The art tour of São Paulo includes the Instituto Cultural Tomie Ohtake, a building named after a Japanese naturalized Brazilian artist.
The taxi driver knew the place; I did not have to present him with the piece of paper on which the address was written. This is quite unusual because most taxi drivers do not quite grasp my pronunciation of various places in Portuguese and have to rely on the written word.
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| The unmistakable shape of Instituto Tomie Ohtake |
As soon as I saw the building, I was captivated by the shape and the colours. It is a statement piece and it created an expectation of the place. The reception area is large, with a few art shops on one side and temporary exhibitions on the other side. I love the space and the fact that it was not thronged with people. There were some beautiful hand-made jewelry on sale but they were quite expensive compared to UK prices.
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| The reception area |
The exhibitions were another matter. The curator has made sure that there is English translation for all the exhibits, which was most unusual in Brazil since English is not much spoken. Still, not much appealed to me.
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| Luiz Zerbini "The First Mass" |
"The First Mass" struck me as a surreal painting. What is the meaning of the coiled snake on the head of the man dressed as a priest? What is the meaning of his tied hands? What is the meaning of red breasts on a black woman? But the colourful landscape and the exotic vegetation drew me to it.
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| Landseer's Black Punishment at Rio de Janeiro |
The painting that provoked the deepest thought was Charles Landseer's Black Punishment at Rio de Janeiro. Of course most of us read about the brutal way in which slaves were treated by their masters but seeing the punishment in such a graphical way was a unpleasant confrontation with the colonial past. There was a narrative to explain why Brazilians were considered to be "lazy": to the slaves, back breaking work at the sugar plantations represented the oppression of their colonial masters.
There was a common theme to the visual art on exhibition: the colonial past and the hardship endured.
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| Modesto Broco's Manioc Mill |
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| Sidnei Amaral's Discomfort |
On leaving the Institute, I realized that Salvodore Dali would be coming to this place at a time when I would have left Brazil.... Timing is everything.
