Monkeys in La Boca

 

Museo de Belles Artes Nacionale

The Museo de Belles Artes Nacionale has a great collection of Argentine art, with some nice pieces from other parts of Latin America. The rest of their collection is patchy and mostly mediocre. The full size plaster of Rodin`s Kiss. in the first room kind of sets the tone.  The plaster gave me a bit of a giggle, as did the bronze of Rodin`s Hand of God taking centre stage at the entrance to the collection. It`s a soccer joke, folks.  

The gallery allows photos without flash, but on the whole, the lighting in the Latin American section was too low for me to take any clear pictures of the works. Strangely, the lighting in the European is considerably brighter.  The above photo is of a work that actually did catch my attention in the European section…  Alas, I failed to record the details. From memory, it`s a 16th/17th century Spanish thingy.

 

Limitations of the body

I have flu.  Sore throat, aching body, sneezing, general blah.  I didn`t dance Wednesday, missed class this morning (Thursday), and despite an afternoon nap, am in no good shape to dance tonight.  If my Spanish was half decent I could watch documentaries on the tango channel on TV, but my Spanish is only barely functional. You have no idea how frustrating this is. The other night I turned on the tango channel after getting back from a milonga, and there was an interview with Alfredo Genovese. The images were fantastic, but I couldn`t understand any of the interview.  Arrghhhh..

I could of course use this as an opportunity to write an actual post about Tango In Buenos Aires, except the reason I haven`t written much about this so far is that its difficult for me to sift out what parts of my tango experience are meaningful to write about. Fuzzy-flu-head doesn`t help – so – tango experience post continues to be deferred. I`ll see if I can get it together this coming Sunday…

 

Jardin Japones

Japanese aesthetics, Buenos Aires style.

 

Cows on a stick

 

Futbol

Yes, Sundays are extremely quiet – unless there´s a soccer match on.  The Sunday after I arrived, at around 3pm, a game started at the football stadium about two kilometres away.  The fans were tuneful, passionate, and above all, loud.  Over the past twenty years I´ve lived next to three different football grounds in inner city Melbourne, but even on grand final day at the MCG, Aussi Rules fans sound like geriatric mice compared to Argentine soccer fans.

 

Just down the road from Salon Canning

Pugliese is a legendary tango composer/orquestra leader.

 

More street art

Most of the stenciling in BA seems to be either political, or includes wordplay on popular culture or advertising.

Mate is a traditional Argentine drink that´s served in a hollowed out gourd about the size of a cappucino cup.  It´s and drunk through a special metal straw and is prepared by stuffing the mate leaves into the gourd, and covering with hotwater.  Mate gives a caffiene kind of buzz, and tastes very bitter. Argentines love it.
 

San Cor is a manufacturor of dairy goods.  

 

Subte

The Buenos Aires underground has murals all over the place.  Some of the murals are lovely naive pieces, but most are slightly shonky reproductions of famous colonial-type paintings in the local galleries – glazed onto tile.  This one in the station near where I´m staying is Enormous.

 

Street art around the corner