Author: Grace Victoria Osbourne

Yes, it took us three weeks but we finally had a Saturday where are plans didn’t go wrong! After last Saturday of trudging around SP in 30 degree heat with all of our dirty washing, we were determined not to let this day slip through our fingers!

We had a quiet couple of Capirinhas in our favourite bar round the corner on Friday night and then woke up early with lots to do!

We went to Liberdade to get a few special people some nice treats. First bit of present shopping over!

After Liberdade we walked towards the Martinelli building on the same route that Rafa had taken us on the Walking Tour. It was interesting going back with more time and we stopped in at a couple of sites he had said to visit.

The first of these was the Cathedral.

The space outside the Cathedral is always very busy- an odd mix of people who have created rough houses, policeman, preachers, food venders and buskers. One busker was performing to a group of people who looked like they were either drunk or on drugs. They all looked quite dazed but were dancing and having a good time. The amount of homeless people here is difficult to comprehend. Its a horrible thing to say but, like I said before, the point of this is to be honest, you can forget that they’re all people. It can happen in England but I’ve never felt the same isolation from people because you can see how things could go wrong and they could end up in that state. You also know that there are things you can do to improve their situation and that each town might get better as people try and help.  The scale of the homeless problem here is so enormous that its easier to get caught up in doing nice things because you feel so helpless and far from them. The language barrier and the drug problems here make it more difficult and to be honest, make me more reluctant to talk to anyone on the street, like I wouldn’t have a problem doing in England. In all of their different ways, for all of their different causes my family and friends have always shown me that if you feel like something is unjust then you should try and do what you can to change it and this is one of the first times that something has felt too big to fix. I suppose Brazil is just a much bigger place with larger problems.

Sorry if that brought the tone down. Issy’s words when I told her that I was writing that were “Oh God. I might skip that bit” so no worries if you did too.

The second was the Caixa Cultural. An old bank converted into a contemporary art gallery and museum. We saw a really interesting exhibition of Dali’s watercolour sketches that were influenced by Dante’s writings. It was a little difficult to follow without a translation and we would have liked to learn more about the works but we were still really impressed at the sheer amount of work he created and his technical skill. He was much more than a fine-moustached eccentric who painted clocks.

We were also pretty impressed by “Desmanches”, an exhibition by Lucas Simones that combined photography and sculpture in really innovative ways.

We wandered the upstairs of the Caixa Cultural to see the museum of banking in Sao Paulo. A lot of the rooms had been restored to how they were in the early 1900s when they were offices for the financial directors. We considered whether or not we would change careers to banking if we could be guaranteed the  same big offices filled with Art Deco furniture and beautiful views looking out onto Sao Paulo.

After all of our little detours we made it to the Martinelli building!

We wondered what view Martinelli originally had before all of the skyscrapers and how incredible the view would have been in the early 1900s when people were not as used to seeing huge panoramic and photo realistic views from the cinema and artworks and 3D films. It was a pretty overwhelming sight for us so it must have been even more incredible for them.

We were pretty hungry after our fill of history and culture so we decided to make the pilgrimage to a vegetarian restaurant called “Alternativa Casa do Natural” in Vila Madalena. Lots of people at the hostel had recommended us to visit this place and we weren’t disappointed. The area was very colourful and arty, full of people eating and drinking at tables in the sun, playing music and lots of plants and flowers.

It was a buffet restaurant so we had several portions of veggie goodness, including lots of beans and fried cabbage, which are two of our favourite dishes here, and papaya and watermelon for dessert!

Afterwards we wandered through Vila Madelena and saw all of the graffiti in the streets for which it is very famous.

At this point in our day we had a couple of hours left before we were going to meet our friend, Diego from the museum who was going to take us out samba. We scrutinized our map and realised that we’ve seen nearly everything we wanted to see in Sao Paulo that we could visit in under two hours. We remembered Rafa suggesting a visit to the Araca Cemetery next to Clinicas station so decided to go. The cemetery is famous for its ostentatious tombs, mainly created in the early 1900s. The tombs were enormous, covered in life size sculptures of Christ and the Virgin or with doors leading to flowers and photos on the inside. Many displayed photos of family members from the earliest to latest deceased, some of whom passed away this year. The tombs were also tightly packed into the cemetery, giving the place a strange overcrowded feeling. The layout of the cemetery was so strange to us that we did not feel the usual feelings of sadness or unease that one normally has in a graveyard.

We weren’t allowed to take photos but the images on this link should give you an idea of the vastness and extravagance of the tombs: http://totalspguide.com/post/1979/Araca-Cemetery-%28Cemit%C3%A9rio-do-Ara%C3%A7%C3%A1%29/

 

After the cemetery we left to meet Diego, only to discover he had left us five texts saying that the samba had been cancelled for rain. We returned to the hostel for a cup of tea and a rest then headed out for a drink and a dance with our French friend, Emmanuel. He took us to a very famous area of Sao Paulo called Rua Augusta, where people fill the streets all night, drinking and chatting.

I hope you’re all well back home!

The days are a little topsy turvy because I had so much to write about for Sunday that I couldn’t finish it last night or the night before so here it is, right after Monday…

Sunday could have been a disaster. We had been planning to visit the Sao Bento monks singing Gregorian hymns at the Sao Bento Monastery at 10am. The great plan involved us leaving by 9.15am so of course we slept through all of our alarms and woke up at 9am disappointed and frantic  inside a  musty room surrounded by bags of dirty laundry from the day before. There are better ways to wake up.

When we were finally on our way to the tube at 10.05am we were considering writing off the weekend entirely when we decided to go to the MASP instead and turned our rubbish start to the day around!

Our quick overview of the gallery to save you trudging through Wikipedia:

The Sao Paulo Museum of Art (MASP) is a fantastic gallery, that was created in the late 1940s by two wealthy Brazilian business man who built up an incredible collection of European artworks from the 13th c. onwards. Thanks to the WWII chaos on our side of the Atlantic in this period, he managed to get pretty good deals on beautiful pieces by artists including Turner, Gainsborough, Van Gogh, Monet, Dali, and Degas.

The gallery is famous for its fantastic building on Avenida Paulista where it has been situated since 1968. Don’t close your mind to its brutalist structure until you know its story!

We thought it was just an amazing feat of engineering  for the sake of being an amazing feat of engineering: a building created out of concrete and glass whose entire body is supported by two lateral beams, leaving 74 metres of open space on the ground floor.

Cool… but its a bit ugly? Think again! The man who donated the plot of land for the building’s location  included specific instructions to keep the view of Downtown from Paulista Avenue clear and unobstructed by the building, making the creation of the art museum fairly difficult. 12 years later Bo Bardi’s design was completed and inaugurated by our Queen Elizabeth II herself in 1968!

The price to enter all the exhibitions and permanent collection of MASP for students is R$7 or £1.98!  Brilliant! While are public collections are free to enter, the student price for a special exhibition is usually at least a few pounds. (The current student price to enter “The Portrait in Vienna Exhibition 1900” at the National Gallery, London is £5.50!)

The exhibitions at the moment include the Photo Biennial 2013, “Gods and Madonnas: The Art of Worship”, “Romanticism: The Art of Enthusiasm” and “Corpus e Restos”,  a collection of prints by Lucien Freud. We were really impressed by the range of artworks and I could ramble on forever if I had the time but seeing as MASP’s policy’s have left our experience photoless, it wouldn’t be fair to bombard you with so many words. Instead I’ll give you some thoughts about each exhibition and steal some photos from the net!

Photo Biennial 2013: The first thing that we have to mention is how excited were to see the dynamic interior architecture of the Pinacoteca as a setting for a couple of pieces in a series of sixteen by photographer and ex pro skateboarder, Fabiano Rodriguez.

We also liked Pedro David’s work, “Suffocation” about the native Brazilian trees that are trapped in the modern Eucalyptus fields. I thought that this series was beautiful, original and made us aware of an industry we had no idea about.

“Gods and Madonnas: The Art of Worship”: This exhibition was an interesting mixture of objects and paintings, focused on the development of art in worship. I have to admit that neither of us spent to long in this exhibition because we have seen a lot of similar art in England, and because it was a little confusing to follow. Issy and I wandered off at this point so I can’t speak for her but my best part was having a look at the restorations on their Greek marble sculptures.

“Romanticism: The Art of Enthusiasm”: Issy was very surprised at the amount of European art in this exhibition. She had visited Monet’s garden at Giverny, lives close to where Constable lived and her family’s company built a village hall in a location near to the setting of one painting by Gainsborough. Although we were aware of Sao Paulo’s importance, we were not expecting to travel so far to see so many paintings that were more connected with us than Brazil. The exhibition has been going since 2010 and connects a 500 year span of art by the themes that developed the genre rather than just chronology i.e. Views from Afar, Landscapes, Portraits, etc.

I wandered around this exhibition listening to Warpaint, who make good music to get lost in colourful paintings to. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yOFxb0F2F2A

“Corpus e Restos”,  a collection of prints by Lucien Freud:Yes, yes we took an eleven hour flight and saw a full exhibition by one of England’s most famous contemporary artists whose works are easily accessed in London. However, this particular exhibition included many pieces we had not previously seen and probably won’t ever again as they’re on load from Caracus, Venezuela and private collections in South America! Also, after seeing the 2012 exhibition of his paintings at the National Gallery and first learning about him through my sister Robina for his use of colour and texture, it was interesting to see an exhibition mainly concerned with his prints. The exhibition also included a selection of photos by Freud’s former assistant, David Dawson. The most famous of these, which most people who have taken an interest in Freud will have seen convey the artist with sitters such as Queen Elizabeth  and David Hockney. We were most taken with the photos that we were not familiar with, including one showing  a female model, who was sitting for Freud falling over and another of a reflection of Freud and a sitter with a half finished painting, “Female Admirer”, inside his studio.

After we had overdosed on art we had a beast of a lunch. All you can eat buffet? Yes please. I’d like to introduce the world to the idea of sun-dried tomatoes wrapped in aubergine! Also we tried Brazilian baked beans! Lovely jubbly! Issy was chuffed with the desserts and can put a photo of plate up when she’s here.

Free Walking Tour of Paulista Avenue

When we left the MASP we joined the free walking tour of Avenida Paulista, with Rafa, the same enthusiastic guide as last time. We really enjoyed it! My photos aren’t great because it was three hours long so ended up finishing in the dark but here are our highlights anyway!

Our summary of the world’s quickest overview of Brazil’s history: The main periods- Colonial (1500-1815), Imperial (1815-1889). Republic (1889 to present) and included the military dictatorship (1964-1985). Rafa also gave us information on the present government and Brazil’s financial history.

Just to be clear, I think the date that says 1815 should be that but I’m not 100% so I’m sorry if its incorrect! It was an interesting start to the tour nonetheless!

Graffiti Tunnel: There’s graffiti all over Sao Paulo. Some of it is beautiful artwork by internationally famous graffiti artists, some of it just shows you if an area is poorer, more run down and dangerous. The tunnel that was created underneath Paulista Avenue to reduce congestion is covered in decades worth of graffiti art.

The MASP: You already know how great we think this place is but Rafa took us again and told us the history, facts and figures that I gave you earlier.

Intuitive fire escaping: Following a terrible fire in a skyscraper on Paulista Ave in the late 1980’s that left over ten people dead, Sao Paulo skyscrapers have to have clear fire evacuation plans. One option is to create bridges in between  buildings that are only to be used in emergencies. This sounds sensible but its a strange sight to see for the first time.

 

The History of the Matarazzo Family: We learned about the history of Francesco Matarazzo, an Italian who emigrated to Sao Paulo and built a business empire. He created a hospital that closed in the late 1980s/ early 1990s and has been left derelict. Brazilian laws classify the building as historical and therefore its structure cannot be torn down or changed, unfortunately for Matarazzo’s children who wanted to sell the land to a building company. Unable and unwilling to restore the building, they have left it empty. They employ a security company to watch the building but they never enter and it is probably now home to squatters (or ghosts according to Rafa) as the same shutters are always open.

When a similar situation occurred a few years later with the Matarazzo children wanting to sell him empty mansion a couple of streets down, a bomb mysteriously went off in the building before it could be classed as a listed historical building. The land was then sold to a construction company who are now building a shopping centre.

The Fate of the Five Old Houses of Avenida Paulista:  There are five old (pre 1920s) buildings left on the skyscraper filled Avenida Paulista. Due to the same building law that restricted the Matarazzo children from destroying their father’s buildings, these buildings cannot be torn down and have all succumb to different endings.

Building 1: Left derelict and has gone into ruin.

Building 2: Turned into a banking company. The beautiful garden full of grape trees that it was once famous for is now a car park and the building is Avenida Paulista’s annual Christmas grotto for children.

Building 3: A medical building concerned with vaccinations in particular.

Building 4: Became a McDonalds and then a bank.

Building 5: Became a museum that hosts poetry evenings and art exhibitions. The beautiful rose garden of the house is still as it was and open to the public. The happiest ending of the buildings.

 

 

 

 

We really enjoyed both of the Free Walking Tours that we joined and would really recommend them! Thanks Rafa and Fe!

http://www.saopaulofreewalkingtour.com/