August 2012 Niemeyer – Still Going Strong at 104 – and Other Established Architects Such As Isay Weinfeld, and S Furniture Designer Sergio Rodrigues, to the New E
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Não Tenha Medo do Seu Corpo, 2012 (Don’t Be Afraid Of Your Body) by Ernesto Neto, at Galeria Fortes Vilaça until August 18; view from Altino Arantes (opposite) rs E /4corn E m I o/s I o bartucc I : anton s E ARANT NO I t ga; aL E to photography:to Eduardo ort E sto n E Ern F NEW YORK NEVER SLEEPS, São Paulo never stops. The best way to enjoy the city is to give in to it. Helicopters buzz between miles of skyscrapers while poly- ethnic enclaves pulsate with fusion Irestaurants and labyrinthine shopping centres below. There are 19 new millionaires created each day in Brazil according to Forbes maga- zine, and plenty of personality to boot. São Paulo is bisected by the eight-lane Avenida Paulista – the historic centre to the north and the upscale neighbourhoods of Jardins, Pinheiros and Vila Madalena to the south. A stroll down this gargantuan highway Caught in the network or a visit to Oscar Niemeyer’s Copan – a build- ing so large that it has its own postcode – tells As the South American giant shrugs off last century’s economic us we are in no ordinary city. With its gloomy decades as a tropical third-world republic malaise, its modernist metropolis of São Paulo has decided it’s time firmly in the past, Brazil is experiencing a to shine. Author Carmen Michael explores Brazil’s other big city. renaissance. From revered architect Oscar 68 QANTAS AUGUST 2012 Niemeyer – still going strong at 104 – and other established architects such as Isay Weinfeld, and s furniture designer Sergio Rodrigues, to the new E mag generation of creatives such as fashion designers I Alexandre Herchcovitch and Pedro Lourenço tty E (a favourite of Lady Gaga), artist Beatriz Milhazes um: g and the graffiti twins Os Gêmeos, Brazil couldn’t E get much hotter. mus L In São Paulo, an explosion of new galleries in ona the city’s bohemian quarter Vila Madalena, the I elegant bairro of Pinheiros and, more recently, & nat Santa Cecilia, reflects the rising middle class. el Openings such as the Galeria Raquel Arnaud and ; mod RS the deeply hip street-art gallery Choque Cultural E show just how far this former coffee-trading town CORN /4 r has come. But it’s not all palm trees and samba E scenes. Lourenço’s geometric dresses are just as HUB / likely to portray Mount Fuji as Copacabana Beach, RG E b while Herchcovitch’s latest collection features LL HA golden dresses in leather and lace. When asked s E what drives São Paulo, Isay Weinfeld says it is a MOS place where “absolutely anything is permitted”. Travellers won’t find a traditional rota of tourism sights in São Paulo. Favelas (slums) hang off the outskirts of the city while massive traffic jams can photography: logjam the city’s roads. It can be exhausting, crowded and ugly. This is a city living in the COPAN Oscar Niemeyer’s A taste of the future? Oscar Niemeyer’s 1950s Copan building National Museum in the federal capital of Brasília, north of São Paulo Alexandre Herchcovitch spring/summer 2012-2013 Mural by Otavio & Gustavo collection at São Paulo Fashion Week in June Pandolfo, aka Os Gêmeos, Cambuci district CITY GUIDE SÃO PAULO present, not the past. Instead, the city’s charms ing network of helicopters to view its endless are to be found in the everyday richness of skyscraper sprawl, or stroll through the teeming design, experimental architecture and the sheer avenues to see architectural experimentation in energy on the street. Walk around the modernist action. Paulo Mendes da Rocha’s MUBE (Brazil- pavilions of Ibirapuera Park, visit a new gallery ian Museum of Sculpture) and Lina Bo Bardi’s in Madalena or sample some Japanese Brazilian MASP (Museum of Art) are both examples of cuisine in Liberdade. Brazilian Brutalism, while the awe-inspiring The city boasts excellent traditional European monolith of Niemeyer’s Copan is pure 1950s styles – Brazilian landscape artist Roberto Burle Brazilian monumentalism. In the exclusive hills Marx once said, “The country is so baroque that of Morumbi, design pilgrims visit the fabulous one has the impression that the style was born suspended glass house of Lina Bo Bardi. here” – but Brazilian modernism is the real Paulistanos like to claim that shopping malls attraction of São Paulo. The simple lines, un- are their beaches and, like Rio’s Copacabana, cluttered elegance and focus on structure, which they won’t disappoint. Whether it’s a voyeuristic is sometimes called Tropical Modernism, afternoon at the city’s luxury behemoth Daslu, evolved out of a century of experimentation with which has a helipad entrance and created an ideas such as constructivism and concretism. uproar when it opened beside a favela, or a quiet Arriving in the 1920s, modernism was taken browse through the cool boutiques of designers up by the Brazilians with gusto. They had the such as Humberto and Fernando Campana, natural flamboyance, large spaces and lack of evidence of flourishing local demand for art, urban control to interpret modernism almost design and fashion is everywhere. ideologically, the most famous manifestation of Nor is São Paulo’s habit of free expression which was Niemeyer’s “favela free” utopian city confined to the city’s elite. At street level, design of Brasília, 874km north of São Paulo, in the flows uninhibited onto walls, park benches and r 1950s. It was an era of enormous vision, but, as urban sculptures. From engaging urban murals LE h persistent economic problems gave rise to the that document the city’s history to arts renewal Ö nb inevitable favelas, of grandiosity, too. “Nothing projects such as Boamistura’s rainbow-coloured E dates faster than people’s fantasies about the favelas, design seeps out of the city’s most ugly hass E future,” Australian art critic Robert Hughes once streets. Even the rune-like symbols of the city’s rg E s: s said of Brasília, echoing a view shared by many illegal pichação graffiti gangs have a subversive E Brazilians until the last decade when its econ- charm. Traffic, inequality and sprawling favelas haz omy was finally put back on track. are enduring features of São Paulo and are often il z m However, if travel is about taking us out of the the subject of the pichação, to the chagrin of the I atr everyday, São Paulo does it better than most. authorities, who often respond with violent E rs; b Travellers can take to the skies on the city’s buzz- crackdowns. Yet in true São Paulo fashion, even E the despised graffiti is being co-opted by the /4corn artistic elite. The work of Os Gêmeos now E m appears in MASP, while the alleys of Beco do I o/s Batman are popular with the middle class. I São Paulo is a city that assimilates and absorbs, always churning out new ideas, forever o bartucc I expanding. Local chronicler Roberto Pompeu de Toledo once called the megacity of 20 million an “urban labyrinth extending towards infinity”. Simply being there is to experience a defining moment in Latin American history. ra park photography: anton E rapu From top: MASP on Avenida Paulista; I b art works by Beatriz Milhazes at the I Beyeler Foundation, Basel; auditorium by Oscar Niemeyer, Ibirapuera Park masp & Red Chair, Humberto & Fernando Campana; CITY GUIDE SÃO PAULO Noir, Le Lis (left) “NOIR, LE LIS OFFERS EVERYTHING THE BRAZILIan PLAYBOY NEEDS” Rua Gonçalo Afonso on actors such as zac Efron, Rua Gonçalo Afonso, Pinheiros. John John jeans have been a behind the cemetery is the city’s global fashion success story. With open-air graffiti gallery beco do sophisticated styles, rich detailing batman. created by art students and limited-edition collections, in the 1980s, keen-eyed observers clear your credit card for a visit to SEE & DO Casa Triângulo can catch some heritage os their shop on what is são paulo’s Galeria Fortes Vilaça 77 Rua Pais de Araujo, Itaim Bibi. gêmeos as well as a wall by rodeo drive. 1500 Rua Fradique Coutinho, www.casatriangulo.com zezão, a graffiti artist famous Pinheiros. fortesvilaca.com.br considered the springboard for for decorating the sewers of são Francesca Romana Diana Featuring heavyweights such as emerging artists in são paulo, casa paulo. afterwards, visit the city’s Shopping Cidade Jardim, beatriz milhazes, Ernesto neto triângulo, in the exclusive Itaim funkiest new gallery of street art, 12000 Avenue Magalhães de and os gêmeos, this is são bibi neighbourhood, holds a choque cultural, at nearby 99 rua Castro, Marginal Pinheiros. paulo’s most renowned gallery of popular monthly exhibition. João moura. francescaromanadiana.com brazilian contemporary art. neto’s popular with brazil’s soap stars, sculpturally sublime new solo Humberto & SHOP Italian designer Francesca romana show, Não Tenha Medo do Seu Fernando Campana Noir, Le Lis diana combines colourful brazilian dra E Corpo, runs until august 18. 219 Rua Barão de Tatui, 2305 Rua Bela Cintra, Jardins. stones with materials such as © r: Santa Cecilia. campanas.com.br www.noirlelis.com.br wood, shells and raffia to I Alameda Gabriel slip in through the unmarked the brainchild of helena create playful, bold designs. d cha Monteiro da Silva garage door to the colourful montanarini and actor matthew E Pinheiros. atelier of this dynamic duo, mcconaughey, noir, Le Lis offers Melissa design buffs should stroll along the first brazilian artists to be everything the brazilian playboy Galeria Melissa, 827 Rua Oscar tt; 1998 r ve the alameda gabriel monteiro da exhibited at MOMA in new york, needs, including a barber and a Freire, Cerqueira Cesar.