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It’s a relatively short distance from Avenida Paolista down to Ibirapuera Park, but it’s a long journey, both in terms of the country it covers, and in terms of the land that lies at the end of it.
Ibirapuera, Sao Paolo's Central Park
Between the noisy, fast-paced, crowded, densely built-up avenue to the quiet green spaces of Ibirapuera lie the fenced wilds of Trianon Park, smart blocks lined with luxury hotels, mean streets lined with the cardboard shelters of the homeless, a perilous roundabout and a massive stone monument to the building of Brazil.
The monument to the building of Brazil
Ibirapuera Park is to Sao Paolo as Central Park is to New York – an escape to nature in the middle of the city. I visited it at dusk and its paths and tracks were still teeming with joggers, skaters and cyclists. Kids played on its vast lawns. Couples strolled by its lakes. Its car parks were still filled with tour buses and tourists’ cameras flashed desperately in the fading light.
The lake in Ibirapuera Park
Ibirapuera is one of many Brazilian parks and gardens designed by the prolific and multi-talented Ernesto Burle Marx, whose career as a sculptor, painter, designer and landscape architect spanned almost the entire 20th century. It is for his gardens, however, that he is best known. Featuring indigenous plants and trees, Burle Marx created landscapes that were truly Brazilian.
Native Brazilian plants and trees in Ibirapuera Park
Burle Marx often collaborated with the patriarch of modern Brazilian architecture Oscar Niemeyer, creating a lush, green setting for his somewhat stark buildings, like the Museu Afro Brasil which sits against a tiny slice of rainforest in Ibirapruera Park.
Museu Afro Brasil
MASP, or Museu de Arte de Sao Paolo, on Avenida Paolista, was one of the highlights of my visit to Sao Paolo. And the highlight of my visit to MASP was a small exhibition in its echoing subterranean gallery. It was showing a selection of works by Candido Portinari, one of Brazil’s most important and prolific painters.
The courtyard at MASP
Most of the works in the exhibition were narratives of old bible stories – The Justice of Solomon, The trumpets of Jericho, Jeremiah’s Lament, Job and The Massacre of the Innocents - classic scenes with universal themes. But the raw and blatent emotions of relief, triumph, suffering, despair, resignation and terror, vividly drawn in the lines of the figures and the faces brought something quite new and even shocking to them. Other works showed Portinari’s own country, life and times. In North Eastern Migrants, Dead Child and Burial in a Hammock nothing was spared of the bleak lives and dreadful deaths suffered by refugees from the drought and famine in the North-East of Brazil in the 1930s.
The son of Italian immigrants, Portinari was born on December 29, 1903 and raised on a coffee plantation at Brodowski, near Sao Paolo. He studied at the Escola Nacional de Belas Artes in Rio de Janeiro, where, in 1928, he won a gold medal and a scholarship to study in Paris.
Returning to Brazil in 1930, Portinari set about producing the huge and wide-reaching body of work which can be seen in galleries, both in Brazil and around the world. His murals range from the family chapel in his childhood home in Brodowski to his panels Guerra e Paz (War and Peace) in the United Nations building in New York. His paintings cover and enormous range of subjects; his childhood, labourers in the city and countrside, refugees from Brazil's north-east, colonial history, portraits of family and leading Brazilians, book illustrations and decorations for tiles.
In 1947, Portinari stood as a senator for the Brazilian Communist party but fled to Uruguay during the persecution of Communists that followed shortly after. He returned to Brazil in 1951. After a decade of ill health he died of lead poisoning from his paints in 1961.
Candido Portinari lived and worked in one of the most artistically fertile periods in Brazil’s history. His contemporaries included the architect Oscar Niemeyer, with whom he collaborated, as well as the great master of Brazilian gardens Burle Marx.
Twenty three kilometres of the Castelo Branco Highway link peaceful, sheltered Alphaville to frantic, edgy downtown Sao Paolo. Avenida Paolista is the main drag and the hub of South American commerce. It’s a parade of 21st century global business towers interspersed with the occasional beautiful colonial relic.
The towers of Avenida Paolista
Trianon Park, a legacy of old Sao Paolo, occupies a block roughly halfway down the Avenue. A small slice of the wild, it looks oddly out of place in this concrete jungle. Palms and plants of Triffidian size and appearance press against its wrought iron fences as if straining to escape and retake the city. Armed guards defend the park against invasion by the poor skinny, ragged homeless kids who run wild in Sao Paolo’s streets.
The street kids are never far away. They hold noisy and chaotic court, across the road from Trianon Park, in the open space under the Museu de Arte de Sao Paolo.
Under the Museu de Arte de Sao Paolo
Designed by Lina Bo Bardi, MASP, as it is familiarly known, is a Sao Paolo landmark and a star among modern Brazilian buildings. The concrete and glass cube, supported on massive red beams, dominates the mid-section of Avenida Paolista.
Founded in 1947 by “the King of Brazil” philanthropist and Media Magnate Assis Chateaubriand and Italian Professor and Art Critic Pietro Maria Bardi, the MASP art collection is the largest and most impressive in South America. It includes centuries of European Art along with African and Asian collections. There are also antiquities and decorative arts from around the world. The South American and Brazilian collections are highlights of MASP. All the Latin American greats are there, including personal favourites Torres Garcia and Diego Rivera, Di Cavalcanti and the poignant and beautiful Candido Portinari.
MASP is a non-profit making private institution and its entire collection is listed as Brazilian National Heritage.
As our plane approaches Sao Paolo, my face is pressed to the window. The high-rise begins abruptly and continues. On and on it goes, mile after mile, row upon row of mammoth high-rise buildings, colossal concrete slabs, lined up like tombstones in a giant graveyard. If there are streets, cars and people in the narrow crevasses between them, they are lost, fathoms deep, in shadow. I’m struggling to imagine life down there, in that vast, harsh, unrelenting, cement and steel landscape. I’m struggling to imagine how Sao Paolo works as a city.
Alphaville
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In September 2005, when Rio’s twelve Special Samba Schools moved into Cidade do Samba, the spectacular new complex of workshops down in the Gamboa dockland district, it was the realization of a long-held dream. But it was also a further affirmation of the place of the Samba as the country’s national dance and of Carnaval as Rio’s premier event. It was one more step in Rio’s, if not Brazil’s, historical journey.
Cidade do Samba
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It sometimes happens in restaurants, that the choicest cuisine is completely undone by poor service, unpleasant surroundings, or a dull atmosphere. But sometimes too, the fare is completely outdone by exceptional service, fascinating surroundings or a fabulous atmosphere. And so it happened, that in two quite different Rio restaurants, the most succulent churrasco and the ultimate caipirinha were almost totally eclipsed by the service, the décor and the ambiance.
Zozo
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While feijoada is Brazil’s national dish, the caipirinha is its national drink. The two make great companions. The cold, tart, light cocktail is a fabulous foil to the rich, hot, salty feijoada. However the caipirinha also goes brilliantly with churrasco, with the little crisp fried fish served in the beachside kiosks or with the simple spiced nuts peddled by the kids from the favelas. As a stand alone it’s sensational. At home, in the restaurant, in the bar or on the beach, it never fails to “create a sensual and relaxed atmosphere” according to Ernesto Britto of Clube da Caipirinha.
This little beachside bar, opposite the Sheraton at Barra Beach makes a delicious Caipirinha
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September 30th 2009 02:50
" New Zealand is made up of two main islands and numerous smaller islands, most notably Stewart Island/Rakiura and the Chatham Islands. Not to forget Great Barrier Island in the Hauraki Gulf near Auckland. The Auckland city is located on the North Island and the main city in the South Island is Christchurch. Both Islands have lots of vast open spaces and mountainous terrain.
A wild west coast Auckland Beach
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September 28th 2009 06:57
New Zealand is famous as a country that offers everything; stunning beaches, magnificent mountains, pristine lakes, wild rivers, lush bush, rich farmland, 21st century cities, quaint country towns, pure fresh food, luxury hotels, sumptuous spas and gourmet restaurants. But it is the Maori culture that sets it apart from any other place on earth and makes it truly unique. TIME Unlimited’s Maori Culture Tours are a chance not just to see, but to live that culture.
The Hongi
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on My darling Stella is gone
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