Exhibit: “Vermeer and Music: The Art of Love and Leisure”

“If music be the food of love, play on;” Twelfth Night, Shakespeare


Painters in the 17th century Netherlands had a strong affinity for music with more than one in ten of the works from the Dutch Golden Age incorporating such themes. Twelve of the existing 36 paintings by Johannes Vermeer include musical references. The current exhibit in London “Vermeer and Music: The Art of Love and Leisure” displays five of these works by Vermeer, along with paintings with musical motifs by his contemporaries Gerard ter Borch, Gabriel Metsu, Jan Steen and Pieter de Hooch.

Music in the Netherlands of that era was not a complex, lofty art, but rather a popular pastime for all classes. People enjoyed simple and accessible musical entertainment such as chamber music performed and sung in their own homes, often holding concerts with friends. Music as part of one’s life was frequently depicted in the forms of various symbols in paintings. In portraits, the depiction of music scores and instruments signaled the social status and talents of the subject while in illustrations of scenes of daily life, the musical items revealed the intellectual and social status of the people in the picture.


The important role of harmony in music became a metaphor for the romantic relationship between a man and a woman. Scenes of music lessons in particular were popular as they offered the rare occasion of a natural setting in which an unmarried man and woman could be together. In Gabriel Metsu’s painting, a male music teacher has stopped a lesson to offer his young female pupil a glass of wine. In the background of Metsu’s “A Man and a Woman seated by a Virginal,” (Fig. 1) we see behind a curtain, a portion of a picture of Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night” which foreshadows what will happen to the two people in the painting.

Fig. 1
Gabriel Metsu (1629 - 1667)
A Man and a Woman seated by a Virginal
about 1665, oil on oak
38.4 x 32.2 cm
The National Gallery, London, Inv. NG839
© The National Gallery, London

Fig. 2
Johannes Vermeer (1632 - 1675)
The Music Lesson
about 1662-3, oil on canvas
73.3 x 64.5 cm
Royal Collection Trust
© Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2013

Fig. 3
Johannes Vermeer (1632 - 1675)
A Young Woman seated at a Virginal
about 1670-2, oil on canvas
51.5 x 45.5 cm
The National Gallery, London, Inv. NG2568
© The National Gallery, London

Vermeer’s “The Music Lesson” (Fig. 2) portrays a woman playing the virginal and a man listening intently. The woman seems to be focusing on her music, but her reflection in the mirror above her head reveals she is looking toward the man suggesting she has intimate feelings for him. Inscribed on the lid of the virginal are the words “Musica Letitae Comes Medicina Doloris” (“Music is a companion in pleasure, and a balm in sorrow”) which allude to the inner thoughts of the woman. At the time, the virginal symbolized the female voice and the viol that of the male. The viola da gamba lies behind the woman as if waiting to be played in harmony with the virginal. Such drama between a man and a woman is hidden within this tranquil painting.

The artists began to devise ways to draw viewers in as active participants of the unfolding romances in the paintings instead of letting us remain simply observers. The women portrayed in Vermeer’s “A Young Woman seated at a Virginal” (Fig. 3) and Gerard Dou’s “Woman at the Clavichord” cast appealing gazes toward the viewer as if inviting us to pick up and play the viols at their sides.

Music may very well be the key to deciphering 17th century Dutch paintings.


The exhibit displays viols, guitars and virginals from the 17th century and will also host musical performances from the era from Thursdays through Saturdays.


“Vermeer and Music: The Art of Love and Leisure” runs until September 8, 2013.

The National Gallery, London

Trafalgar Square,
London WC2N 5DN
The United Kingdom
+44 (0)20 7747 2885
http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/

Opening times:

Mondays – Thursdays, Saturdays, Sundays　10：00 – 18：00
Fridays　10：00 – 21：00

History and Design go hand in hand at the Lloyd Hotel and Cultural Embassy in Amsterdam

Lloyd Hotel & Cultural Embassy

With its mix of guest rooms ranging from one star to five stars, The Lloyd Hotel is unlike any other. Inside the rooms might be grand pianos, beds long enough to fit seven to eight people, soundproofing fixtures strong enough for concerts, a bathtub and swing set up in the rafters or a gigantic kitchen. This place is filled to the brim with the playfulness typical of Dutch design.
There’s also a lot of interiors with movable parts, or you can just freely use any of the furniture in the corridor. Different from a regular hotel, the bathroom and toilet might be right in the middle of the room, or furnished in another such way to draw the eye. In these guest rooms you could bring in a room divider, take a shower right alongside your bed, or submerse yourself in the tub; they propose and allow an entirely different use of time and space than in our daily lives.

5-star room. Bath area is designed by MVRDV.

The Lloyd Hotel, located on Amsterdam Harbor’s eastern wharf, draws its name from the original owner of the building, the shipping company Lloyd.　Originally constructed as a hotel where emigrants to South America could have a physical examination and a few days’ rest, at that time as many as nine hundred people could stay at the hotel. After Royal Dutch Lloyd went bankrupt in 1935, during the German occupation of the Netherlands in WWII, the building was used to hold members of the underground resistance. After the war ended, it turned into a regular penitentiary, and later again a reformatory centre for youth. From the second half of the 1980s, it was put to use as studio space for artists.

Between 1989 and 1999, artists created work, lived and interacted there.
They took down the walls creating the melancholy and enclosed impression, and brought about a complete change with what came before: an open space and open atmosphere, in which a variety of people could come and go. The open-minded and creative spirit of the artists was taken over by Suzanne Oxenaar and Otto Nan, the founders of the current Lloyd Hotel and Cultural Embassy, and this can be seen all over the hotel in different forms.


When the building was being renovated for use as a hotel, what counted most was the concepts of “a release from the dark past” and “welcoming the sense of playfulness, bringing the space alive”. The Dutch architecture agency MVRDV made the central area of the hotel into a light and open atrium. Inside the building is the Cultural Embassy; which lives up to its name, always surrounded in works of contemporary art and design. For example: on the top floor, there is Suchan Kinoshita’s work, at the entrance to the restaurant and café, which are popular locally as well, the work “Lloyd Life” is on display, by the Amsterdam-based artist Chikako Watanabe. Moreover, in the upper reaches of the café, there is a library, and space provided for exhibitions and workshops, where visitors can walk around freely. At Lloyd Hotel and the Cultural Embassy, design and art have integrated to create an experience for all five senses, and its attitude and conception of remembering its history with respect is mesmerizing.

*Click here for more photos.

Lloyd Hotel & Cultural Embassy

Oostelijke Handelskade 34
1019 BN Amsterdam
The Netherlands
http://www.lloydhotel.com
t: +31205613636

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