First Impressions: Sao Paulo
I like Sao Paulo a lot so far. Maybe because people told me that I would hate Sampa, and so I like it to be contrarian. (Though everyone told me that I'd love BA and it turned out I did, so I'm not contrarian in every case!) Sampa reminds me a lot of Tokyo - no semblance of city planning whatsoever, no real "skyline," just more buildings as far as the eye can see.
I was impressed, that on my first day just walking down Avenida Paulista, that I could take in so many art and design shows. Of course, there's MASP, the main museum with a lot of European art, but then continuing on I came across an exhibit of Argentine art at Centro Cultural Fiesp. Then at Itau Cultural, there was a sort of "current state of Brazilian art" show, that was truly mixed media (seems like most other exhibits I've seen so far in Rio and here have been painting-focused). Finally, I ended up at Centro Cultural Sao Paulo where there were a couple photography exhibits and the Bienal do Design of graphic design.
And boy, Paulistas love their concrete. I feel like, as they cleared out the rainforest to build their city, they wanted to have the most "built," non-natural environment possible. Concrete gets shaped into the most interestingly contoured buildings.
And even gets shaped into sculpture.
