I hope that Santa has found his way to your house and spoiled you with treats.
It certainly looks as if he found OUR house!
Notice the tunnel through the gifts to the left . . . So the cats can continue to make their way to the back of the tree and curl up on the tree skirt. Pet owners will appreciate doing things like this.
Have a brilliant day!
This time last year I was 5 weeks away from a trip to Amsterdam with my friend Nancy. Today, with no vacation in sight, I am think about that trip ...
This week's Photo Hunt theme is 'gray' (or grey as we rightly call it here in Canada).
These grey shots were taken while wandering Amsterdam in January. While it was considerably warmer than it was back home in Canada, it was also quite grey.
This week's Photo Hunt theme is 'cloudy'.
Hmmm - another hunt for which I have a gazillion pics . . .
Cloudy shots from my trip to Amsterdam a d Berlin earlier this year.
Yesterday's post about the movie Monuments Men got me thinking about art and what had been saved from the fires and vicissitudes of WWII. One of the displays in the Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam touched upon this in relations to the artist's famous 'Sunflower' paintings.
Van Gogh painted 7 sunflower themed paintings to decorate the studio/house in Arles where he lived for a time with artist Paul Gaugin.
This image:
shows one of the seven sunflower paintings that once decorated the Arles studio. It was destroyed in an air raid in 1945.
Be sure to pop on over to Sandi's blog to see what else is happening on Travel Tuesdays!
This week's Photo Hunt theme is 'ripple'.
When I was recently in Amsterdam I visited the Van Gogh Museum. I love how he used ripples of colour in his paintings . . .
This week's Photo Hunt theme is 'door'.
If you have been to Amsterdam and visited the house or have read the Diary of Anne Frank, you know what this is. In the image on the left it looks like a nondescript bookcase. The bookcase is actually a door which opened up onto a steep, narrow staircase leading to a secret Annex where Anne and 7 family and friends hid from the Nazis.
While I was at the Hermitage there was an interesting display on the upper floor overlooking the Amstel. There were photographs of the houses across the river and brief stories about some of the people who lived there. This one caught my attention:
Coenraad van Beuningen was a brilliant member of Amsterdam's regent class (similar to the French intendant class or the old political families of the U.S.) and was mayor of Amsterdam and a master diplomat. His political peak came in 1672, when King Louis XIV tried to claim the lowlands because his queen was Spanish (the Netherlands had won their independence from Spain a hundred years ago). Louis' army had taken nearby Utrecht and Naarden and Amsterdam was in confusion. Van Beuningen managed to forge an alliance that included England to repel the French.
Van Beuningen went into a decline after this. The Prince of Orange, nominal ruler of the lowlands, wanted to use the new alliance to invade France. Van Beuningen demurred, on the grounds that the alliance wouldn't survive the venture. He was right, but he suffered politically and, as it turned out, mentally. A few years later, he speculated wildly in East India Company shares and bankrupted himself. Within this time, he married his mistress of some years. He had been celibate up until this time. It's not known whether he was afterward. Either way, the marriage was a bad one.
In 1689 he went cabalistic. A follower of the German mystic Jakob Boehme, he pestered local theologians with his theories on the nature of the Godhead and generally ranted like a street person. He also had apocalyptic visions, seeing red fireballs and a rainbow-colored coffin floating above the city. Around this time, legend has it that he slashed his arms with a scalpel and scrawled messages in his own blood on the outside wall of his house. Chalk or paint is more likely, but the writings have resisted 300 years of cleanup attempts, including a 1930s effort using acid and high-pressure hoses. One can see a sailing ship, two attempts to write "van Beuningen" and one instance of "Jacoba," the name of his wife. There are also Hebrew letters, but they're difficult to discern.
After years of mental and physical suffering that he likened to the sufferings of Christ, van Beuningen died, on 26 October, in poverty. Among his effects, valued at less than f 100, was an oval mirror. No one knows what he saw in it, and nobody knows where it is now.
Here are some shots I took of these mysterious markings:
Today was a quiet day. There was nothing on the schedule and since my cold has moved to my head I just felt like taking it easy. I realized in the morning - finally heading out about 11.
I crossed the Amstel River to the area known as the Plantage. I have now explored all 7 of Amsterdam's inner areas - I wouldn't say that I have explored them well mind you, but I have walked in each of 'em.
The reason for this visit was I wanted to go to the Hermitage. Those of you who know art will be thinking I am confused - 'the Hermitage is in Russia, Jerry!' Apparently the famed St Petersburg institution was looking for a satellite site and Amsterdam won the lottery. The gallery is housed in a restored poor house that was built in 1681.
The exhibit I wanted to see was called 'Gauguin, Bonnard, Denis. A Russian Taste for French Art'. In the years following the breakthrough of Impressionism, they went in search of new artistic paths. The elusive Paul Gauguin (1848–1903) was a shining example for the introverted Pierre Bonnard (1867–1947) and the theoretician Maurice Denis (1870–1943). Bonnard and Denis were briefly united with a few other artists (such as Valloton and Vuillars) under the name of Les Nabis, after the Hebrew word for ‘prophet’. These young artists explored fascinating new artistic paths. Unlike the Impressionists, who aimed primarily to capture the fleeting qualities of natural light, the Nabis emphasised colour, feeling, symbolism and imagination. Their work was quickly embraced in Paris, and in Moscow.
The wealthy Russian collector Ivan Morozov was soon charmed by their youthful talent, buying their work and offering them commissions. For instance, Morozov asked Denis to decorate the concert hall in his mansion in 1908. The exhibition will include a unique reconstruction of this exquisite interior, with seven paintings and six decorative panels: The Story of Cupid and Psyche. Bonnard painted the monumental triptych Méditerrannée for the same collector. This work too will be on display in an illusionistic setting, with flat columns in front of the work enhancing the illusion of a Mediterranean view.
The work of the Nabis will be exhibited side by side with French paintings and drawings by their predecessors, contemporaries and immediate successors. With a small selection of sculptures by Auguste Rodin, Auguste Maillol and Paul Auguste Bartholomé, the exhibition will reveal the many facets of Paris’s flourishing artistic climate in the 1890s.
The term ‘Nabis’ was first used in 1889, by a group of young artists in search of a new approach to painting. They were studying together at the Académie Julian in Paris. The daring experimentalist Paul Gauguin became their inspiration, pointing them toward a new way of seeing and painting. The works on display were made between 1890 and the outbreak of the First World War.
Through their ‘flat’ style, initially lacking in traditional linear perspective, the Nabis – together with other avant-garde artists such as Van Gogh and Gauguin – opened the door to modern art. Their paintings in unmixed colours, making expressive use of form and coloration, paved the way to an art that was free and abstract. Their wide-ranging subject matter included city scenes, landscapes, religious themes, portraits and interiors. The Nabi painters used photography to test their compositional ideas, developing a photographic way of seeing. They also embraced the decorative painting of the Art Nouveau movement, making enormous decorative panels for their patrons’ buildings. In all these ways, they explored the artistic boundaries between high and low, fine and applied art.
The exhibit was free with my Museum Card. I paid 4 euro for the excellent audio guide and spent the next two hours enjoying the show.
After I left the Hermitage I wandered around trying to find Rembrandt's House. You'd think it would have been easy but for some reason it was a challenge! The artist lived here from 1639 and 1660. The Rembrandt’s House museum is an interesting reconstruction of painter’s everyday life, his living quarters, and his workshop.
Later, once it had gotten dark and Nancy had gone to bed, I ventured out to explore in the dark. I wanted to see if I could find some of the light sculptures that I had seen from the canal boat. It was a challenge photographing them from the boat because of the movement - I figured on food I might be able to get a decent shot!
One of the great things about slowtravel is the freedom to wander and explore at your own pace. No need to race about! I really appreciated that on this trip.
Yesterday Nancy and I decided to visit some of Amsterdam's famous art galleries. First up was the Van Gogh Museum, a contemporary gray building located on the edge of a huge open gassy area in Museumplein. No one was playing on the grass, but I could imagine people playing sports, kids running, families picnicking on warmer days.
After entering the museum, I quietly strolled through each floor and enjoyed viewing each piece slowly - taking it in. It was a thrill to witness some well-known pieces with my own eyes: the two versions of The Bedroom, various Self-Portraits, Sunflowers, the Zouvae, and multiple Almond Blossoms paintings. The great upside of selling only one painting during his lifetime is that an almost complete collection of his arts can be centralized for us to visit in one location.
It was interesting for me to learn that Van Gogh was not considered a talented artist, a natural artist - he had to work very hard at achieving what he did. The tour was set up to show his artistic development over the ten years he was a painter.
He also had little natural talent for artistic proportion and the illusion of depth. For a long time, he used a perspective frame; a tool that helps artists renders proportions and depth accurately. He also used tracing paper on which he drew a grid to help him enlarge compositions and transfer them to canvas.
He was extremely focused about what he wanted to accomplish. He created approximately 900 paintings during his lifetime. I was a bit surprised to discover that his most productive period was while he was in the insane asylum - he painted a canvas a day - many of these are considered to me amongst his greatest works.
After a snack in the museum cafe overlooking the expanse of museumplein, we headed to the Rijksmuseum which has recently reopened after a 10 year 370 million euro + renovation. This building was designed by Pierre Cuypers, and the museum first opened its doors back in 1885. To me, on first impression, it looked more like a house of state or a castle than an art museum.
Admission is on the steep side, with an adult ticket selling for 15 euros. However, with my museum card it was free.
The renovations not only modernised displays and conserved vulnerable parts of the building, but they also focused on returning the museum to the full glory of Cuyper's original architectural designs. Stepping into my first gallery, I was amazed by the interiors before me: the museum was as much of a display as the art.
I've been to many, many museums and galleries, but the Rijksmuseum felt so spacious compared to the others I have visited. Long corridors, high arched ceilings and bright stained glass windows - I couldn't help but feel that the ten-year renovation was warranted as the museum used to be dark, cramped, and crowded with the large galleries having been subdivided into tinier spaces over time.
With big names like van Gogh, Rembrandt and, Vermeer, as well as many other more modern artists, this collection is one of the world's greatest. Not shocking when you consider the wealth that was concentrated in the Netherlands from 1600 onwards. Also, the Dutch had a very positive attitude towards art and most families would have at least one painting of varying quality hanging on their walls at a time when in other places art was only the purview of the fabulously wealthy.
I got a chuckle out of this painting which was designed to show the triumph of Protestantism over Catholicism. The two religions are shown in boats fishing for souls - the Protestants on the left, Catholics on the right. The Protestants are clearly more successful as the left shore is crowded with rescued souls. On the right shore, the Catholic shore, things are not going well - the land is dank and vegetation withering. The saved souls on the right bank even look twisted in their depiction. In desperation the Catholics have taken to throwing gold, jewels, and fancy clothing at the souls in the water in hope of attracting more souls.
A nice bit of 'propaganda' from 1614.
Nancy and I split up in the Rijkmuseum. Afterwards I headed back to the apartment but I had one more stop before I got there. Marta, one of my slowtravel pals, had told me about a unique Cat Museum which was located close to the apartment. The Cat Cabinet specializes in art representing cats. There is an aura of humor not only in the theme of this museum, but also in a way this museum has been presented to the visitor. Sculptures, paintings, posters and books about the felines are exhibited in a serious, professional way - almost too serious not to provoke a smile on a visitors face.
The house De Kattenkabinet is located in could be a museum on its own. It has been built for William and Adrian van Loon in 1667, as one of the two identical houses standing opposite each other at Herengracht 497 and 498. A draw decided which of the houses belonged to which of the brothers, and it was William who got the house in which today the museum is to be found. Among the famous people who in the past stayed here were mayor of Amsterdam Jan Calkoen and an American president John Adams. Throughout its rich history the house has been several times rebuilt and redecorated, to be finally brought back to its full splendor by its present owner. And although most of its rich interior is dated only from the 19th century, it is still interesting to visit.
Later we decided to go out for dinner. I had read that Amsterdam was known for its Indonesian food - a throwback to the days of the colonial era. One of my 'food' goals was to try some. One of the best Indonesian restaurants in the city, Tempo Doeloe, is located across the street from the apartment so we went there. We didn't have reservations but they were able to accommodate us.
The menu clearly identifies which foods are spicy and which ones were not. This was tricky as Nancy thinks pizza sauce and medium cheddar cheese is 'spicy' whereas I douse my food with Sriracha sauce. Ordering would have been very challenging without the helpful guide.
I started off with the spicy chicken soup - Soto Ajam. The presentation was interesting. I was presented with a bowl of shredded chicken, vegetables, and a boiled egg but there was no broth. The server then reached over with a large tea pot and poured an amazing broth over everything - voila, soup!
Delicious soup with a hint of spice. Nothing too hot here.
I was torn over what to order for my main course. I asked the server which one was better and he offered to bring me a half portion of each. The food was served on a hot tray with rice, salad, shrinp chips, and two small dishes of vegetables.
Both dishes were amazing but I was particularly partial to the beef with chili and garlic.
Dinner was so good that we made reservations to return on Thursday night - our last night in the city. We are going to order the traditional rice table meal - 20 + dishes brought out so you can savour the food from varying degrees of spice intensity.