Burle Marx - on the back of an envelope
Landscape architect John Medhurst contacted FOLAR to see if we thought the MERL would be interested in a little sketch he had made - he said it was on the back of an envelope. We said yes! of course, and he forwarded a couple of sketches and some notes he made while listening to a talk. The event was at the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew, on Thursday 18 March 1982. The speaker was Burle Marx (1909-1994). This is what John sent:
John Medhurst’s notes read:
Centrally parted silvery white hair with complementary close wisps decorating forehead with curves reminiscent of buffalo horns, spectacles small, neat moustache, halting English, rhythmically spasmodic with German sounding accent, slightly short sighted, peering closely at text. Curls around before.
Overflowing richness of Brazilian plants, neither to deny or imitate nature, results of loving interest and prolonged observation.
Emphasised the importance of botany and horticulture to the landscape architect.
Fought against T[own] P[lanning] that destroyed local character and landscape use of natural associations.
Kanga flora [JM adds - Kanga is a colourful fabric from African Great Lakes region, to which he likened his own flamboyant distribution of colour in the garden.]
Protection given like that of a shrine confirmed the creation of gardens is an art [form].
John added that in May 1982, and inspired by this talk, he went to Paris to look at the sunken courtyard gardens that Burle Marx had designed for the UNESCO Headquarters c 1958. Here are a couple of the photos he took of one of the courtyards:
Isamu Noguchi was also commissioned at the same time to design the Japanese Garden of Peace here.
This wonderful envelope has now been safely deposited with the LI archive at the MERL. But there is another link to Burle Marx in the LI archive at the MERL.
Hungarian émigré, landscape architect, lecturer at Thames Poly and artist, Marian Thompson went to Brazil for 9 months in 1989 joining a plant hunting group at the Jardin Botanic; she also met up with Burle Marx. Her archive is part of the Landscape Institute / Museum of English Rural Life collection https://merl.reading.ac.uk/collections/thompson-marian/ It includes some fabulous material: her student projects submitted for ILA external exams; jobs for Stanley Seeger at Sutton Place, the Deanery, Sonning, and Villa Asolo, Italy and a wide range of other projects; and there are her teaching files. Research on her work is much needed, especially while there are people around who knew her. What impact did Burle Marx have on her?
There are some other published accounts of Burle Marx’s talks in the UK from this time eg Jill Raggett on The Gardens Trust website http://thegardenstrust.org/reflections-brazilian-odyssey/ who was so inspired by his talk at the RCA London, 15 March 1982, (a few days before the talk John went to) she joined the GHS tour of the Gardens and Landscapes of Roberto Burle Marx in March 2009 and describes her responses to what they saw.
Robin Lane Fox writes up an account https://www.ft.com/content/35103096-cd77-11e9-b018-ca4456540ea6 of one of the most significant exhibitions of Marx’s work staged at the New York Botanic Garden, June 2019. The exhibition was created by his protégé landscape architect Raymond Jungles and included landscape, planting, art works, tapestries and Brazilian music and poetry. This all sounds like it needs to be set up again, at a different venue, when the pandemic is under control.
Pidgeon Digital have a recording and transcript of Burle Marx from 1981 https://www.pidgeondigital.com/talks/a-garden-is-like-a-poem/
Gareth Doherty (former user of the Landscape Institute library and archive, now associate professor at department of landscape architecture at Harvard) has edited a book based on the transcripts of 12 of Burle Marx’s lectures given between 1954-1986 - Roberto Burle Marx lectures, landscape as art and urbanism, Lars Muller Publishers (2018). Doherty observes that these lectures were written to be performed rather than read as a text, and that they were delivered at many different international institutions (although unfortunately RBG Kew is not identified as one of the venues). Since they were written for speaking and performing, Doherty encourages reading the lectures out loud: ‘In doing so, allow Burle Marx’s words, overflowing with energy, ideas and opinions fill the room … Imagine Roberto “like a peppercorn” as one of his friends once described him, “very hot and very strong” and occasionally getting up your nose’ adds Doherty.
Are there other Burle Marx associations, stories, images or encounters to share? Or something else worthwhile keeping on the back of one of your envelopes? Let us know please info@folar.uk
AD 29 Dec 2020