FOR ME - AND NOT REALLY ME!

Some cities I love and am happy to return even if at each visit strange events occur! Amsterdam is one of these cities. I don't think I know how many times over 40 years I have been there but I do know that usually I always reserve a hotel which is not close to where I want to got; my sense of direction is hopeless - and hasn't mattered how old or young I was. The Dutch are open, speak several languages fluently and always pick me up when I fall flat on my face in the street. That seems to be an Amsterdam tradition for me.

The reason for my visit this time was to visit the renovated Rijks museum, the modern art or the Stedelijk museum which too has been closed since I first visited it with my Mother and perhaps take in the Van Gogh museum - the only one with a specific exhibition. Perhaps the Hermitage too.  Enough for three days. I lost so much time getting lost when walking down to the museum quarter which at the best, so I was told, could be walked in 45 minutes. I was close to the central station in an Arts Centre B&B - the museum quartier was very much to the south. There are always lovely things to see when strolling along. Was that house really crooked? 

Haschich could be found anywhere in Amsterdam - but a museum too and «seeds» next door!

Crooked house ?

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And how to you SEE these photos ???

So I lost a good hour and finally rushed into the Rijks. Renovation? It was sparklingly clean in the halls but what changes had been made to the individuel galleries?   I will need to be told as I saw few. There is no mistaking the Rembrandt and Vermeer gallery. The crowds were horrendous. I skirted around the masses and was left to look at the lesser known works. There is nothing to say. The man was a rare Master and even one of the over 100 autoportraits caught my attention. Another too of his son wearing a monk's habit.

HIS SON AS A MONK

AUTO PORTRAIT AS ST PAUL

Then I started wandering. My Iphone could have been focused 100 times. It wasn't. Then I began to see what was going on inside me. This may not be "my painting" but some paintings   in the 80 rooms and over 800 years of Dutch art history were bound to catch my attention. I smiled to myself when I  saw something I remembered. Out of the Rembrandt and Vermeer galleries = out of the crowds. Many of the middle age galleries and even earlier where as empty as this.....Saint Sebastien looked strangley effeminate in such a ghostly light.

Saint Sebastien

An empty and poorly lit gallery

Not far off were the portraits of Guiliano and Francesco Giamberti (Piero Di Cosmo - 1482-85) These portraits describe the architect and his father. They came across to me as as a single picture. For once the landscape seem to run from one portrait to another.  They were both  architects but the father  was also a musician and a musical score can be seen in front of him. From a little way off, I thought this was a painting by Hans Memling - so wrong again even if Di Cosmo may have seen Hemling’s work and been inspired from it.

I did not miss the 17th century painting of Jan Haicksz known as the «Dancing Lesson». Children haven’t changed, have they? The poor cat certainly must have been upset while the dog barks gleefully. And see the man peeping in at the window? You can hear what here is saying of course.

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A sculpture from 17th century by Hendrich de Kayser . Screaming child stung by a bee. I didn’t know though that it could have been Cupid stung by a bee when he stole too much honey!





Frans Hals - also the 16th Century is always fun. In my drinking days I would have enjoyed one or two with this individual. «The Merry Drinker».

 I suppose you are wondering if this is Titien’s Venus? Of course it isn’t. Lambert Sitrus in the 16th century. I frankly find her lacking in erotica. Far too poised and perfect.

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Just as William ll, the King of Netherlands. Jan Adam Kreuseman (1804-1862). I am sure the king could look relaxed and the dog look adoringly as his master - but his neck? Was it really as long as that?




Jan Jansz Mostaert painting in 1535 of an episode of the conquest of America and described as a West Indian Landscape is a little hard for me to believe. In the 16th century did all the natives run around naked with sheep and animals grazing peacefully close by?



This ships model was immense as you can see. The William Rex made in 1697 gives a very good idea of what a late 17thc ship can look like. Next to it, a blue Delft vase which as tall as it was looked reduced in size along side the ship.

Majestic

Anton Mauves 19th century painting of a herdess of cows on a country road in the rain made my feet feel quite damp. I glanced out of a window....no, it was not raining - yet.



The Nazi Chess set made me shudder - to glorify Germany even in the games they played. The pieces are shaped like weapons and around the board are the countries which Germany attacked in 1939-40.


I was glad to see the sea again. Jan Toorop’s painting of of 1887. The paint is piled on and when looking at this from a distance, the sea seems to be filled with many, many colours.




Perhaps what I really enjoyed looking at was the Library. Books of any kind draw my attention. Although I read on a tablette when travelling, nothing will ever replace paper and going through a book at my will. This was a wonderful place with all the books you would want to look at on art of the different periods.

 I had sauntered through the museum and suddenly two hours and more had gone by. It was too early for dinner. The evening light was enough to clean a slightly sour taste of dissatisfaction from my mouth. I crossed the park and a wonderful surprise. It was Thursday evening and the Stedelijk Modern Museum would be open until 10pm. It was just 6. The old energy raced back into me as I entered the museum and found it virtually empty. Joy! Joy!

As an opening my eyes sparkled as I saw one wall of Karel Appel’s painting. Did I stay there for long? Perhaps as an attendant came over and asked if I was alright. I was indeed but just so happy to be back in a world full of energy.

Karpel's room....

There was a major exhibition of he CoBrA work in the Stedelijk museum in 1949. The critics tore the artists to pieces. Willem Sandberg certainly came under fire but as the curator he definitely could see what was happening. CoBrA was founded in Paris in 1948 and defied all the rules of traditional painting, encouraging experimentation with materials and artistic collaboration. Spontaneity and imagination were the heart of the movement. It was a reply to the gruesome experience of the second world war. Then and now many of the paintings seem primitive and naive.



The art of this period is «my world». It can be abstract as with Jackson Pollock, Kandinsky, Sam Francis, De Kooning, Asjer Jorn, Robert Delaunay

Asger Jorn - In the wingbeat of the swans 1963

Pollock - The water Ball - 1946

Delaunay - Circular Forms, sun moon - 1952

San Mateo 1964

De Kooning - Morning, The Springs 1983

De Kooning - North Atlantic Light - 1977

 or quite realistic with Chagall, Dubuffet, Picasso, Constant....he believed that art should plead for freedom and human emancipation. During the same war period, Picasso was painting still life which were to give colour and hope to those who had none in their lives.

Dubuffet - Clown's point - collage -1956

Dubuffet - Hilarious Figure - 1966

Picasso - Heads - 1943

Picasso - The Aubergine - 1946

Chagall - Self Portrait with 7 fingers -1912 - 

Franz Mark - Blue Foals - 1912

Philip Gustons - Smoking, Eating, Drinking- 1973

Picasso - Nude in front of a garden- 1956

 Guston and Picasso were side by side in the same gallery.

Appel

Constant - Scorched earth 1951

Karel Appel - 1951

Constant - Barricade - 1949

Anton Rooskens - Composition in Black - 1955

Sculptures you want to touch like Hans Arp, or which make you laugh - Tinguely or make you go a little further in your way of thinking  because of the savage nature of the wood cut by Kruyder «Distrust». This is one of the Dutch artist’s Herman Kruyder few sculptures. And still the same period.

Hans Arp - Large Torso - 1957

Tinguely

Herman Kruyder - Distrust - 1922-2

Having just finished a book by Catherine Millet «L’Art contemporain - histoire et géographie» the final phrase in her book summed up much of the contemporary period perfectly for me. «l’art contemporain est un pôle d’attaction. Rien de plus, rien de moins» Perhaps not the easiest of phrases to translate but could be « Contemporary art is a hub of activity. No more, no less». The book has «tidied up a lot in my mind about installations and some art. Galleries such as this no longer frighten the life out of me; a room full of Mondrian, Malevitch I’ll walk through with only a second glance, which I did with the below too.

Klein - Wood, sponges, small stones - 1960

and yet  a Klein may hold my attention.



By now it was 8pm and I was at saturation point. A glass of Prosecco in the museum bar gave me the strenght to wander home. Dinner was late that night.

However, not doubt that I had to come back to the Stedelijk the following day. Just to look at some paintings again and then visit the design section of the museum. From 1900 to the present. An impressive collection. Just two examples. I have always wanted a patched work quilt. I love this with it’s couple. And would not have minded this on my bathroom wall.

Like it on my bed(

or on the bathroom wall

First floor of the Stedelijk

As the Van Gogh museum was just across from the Stedelijk, I decided to go. Fortunately my Icom card played it’s role and I sailed through the crowds of Japanese and Europeans. The impressionists attract crowds and especially the Asians.

A little dark for an opening image?

This was an exhibition in Van Gogh centre. «Van Gogh at Work» After so many retrospectives of his work, I feel rather blasé about Van Gogh. Once again, how wrong can I be.

«It took Vincent van Gogn only ten years to progress from a hesitant beginner to the unique artist whose life and work have fascinated people for more than a century. He is often thought of as a painter who followed his own path, who was not particularly interested in the work of other artists. However, this is quite untrue. In fact, he learnt a great deal from other artists and took a fairly traditional, though very personal approach. This exhibition tells the story of the way he mastered his craft, from the first tentative sketches to the famous paintings made in France. .....

 Although I have seen a lot of his early work, seeing it this way is quite different. The progression from those who influenced him - Delacroix or Rembrandt for starters - to the artist and brush strokes we all know so well. Some of his early sculptures were new to me. The skull with a cigarette protruding from its mouth was certainly a send up of his Beaux Arts teachers! He was in fact last in the class for his drawing of anatomy which maybe one of the reasons he branched out on his own. In the early days he was a painter of peasant life - the potatoe eaters we are all aware of. 1885. He was very satisfied with the end results but realised that he still had a lot to learn.

Peasant boy

Pieta - after Delacroix - 1889

Man with a sack of wood - 1881

Old Woman with a Shawl and a walking stick- 1882

The Potato Eaters - 1885

Plaster cast of the leaning "écorché"

Head of a skeleton with burning cigarette - 1885

As he moves out of his studio and works outside, his brush work changes and becomes much more like the Van Gogh we know.

Flowering Gum Orchard after Hiroshige - 1887

His interests were varied and there were other paintings which I had not seen on his Japanese period which I would have had problems in saying straight out that they were Van Gogh.

After Daumier's Drinkers - 1890

In 1890, he wrote to his brother Theo telling him that he had copied a picture of Daumier’s «The drinkers» and how difficult it had been. The background is a figment of his imagination but each drinker has, in my book, a lot of charactor.





He also produced two several versions of «The Bedroom» - the first one was painted in 1888. It was damaged during a flood and Van Gogh sent it to Theo to have it restored. However, during his stay in the hospital of Saint-Remy one year later, he wanted it back. A second «bedroom» was painted but if a comparison is done of the two works, he did not make an exact copy but added subtle changes in the use of colour and in certain details which I hope you will see here. There is a third version - much smaller and in the Orsay museum in Paris. This was sent to his mother and sister.

1888

1889

However, he preferred to work outside - I have always loved his fishing boats (1888) and his seascape in the south of France.

Seascape near les Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer 1888

Fishing Boats on the beach - 1888

The final years in Saint Remy he was restricted to painting inside most of the time. It’s fascinating to know that he had a grid which he used all the time to gain perspective in his paintings. Sometimes in fact if you study a painting closely - like «the Drinkers» you can see where the grid has been placed onto the canvass and his has transfered his initial drawing be it inside or out.

Impasse des deux frères - 1887

Due to the crowds I had started on the third floor and moved down to the first and then to the ground - or in other words, the beginning of the exhibition. It was interesting to work «backwards» as the last striking moments found in what was possibly his last painting of the «tree roots» in 1890 compared to his very early work showed how much of a genius he had become.

The Roots and probably his last painting - 1890

It was raining when I came out mid afternoon, cold and windy. Time to get back to the B&B and then home to Paris. I would have to go to the Hermitage next trip.....