About a hundred years ago, I had a blog, which I kept up until the Special Operation on the Blogosphere by the United Federation of Facebook and the Twitter. Some people even remember it.
In my blog, I used to catalogue the people and things of Portugal (and take the piss, sorry, I was a bit miffed back then). I’ve always meant to get back to doing more of that cataloguing in a consistent way, but work and life often get in the way, that and my extraordinary ability to get sidetracked. Most of what I do these days is motion graphics (a. because I love it and b. because the illustration industry is a husk of what it was… maybe I’ll tell you about it one day) and if you know anything about motion graphics, you’ll know that it takes all your time and all your attention.
HOWEVER
However, sometimes, I get inspired to returning to draw all this (waves hand around head), especially since things have changed quite a bit since the early 2000s and my good old blog (it’s 19 years since I started blogging!), and because, last night, we went to the launch of the re-edition of João Abel Manta’s “Portuguese Caricatures from the Salazar Years” a full collection, in full colour, of his of cartoons from the 70s about those Salazar years. Good cartoonists always inspire me.
I took a while to appreciate Manta, but then one day, a good while ago, I got him. Look him up, if you are not Portuguese. The essence of his drawing style, as well as the caricatures themselves, encapsulates a certain Portuguese aesthetic. I love it.
The book launch was in Campo Grande and Campo Grande is where Lisbon University has its campus, and where, at certain times of the year, can be found gangs of these little sods (see above) hazing (praxe) first years. It’s a vile practice, even in the fact that you can choose to be praxed or not… having to choose to be the in or the out group and all that bullshit. Don’t imagine that this garb they wear is a university uniform or anything… it’s a self-imposed uniform that make the boys look like they’re trying out for the sixth form at Hogwarts, and the girls like they’re applying for the position of secretary to Doctor Evil.
They always give me the impression that they are lacking something in their lives… I don’t know what… a sense of self? taste in shoes?
(I have missed writing, too). Laters, hopefully.
3 thoughts on “Cataloguing ugly shoes”
Ola
Ah yes the capas negras…. it used to be a sort of uniform for univerity dudes way back in the day when only guys attended the university. They’d were a suit as everuone dis and then a cape because it was a hell of a lot cheaper than coat.
Anyway, times change and the suits become less of a social demand, weman go to higher learning schools, bla- bla, and these days the black suit and cape a just a symbol of the academic or student association aka “the in crowd”.
Long and forgotem go the Salazar days when the capas negras de Coimbra were a synonim os rebels against the system. I bet Manta probably has some drawings of that.
Ah yes the capas negras…. it used to be a sort of uniform for univerity dudes way back in the day when only guys attended the university. They’d were a suit as everyone did and then a cape because it was a hell of a lot cheaper than a coat.
Anyway, times change and the suits become less of a social demand, women go to higher learning schools, bla- bla, and these days the black suit and cape a just a symbol of the academic or student association aka “the in crowd”.
Long and forgotem go the Salazar days when the capas negras from Coimbra were a synonim os rebels against the system. I bet Manta probably has some drawings of that.
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