Lisbon Blog

Britney Spears probably wishes that someday, when reviewing the commercial side of the mass culture of the first decade of the XXI century, encyclopedias considered her enigmatic figure, as the missing link between Madonna and Lady Gaga. As the first half of the nineties, the twentieth century witnessed the strange phenomenon, initially led by Nirvana, a number of groups from the independent music scene came to dominate the charts, the subsequent disappointment , whose home was somehow tragically dramatized by the suicide of Kurt Cobain, was so great that a huge void was quickly filled by a type of music and culture radically different, however, seemed infinitely, more honest and appropriate in its alarming emptiness content and form.

Since the sense of deception and use by more sinisterly effective springs of society of the spectacle, something that felt acutely mentioned groups like Nirvana, Pulp (whose corrosive, caustic and subversive lyrics and staging were suddenly sung in the UK for hundreds of thousands of young preppies and turning reactionary, as what had happened with Blur in banner of a new patriotism exalted and drunk beer and designer drugs) and Radiohead (shipped in creating discs each time darker and hardly penetrable to help them shake off the burden of millions of new fans thanks to incomprehensibly made desperate melancholy and futuristic existentialism OK Computer), to name just a few representative names.

Anxiety, anger, marginalization, existentialism, sedition, vanguard, even a certain situations, were co-opted and turned immediately into mass market products, generating a profusion of bands that were sold under the new and empty tags. Coinciding with a rise of the right-wing ideology that had been properly beaten for the commercial success of decaffeinated proposals free of any edge, Coldplay was called (in the field of music with certain claims) or Britney Spears, converted even before having the right age in the most brilliant and successful stars among media.

Despite her convinced legions of detractors there is something fascinating about Britney Spears -who will perform at the Atántico Pavilion in Lisbon on the 9^th of November (http://www.pavilhaoatlantico.pt/vPT/Agenda/Agenda/Pages/evento.aspx?eventoID = 1179) – from the beginning of her career. Without having a conventionally sexy body, or have a beautiful face, or have great songs, or sing convincingly good (most of her concerts and robotic voice without soul, are the result of play-back), or take forward the moral boundaries of permissible (her statements regarding her desire to reach a virgin marriage were famous) and continue despite her 29 years old, she basically sings the same teenager pointless music as a without inner world, her sales remain stratospheric and they keep breaking records.

Paul Oilzum

There is something inexplicable and certainly difficult to define in what makes her one of the greatest icons of our time, something that somehow has perhaps to do with her suitability to become a representative symbol of the dominant values in the West during the last decade. If you rent apartments in Lisbon in November, you will have the chance to personally investigate this amazing mystery.

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Translated by: Hans
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“I’m nothing / I’ll never be anything / I am not able to wish being anything / Apart from this, I have in me all the dreams of the world.” In this way the unforgettable Tabacaria begins (in English Tobacco Shop) the famous eight-page poem by Alvaro de Campos. De Campos was a naval architect born in Tavira on the 5^th of October 1890 at half past one o’clock. University-trained in Glasgow, he was unemployed in Lisbon, at the time of Ricardo Reis, a leading heteronym of Fernando Pessoa, wrote a small, crucial text called the Art of Alvaro de Campos, as a framework of a collection of poems of his authorship that occupies one of his most important places in the gallery of illustrious ghosts of twentieth-century poetry.

De Campos was rather tall for his world, he learned Latin from an uncle who was a priest in Beira, who once traveled to the East on vacation, experience that gave him the inspiration to compose a long poem called Opiario, which used a monocle and had a tendency to slouch, in all probability descended from Sephardim, which was published in the journal Orpheu.

And he wrote a remarkable series of poems in which he drags us before we can help it, without even being able to soften a bit, an overwhelming emotional power and haunts with Whitmanian futuristic root (Reis called them “an overflow of emotion” in a famous and also very exciting prologue. He wrote this, because according to him it was insufficiently poetic, that the idea would rather serve to dominate the emotion-in fact he openly accused Campos of writing prose rhythms, majestically, yes, instead of true verses) that seemed to come from one of these wonders of modern technology and impressive pieces of machinery that greatly fascinated him, and behind which often seemed to hide, as the real driving force behind the irrepressible dynamism, a deep longing, a deep longing is not known well what very slow etched on his inmost, an elegant and impossible melancholy as anything else expresses the heart of Lisbon and that its particular constitution and moods in more than one occasion seemed to have come close to suicide.

In a few poems are so abundantly expressed his inimitable voice as in the above Tabacaria, parliament of a character that looks at the door of a tobacco shop from the window of his room and painfully that the space between them (along which some way not only happened but people throughout the city, in its most physical quality even the world itself) is, despite feeling intimately twinned with him and obliged by ties of loyalty to the tobacco shop, fatally and desperately hopeless, despite which can not give up writing the verses of the poem as a beautiful and sad “split frame into the impossible.”

Paul Oilzum

Perhaps you will be able to sense that the city is also like that, when you rent apartments in Lisbon A sad and beautiful gateway to the impossible, in which, if you smoke is perhaps to acquire, among a route in its meanders itself, “the awareness that metaphysics is a consequence of an ill feeling.”

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Translated by: Hans
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In an old television documentary, Mr. Máximo Francisco Repilado Muñoz, better known as Compay Segundo, one of the most respected Cuban musicians and composers of the last century, recalls, already a nonagenarian, smoking a cigarette on the porch of his home in Havana and how he started smoking. He must have had been about six or seven years and used to, so seductively, light, upon request, his grandmother cigars, a former slave who died free well past one hundred years of age.

Not be ruled out are those cigarettes that have their own names that are introduced in a more fully way in the misty and smoky field of literature. As Alberto Manguel recounts in his excellent book A History of Reading, social initiatives were included and undertaken by the first Cuban unions in the sector of the cigar during the mid nineteenth century. To this end, cigars popularity was such that poet Saturnino Fernandez in 1865 founded the newspaper La Aurora, rich in both articles of termination and working conditions, such as book reviews, translations and literary texts and popular science writings as an expression of the intellectuality of cigar smoking

To overcome the main obstacle to the popularity of the publication, ie, the fact that at that time the number of Cuban workers who could read did not reach a 15%, Fernandez came up with the idea of ​​creating a new job: The reader paid by the workers of the factories, which was obliged to read aloud during the workday both the content of the Aurora as a series of books. Naturally the Spanish authorities, fearful of the possible content of such subversive activities took little time to ban them, yet the readings continued to take place in many  underground meetings. To know if any of those cigarettes was  lit by Compay Segundo as a child in Combray (sorry, in Siboney and Santiago) for his grandmother is a mystery, perhaps one of those workers in cigar factories who listened as his hands rolled tobacco during public readings, was once a Montecristo, we shall never know but  we know the name of this famous type of cigar that remains one of the best sellers in the world, was directly inspired by Dumas’s novel, whom the workers wrote to shortly before his death in 1870 to ask for his  permission to name the cigars inspired by his novel “The count of Montecristo”

When in the documentary about his life Compay was asked how he could continue smoking at his very advanced age, smoking and tobacco so terrible for health, his answer, served with one of his charming smiles, is blunt: “Tobacco does not kill partner , what kills is rush and stress”

Paul Oilzum

If you rent apartments in Lisbon a city that looks to Havana which inspired the famous poem by Álvaro de Campos Tabacaria, observe that, with tobacco or not, there are few cities in Europe that will suit better the idea of a life without stress and hurry

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Translated by: Marc
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The Chiado Museum presents the retrospective exhibition 30 years of the AICA/MC Visual Arts Award until the 22^nd of January 2012. A quick glance of Portuguese art, which shows the work of prominent artists who have participated over the years in the exhibitions organized to grant the award, one of the most prominent and ancient architectural awards in Portugal.

This exhibition makes its way to the debate on the symbolic value of the mentioned awards and the role that the International Association of Art Critics has played in the history of Portuguese contemporary art. The idea is to make a critical rereading of the process that in thirty years has changed the society, with consequent effects on art.

The works of Joaquim Rodrigo Cardoso, are considered some of the most important of the exhibition. This ordinary man who devoted himself to painting during his old age, due to his involvement in some intellectual gatherings that led him to acquire a passion for poetry and arts in general, was one of the most prominent Portuguese painters of the stream of theoretical geometric and interestism. Cardoso was born in 1912 but it was only in 1949 that he exhibited for the first time with a resounding success. In the beginning of the 50s, he had a tour around several European countries and was impregnated with the new currents, shifting his work to abstraction. During the late 50′s and early 60′s his paintings were more indentified with geometric current, while being influenced by many artists of his country and bringing his work to other continents.

Another author whose work will be exhibited in this show is José Pedro Croft, one of the best-known contemporary Portuguese artists. His work moves through the conceptual, minimalist and povera currents, even though he rejected them, believing that they pigeonhole him. His works are performed primarily in very delicate sculptures, playing with the vacuum. He combines materials, using mirrors and lenses to amplify the spatial playground of his proposal.

In a show like this, the artist and photographer Helena Almeida could not miss. Almeida is a Portuguese artist internationally know, daughter of the sculptor Leopoldo de Almeida, who is famous for his photographic work intervention. His complex work begins with the creation of sketches of the pictures she wants. They are always pictures of herself taken by her husband, then she painted them and added intervening objects, to make them look three-dimensional. Almeida began working on her works in the 60′s, when body-art began.

An interesting retrospective to visualize the changes in visual the culture and way of looking at art, an important point in the discussion that transforms the museum’s proposals, part of the theoretical reflection of this exhibition.

For more information http://www.museudochiado-ipmuseus.pt/en/node/1144

Nancy Guzman

This is probably the best time to come and rent apartments in Lisbon because there is nothing more beautiful than sea in a romantic evening by the Mediterranean this autumn, which can be stimulated by good art exhibition at the Museum Chiado.

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Translated by: Hans
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The Centre of Modern Art of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation presents, until the 9th of October, an interesting monographic retrospective of the Portuguese contemporary artist João Penalva. The exhibition is the biggest one carried out on his work and it shows interesting aspects of his work which is made in different fields, such as painting, film and installations.

The exhibition commissioned by Isabel Carlos stops by two parts of Penalva’s work: the decade of the 90s, when he worked in painting, and in the most recent one of audiovisual production. For the assembling of this exhibition, Penalva actively participated in it by redesigning the space in the rooms with the aim of giving it the precise content for his work and to manage that the spectators capture the central point of his visual work ‘Text and Image’.

Penalva explores the perception of the public on art through theatre, design and the visual image. For that, part of the premise that the perception is marked by the reading and the codifying and de-codifying process that each subject has from his own conscience and his surroundings through his own senses. However, in art, this perception is given from the rational thought of objects and how we capture these visually. For that it happens to be a significative interpretation mediated by sensations.

This idea of perception which has is studied today in many different fields, is also a cause for permanent unrest in art, because the artist expresses his own perceptions and to fixate his focus of representations, the object isn’t the reason in itself of representation, but it’s the attitude taken towards the object.

Hence that his visual works are a key tool to express this complex outlook on art and the representations that it produces towards the spectator. In this sense, his explorations through theatre, photography and all art expressions has been an essential experimentation in the maturing of his work.

João Penalva was born in Lisbon in 1949. He achieved a degree and a master in Fine Arts at London’s Chelsea School of Arts, a city which he’s iived in since 1976. His work in installation and video art has been the focus of much praise by the most demanding critics and it has placed him as the most important Portuguese artist of the 21st century.

His works have been exhibited in different cities such as Lisbon, Munich or Sydney, and the Biennials of Venice, Berlin and Sydney. Today, his works are part of the great collections of the world, like the ones in the Museo do Chiado, the Centro Gallego de Arte Contempóraneo, the Arts Council Collection of Great Britain and the Musée d’Art Moderne Grand-Duc Jean in Luxembourg among many others.

For more information: http://www.gulbenkian.pt/index.php?article=3217&langId=1&format=404

Nancy Guzman

This exhibition is an interesting idea if you’re going to be spending a few days in apartments in Lisbon You just have to get to the Centre of Modern Art of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation and enjoy the work of this great artist. After, you have the perfect excuse to go for some drinks and chat about your perceptions on it.

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Translated by: aleixgwilliam
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We’re not here to do a treaty on bibliophile (the branch of knowledge dealing with beautiful, unique, rare or impossible books), but we dare to recommend travelers passing through Lisbon to come close to the  temple that is the Museo Nacional de Arte Antiga in Lisbon. If you can, stop and admire the copy of the Book of Hours of Don Manuel. That said, the reader not versed in matters of bibliophile wonders what a Book of Hours is….

Although Gutenberg invented the printing press around 1450, the new tool was not available in major European cities (America was on something else) until  the late fifteenth century. Until then, all books were manuscripts and to be published they were copied by hand. Because of its high running cost, books were precious, treasured and appreciated. If, moreover, were illustrated, ie, pictures or drawings (of course drawn by hand with materials such as lapis lazuli, silver or gold), they really only became available to royalty and high ranking nobility (the townspeople could not afford such luxuries).

The use of the books of hours began to spread about 1400 until 1550, when printing press was installed, but it has a very simple explanation, since by that time, there was a significant increase of wealth and, furthermore, these books, more than a means of transmitting knowledge, were considered works of art. Normally the illustrations were carried out by a talented known artist at the tim. Books of hours were briefs with the most important prayers recited during the day. They were edited  in a quarter size (just as current standard nowaday novels) with a nice binding and used to have a beautifully embroidered velvet jacket with the arms of the owner and a string to carry it (like we do with our mobile). Famous books of hours are, for example, that of Isabella or the Duke of Berry. Of course, they are all unique.

The Book of Hours of Don Manuel is located in Lisbon and it belongs to this type of books. Although it is not signed, it is the work of one of the most important illustrators of his time, Antonio Holland. No one knows the  exact date it was written, although probably around the years between 1517 and 1538. Some researchers point to a later date, after 1521, when its owner, at the time Don Manuel I of Portugal (the lucky) had already died. So it suggests that was commissioned by his son John III (the pious) to honor his father. Whoever was the owner of this magnificent work, you should enjoy the impeccable calligraphy and its beautiful illustrations in tempera and gold. Today, a delight for the vision of any mortal soul  that passes through Lisbon.

Candela Vizcaíno

When you leave one of the beautiful apartments in Lisbon heading for the Museo Nacional de Arte Antiga, do not forget to honor this great bibliophile tradition of always being accompanied by a book.

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Translated by: Marc
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Chiado Contemporary Art Museum exhibits until the 5^th of October Twentieth century Portuguese art (1910-1960). In this exhibition, curated by Adelaide Ginga, the works of artists who were enrolled in the forefront of Portuguese art are highlighted, as part of a trilogy of signs that the museum has organized to commemorate the centenary of its foundation, as a space to house contemporary art .

During the first decades of the twentieth century, Portugal dreamt with the republican liberty and the revolution was an imminent possibility, to the point that on these utopias were developed interesting avant-garde movements of artists, that invigorate the political process that led to the dictatorship of Antonio de Oliveira Salazar in 1926 and the closing of an era of freedom.

During the 40′s, the lack of freedom and the rebellion strengthened the social protest, thus the repression against the political opposition movements, trade union leaders and intellectuals. This situation generated the response of many artists, who through their works expressed the political moment the Portugal was living.

Among the works on display, there are the works by Amadeo de Sousa Cardoso. Although Cardoso died in 1918 as a result of the Spanish flu epidemic that affected the peninsula, he was the precursor of the avant-garde and modernism in the Portuguese art. His magnificent work took elements from Expressionism, Impressionism and Cubism, declining the enrollment in some of the fashion trends in those years. At the end of his career he joined the abstraction and experimented with new forms of representation, collages and works in an unconventional way.

The work The rebellion of the Dolls by Eduardo Viana, is one of the most representative paintings of the post impressionist Portuguese art and is a piece that reveals the influence of Robert Delaunay on Viana´s work of, as a result of the friendship they had while spending a season in Lisbon. Viana, along with de Sousa Cardoso and Almada Negreiros marked the beginning of modern painting in Portugal.

The most prominent expressionist Portugal, Mario Eloy is present with self-portrait. His style was marked by Picasso and the expressionist Carl Hofer. However, at the end of his career, he built the foundations of Portuguese painting surrealism in his work The Burial.

Among more recent artists, there is the work by Julio Pomar called Gadanheiro, Pomar was a great representative of Portuguese neorealism of the 40s to 50s. Adam and Eve sculptures by Ernesto Canto de Maia and the oil painting Meat Plant by  Marcelino Vespeira.

Undoubtedly the modern perspective of photography could not be absent from this exhibition on contemporary artand, for this nothing better than the work by Fernando Lemos, who with his work Eus expresses the feelings and desires of the clandestine life under the dictatorship by Antonio de Oliveira Salazar.

For more information http://www.museudochiado-ipmuseus.pt/en/node/1058

Nancy Guzman

Nothing more wonderful than watching history through art, this exhibition is an excellent way to appreciate that art, politics and history are always going on the same path. So if you spend a few days apartments in Lisbon come and delight yourself with the best works of art in Portugal.

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Translated by: Hans
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The construction of the church started in 1779 under the orders of King Pedro III to keep the promise made by him to his wife Dona Maria I after having their children. The construction work of this famous monument was started under the supervision of some prominent architects of the decade such as Manuel Reynaldo and Mateus Vicente. This basilica is built on one of the edge of Lisbon far from the crowded and poverty struck areas of the city.

Built on a hill, this church is located in the east of Lisbon with a beautiful dome located right at the top. The building also has two large bell towers that are decorated with statues and carvings of saints. The interior is very spacious and the beautiful lighting welcomes you in all the rooms.

The church is very carefully designed and decorated with prominent marble sculptures of green, pink, yellow and various other colors and several other antiques can also be found here. In one room there are some especially designed terracotta figures and some other art works. There is also the Jardim da Estrela, a garden in front of the monument which is considered to be one of the largest and finest Parks in the gorgeous Lisbon city. The garden is full of different species of plants who get taken care of by some professional gardeners. The famous band which plays in the evening is a specialty of this place. Various other antique sculptures can also be found here just as they are distributed in different corners inside the church.

The church also is in possesion of some great paintings done by some of the most renowned artists of the era such as Pedro Alexandrino and Pompeu Botoni. The enchanting and invigorating ambience of the monument completely refreshes the mood of the visitors and provides a sense of inner happiness to one’s spirit. This basilica is a very well preserved example of the religious art during the Baroque era. After visiting the church, one can continue on to the beautiful streets and landscapes of Lisbon city. One of the main atttractions of the Basilica is the glimpse of fashionable cork which consists of more than 500 different figures.

Address:

The Basilica of la Estrella
Largo da Estrela
Lisbon

Hours:

Open daily from:  8:00 am to 01:00 pm and 03:00 pm to 08:00 pm.

It remains closed on 1^st January and 25^th December every year.

Entrance fee:

The entrance to the basilica is free of cost.

John

This basilica is famous in Lisbon and there is a serious interest of people for this building. Why not rent apartments in Lisbon and check out this important monument of Lisbon.

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If there is a favorite spot for tourists visiting Lisbon, without a doubt, is Cafe a Brasileira located near Chiado, in Baja. The spectacular Art Nouveau decor, coupled with the myth of Fernando Pessoa, Portuguese poet most internationally renowned, outweighs the local bustle of high season.

Cafe a Brasileira Coffee is probably one of the oldest establishments in Portugal. Following the trail of the bohemian cafes from Paris, Berlin and even Madrid, with the peculiar character of the soul from Lisbon. Born in 1905 as a grocery store specializing in grain from Brazil, a type of coffee unknown to the European palates at that time. Its owner, Adrian Telles, a true entrepreneur, wanted to show to his potential customers the benefits of his product and could not think of a better idea than inviting all those who would buy a kilo of coffee to one cup of it made in the store. Gifted consumption could be considered as the starting poit of the marvelous Cafe a Brasileira. From here, the cafes mushrooming all over Europe, the establishment was rebuilt with the magnificent Art Deco we know today.

With the opening of this cafe to the public, came quickly political and literary gatherings. Orpheu magazine, led by Henrique Rosa, had his headquarters between the mirrors and modernist lamps of Cafe a Brasileira. In addition, starting from the 20′s, its walls served also as an art gallery. Here pictures by the very best of the vanguard Portuguese artists were exhibited: António Soares, Eduardo Viana and José Negreiros. The owners (in return for the organization of each exhibition) were given some of the works. These paintings were sold (apparently quite well) to a private collector in the late sixties and, with this lucrative business; the owners have taken up this activity for contemporary artists´s joy and delight customers.

But if there is an artist that has been so linked to the café that has been immortalized on the terrace, with a life-size bronze sculpture is, without a doubt, Fernando Pessoa, the master of the Portuguese letters. At Cafe a Brasileira, he spent hours reading, doing translations with which he earned his living as a freelancer, frantically writing poetry, taking its bica with lots of sugar and absinthe, which was the probable cause of liver cirrhosis which led him to the grave. For the poet, the cafes were an inevitable part of his lifestyle. They were the lone fellow that he invented the heteronyms, completely different personalities that were talking and discussing together. Alvaro de Campos, Ricardo Reis, Alberto Caeiro and Bernardo Soaeres (closest to the poet) wrote on the tables at Brasileira, the most memorable verses of Portuguese lyric. E.g. taken from Tabacaria: “… I have, in all my dreams of the world. “When a dream is enough to live, Pessoa had them all.

Candela Vizcaíno

Those who feel with the spirit to keep remembering the exquisite fingerprints of Portuguese old art, should rent apartments in Lisbon and experience melancholy poetic environment of the city, “saudade”!.

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Translated by: Hans
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In one of his articles for the Uruguayan magazine Ramas Frias (Cold Branches)  writer Albert Hanover Samoa explains the bad feeling that lingered around him on an occasion that the crowds that packed the room where Alejandro Jodorowsky had just given a brilliant lecture keep listening to each of his words as if they were delivered by a divine wisdom guru.

He wanted to leave right away just as soon as the conference was over the, but a friend who had traveled a long distance not wanting to miss this event had bought by surprise the last book of Jodorowsky and was forced to queue with it so the writer could autograph  it.

As he did not like the tense atmosphere of idolatry, at the last minute  he decided to magically switch books and had Jodorowsky sign another totally different novel, a copy of The Vertical  Journey from Vila-Matas, which greatly embarrassed the Chilean actor whose colossal ego seemed to be pleased so far with the quasi-sectarian reverence of the uncritical crowds. When asked why he did that Hanover slightly disoriented responded “for the sake of deception, to fool my biographers and because in his latest novel Vila-Matas says that as a young man he rented a garret in Paris where Jodorowsky the magician had lived “

– “The Wizard Jodorowsky, huh?” He replied slowly, smiling, self-absorbed in complacency, signed it with pleasure and a knowing wink.

Less than a year later the situation as in a mirror was  reversed, when at an event he was introduced to Vila-Matas Hanover asked him to sign, after recounting the story, the book that was that day in his bag,  andwhich turned out to be a copy, recently acquired,  of the last published by Jodorowsky, The Master and the magicians. As he didnt seem to understand, Hannover had to remind him that from his books he had learned that writing was an impersonation where we go through becoming another, which suddenly sounded like something that maybe applied to other things, something  Jodorowsky could have perfectly said.

Perhaps its not entirely coincidental that Vila-Matas book turned out to be precisely “The vertical Journey“, a rarely beautiful and seductive novel Hanover read in a tragic climate and where it describes a delirious transforming  trip that excludes the possibility of returning home. In it the central level there is Lisbon, a city that is fabulously presented with the words: “Sometimes I have the feeling that it arises from what I’ve written like a snake emerges from your skin … And I think the city of Lisbon could say something of the style. Labyrinthine, with balconies offering strenuous views and the eternal truth of the sky empty, sad and captivating as any. Lisbon is graceful in its meandering, it  is a city that sometimes seems to emerge as a snake emerges from your skin. It Captures the visitor … “

Paul Oilzum

You wont find a more attractive book to read when you rent apartments in Lisbon few books capture better the atmosphere of this unique city and invites you to prolong you stay indefinitely or to jump from there to the other side of things.

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Translated by: Marc
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