The Times Suggests Lisboa

With a 36h trip.

Hamburgers, de Portuguese

The concept of hamburgers is a bit different on the continent. I just tried a new gourmet burger place called H3 in El Court Ingles. The gourmet options would have been familiar to an american, mushrooms, 'benedict' with egg and spinach and 'french' with foi grais. And then the next item on the menu would have thrown them, like it did me. That would be the option—the only one—that included putting the burger on a bun. Well focaccia actually. And that option wasn't combined with any of the interesting ones. A burger on a nun was exotic enough already! What isn't clear to me is how grilled ground beef, which is common in many cuisines, gets converted into something very consciously labeled an marketed as a hamburger while missing the basic elements necessary to achieve hamburgerness.

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Tobacco as a failure to culturally connect

I was sitting in kaffehaus eating brunch when an older gentleman, eating lunch with his wife and daughter, asked for piri-piri. They didn't have generic Portuguese hot sauce (piri-piri) but brought tobacco instead. Which would Have been a fine stand-in had the gentleman the. Proceeded to spray his food, his table and me with Tabasco. And then said nothing to me. No "Desculpa-me" or "Pardon". Nothing. Not a word. I then spent 10 minutes cleaning my iPad, jacket and pants of tobacco while my brunch got cold. A failure to culturally connect.

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Location:R. Anchieta,Lisbon,Portugal

Art @ Miro Foundation

Leon Kossoff: Head of Seedo
This pei e in grey and white and red paint is of a face, perhaps an old man. The technique is wonderful—paint layered and applied so thick that it looks like putty or clay. Viewed face on it loses it's dimensionality, but as you move obliquely the contours begin to dominate and you loose the face, as you do if you move to close.

Frank Auerbach executes something similar in EOW's Head on her Pillow III but I think it is less successful.

Raymond Moore produced some interesting composite photographs that play with reality and abstract ideas.

Kenneth Martin: Blue Tangle
This is a simple abstract Piece composed of some spiral forms that invoke the rose embedded in a larger circular 'tangle'. It evokes a response that i assume relates to it's effects on higher visual cortices.

If that begins to be about abstract effects producing visual 'experiences,' then Bridget Riley is all about it. She produces illusory contours onto of other repeated contours and plays with color and line spacing.

In Cataract 3 the effect produces an illusion of motion as you visual system attempts to integrate the information making the image shift and shimmer.

Anthony Caro: Lock
A giant pair of I-beam prices loosely tied together with a few bridging elements. very effective and modern.

Eduardo Palozzi: Mechanik Zero
A bronze man in abstract 'mechanical' form from '58. Feels very much a response to industrial mechanization.

Tony Ray-Jones produced interesting Pop-Art photography.

Calder's Mercury Fountain is amazing...

I really like Miro's textile and bronze works. Especially the found object sculptures and The Ladder of the Escaping Eye.


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Location:Avinguda del Marquès de Comillas,Barcelona,Spain