Tag: Art
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A statue of liberty
A statue of liberty In 1674, during a great storm, the nave of the gothic Dom Church in Utrecht collapsed and from the rubble one must have had a view into the choir and apse that were still standing. The nave had fallen to pieces because it had never been properly finished at the time…
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The lost heroes of Rozenoord
The lost heroes of Rozenoord A monument of empty chairs with nameplates underneath. Names of resistance fighters – mostly – who were executed nearby in the final months of Nazi German occupation of The Netherlands during World War 2.A chair without armrests for the young ones below 30 years of age; for the ones of…
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Lightness of being
Lightness of being In last week’s post I touched upon the innovative art of Mondrian, De Stijl and Bauhaus in the first half of last century and I mentioned their impact on abstract art and modern design.At a friend’s house in Geneva I once saw the coffee table of the picture. Impressed by its clever…
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Mondria(a)n
Mondria(a)n This painting (The Grey Tree), revealing cubist influence, shows Mondriaan at the crossroads between his earlier figurative work and his later purely abstract paintings. Mondriaan made it in 1911, the year he went to France where he wished to join the Parisian Avant Garde. On his way to Paris Mondriaan dropped one ‘a’ of…
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Bonies in the Art Museum (2021)
Bonies in the Art Museum (2021) (Nota bene: After Autumn Sonata, the first weekly post on my blog almost ten years ago, today’s post happens to be number 500. And I’m still there to continue!) The ‘Kunstmuseum’ (Art Museum) in The Hague, the GEM of Berlage, is a piece of art in itself. I think…
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Cors des Alpes
Cors des Alpes A concert with two alpine horns and two accordions in an old Hydro Power Plant in the Rhône, where the river flows out of Lake Geneva. Very original, as for the music, the instruments and the location.The musicians played arrangements of old baroque compositions and more recent pieces specially composed for these…
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Memento mori
Memento mori When walking around in a graveyard we may be content of still belonging to the realm of the living, but it also inevitably reminds us of our own mortality. This is certainly the case in the graveyard of the Portuguese Jews near Amsterdam. Many of the gravestones carry images that denote death: an…
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Anno Mundi 5490
Anno Mundi 5490 The Jewish cemetery at ‘Ouderkerk aan de Amstel’ near Amsterdam is called Beth Haim which means House of Life. This tells us something about the Sephardim philosophy of life – and death. The picture shows a detail of a partly submerged gravestone in which we see a shepherdess with her cattle. A…
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Watery grave
Watery grave I saw this sculpted marble gravestone at the cemetery of the Portuguese Jewish community in ‘Ouderkerk aan de Amstel’. The Sephardim Jews had started settling in Amsterdam in the 16th century and their cemetery in nearby Ouderkerk dates from 1614. I used to pass and visit it regularly on my walks along the…
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Maps
Maps Populonia,Via de CrinaleVia dei Cavalleggeri …Not much is left of the map on display telling us about exciting places to visit and walks to take around the Gulf of Baratti on the west coast of Tuscany. I love maps. A map can let us dream of unknown worlds, even when the elements have transformed…
καιρός remembered 