Lake trasimeno via Instagram

If you thought Instagram was just a gimmicky way to make crap photos into good ones, think again. I’m a recent convert; very specifically, I converted last week when Kirsten Alana showed a group of us in an iphoneography workshop the amazing things she can do with her iPhone 4s. The take-home message was: if you think of your smartphone as a camera (and apply the same rules and rigour to it as you would to your Nikon), it is a camera. So at a weekend conference in Umbria, when the weather was variable and my free time limited, I used exclusively my smartphone – an HTC Desire – to take pictures. You be the judge.

Assisi

Assisi in black and white

Assisi’s medieval streets are charming, and even in the rain (it was raining here!) a flat photo can be made pretty using the right combination of apps. This was taken with the Android app Camera 360 in HDR mode, then imported into Instagram with the inkwell filter and frame.

HDR flowers

Conversely, any colour can be made into too much colour with the same apps and Kelvin filter.

The official measurements in Medieval Assisi

This is a really cool element on the wall of Assisi’s city hall equivalent: a diagram that was used to indicate the measures for this medieval town (which varied between towns and regions). This detail shows the official size of a roof tile (right) and other types of bricks. Below there are metal inserts that indicated the lengths of things like a bolt of cloth. The photo is taken simply with instagram.

Assisi preparing for medieval fair

A little corner in the medieval streets of Assisi was being prepared for a medieval fair to be held in a few weeks. These wooden frames caught my eye, but lacked interesting light. Solved (I think) by the 1839 filter on the Android app Camera 360, which mimicks the sepia tone and lack of contrast found in some of the first cameras.

Santa Maria degli Angeli below Assisi

People drive through the town below Assisi, Santa Maria degli Angeli, mainly to get to the top. But this modest town is home to a gigantic 17th century church that encloses a much smaller 9th century nucleus called the Porziuncola, which sits like a funny hut in the midst of a grand apse. It’s an important location to the Franciscan order, though to look at it today, you could easily miss this fact, and many tourists do.

I was driving away from Assisi when I saw the church’s facade silhouetted against a dramatic dark grey sky and a ray of light illuminating the guilded saint that tops it. The sky turned purple with the HDR app.

Perugia

These photos by no means provide a fully representative image of Perugia, but are just some really cool details that I spotted in my short visit (this time around – I’ve been plenty of times before).

16th century caryatid in Perugia

I love this 16th century caryatid sculpture on the side of a building, guarding a gate. The camera’s lack of zoom forced me to think of a composition unlike what I would have chosen with my usual 18-270mm lens. I used Camera 360′s Lomo filter for this one.

Perugia: Rocca Paolina

My very favourite part of Perugia is the Rocca Paolina, a sixteenth-century fortified structure imposed on the conquered city of Perugia by the Farnese Pope Paul III. The story is amusing enough to warrant its own post: the people so hated the papal ruler that the fortress defended the ruler against the city more so than the city against the outside! It has now been reclaimed for multiple uses… including, when I stopped by, a forestry convention that resulted in this display:

The famous underground forests of Perugia?

Lake Trasimeno

Wonderful weekends come to an end, so I got in my car to leave Umbria for my more familiar Tuscany. And the skies opened up and there were my very favourite type of clouds doing their riotous display… and as I drove down the Perugia-Bettole superstrada I kept spending a dangerously long time glancing over to Lake Trasimeno, to my left, over which the clouds had opened to reveal that kind of light that makes you think there really is a god. Quick, find the nearest exit and hightail it to water access! I stopped at “Camping la spiaggia” (at what exit I do not know) and begged to be let in (the lady refused, but I was pushy). I had to get the shot before the light changed. And I did.

Lake Trasimeno and those godlike rays of light

More lake trasimeno

Lago Trasimeno HDR (this one makes the water rather unappealing)

The closing credits

The opportunity to learn about smartphone photography and explore the beautiful Umbrian landscape was made possible by the Travel Bloggers Unite conference that I attended. Oliver did an amazing job pulling together great sponsors, speakers, activities, and attendees for an intense weekend of networking and eating. Especially eating. I particularly want to thank Luca of Confindustria Umbria and the Region of Umbria for welcoming us travel bloggers and really pulling out all the stops to show us how awesome their region is. I will be back, I promise.

For readers who want to visit Umbria, I suggest you get ideas from Umbria on the Blog.

And if you want to play with smartphone photography but can’t afford an iPhone, buy an HTC like mine: HTC Desire Unlocked on Amazon.com for US readers or HTC Desire HD for European users on amazon.it

Magritte: L'avenir des voix

Travellers to the Bel Paese often seem to wander the country in a food-and-art-induced dream-like state — and those who have chosen to live here are soon struck by the surreal bureaucracy — so Perugia’s new Teatro del Sogno: da Chagall a Fellini exhibit at the Galleria Nazionale dell’Umbria seems fitting in its theme of dreams in the work of early 20^th century surreal art and cinema.

This is very much a crowd-pleasing, getting bums in seats sort of show.  Not particularly challenging or innovative, the grouping of more than 100 works from early modern artists including Chagall, Dalì, Magritte, De Chirico, and Man Ray are sure to satisfy the majority of casual art appreciators who had one or more posters of these works adorning their dorm room walls in college.

The exhibition space was retrofitted from the recent Steve McCurry photography exhibit; in that context the layout was irritatingly confusing and unfocused, but in the Theatre of Dreams the wandering, slightly claustrophobic installation just adds to the somnambulant feel. Works depicting scenes from another dimension pop out of the semidarkness around every turn, and the lack of any posted notes or explanations (aside from the spare tags identifying each work and artist) frees visitors to simply focus on the alternatingly beautiful and bizarre paintings, drawings, and sculptures.

Fellini

Fellini’s whimsical sketches are a high point of the show (the small screening space with a constant loop of his films seems anacronistic in this world of Netflix and streaming); the upstairs hall with works by contemporaries, including Hirst and Fabre, a jarring and largely uninspiring end. I suggest simply finishing your visit with the main hall, so you can leave the museum without having completely shaken off your floating, dreamy trance.

Il Teatro del Sogno: da Chagall a Fellini is being held at the Galleria Nazionale dell’Umbria in Perugia until 9 January, 2011.

PS: Take the time to visit the fetching main galleries of the museum as well, especial the clock tower room on the top floor.  In the gift shop, alongside the ubiquitous Botticelli printed notebooks and pencils, take a peek at the window displays showcasing wares from some of the best local artists and artisans.

By: Rebecca of Brigolante Guest Apartments in Umbria.

Chagall: La famille Parigi Comité (1975-76) is a dorm room fave.

Certain topics seem inherently polarizing. Country-western music, for example. Home schooling. Mayonnaise on french fries. And, of course, contemporary art.

Which is why I find it surprising that so much contemporary art is found in Umbria, a stodgy – though beautiful – central Italian region known more for its reserved and conservative nature and the fact that it pretty much ran out of iconoclastic steam when native son Saint Francis of Assisi revolutionized the Catholic church in the thirteenth century than for its artistic envelope pushing.

Yet Contemporary Art in Umbria seems to pop out at you from the most surprising places. My first brush was about twenty years ago when I stumbled upon Flash Art. (Contemporary art seems to lend itself to being stumbled upon. I have lunched at many oddly shaped park benches before realizing that I am perched on some conceptual stone torso.)

Palazzo Lucarini

Flash art is an annual show of contemporary artists held in the improbable venue of Trevi, a tiny medieval hilltown otherwise known for its olive oil and black celery. The event was organized by the venerable Flash Art periodical, whose editor is originally from this Umbrian village. Like most collective exhibitions, the works were a mix of the banal (how many more times are we going to be shown rooms bare but for a pile of trash in the center and a sense of angst hovering above?), the thought-provoking, the visionary, and – primarily – the self-referential. But the juxtaposition between the historic stone palazzi and the jarring contemporary installations worked. No longer an annual event, Flash Art has morphed into a permanent exposition space called Palazzo Lucarini Contemporary which has been host to shows of contemporary artists since 1993.

Burri

Then, in 1995, Alberto Burri died. Which means that everyone suddenly fell in love with Alberto Burri, including those who had never heard of him. Including me. Born in the Umbrian town of Città di Castello, Burri is one of the best known contemporary Italian artists outside of Italy. His abstract collages, charred wood, plastic, and burlap works, cracked paintings, and Cellotex creations are included in the collections at New York’s Guggenheim, Paris’ Musée National d’Art Moderne, and London’s Tate, but his most complete collection of works can be found back in his small hometown in northern Umbria. The Burri Foundation owns over 250 works; those from his earlier period are housed in the Renaissance Palazzo Albizzini, while those from 1970 until his death can be found in the Ex Seccatoi del Tabacco, an immense industrial complex used in the mid-1900s to dry tabacco and restored and converted into a exhibition space in 1990.

Perhaps one of my favorite stumbles occurred in the bucolic vineyard-covered hills near Torgiano. I was toodling along on my bike, minding my own business, when I came around a curve and suddenly found myself facing a monumental stone and steel sculpture surrounded by nothing but fields and pastures. “Huh,” I thought. I continued peddling and about half a kilometer down the road came across a towering stainless steel tree. By the third work of art, I figured there must be a rhyme or reason here, and indeed came to find out that I had unwittingly biked right smack in the middle of one of the best collections of contemporary landscape art around. Scultori a Brufa began in 1987 when this tiny hamlet decided (somewhat mysteriously; no one seems to recall the catalyst) to begin annually installing a work of contemporary outdoor sculpture in the center of town and the outlying hills. The project is meant to ponder the relationship between wine and art, art and nature, and/or artist and local – depending upon whom you ask – but the effect of these spare pieces surrounded by the romantic Umbrian landscape is undeniably fetching, regardless of the message.

[editor's note: This promotional video for Brufa is in Italian but you'll get a good idea of the works in the landscape]

Contemporary Art Museums in Umbria (plus: hotels, restaurants, and galleries)

The art of art

CIAC Foligno

Despite this climate of budget cuts and economic crunching, Umbria has (against all odds) opened two new Contemporary art museums in 2010: the brand-new CIAC Museum in Foligno and the new-to-you refurbished and reorganized Museo Carandente (part of the Palazzo Collicola Arti Visive complex) in Spoleto. If impenetrably sleek websites and chic-ly unhelpful staff is any sign, these are both destined for greatness.

The art of sleeping

Umbria is home to two luxury hotels which combine four star hospitality with four star contemporary art. The Albornoz Palace Hotel in Spoleto and the ArteHotel in Perugia both have frescoes, paintings, sculptures, reliefs and temporary exhibitions throughout their public spaces, private rooms, and outdoor gardens.

The art of eating

L'Officina art restaurant in Perugia

L’Officina Ristorante Culturale in Perugia is part restaurant, part art gallery, all cutting edge. Good food, good art, good times. The new Palazzo Collicola (www.palazzocollicola.it) in Spoleto is opening their museum cafeteria this week in occasion of the National Day of Contemporary Art; the space was designed by Italian installation artist Veronica Montanino.

The art of shopping

For a taste of what contemporary Italian artists – Umbrian and non – have to offer, you can take a look at the friendly and tiny Minigallery (it lives up to its name) in Assisi or the larger but more formal Galleria Artemisia in Perugia.

PS – If you love Rebecca’s writing as much as I do, you’ll want to read her blog about expat life in Umbria.

William Patterson: Garden Shrine, oil on panel, 52x42 1998

I want to tell you about this opportunity to take a painting class in Italy with a famous painter who just happens to be my friend.

Last year I had the pleasure of having Bill Patterson, contemporary realist painter, as my colleague. Bill’s an amazing painter, a dedicated professor, and more importantly, he is a wonderful person. I think I have never met anyone so genuinely GOOD.

Bill also really loves Italy. Let’s face it, he’s retirement-age, and he’s been coming to Italy for a long time, but he still approaches everything from the scenery to the food to the art in museums with the enthusiasm and appreciation of a first-time (but very informed) visitor. He’s also someone who loves to learn from people he meets, and so was one of my most dedicated listeners when I felt I had to drone on about art history.

Similarly, although he’s been teaching for something like 40 years (yup, just checked, he started in 1968), he prepares every painting class for hours, meticulously providing learning materials, setting up props and still-lifes, and even getting slightly nervous. In some ways I hope that I will be like that 40 years from now; on the other hand, I thought that teaching might become less hard work with time, but watching Bill proves that theory wrong. It could be easy for him, but he makes it difficult because he wants to give the best to his students.

William Patterson, The Basilica of Sant Francis of Assisi, oil on canvas, 66x44, 1998

Bill’s own work amazes me for its meticulousness. In March I sat three hours for a portrait for him, and when I went behind the easel to take a peek I expected to see it just about done, but he’d barely sketched my face. He is still working on it now, because he keeps “fanning down” the oils and taking another shot at my chin. I’ve watched him throw out quick landscape oil sketches that he pooh-poohs as something crappy he made so as not to discourage his students, and think to myself how 99.9% of the world’s population could only dream of producing something that good, even with a lot of effort. I particularly like his still life pieces that employ the technique, and embody some of the feeling, of Dutch Renaissance oils.

Bill’s favourite place in Italy, as I understand it, is Assisi. I guess it is the Saint Francis factor. Since 1992, he has been holding painting workshops in Italy that take place mostly in and around Assisi, with some trips to Rome and Florence. These workshops are an opportunity to learn from a true master of the paintbrush, not only on canvas, but also in museums and churches, where if you follow Bill around you’ll learn to see things in a different way – like a painter sees them. If you don’t paint (but perhaps your spouse does), not to worry – you can come along to photograph, journal, and just experience the place. You can work at any level – one thing Bill offers so generously is personal feedback. The course is co-taught with Bill’s wife Carolyn Patterson, whom I have not met, but already like.

WP, "Pears and Cherries on Box" is for sale (10x12, oil on panel)

 The next workshop will be July 1-12, 2010. For more information please see: www.artworkshopsinitaly.com

 

Works by Bill like this still life of pears on his signature old box are also for sale, read more on: www.williampattersonstudio.com