his brochure!
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| The Fawn in Trianon Park |
Later we visited the
lovely Trianon Park right across the street – yet another safe feeling (at
least in the day time) tropical green space.
We walked past the sculpture of the fawn that guards the park. We followed Avenida Paulista to visit Casa
das Rosas. There we sat outdoors in the
garden café amid box hedges and orchids and ate delicious chicken pies and
drank ice cold beer. Formerly the
private home of a wealthy Paulistano, it now belongs to a foundation that
promotes poetry and literature. After lunch,
we toured the big house. When we walked
in, a young poet asked me if I wanted to buy a book of his poetry. For less than $10 I did. By way of thanks he signed it and wrote me a
short poem in English – although he barely spoke a word. I think it will be an inspiration to write
more poetry. We should all be writing
poetry or making art to explore the wonder of each day. Perhaps we can write just short verses or
haikus to help the power of words inspire the world to change. Perhaps all of us can create the kind of art
that the Bienal inspires.
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