"There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness is the true method". Herman Melville

"I know nothing but miracles." Walt Whitman







sábado, 19 de março de 2011

Museo Vostell Malpartida

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).

quinta-feira, 3 de março de 2011

Porous Walker´s Great Ready Made Art

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









terça-feira, 1 de março de 2011

A day on the beach

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

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.