L-APC: Architecture in Three Brazilian Cities

Lens-Artists’ topic this week is interesting architecture.

Dipping into my archives, five years ago this month, we were in Brazil. These photos are of the new museum Museu do Amanha (Museum of Tomorrow) in Rio de Janeiro. Designed by the renowned Spanish architect, Santiago Calatrava, this science museum is very interesting, with many interactive exhibits that pose questions about our planet’s future.

The city of Sao Paulo has a variety of interesting architectural structures, dating from colonial times to futuristic modern buildings. The first images were taken along Avenida Paulista, which is closed to vehicle traffic on Sundays, so that pedestrians and bicyclists can enjoy the many interesting places along this avenue in the downtown area. First are several modern buildings and facades, followed by details of a Victorian era house called Casa das Rosas because of its rose gardens in front. The Instituto Tomie Ohtake complex is another example of modern architecture. Finally, in central Sao Paulo is the cathedral, built in neo-Gothic style topped by a Renaissance type dome. Downtown Sao Paulo is a good place to see Portuguese colonial style buildings, such as the Anchieta History Museum (closed the day we were there!). Farther out from the city center is Luz Railway Station, a hub of subway lines crisscrossing the city, as well as trains for travel outside the city. It was built to serve the British-owned Sao Paulo Railway and was built with influences of classic late-Victorian architectural style. Its most iconic feature is its clock tower. We took a subway line back to our Airbnb from Luz after visiting the Pinacoteca, one of Brazil’s most important art museums.

We also visited the capital city of the state of Parana, Curitiba, where we stayed with good friends. One of the most interesting structures is the ultra-modern Museu Oscar Niemeyer (MON) named for the architect who designed it. Its 17 thousand square meters of art exhibit space is now the largest in Latin America.

The Past, Squared: Oct. 20, 2016

I picked an October 20 from my blog archives. I am featuring them here for Becky’s Past Squares (or SquarePast?) today. The photos below are from two posts on Oct. 20, 2016.

For Thursday Doors that week, I posted doors of houses in Des Plaines. I have selected the ones that are most seasonal.

I like the contrasting blue & orange in this photo.

The other post I did that day was for Cee’s weekly Fun Foto Challenge. Her topic was vibrant colors. This is, coincidentally, the topic of Nancy Merrill’s A Photo a Week. These photos were taken on a trip to Texas, where we visited the San Antonio Museum of Art.

Dale’s silhouette in front of a neon Texas flag!
Pink Electric Chair (2006)

Squares That Didn’t Make the Cut

I’m finally jumping in to Becky’s October square challenge: Squares of the Past!
When I do an ongoing challenge, I create a folder especially for that challenge, and often the pictures I add never “make the cut.” So I’m going to begin with the Squares in those folders which I didn’t include originally.

These “bright squares” were all taken at the Museum of Glass in Tacoma, Washington in September of 2019.

Monday Window: The Summer of Frida

The Summer of Frida is my theme for this week’s Monday Window hosted by Ludwig Keck. People in the Chicago area – especially in the suburbs of Glen Ellyn and Wheaton – are going gaga over Frida Kahlo, the Mexican artist who painted a variety of subjects reflecting her experience and Mexican culture, as well as many self-portraits meant to portray her own thoughts and feelings.

“Frida in New York” (1946), photo by Nicholas Muray

At the College of DuPage in Glen Ellyn, Illinois, the theatre on campus built a brand new gallery in 2018-19 specifically to house an exhibit of 26 Frida Kahlo works borrowed from the Dolores Olmedo Museum in Mexico City. After negotiating with the museum for the exhibit, they planned for it to take place in the summer of 2020.

We all know what happened in 2020 – Covid-19 – so the exhibit was postponed, and opened with great success and fanfare on June 5, 2021. It will run until early September.

Dale next to the “2021” that is painted in Mexican style at the museum. If you look carefully, you can see that the style and colors of the painting on the numeral 1 are different from the other digits – that’s because the original number was “2020” and they had to get a different artist to paint the number 1.

The exhibit is expected to draw large crowds, so one must buy tickets online with a specific date and time for entry. Already reservations have come in from 48 states and 6 other countries! Not wanting to lose the opportunity to capitalize on this event, the suburban communities of Glen Ellyn and its neighbor, Wheaton, have decorated their downtown areas with festive “papel picado” (colorful banners of crepe paper with designs cut in them), large pots of colorful flowers (Frida Kahlo loved flowers, which figure prominently in her work) and by painting images of the artist on the windows of stores and restaurants.

This downtown Wheaton street is blocked off to traffic and tents have been erected to have outside seating for several restaurants. We didn’t eat outside because the weather was too hot! Note the colorful flower pots and “papel picado” crepe paper banners.

I have a good friend who lives in Wheaton and is a Spanish professor at the college, so after we toured the exhibit, we went to downtown Wheaton for lunch, where we saw several of these windows.

My friend Sandy and her husband taking a selfie in front of one of the windows.
This pizzeria is across the street from the restaurant where we had lunch.

Frida Kahlo was born in Coyoacan, Mexico in 1907 to a German father and a Mexican mother. Her father was a photographer, so there are many photos of Frida and her family. At school, she was studying the prerequisites for medical school but in 1926, on her way home from school, the bus she was riding in was in a serious accident when it collided with another vehicle.

Frida’s drawing of the accident

Frida was thrown to the ground and suffered serious injuries from which she never fully recovered, in spite of having several surgeries. While in a body cast, she began to paint on it, thus initiating her career as an artist.

A replica of one of Frida’s body casts that she painted on.

She broke her pelvic bone, and fractured her back in three places, the result of which she was almost always in pain, and was not able to birth a child.

At the age of 20, she married the famous muralist Diego Rivera, and spent time in New York, San Francisco, and Detroit, where he had commissions to paint murals. Diego said of Frida that she was a better painter than he was! Anyone who sees the beauty of her subjects, and the intricate details and symbolism in her paintings would tend to agree!

Coincidentally, there’s a new biography out by Celia Stahr, called Frida in America. I highly recommend it to anyone interested in knowing more about Frida Kahlo and her work. Several of her works, mainly those painted while she lived in the United States, are featured in the book.

February Love Me

Yikes! I have a few days to catch up for Paula’s February Love Me challenge! Here are 3 more, in no particular order…

Feb. 6: I love…ice cream! Even though it is winter, and quite cold here, I can’t resist the temptation of ice cream once in a while!

Ice cream in France

Feb. 7: I love…art. I love to visit art museums whenever I can as well as do my own artwork! I just finished the book Frida in America by Celia Stahr, a new biography of Mexican artist Frida Kahlo focusing on her years in the United States with her husband, Diego Rivera. While reading the book, I explored her artwork on line and, although I was quite familiar with her work, I discovered a lot of her paintings I hadn’t known about before. I also love mural art wherever I find it – and usually stop what I’m doing to take a picture!

Claude Monet, Bordighera, 1884, oil on canvas; exhibition at Chicago Art Institute, Oct. 2020
My artwork: Painted Bunting, sharpie and pastels on construction paper, January 2020

Feb. 8: I love…traveling. Anyone who reads my blog even occasionally knows how traveling is absolutely the thing I love most to do! And while traveling, I engage in one of my favorite hobbies, photography, and when I come back, I engage in another favorite activity, writing (or blogging). Below is a gallery random sample of travel photos from 2018-2019. There are no travel photos from 2020 due to not being able to travel during the pandemic! I have two international trips booked for 2022 and hopefully we can do a road trip in the fall of this year.

CFFC: Dark Red

Cee’s fun Foto challenge continues with a color theme. This week is dark red including maroon and burgundy.

bathroom décor at a wedding venue, Chicago
ceiling in bathroom at a wedding venue, Chicago
Field of flowers, Israel
Light show at Abu Simbel, Egypt
Lightscape 2019, Chicago Botanic Gardens
Seussian field of fake flowers, Chicago Botanic Gardens
Painting by Malangatana, Art Institute of Chicago
Red leaves, park in St. Charles, IL
Mural on the side of a law firm building, Geneva (?), IL
Dahlia
Painting by Edouard Manet, Musee d’Orsay, Paris

Carol’s Cheerful Selfie Challenge #1

Carol Carlisle at Light Words has started a new challenge – posting selfies! This is how she introduced the challenge:

CCSC is an opportunity to share a photograph you have taken, that you were in somewhere. Maybe even by accident, or intentional. There are all kinds of selfies, the simplest is getting in the way of the camera. I’ve given up trying to get out of the way when attempting a window photograph.  Of course there’s where your toes get in the way.

Anything Counts as a Selfie as long as you’re the one holding the camera. Some examples of Selfies and why you take them:

  1. A photo of you doing something special. Boy I’m proud
  2. Creating a memory. I was here doing this…
  3. A photo of you in a mirror ( hair cut, new hat, should I get this dress?
  4. An image where you only catch part of yourself (my toes get in flower shots more then I want.) sometimes it’s cute
  5. Photo with you and one other person even a whole group of friends (screen shots of zoom groups count )
  6. Just your finger pointing something out.
  7. An I.D. Picture
  8. Selfie from archives are welcomed

The Prime Directive is HAVE FUN.

I am including an example of three types of selfies. The first is the “partial leg selfie.”

Accompanying my leg is my grandcat Freddy, June 2020

The next could be called “in a mirror darkly.” This was completely unintentional, but I kind of like how it turned out!

At an exhibit of artwork by Parisian art students,, Musee d’Orsay, Paris, June 2019

Finally, a “full face” selfie – this is my favorite selfie!

Standing in front of the Mediterranean Sea at Caesarea Maritima, Israel, January 2019

Thursday Doors: Cairo’s Islamic Art Museum

I am finding photos in my archives that I have never blogged about before, some suitable for Norm’s Thursday Doors challenge. We were on our own our last day in Cairo, because we were going to Israel to join up with a tour group there. On recommendation, we decided to go to the Museum of Islamic Art (MIA).

In 2014, there was a car bombing intended for the Cairo police headquarters across the street, which severely damaged the building’s façade, and destroyed over 20% of the museum’s artifacts. Personal photo of Gerard Ducher; link to license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5/deed.en .

The MIA in Cairo is considered one of the greatest in the world. It has an extensive collection of rare wood and plaster artifacts, as well as metal, ceramic, glass, crystal, and textile objects of all periods, from all over the Islamic world and representing different periods in Islamic history ranging from the 7th to the 19th centuries CE. The collection occupies 25 halls in 2 wings, one wing organized by period and the other organized by category. The MIA displays about 4,500 objects, but their total collection equals approximately 100,000 artifacts.

These photos represent only a small fraction of the items on display, but they were ones I found especially beautiful or significant. And, of course, featuring doors!

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Ceramic tiles from Iznik, decorated with floral ornamentation. Turkey – Ottoman Empire, 16th century CE.

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Ceramic tiles with under glazed decorations based on inscriptions, human, animal and floral motifs. Iran, 11th-15th century CE.

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Two table chests, made of wood inlaid with ivory. Turkey – Ottoman Empire, 18th century CE.

 

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Ceramic Mihrab with carved under glazed decoration. Iran, 14th century CE.

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Cabinet of painted wood, decorated with ceramic tiles. Egypt – Ottoman Empire, 17th century CE.

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This and photo below: Stucco façade in shape of a Mihrab. Egypt – Mamluk, 15th century CE. Marble portico. Egypt – Mamluk, 14th-15th century CE. Marble fountain. Egypt – Mamluk, 14th-15th century CE.

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Wooden door, assembled “tongue and groove,” inland with ivory, ebony, and bone. Egypt – Ottoman, 16th century CE.

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Marble door, decorated with floral and geometric designs; gift from the king of Afghanistan, 18th century CE.

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Wooden pulpit, (Minbar), brought from the mosque Tafar al-Higazlya, 1348-1360 CE. Egypt – Mamluk, 14th century CE.

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Wood plated door with copper revetment, bears the name of prince Shams al Din Sunqur al-Tawil-al-Mansuri. Egypt – Mamluk, 14th century CE.

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Ceramic tiles, painted under glaze. Egypt or Syria, Mamluk, 15th century CE.

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Information obtained from:
Wikipedia: Museum of Islamic Art, Cairo

 

 

 

 

Monday Window: Chagall

One of the “must-sees” at the Chicago Art Institute is the Chagall windows. They are located at the end of a long hallway, in the same room with replicas of other famous artists’ Chicago artwork (such as the Picasso sculpture whose original is in front of the Daley Center).

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Posted for Ludwig Keck’s Monday Window challenge.

Lens-Artists #67 – Candid at the Louvre

I took this photo last June at the Louvre in Paris, at the meeting spot for our family group of four after a couple of hours roaming around individually. It’s not particularly complimentary to them, and I think maybe my son saw me taking it since he is looking right at the camera, but it’s a candid shot nonetheless. The person on my son’s left is just a random stranger.
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Posted for Lens-Artists’ photo challenge #67 – Candid.