Van Gogh at Work

Fig. 1 Vincent van Gogh Self portrait as a painter
1887-1888, Paris, Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam
(Vincent van Gogh Foundation)

Commemorating the 40th anniversary of its opening, the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, is currently showing “Van Gogh at Work.” The exhibit traces a 10-year-period of Van Gogh’s growth as an artist through a collection of 200 items, including 150 paintings, sketches, sketchbooks, letters, paints and palettes. The exhibit is a compilation of an eight-year-long research project and presents in detail Van Gogh’s painting methods and actual drawing techniques.

“Self Portrait as a Painter” (Fig. 1) is often noted for its depiction of an artist fervently at work with attention focusing on Van Gogh’s facial expression. This exhibit examines Van Gogh’s art supplies. In the painting, the artist stands before an outdoor easel, holding a palette with paintbrushes in his hand. There are a total of seven flat and round brushes, the flat suited for painting surfaces and the round for filling in details. A study of the paints by the containers on the palette revealed that the orange was cadmium orange, and the deep blue to the left was a mix of cobalt blue and white lead.

Fig. 2 Vincent van Gogh Sunflowers,1889, Arles
Van Gogh Museum, Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam
(Vincent van Gogh Foundation)

The second and third floors of the museum display photos and videos that explain the scientific investigations. To save money, Van Gogh often painted new works on top of canvasses of previously completed pieces. The Van Gogh Museum used X-ray photography to uncover earlier paintings on canvasses thought to have been recycled. There are also microscopes through which visitors can view samples of extracted paints to see the layering as well as three-dimensional replicas of portions of paintings that allow one to touch and feel the protrusion of such layers.

Fig. 3 Vincent van Gogh’s Pallete from Auvers Musée d’Orsay, Paris
Photography: Erik and Petra Hesmerg

Until August, two versions of “Sunflowers,” one owned by the Van Gogh Museum (Fig. 2) and the other from the National Gallery, London will be displayed on both sides of “Portrait of Augustine Roulin“ in a reincarnation of the “triptych” from Van Gogh’s sketchbook. From September, the museum will show all three versions of “Bedroom in Arles,” (the Van Gogh Museum, the Art Institute of Chicago, Musée d’Orsay). Also on display will be Van Gogh’s only remaining palette (Fig. 3) and three out of the four existing sketchbooks of the artist. This is a rare exhibit that fans of Van Gogh will not want to miss.


Van Gogh at Work. Through January 12, 2014.

Van Gogh Museum

Paulus Potterstraat 7
1071 CX Amsterdam
The Netherlands
+31 20 570 5200
http://www.vangoghmuseum.nl

Opening times:

May 1 – Sept 1, 2013 / Dec 27, 2013 – Jan 5, 2014: 9:00-18:00 （Fridays until 22:00）
Sept 2 － Dec 26, 2013 / Jan 6 - Jan 12, 2014: 10:00-17:00 （Fridays until 22:00）

Frans Hals Museum’s one-hundred year commemorative exhibitio

The Frans Hals Museum in the Dutch city of Haarlem recently celebrated its one hundredth birthday. The exhibition “Frans Hals: Eye to eye with Rembrandt, Rubens and Titian”, featuring paintings by the seventeenth-century Dutch painter Frans Hals, representative of the Golden Age, and the works of the masters who influenced him, commemorates this event. It has been twenty-five years since a Hals exhibition of this scope was on show.

Hals was especially talented at portraits; the natural posing and movement of his models , their cheerful expressions are exactly living, breathing people. The painting “Laughing Boy” (image left) is a portrait of a young boy smiling a toothy, innocent grin. In seventeenth century art theory, painting a smiling expression was considered incredibly difficult, but Hals skillfully expressed an attractive smiling face with a deft touch.

At the hall in the back of the museum, is collected Hals’ vigilante corps’ collective portraits. In the Netherlands in the 17th century, which had just achieved independence from Spain, citizens organized vigilante groups for the purpose of defense and maintaining public order. They would sometimes order group portraits from painters. When at first collective portraits were painted, many paintings showed every subject’s face neatly aligned, like in a group photograph, but gradually movement was introduced onto the surface of the canvas, and the scene of the corps members at a banquet became popularised. While capturing each member’s facial expression and personality, Hals also depicted the affable scene of comrades smiling and drinking together at a lively banquet. The banquet dining table, reproduced at the centre of the hall, leaves the spectator somehow in the midst of their banquet.

The inner yard of the museu

In the exhibition rooms, the works by Hals and the other painters dealing with the same motifs are on display in such a manner that they can be compared with one another. One set, among them, features “The Lute Player” that Dirck van Baburen painted in 1622 and the “The Lute Player” painted by Hals in the following year. Van Baburen, who underwent extensive training in Rome, is one of the artists who brought the Caravaggio school’s preferred themes, such as people playing music, or at cards, to the Netherlands. Hals, receiving this new motif from Baburen, went on to paint many portraits of people playing instruments. The person depicted in “The Lute Player” smiles with great playfulness, and seems to be enjoying the music from the bottom of his heart.

In recent years research has proved that Hals, who was active in Haarlem, had exchanges with his contemporaries. This exhibition is an excellent opportunity to learn more of the influential relationships of seventeenth century Dutch and Flemish painting with the likes of Hals, Rembrandt and Rubens.

The exhibition will be open until 28 July (the museum is closed on Mondays)

Frans Hals Museum

Groot Heiligland 62
2011ES Haarlem
The Netherlands
http://www.franshalsmuseum.nl/en/

Opening times:

Closed on Mondays
Tuesdays – Fridays 10:00 – 17:00
Saturdays – Sundays 11:00 – 18:00

Tadasu Takamine exhibits in the Netherlands

The Eastern Japan earthquake disaster which occured on March 11th, 2011 brought on the accident of the Fukushima nuclear power plant’s number one reactor. Ever since, a vague sense of anxiety regarding radioactivity has grown among us. This invisible anxiety is what the Japanese contemporary artist and stage director Takamine Tadasu has made visible through film works. These works are currently being displayed in Utrecht, at Casco’s exhibition Japan Syndrome – Utrecht Version.

Takamine brings contemporary problems to the surface in installations, media art and performances; his work is highly appreciated not only in Japan but around the world. Take for instance the work “God Bless America” (2002), a video work which takes for its starting point the criticism towards America’s forcing its way into a war in Iraq after 9/11. The film is produced in clay stop-motion animation. In it, a figure tries to beat an enormous creature, made of two tons of modeling clay, into singing “God Bless America”.

Tadasu Takamine, Japan Syndrome – Yamaguchi Version, 

video. ca. 30 min, still, 2012. Courtesy of Casco

The current exhibition is being held at two different locations: at the first, the video installation “Japan Syndrome –Utrecht Version” is on display. The “Japan Syndrome” is a series of dialogues re-enacted from the script Takamine created, based on exchanges about the fear of radioactive pollution and the influences of the nuclear disaster, which took place between local shop owners and performers, who joined the project by open invitation. There are three versions, of Yamaguchi, Kansai (Kyoto and Osaka) and Mito; and these three works are being displayed together at the Utrecht Version.

Opening “Japan Syndrome –Utrecht Version”

When asked about the safety of a product, there were shop employees who would recommend produce from areas far from Fukushima, or fish imported from outside Japan, and sympathize with customers about their apprehensions regarding radioactive pollution. However, most would reply, even while showing a glimpse of their own anxiety and fear, “it passed inspection, so it’s okay,” or “it’s a substance that’s in the air anyway, so there’s no problem,” and so on, repeating claims from national and regional safety declarations and scientists. In each video, the feeling is present that although everyone has their own doubts, you are obliged to maintain, in passive endorsement, that it is “safe” like the government says, like everyone says – for otherwise, you face the pro-active, unspeakable “danger”.

The second location, the Casco shop, is displaying the work “Nuclear Family” (2012). Ranging from the ground floor to the exhibition room below, peaceful photographs of Takamine’s family life are on view, alongside the history of nuclear tests throughout the world. Behind this peaceful life, the work hints, is nothing but extensive amounts of nuclear testing, and the truth that Japan’s peace has been protected all along by America’s nuclear weapons. Just then, on April 9th, the NPDI (Non-Proliferation and Disarmament Initiative), consisting of a total of ten countries which do not possess nuclear weapons, including Japan, Australia, and the Netherlands, held a foreign ministerial conference in the Dutch city of The Hague. To discuss the future of nuclear power and its generation, surely the problems which were invisible until now need to be taken into consideration. It is these issues that Takamine’s work aims to make transparent, through the power of his art.

Tadasu Takamine, Nuclear Family. 1989
photo from installation

Takamine Tadasu: Japan Syndrome Utrecht Version is open until July 6 (closed on Mondays).

 








Casco

Nieuwekade 213-215
3511 RW Utrecht
The Netherlands
http://www.cascoprojects.org/

Casco shop

Voorstraat 88
3512AT Utrecht
The Netherlands

Opening times:

Tuesdays – Sundays 12:00 – 18:00
Closed on Mondays

Grand opening at the Rijksmuseum

Rijksmuseum. Photo credit: Iwan Baan. Image courtesy of Rijksmuseum

The Dutch city of Amsterdam’s National Art Museum, the Rijksmuseum, opened at last on the 13th of April 2013, after ten years of restoration work.
In its eighty exhibition rooms, which visit eight hundred years of Dutch art and history, including the 17th century, the Netherlands’ Golden Age, eight thousand items –carefully selected from the collection, numbering nine hundred and fifty thousand – are currently on display.
The restoration work was executed by the Spanish architecture agency Cruz y Ortiz Arquitectos. Keeping to the slogan “Cuypers for the 21st century”, they honored the Rijksmuseum’s architect Pierre Cuypers, restoring the building to how it looked when it first opened in 1885 while transforming it into a museum suited to the 21st century.

The competition for the architectural design of the National Art Museum held in 1876 saw Pierre Cuypers (1872-1921) as its winner. Cuypers, having worked on more than one hundred buildings, including, among others, Amsterdam Central Station (1889), was one of the leading architects of the late 19th century Netherlands. The museum design he presented would provide three hundred and thirty-three exhibition rooms, adorned with spectacular decoration both indoors and out. According to his wishes, the Austrian painter Georg Sturm (1855-1923) took charge of the architectural decoration.
Upon the building’s completion, however, the issue arose that the splendid decorations interfered with the appreciation of the artworks, until at last in 1903, by reason of its being unsuited to the objects on display, one piece of wall was painted over. From the 1920s onwards, more and more of the decorations were removed or hidden, until the restoration work executed in the 1950s, which left the building far from its original design.

top left: Great Hall. Photo credit: Jannes Linders. Image courtesy of Rijksmuseum
top right: Night Watch Gallery. Photo credit: Iwan Baan. Image courtesy of Rijksmuseum
bottom left: Gallery of Honour. Photo credit: Iwan Baan. Image courtesy of Rijksmuseum
bottom right: Great Hall. Photo credit: Jannes Linders. Image courtesy of Rijksmuseum

One of the key aims of the most recent restoration was, to bring these decorations back to life, with an emphasis on the second floor’s Great Hall and Gallery of Honour. The Great Hall’s floor is made up of a mosaic, its large windows glitter with stained glass, and on the wall are artists, scholars and historical figures praising the arts and sciences in an allegorical painting(image at top left). Above the door of the Gallery of Honour, which neighbours the Great Hall, is painted the Allegories of ‘Hope, Faith and Love’ (image at bottom right). In the Gallery of Honour hang works by Vermeer, Hals, Ruisdael and others, representing the Dutch Golden Age of the 17th century. At the very back is the Night Watch Gallery, for Rembrandt’s great masterpiece, the Night Watch(image at top right). This amazing collection of works immediately draws one’s eye; but if you chance to look up, your vision will be filled with the elaborately wrought architectural decorations(image at bottom left).
In the ten Lunettes (the half-circles on the upper walls) are young women symbolizing the various fields of the arts, the craftsmen pursuing them, and the coats of arms of the city most closely connected to each field. For instance, the Lunette featuring Ceramics portrays a woman holding Delft earthenware, a ceramist, and the crest of South-Holland, the province to which Delft belongs. The Lunette is in praise of the craftsmen, who bring forth such excellent artwork, and of the Netherlands, which brought forth the craftsmen.

Simultaneous to the restoration, the addition of the Asian Pavilion was made, to bring Asian artwork under the public eye. The Philips Wing is still under construction (due to open late 2014), and will become a planned exhibition space. The National Art Museum of Amsterdam holds its history in high regard, while it continues its transformation into a museum that can match the transitions of the times.

Rijksmuseum

Museumstraat 1
1071 CJ Amsterdam
The Netherlands
https://www.rijksmuseum.nl/en

Opening times:

9:00 to 17:00 daily, open 365 days a year

The Impressionist Caillebotte and Photography

Image1.　Gustave Caillebotte, The Floor-Scrapers, 1875, Musée d’Orsay, Paris

An exhibition on the work of the impressionist painter Caillebotte is currently up showing at the Gemeentemuseum in the Dutch city of the Hague. Gustave Caillebotte (1848 – 1894), who participated in impressionist exhibitions five times, is considered one of the exemplary painters of impressionism.
Raised in an affluent household, Caillebotte was able to support impressionism in a world that did not yet recognize it, by financing and buying works. At his death, he left the works in his possession to the French state. A great number of works currently on display at the Musée d’Orsay in Paris are there thanks to his efforts.

In 1874, Caillebotte visited the very first impressionist exhibition. Here he saw new paintings such as Claude Monet’s “Impression, Sunrise”, filled with light, and was drawn in. It was right after visiting this first impressionist exhibition that Caillebotte painted “The Floor Scrapers” (image 1). It is an image of three laborers, scraping a floor with wood planes while sunlight coming in through a window bathes their backs in light. This work was praised by Edgar Degas and on his recommendation displayed in the second impressionist exhibition, where it received much praise.

Image2.　Gustave Caillebotte Pont de l’Europe, 1876 – 1877
Kimbell Art Museum, Forth Worth, Texas

From that time Caillebotte took to drawing city sceneries and sights from his neighborhood and as seen from his Paris apartment. In the second half of the 19th century, the governor of the Seine prefecture, Haussmann, had Paris restructured into the wide avenues, parks and railway stations that we know today (also known as Paris’ haussmannization). In “The Europe Bridge” (image 2) we can see, beyond the bridge’s metal ribs, the station of Saint-Lazare. Caillebotte observed the scenery of his rapidly evolving modern city, and attempted to capture the change of the age.

Image3.　Gustave Caillebotte, The Pont de l’Europesketch,
c.1876, Private Collection

The composition Caillebotte used in a study of the same Europe Bridge (image 3), drawn from a different angle, is extremely interesting. In this work the road, which fills a broad span of the foreground, converges at a steep angle behind the man in the silk hat. This characteristic use of perspective is due to the fact that Caillebotte related to photographs while painting.


Thanks to research by Kirk Varnedoe and Peter Gelassi, it has become clear that when Caillebotte was at the stage of selecting composition, he frequently used photographs taken with a wide-lens camera. While on the one hand a wide-lens allows for a wide area to be shot,  it also compresses this wide range, emphasizes the perspective. This effect has been applied to the painting by Caillebotte.

At this exhibition, there is one room displaying stereoscopes of Paris city sceneries, contemporary to Caillebotte. Stereoscopy refers to a construction in which one can view a double photograph with a special pair of glasses, through which the images will unite and appear three-dimensional. Peering through, the optical illusion allows anyone to imagine themselves a time traveller, visiting 19th century Paris. In viewing these photographs together with Caillebotte’s work, we can know one expression of the revolution that photography brought upon painting.


The exhibition of Gustave Caillebotte’s work is open until May 20 (the museum is closed on Mondays).

Gemeentemuseum Den Haag

Stadhouderslaan 41
2517 HV The Hague
The Netherlands
http://www.gemeentemuseum.nl/en

Opening times:

Tuesdays - Sundays 11:00 - 17:00
Closed on Mondays

Lichtenstein, A Retrospective

Roy Lichtenstein, Whaam!,1963, Tate. © Estate of Roy Lichtenstein/DACS 2012

On February 21 a retrospective exhibition opened at Tate Modern, of Roy Lichtenstein, one of the central figures of American Pop Art. It is the first large-scale retrospective exhibition of his work since Lichtenstein passed away in 1997 at the age of seventy-three. With the collection of one hundred and twenty-five works from his early days to his late years, it becomes possible to look back over Lichtenstein’s paintings and the borderline they balance between art and mass culture. Lichtenstein is known for his work in which he enlarges single panels from comics. His active years, the 1960s, are the period in which Andy Warhol and his factory first drew from mass media and surrounding urban settings, as well as mass media and the world of commercials, to start producing work.

Roy Lichtenstein, Oh, Jeff…I Love You, Too…But…, 1964, 

Collection Simonyi © Estate of Roy Lichtenstein/DACS 2012

In 1962, Lichtenstein displayed shocking work at Leo Castelli gallery in New York, that overthrew the noble image of art that people had. This work was a painting named “Look, Mickey”. It was the famous Disney characters Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck, in a painting. The characteristics of comic books, such as the emphasized lines and simple coloring, had been reproduced in oil paints to paint these cartoon characters on an enormous canvas. Lichtenstein had transformed the mass-produced, widely circulated printed matter of the cartoon illustration, into a work of art.
Due to its motifs and his manner of painting, his work is often mistaken as simply the enlargement of a piece of printed matter. But is that really all?



For instance, let’s take a look at one of his most important pieces, “Whaam!” This painting is a panel from a comic about a fighter pilot, “Star Jocky”, published in 1962 in the compilation “All American Men of War”. If we compare it to the scene from the comic that inspired it: the background has been eliminated, the lines and coloring have been cleaned up, and the image has been reshaped into a composition with all the more impact. When viewed up close, the dot matrix used by printed matter is visible, but when studied more closely, we see that the precisely arranged dots have not been produced mechanically, but are entirely hand-painted. Although Lichtenstein’s motifs drew from mass-produced printed matter, because he allowed for alteration and hand-painted everything, his works became unique paintings.


 The retrospective also features works that are not nearly so well-known, such as paintings of female nudes, and his landscapes in the Chinese style. His series of paintings, Art History, which recreates artworks in Lichtenstein’s own style, seems to hurtle a challenge at modern art’s views on originality. This retrospective exhibition provides us with a wonderful opportunity to know the many different sides to Roy Lichtenstein.

The exhibition Lichtenstein: A Retrospective will be open from 21 February to 27 May at Tate Modern (open all days).

Tate Modern

Bankside London SE1 9TG United Kingdom http://www.tate.org.uk/visit/tate-modern

Opening times:

Sun - Thurs 10:00 - 18:00, Fri & Sat 10:00 - 22:00

Dalí the Genius -Centre Pompidou

The expression of his unique view of the world; the eccentric appearance characterised by his long moustache; his presence in the tales of numerous scandals -it is none other than the twentieth-century artist Salvador Dalí. At present, a large scale retrospective is open at Centre Pompidou in Paris. It features not only paintings, sketches, and sculptural work, but also photographs, film, and the television program in which Dalí appeared, in a total of two hundred works.

Among his numerous masterpieces, there is “The Persistence of Memory” (also frequently called “Melting Clocks”). This piece, painted in a superior technique, gives us a world in which reality and dream are strangely intertwined. Although one of the most famous of Dali’s work, when it is before your eyes it is shockingly small - a mere 24 x 33 centimeters. On this small canvas, with the seashore by the Porto Rigato, where Dali’s atelier was located, for the background, Dali’s face is delivered to us like a piece of meat beside these impossible, limp clocks. The long eyelashes make you think of an insect that might start to move at any moment. The piece / Dali’s view on paintings becomes plainly visible: ‘paintings are hand-drawn photographs made of the world generally imagined as a tangible illogicality.’

The second half of the exhibition does its best to carry you even deeper into Dali’s world: an installation inspired by the American actress Mae West. This work is her portrait - a chair in the shape of lips, furniture in the shape of a nose, curtains which look like hair, and so on - a room remodeled to a sculpture. Here viewers literally step inside the work, and can even photograph themselves inside.

After seeing Dali’s original work even once, it sticks in your memory; his eccentric appearance, too, makes an intense impression on people. It’s possible that his long, pointy moustache and his peculiar face are even more famous than his work. Dali excelled at self-production, called himself a genius, behaved in ways that departed from common sense, and constantly provided the topic for newspapers, television and other media. Among so many artists who despised commercial works and show business, Dali’s enthusiastic exposure towards media drew much attention and played a great part in establishing his fame. However, do we really believe in this ‘genius’ that he created?

At this exhibition the ‘genius’ image Dali created is questioned, but his work courteously visited, to attempt to throw into relief the essential form of Dali.

The Dali exhibitionis open until March 25th. (Museum is closed on Tuesdays).

Centre Pompidou

19 Rue Beaubourg
75004 Paris
France
http://www.centrepompidou.fr/en

Opening Times:

11:00-23:00　 Closed on Tuesday