art-disent-fr.html
  • Oscar Niemeyer & Clouds
    The Curves of Time - (about Clouds)
    Oscar Niemeyer Memoirs– 1998
    Excerpt from the Trois Traces d’Oscar catalogue (2006) - English version by Jacques Benoit

     

    Besides, observing the clouds
    remains my favorite hobby when I travel,
    my mind on the watch, trying to decipher
    in their shapes an omen of
    some happiness to come.

    One day I saw something in these clouds
    still more breathtaking.
    One could make out a beautiful woman
    with a pink complexion, as if
    she had been painted by Renoir.
    Her oval face, her generous chest, her flat stomach
    and her long legs mingled
    to the white of the clouds in the sky.

    For a while I gazed at her completely
    in awe, filled with the fear that
    Suddenly she might vanish away.

    But the those summer afternoon’s winds
    were friend to me, and for a long while
    she just hovered and floated there,
    gazing at me from afar, as if she invited
    me to follow her and to play with her
    up there, in the clouds.

     

     

     

     

     

    Finally my fears were sound, as bit by bit,
    my sweetheart began to dilute into thin air,
    her arms outstretched reaching out in despair,
    her breasts soaring up to the heights
    and detaching from her body,
    her long legs coiling in spirals,
    as if she refused that she must leave me.

    Her alarmed and sad eyes solely
    continued to stare at mine, growing bigger and bigger,
    while a large and heavy cloud appeared
    and took her away from me.

    For a while I stood there, restlessly
    following with my eyes her struggle against
    the enfolding clouds and the raging winds
    that tore her apart mercilessly
    in annihilation.

    It was then that I realized that I had been a witness,
    through this evilish metamorphosis,
    to a metaphor of our own destiny.

    Because, like this beautiful lady in the clouds,
    we are doomed to be born, to grow up, to fight,
    to die and to disappear -forever.

    Oscar Niemeyer

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

art-disent-fr.html
© Jacques Benoit. Design, œuvres, photographies et textes par Jacques Benoit et placés sous son copyright. Les contenus provenant d'autres sources sont crédités comme tel, ainsi que leur origine.
© Jacques Benoit. Design, works, photographies and texts by Jacques Benoit and under the author’s copyright. Except when derived from other sources and then mentioned as such.