The Ultimate Resource For Learning Everything About Portuguese & Brazilian Culture
August 23, 2011 Leave a comment
Here is a beautiful installation by graffiti artist JR in Brazil. This group effort is part of a larger project to document the lives of women living in poverty worldwide. JR is the name of a photographer and artist whose identity is unconfirmed.
August 22, 2011 Leave a comment
I first learned about Vik Muniz, the highly successful New York-based Brazilian artist, when I saw Waste Land, the documentary about Muniz that won the Public Award in the Sundance Independent Film Festival and shows his work with garbage pickers in Jardim Gramacho, the largest landfill of Rio de Janeiro….
From the website for Waste Land:
“Vik Muniz was born into a working-class family in Sao Paulo, Brazil in 1961. As a young man he was shot in the leg whilst trying to break up a fight. He received compensation for his injuries and used this money to fund a trip to New York City, where he has lived and worked since the late 1980s.”
“Often working in series, Vik has used dirt, diamonds, sugar, string, chocolate syrup and garbage to create bold, witty and often deceiving images drawn from the pages of photojournalism and art history.”
Muniz's portrait of brazilian musician Seu Jeorge, made with cut-out circles from magazine pages
Filmed over three years, Lucy Walker's "Waste Land" follows renowned artist Vik Muniz as he journeys from his home base in Brooklyn to his home country of Brazil, and to Jardim Gramacho, the world's largest garbage dump located on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro. There Muniz photographs an eclectic band of catadores - pickers of recyclable materials - and then works with them to "paint" their portraits using garbage. The resulting collaboration is a powerful and moving story of people, art and the human spirit.
From KQED:
“An estimated 3,000 to 5,000 people, known as catadores, live in Jardim Gramacho dump, while 15,000 derive their income from activities related to it. Some Gramacho residents come from families who have been working there for three generations. Muniz was surprised to meet the community of people who scavenge the refuse of Rio to make a living.”
And then today I saw THIS picture in NYT Magazine…
From Muniz's "Birds of a Feather"
From the NYT Article:
“One July afternoon, a truck full of paper cranes arrived at the Brooklyn studio of Vik Muniz, a Brazilian-born artist known for building images from unconventional materials like diamonds, spaghetti and dust. “I was like, ‘Where are you going to put all these?’” he says. The birds had traveled a long way. After the Japanese earthquake in March, the nonprofit Bezos Family Foundationinvited children to mail origami cranes to the Seattle headquarters of its Students Rebuild program. Each would trigger a $2 donation, up to $200,000. The group received more than 2 million and doubled the donation. Last week, Muniz made a mosaic of a giant crane from smaller ones, for a fund-raising poster. “It’s alchemic,” he said. “The idea worked because everyone wanted to help.”
August 10, 2011 Leave a comment
What does the world’s largest stop-motion video made with Post-its look like? It looks something like this massive mural made with over 350,000 of the colorful sticky notes and carefully “animated” over five months.
As part of an advertising campaign for Melissa, a new shoe store in Sao Paulo, Brazil, the shoe brand partnered up with 3M to get 350,000 Post-its to create an animated stop motion video — the largest one to ever use so many sticky notes.
With a theme of “the power of love,” the public was invited to leave their own love messages on the Post-its while the animators worked vigorously to move the notes around to create an animation.
What the 25 animators end up with is a colorful animation that features elephants, balloons, flowers, and all sorts of hypnotic patterns that have a pixelated aesthetic. I might not be a shoe freak, but I love Post-its and this video is mesmerizing.
As a bonus, you can see the behind-the-scenes/making of the Post-it stop motion video here.
August 10, 2011 Leave a comment
I was introduced to Britto about 5 years ago while I was still living in Miami, and even though he had not yet become a household name, I remember it being extremely obvious at the time that this guy was going big or going home. For one thing, Romero Britto’s art just screams to be marketed, as it has been…extensively:
Absolut Britto
His style is simple, unique, joyful, appealing, easily identifiable, it’s a brand. Today Britto’s influence is ubiquitous. You almost can’t pass a luggage store or an airport terminal anymore without seeing the Brazilian artist’s work showcased somewhere. And you certainly can’t walk the streets of Brazil anymore without seeing a menagerie of Britto forgeries being sold as “originals” by street vendors (tourists love them). His work is just so replicable!
Romero Britto's NYC Apple
August 2, 2011 1 Comment
Here are some really cool old photos of Brazil that I had never seen before. Enjoy!…
Copacabana in the '60's
an old view of rua 25 de Março - today the busiest street for shopping in São Paulo
Corcovado, antes de ter o Cristo Redentor - Corcovadowhere christ the redeemer was built....back then, a bar.
albert einstein in brazil
the brazilian capital city Brasília in 1958
The National Congress of Brazil in Brasília, under construction.
construction of Christ the Redeemer
old photo of Pão de Açúcar (Sugarloaf Mountain) in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
a young Silvio Santos (owner of Brazilian TV channel SBT and one of the richest men in Brazil today))
Lula and Fernando Henrique (both were Brazilian presidents) handing out pamphlets together
July 14, 2011 1 Comment
The story of Ayrton Senna is so amazing! I just love this guy, he had such a good heart! I can’t wait to see this!
Ayrton Senna: Drive fast, leave sparks
AT THE time of his death at age 34, Ayrton Senna da Silva was already being called one of the greatest Formula One drivers of all time, if not the greatest. A three-time world champion, he was known for his effortless grace and precision on the road, and his baffling knack for racing in the rain. He also looked like a movie star. It’s no wonder that Asif Kapadia, a BAFTA-winning British filmmaker, chose him for a documentary subject.
Senna was a passionate figure, charismatic and full of bravado. He believed zealously in both God and Brazil. Born to a wealthy family in São Paulo, to whom he remained devoted, he was also a generous philanthropist during a particularly miserable economic time for the country. Millions of people attended his funeral (making his the country’s biggest), and Brazil honoured him with three days of mourning. He was also quite vocal about improving the rules and safety standards of Formula One. But it took his death and that of Roland Ratzenburg—both at Italy’s 1994 San Marino Grand Prix—for the sport to get safer. The changes made a difference. Senna was the last Formula One driver to have died on the track.
July 14, 2011 2 Comments
Thanks Deep Brazil for digging up these old postcards depicting the evolution of Florianoplis, Santa Catarina. I loved seeing these, I recognize these spots from when I used to live there!
Bridge Hercílio Luz, one of the biggest suspension bridge in the world, under construction, probably 1925
The Public Market in the 40s
Decade of 1950. First buildings
Decade of 1960
Beginning of the decade of 1970
Rowing competition, beginning of the decade of 1970
July 9, 2011 Leave a comment
Hey, that’s awesome! The mythic Bob Dylan went to Brazil to paint favelas, of course, and who knows what else. Not sure about quality of the paintings (or whether that matters, really). Now the “Brazil Series” is in exhibition at the Denmark National Gallery.
Bob Dylan’s new series reflects the settings and people he came across in Brazil. Here, we find depictions of everyday scenes in cities and in the country. Wine growers, gypsies, politicians, gamblers, and gangsters. A motley collection of motifs and subject matter that accentuates the artist’s fascination with the diversity of Brazil. The works appear almost like anthropological records, shorn of any romantic sentiments, preconceptions, or social commentary. The motif itself, its compositional potential, and the underlying narrative would appear to be the features that most interest the artist.
*Sources: http://museumpublicity.com/2010/08/16/bob-dylan-exhibition-at-the-national-gallery-of-denmark/
July 9, 2011 Leave a comment
*Sources: http://pigsinmaputo.blogspot.com/2010/10/things-people-ask-because-you-are.html?ref=nf
June 22, 2011 Leave a comment
MASP stands for Museu de Arte de São Paulo (São Paulo Museum of Art) and it is located on 1578 Paulista Ave. in São Paulo. It is undoubtedly one of the trademarks of the city. It is a 1968 concrete and glass structure designed by architect Lina Bo Bardi.
The building’s most distinctive feature is the 243 ft (74 meters) freestanding space between two lateral beams that support the concrete “box”, as if it were hanging in the air. It is a remarkable symbol of modern Brazilian architecture. The museum is a non-profit institution founded in 1947 by media mogul Assis Chateaubriand and Pietro Maria Bardi, an Italian native who was the museum’s curator for 45 years.
MASP houses more than 8,000 pieces of Western, Brazilian, African and Asian art, among other works of art. It also has one of the largest art libraries in Brazil.
Visiting hours are Tuesday through Sunday from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. and Thursdays from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Admission is R$15.00 except on Tuesdays when admission is free. Admission is also free for children under 10 and senior citizens over 60. For more information, you can check their website at www.masp.art.br. Enjoy!
*Sources: http://www.theportugueseblog.com
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