AboutEverythingElse

Elsa Peretti :: photo by Duane Michals :: Vogue, 1974

Elsa Peretti is perhaps the greatest responsible for the contemporary image of Tiffany & Co. Since her first collection for the brand in 1974, the Italian designer has been creating beautiful objects and jewelry that are characterized by an organic simplicity and an unmistakable formal elegance – attributes that have kept her work among the best sellers of the company over the past 40 years.

Born in Florence in 1940, Elsa revealed her creative, curious and free spirit in a very early age. Daughter of a magnate of the oil industry, while still young she distanced herself from her conservative parents to spend time in Switzerland, and teach Italian and ski. Back in Italy, she graduated in interior design in Rome and, after breaking her engagement, moved to Milan and began working with the architect Dado Torrigiani. In the following year, 1963, she moved to Barcelona and began her career as a model, and plunged into the fascinating world of Catalan artists and architects – in particular Gaudi, a declared influence to her. Fascinated by the sculptural forms, she traveled to Japan and Hong Kong to immerse in Asian art and symbolism; finally, in 1968, she emigrated to the United States and went to live in New York (according to her, the best place to enjoy one’s youth at that time).

When walking the runways for Halston, Sant’ Angelo and De La Renta, Elsa noticed her special interest in the design of jewelry and accessories. With her somewhat rebellious personality, refined esthete perception and proximity to the fashion world, she quickly realized that the language that was emerging in clothing design (characterized by the combination of comfort, practicality and sensuality) should also permeate dressing accessories. Then she began her wax modeling work with abstract, simple and organic shapes inspired by the forms of nature; later, by dipping them in silver, she created beautiful pieces, attractive because of their clean and innovative design and their superb execution. Only 5 years separated her first necklace creation to her contract with Tiffany – and by the time the renowned jewelry brand launched her first collection, all her pieces of work were already sold out.

Elsa Peretti usually says that her work comes from her life. And there is no doubt that every one of her creations reflects her personality and the way she sees the world: her passion for nature, whose shapes she copies and then reinvents; her tireless curiosity, that moves her in search of various materials and production processes; her devotion to craftsmanship, that makes each creation the result of hard and investigative manual work; and her eternal rebellion that keeps the flame of questioning alive in her.

Even today, there is no model more perfect for Elsa Peretti’s creations than herself. Style (which, according to the designer herself, does not go with excesses), beauty, simplicity, competence, elegance and personality – to see, wear, admire and learn.

To learn more: http://elsaperettidesign.blogspot.com.br

PauBrasil :: Villa-Lobos Superstar

To my friends Marcos and Lucia

Heitor Villa-Lobos, as every great creator, began his work under the influence of the great masters of the style in his time (such as Wagner and Puccini), and then separated from the academic work and created his own innovative and very unique language.

By incorporating elements of folklore, popular music and the indigenous culture into instrumental music (solo, chamber and symphonic), Villa-Lobos embraced the most relevant issues of modernism, giving a new dimension to the so-called nationalist music, and putting Brazilian music in the world scene. And throughout his history, the composer never followed a linear path – he explored many stylistic possibilities and experimented with the most unusual combinations of instruments, always freely and in an evolving manner.

The Pau Brasil band, today made up of some of the greatest Brazilian musicians (Rodolfo Stroeter, Paulo Bellinati, Nelson Ayres, Ricardo Mosca and Teco Cardoso), has always aimed to find new ways to Brazilian instrumental music. Since it was created in 1979, the reinterpretation of genres and styles, and the combination of the traditional and the contemporary to create a “viscerally Brazilian” repertoire form an intrinsic part of its identity – which, along with its technical excellence, elegant performance and good taste in the definition of the repertoire – made this band a benchmark in Brazilian instrumental music, with international recognition.

Earlier this year, Pau Brasil released the outstanding CD ‘Villa-Lobos Superstar’ (in partnership with the string quartet Ensemble SP, and with the participation of Renato Braz in the vocals). With magnificent arrangements by Ayres and Bellinati, the CD brings a sensitive reinterpretation of works like the Bachianas Brasileiras No. 4 (Prelude and Tune) and No. 5 (full), in addition to several other songs, all of which in beautiful and moving interpretations. And the surprising inclusion of a string quartet in a traditional jazz band, combined with the inclusion of points of light created by the voice of Renato Braz, give this CD a Villa-Lobos-like language: innovative and unique.

By reinterpreting Villa-Lobos with such ability, Pau Brasil not only demonstrates knowledge of the composer’s work, but mainly carries it out as it states appreciation for history, reveals talent for innovation and reiterates its willingness to always evolve.

To learn more: http://www.grupopaubrasil.com.br

Mosaic :: BR Conspiration :: Fábio Galeazzo :: 2012

According to some historians, the first record of tiles in Brazil dates back to around 1620, when pieces of glazed ceramics from Portugal came to adorn the convent of Santo Amaro de Água Fria, in Olinda. Since then – whether for its strong representation of the metropolis’s culture, for its plastic beauty or for its thermal comfort characteristics (well suited to our climate) – the tile gained more and more space in Brazilian buildings. Initially present in panels of religious or government-owned buildings, in a few decades the beautiful pieces began to be imported not only from Portugal but also from France and the Netherlands (countries that produced their tiles with an important forma of artistic expression) and also began to serve as frontages of urban buildings.

Also in the late nineteenth century, Brazil started manufacturing the tile – but it was not before the beginning of the twentieth century that our production became regular. And although during that time some architects abandoned the use of this material (as a rejection of elements that represented the colonial period), the modern Brazilian movement, seeking to “combine tradition and modernity, and turn domestic and traditional materials into a bridge between the colonial and the modern”* (re)incorporated the tile to its architecture. Since then, the domestic tile has become a powerful artistic expression of our own culture, and depicted, along with geometric shapes, elements of our landscape, our wildlife and our flora.

Under this historical perspective, the tiles created by designer Fabio Galeazzo and now released by Azulejaria Brasil (Cerâmica Antigua) have gained even greater momentum. In a collection named Conspiração BR (BR Conspiracy, in a free translation), which consisted of 20 prints divided into four themes, Galeazzo rescues and revisits, with mastery, one of the most important elements of our architecture.

Galeazzo reveals deep knowledge, extreme sensitivity and an enormous capacity for innovation through his choice of format (15cm X 15cm, the most traditional in our production), his choice of themes (which range from Festa do Divino images to prints traditionally found in the Brazilian cheetah), and his assembly of the color palette, thus obtaining results of undeniable plastic beauty.

By combining technical and theoretical expertise, sensitivity and talent, Galeazzo proves that interior design can indeed be innovative and storytelling, playful and cultural – all at once, while providing beauty to the environment, pleasure to the eye and comfort to the soul.

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Arthur Bispo do Rosário :: ‘Manto da Apresentação’ :: sem data

It is assumed that Arthur Bispo do Rosario lived for about 80 years – no one knows the exact year of his birth. He spent 50 of these years as an intern at an old mental hospital in Rio de Janeiro called Juliano Moreira, being 25 continuous years until his death in 1989.

As a black man, grandson of slaves, poor and migrant, he tried to survive in Rio de Janeiro as a janitor, caretaker, building doorman, employee of a public utility company and bodyguard of politicians, until he was considered “a paranoid schizophrenic”. In a context marked by the rise of fascism – including Brazil, where the acting Brazilian League for Mental Hygiene took a hygienist, racist and xenophobic approach – he was subjected to lobotomy, electroshock and punishment by psychiatric methods that mutilated and excluded those who disturbed the order.

His work was made public, as a whole, only after his death – and revealed an immense artistic legacy of originality, profound thematic creativity and diversity of shapes and materials, bringing to light a previously unknown life whose understanding was based on art, not insanity.

Consciously appropriating of his exile as a way of facilitating self-expression, Bispo do Rosario created art out of any material resource he laid his hands on, irrefutably demonstrating man’s innate ability to create – in spite of difficulties of any nature: technical, material, theoretical knowledge or personal history. His hands made bottles, combs, coins, shoes, mugs, spoons, brooms, pieces of fabric (taken from sheets), sewing threads (for embroidery, taken from the inmates’ uniforms) leave their original purpose to become vehicles of his obsessive quest for ordainment, structure and rhythm of time and thought.

In the words of Louise Bourgeois, “Bispo do Rosario had the ability to take an object of his life of confinement and turn it into a symbolic object of his self-expression, mystery, beauty and freedom”. Coming across any of these objects is an experience invariably fraught with great emotion for its astonishing plastic beauty and the possibility of recognizing shapes, words and meanings that silently talk with the human soul, awakening universal feelings and existential questions.

Questions, yes. Because by looking inward, listening to his own soul and allowing himself to give vent to his creative essence even in the face of immense adversity, Bispo do Rosário yielded beauty and put himself in a time in history psychiatry will never reach. We then wonder where our eyes are turned to, what our ears are listening to and why, even when there is no adversity, we find ourselves reluctant to let forth the creative essence that each one of us carries, in a unique and singular way, inside of us.

P.S. 
In 1982, the Bispo do Rosario Museum of Contemporary Art was inaugurated in Rio de Janeiro – http://www.rioecultura.com.br/instituicao/instituicao.asp?local_cod=119

In 2007, CosacNaify published the beautiful book named “Arthur Bispo do Rosario – Seculo XX”, put together by Wilson Lazaro, with texts by Emanuel Araujo, Louise Bourgeois, Paulo Herkenhoff and Ricardo Aquino, currently out of print.

Xenon on Berlin’s Matthäikirche, 2001 © Jenny Holzer

Born in Ohio in 1950, Jenny Holzer is an artist who, over the past three decades, has been consolidating a beautiful and impressive work in the visual arts. In spite of her flirting with the abstract arts at the beginning of her career in the late 70’s, when she moved to New York, Holzer chose the word as the driving force of her work, and began to use non-conventional media such as billboards, LED panels and lighting projections to convey both dimensions that make up a word: form and content.

The texts used have different origins: many of them are her own writings, others are internationally known poems, others are even extracted from governmental documents. But Holzer uses this diversity to work in a single line, which speaks of universal values and establishes counterpoints that deeply touch us all: the public and the private, the political body and the physical body, the universal and particular.

More impressive, however, is Holzer’s counterpoint between form and content: we see, at one time, sensitivity and strength, gigantism and fluidity, frailty and perennity – all with a plastic result of unarguable beauty.

It is impossible to stand indifferent when faced with one of Holzer’s pieces of artwork. The strength of her words beautifully invades our eyes, our minds and our souls.

To learn more: www.jennyholzer.com
“ProtectProtect”, Jenny Holzer Exhibition at Whitney Museum, NYC, 2009 (video)