VIGÉSIMO PRIMEIRO LIVRO

ADDITIONS AND ALTERATIONS


Additions and alterations have always fascinated me. I like to work on other people's ideas - to continue them if l am sympathetic - to oppose them if I am not.


The proposal to add to the silently Neo Manueline Natural Sciences Museum consisted of a few new wings partially enclosing a space to be used as an outdoor room - a captive jungle.


At the Polana I built a bar like something out of Dr. Caligari's cabinet. It is a cockeyed box of surprises with dancing girls painted on one wall. To enter each patron Is contained for a moment in one of the two man-sized bottles, one of the sides of each bottle swings open to let you in. Those two bottles are my most ambiguous spaces. One is already inside but one is still outside. The air conditioning, in the bar reinforces that passage. There is no other way into the drunken box. The handles on the huge bottles' glass doors were cut out in brass and the mural of dancing girls is based on Klee's beautiful drawing of a Middle East dancer, out of which I had made drawings and a painting. The mural itself I painted with the help of a friend. The three dimensional geometric agitations of the walls were built out and etched with a different texture on each plane and the whole painted In earthy browns and greys reminiscent of Mappoga murals.


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