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| Our ferry across to Buenos Aires--Francisco |
I will have to say, I was a little sad this morning to leave the lovely city of Montevideo behind and all the wonderful people. I felt like I barely got to know it when it was time to go. BUT...
We toyed with the idea of flying back to Montevideo, but there were two other choices, both cheaper. One was the bus and that is a longer but very economical option if you don't have time constraints at all. An option which is amazingly no more time consuming that flying and much cheaper is BUQUEBUS. In the summer, you probably need to arrive at the port of Montevideo to catch this passenger and car ferry a couple of hours in advance, but in the winter, like now, it's fine to show up about an hour in advance to go through customs for BOTH Uruguay and Argentina at the same juncture and load your luggage. We went first class, but other than sitting in the front of the boat, a bit less crowd, and a welcome glass of champagne, I didn't see the advantage and tourist class is considerably cheaper. We did have a nice view of the departure, passing huge container ships and eventually the Buenos Aires skyline..
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| Hola, Buenos Aires! |
It is a short ride by taxi to downtown where we settled into the Hotel Panamericano where it costs $5 to get a pair of undies laundered (I kid you not.) This is the first hotel for our eclipse trip and we came a day early. The hotel is exceptionally nice and is well located across from Teatro Colon, the most famous theater in South America.
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| Welcome home to Hotel Pan Americano. but do your laundry before you arrive! |
After a brief respite, we decided to go to the home and gallery of the late Argentinian abstract artist, Xul Solar. We named our cat after him, even before we knew much about the artist himself. But for those unfamiliar, my husband says he reminds him of a visual artist's parallel to Sun Ra, the jazz artist. He was born inBuenos Aires Province, in the bosom of a cosmopolitan family. His father, Elmo Schulz Riga, of Baltic German origin, was born in the Latvian city of Riga, at that time part of Imperial Russia. His mother, originally from Italy, was named Agustina Solari. He was educated in Buenos Aires, first as a musician, then as an architect (although he never completed his architectural studies). After working as a schoolteacher and holding a series of minor jobs in the municipal bureaucracy, on April 5, 1912, he set out on the ship "England Carrier", supposedly to work his passage to Hong Kong, but he disembarked in London and made his way to Turin. He returned to London to meet up with his mother and aunt, with whom he traveled to Paris, Turin (again), Genoa, and his mother's native Zoagli. Over the following few years, despite the onset of World War I, he would move among these cities, as well as Tours, Marseille, and Florence; towards the end of the war he served at the Argentine consulate in Milan.In 1916, Schulz Solari first signed his work "Xul Solar,” ostensibly for the purposes to simplify the phonetics of his name, but an examination of the adopted name reveals that the first name is the reverse of "lux,” which means "light" in Latin. Combined with "solar", the name reads as "the light of the sun", and demonstrates the artist's affinity for the universal source of light and energy.[1] His father's name "Schulz" and "Xul" are pronounced the same in Spanish.(Not really, but close.) Solar's paintings are mainly sculptures, often using striking contrasts and bright colours, typically in relatively small formats. His visual style seems equidistant between Wassily Kandinsky and Paul Klee on the one hand and Marc Chagall on the other. He also worked in some extremely unorthodox artistic media, such as modifying pianos, including a version with three rows of keys.
Xul Solar was an interesting guy with a great artistic talent, definitely ahead of his time, and his work is interesting a beautiful. He had an interest in all mysterious things such as astrology, tarot, religions, etc. We thoroughly enjoyed the museum and think if anyone is in Buenos Aires--GO THERE!
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| Did Xul Solar go to Knoxville and paint the 1982 World's Fair Golden Golf Ball? |
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| Since Paul has a cat named Xul Solar, I had to photo the pirate observing cat-like critters of Xul Solar's work. |
After a sojourn in this very fine museum (with a crazy good small gift shop!), we were off to dinner at Chila.(rated in the top 50 Latin American restaurants.) The serve a tasting menu and it is in fact insane. It is haute cuisine gone wild. We had wine pairiings. The service was great as well.
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| Mushrooms cooked tableside on hot stones in a mushroom broth |
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| Dessert of sorbets |
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| Chocolate cake in an edible dulce de leche box. |
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| My mate drinks mate' |
For a transit day, it doesn't get much better. Much enjoyed by all.
"I am a world champion of a game that nobody yet knows called panchess (Panajedrez). I am master of a script that nobody yet reads. I am creator of a technique, of a musical grafía that allows the piano to be studied in a third of the usual time that it takes today. I am director of a theatre that as yet has not begun working. I am creator of a universal language called panlingua based on numbers and astrology that will help people know each other better. I am creator of twelve painting techniques, some of them surrealist, and others that transpose a sensory, emotional world on to canvas, and that will produce in those that listen a Chopin suite, a Wagnerian prelude, or a stanza sung by Beniamino Gigli. I am the creator, and this is what most interests me at the moment, apart from the exhibition of painting that I am preparing, of a language that is desperately needed by Latin America.”
Xul Solar
Paul's Ponderings: This was quite a varied day.....we had a nice ride on the ferry to start, sadly saying goodbye for now to Montevideo. After arrival and a bit of shuffling around we headed to Xul Solar, the great artist from Argentina we found at a museum in San Diego a year or two ago and whom we now have a cat named after. From the view of jazz, he's someone I would compare a bit to Sun Ra, although he was not a musician Very cosmic stuff from a drawing view but he also invented his own languages and more. The paintings are pretty compelling and speak to you in a way that still is relevant. Too bad he didn't get more appreciation in his lifetime.
After that it was off to a crazy great tasting menu at Chila...a contrast to Araumburu from a few days ago. Looking forward to more great times ahead here.
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