BEAUTY: Photography--Henri Prestes

A dim world of fog. Henri Prestes photographs his village in Portugal in winter and the results are arresting...

https://henriprestesp.com/

Palácio Chiado, Lisbon

A new restaurant in Lisbon, Portugal is housed inside a stunning, painstakingly restored, ancient palace. Palácio Chiado boasts six restaurants featuring seven different, distinct types of cuisine (including a tapas bar, and a charcuterie with meat and cheese pairings), two Bars (the Dawn Bar and the Junot bar), and a pastry shop! The website explains:

Once upon a time there was an elegant Palace, built in 1781, where the aristocracy and bons vivants danced, enjoyed lavish banquets and admired new works of art. A different Palace, with its graceful architecture and its history and experience, that hosted a number of irreverent figures associated with curious expressions in Portuguese, such as “farrobodó” and “à grande e à francesa”.

Quintela Palace has been reborn in the hands of three partners who realised that it was a unique business opportunity, where they could develop an original concept never before attempted in the capital. It was a challenging and lengthy project due to a number of conditioning factors, taking more than a year and a half to be completed, supported by excellent partnerships.
The first priority was to restore the paintwork and stained glass, maintaining the original characteristics, remaining true to the palace’s historical past. The architect, Frederico Valsassina, conceived a design in which classical and modern are harmoniously combined. The decoration was designed by the architect Catarina Cabral, who sought pieces in a restrained and timeless style to be integrated into the atmosphere of the palace without overwhelming the grandeur of its details and frescos.

Renovation is the key-word when talking about Palácio Chiado. In September of 2018, Palácio Chiado goes under a few refurbishment works and reopens in October, with new gastronomic concepts, albeit with the same diversity and originality it has always had. With exquisite gastronomic and artistic curatorships, this is the FOOD & ART spot of Lisbon.

After you ogle the flying lion, take a look at the video at the bottom for a peek at the extensive renovation process!

http://palaciochiado.pt/en/

"Éden"

For our last day of Pride Month, here is a lovely short film, "Éden," by Portuguese filmmaker Fabio Freitas.

"Genesis 2:8 "And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and there he put the man whom he had formed". In this story, João (Nuno Pardal) and Pedro (Pedro Sousa Loureiro) live in this garden. What João wants the most is for Pedro to be happy and the only way he found to make that happen is to support him in his escape with Sara (Sara Barros Leitão). On the other hand, Pedro learned how to love João and does not want to leave the garden. But one of them ate the forbidden fruit."

http://www.eden-movie.com/

BEAUTY: Interior Design--A Cevicheria by Antonio Martins

Interior designer Antonio Martins designed a fantastic little restaurant in Lisbon, Portugal called A Cevicheria. Specializing in seafood, the restaurant sports a whimsical, giant octopus in the central dining area. The iron doors with laser cut images of fish and fowl are reminiscent of an Escher print. And I love how Martins used a blue and white color palette which not only evokes the sea but also references the azulejos, traditional Portuguese tin-glazed ceramic tiles which are always in blue and white...

https://www.facebook.com/ACevicheriaChefKiko/
http://www.antoniomartins.com/

BEAUTY: Installation--Joana Vasconcelos

From the website for Joana Vasconcelos' installation at the current Venice Biennale (through November 24th, 2013):

"The Portuguese artist Joana Vasconcelos is a commentator on the real. She investigates the present through a critical reading of Western mythologies and iconographies. She explores mainstream values, habits, and customs in order to examine personal and collective identity with respect to gender, class, and nationality. Her practice involves appropriating familiar objects and images and meticulously re-elaborating them, often calling upon artisanal techniques affiliated with female labor and employing craft-related materials such as textiles and tin-glazed ceramic tiles.

Trafaria Praia is Vasconcelos's proposal for the Participation of Portugal at the 55th International Art Exhibition – la Biennale di Venezia. Her project addresses the historical relationship between Portugal and Italy, which evolved through trade, diplomacy, and art. Lisbon and Venice have many commonalities; both cities played key roles in broadening the European worldview during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, redefining the imago mundi by establishing networks between East and West. Trafaria Praia looks at the contemporary contact zone between the two cities by examining three fundamental aspects they share: water, navigation, and the vessel.

Vasconcelos constructs an allegorical correspondence between an iconic Lisbon ferryboat, the cacilheiro, and the picturesque Venetian vaporetto.

Vasconcelos has brought to Venice an actual cacilheiro, the Trafaria Praia, and is presenting it as the Portuguese pavilion. Vasconcelos is also presenting the Trafaria Praia as her art. Informed by Marcel Duchamp's 'assisted readymade,' she has changed the object without removing its functionality. On the outside of the ship, from prow to stern, she applies a large-scale panel of azulejos (tin-glazed, blue and white, hand-painted ceramic tiles) that reproduces a contemporary view of Lisbon's skyline, from the Bugio Tower to the Vasco da Gama Tower. The work takes its inspiration from another large-scale panel of azulejos, the Great Panorama of Lisbon, which depicts the city before the legendary earthquake of 1755 and is a quintessential expression of the baroque-style golden age of azulejo production in Portugal. Vasconcelos has made other works that involve covering objects in azulejos; in doing this she evokes the material's frequent deployment in architecture.

On the ship's deck is an environment made of textiles and light. This also echoes past works by Vasconcelos, such as Contamination (2008–10) and the series Valkyries (2004–ongoing), in which organic, often colorful forms hanging from the ceiling interact with the surrounding architectural elements. This new work consists of a complex medley of blue-and-white fabrics all over the ceiling and walls, from which crocheted pieces, intertwined with LEDs, emerge to create a compelling effect. The installation suggests a surreal, womblike atmosphere or the deep ocean—something out of Jules Verne's TWENTY THOUSAND LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA, perhaps, or the Bible story of Jonah and the Whale. It envelops visitors, eliciting both an intellectual and a sensorial response."

http://www.vasconcelostrafariapraia.com/en/home/
http://www.labiennale.org/en/Home.html

Unique Bookstores

Above: The entrance and an interior view of Shakespeare and Co. in Paris, France, just steps from Notre Dame. On my very first trip to Europe in 1986, I visited the legendary Shakespeare and Co. bookstore intending to buy a book. Having just spent a week in London with a friend, I suddenly found myself on my own in Paris so when I came across a very old hardback copy of Dickens' A TALE OF TWO CITIES, it seemed to be the perfect purchase from the bookstore, and the perfect souvenir of my trip. When I approached the front to buy, I was excited to see that the equally legendary George Whitman, owner and grand-nephew of poet Walt Whitman, was manning the counter. He was annoyed that someone--presumably not him--had taken it upon themselves to mark the book down from 35 francs to 30 francs. For a moment, I worried that he thought I had done it myself in an effort to cheat him out of five francs, but he stamped my book with the "Shakespeare and Company Kilometer Zero Paris" stamp anyhow (seen below), took my money and I was on my way. (The stamp refers to the fact that the store is located at the "Kilometre Zero" spot, a spot which is considered to be the center of Paris and the center of the country really, the starting point from which all distances in France are measured.)

Below: George Whitman

Above: Two views of The Selexyz Bookstore in Maastricht, Holland which is in an old Dominican church. The coffee shop (in the second image, seen from above) located on the altar features a little visual pun: a communal dining table in the shape of a cross!



Above: The entrance to the Lello Bookstore in Porto, Portugal. One would think it is also a converted church, but it was designed and built in 1906 to be a bookstore. Designed in a Neo-Gothic style, it features a beautiful, double floating staircase seen in the following three images below.

Below: The El Ateneo Bookstore in Buenos Aires used to be a theater, in case you couldn't tell...