A AUSÊNCIA (THE ABSENCE)

At the end of 2012, I was listening almost exclusively to The Absence album,
by the musician and jazz singer Melody Gardot.
Her music accompanied me when Oscar Niemeyer passed away.
Except for the very day when the architect said goodbye to this world, that is when Nenia,
by Italian jazzman and trumpeter Paolo Fresu, played coincidentally on my CD player.
Rarely, the soul of a piece of music ever matched so perfectly the circumstances.

The death of Oscar Niemeyer gave birth to a polyptych.
Gardot’s music was the cradle for this birth.
Gardot tinged the compositions of The Absence with the colors of Portugal and Brazil.
It is probably by pure chance that the paintings evoking Niemeyer’s passing came
to my mind as Gardot’s Lisboa was flowing in my ears. Pure chance, again, that Lisboa
happened to be a love song addressed to the capital of a country that once approached
the shores of a new world, this world becoming known as Brazil then after.
The capital of which became Brasilia afterwards, at the dawn of the Sixties.
It must be undisputedly by pure chance that this love song
for the capital of Portugal inspired some paintings dedicated to the capital of Brazil
and its architect. Pure chance again that Lisboa begins under
some church bells’ sound - the bells of some cathedral, perhaps ?
Finally, it is certainly only by pure chance again that the last brush strokes to my painting
A Ausência (The Absence) were given when the very last notes and words of Gardot’s album
last track Iemanja played :

"I wanted to stay, I gotta go, but I’m coming back one day"

I have no idea whether Oscar Niemeyer will be coming back one day.
But anyway, in order to be back, you must have been gone first.
And just look at his master work, everywhere that it is.
It proves that he never left us.

March of 2013

Photography: Jacques Benoit / Excerpt of Oscar Niemeyer's 2004 filming in Rio for the project of documentary film Brasilia. Travel Towards Dawn > See "Brasilia Background"