Today we toured Rembrandt's home in Amsterdam and then spent time wandering around the Vincent Van Gogh museum. Truly amazing. And the hope is that tomorrow we can see a traveling exhibit of the late US pop star icon, Prince. In my eyes, three incredibly gifted artists! Geniuses really.
I thought about my grandmother Dot when I saw this shop.
I found this Spinoza statue by accident. It shouldn't have been an accident, because I had read a short biography of Spinoza many years ago and had learned of his connection to Amsterdam. I guess I had just forgotten. Rediscovering Spinoza in this manner was one of my most pleasant surprises during our time in Amsterdam.
When you enlarge this image, you can see the back of the Spinoza statue, over on the left. In that restaurant over there is where we had lunch. And the very next day, we were on one of those canal cruise boats moving through here.
Gene Simmons, Prince and Mick Jaggar
Rembrandt Square
We saw some Rembrandts in the Hermitage in St. Petersburg (2007). Catherine the Great sent her agents all over Europe to buy up Rembrandt art when he had fallen out of favor for a period. Smart lady. St. Petersburg and Amsterdam have close ties, and Peter the Great designed St. Petersburg, his new capital, after Amsterdam, but on a larger scale. There's a branch of Russia's hermitage in Amsterdam. We did not go. Peter the Great spent 4 months in Amsterdam in his twenties, and one home he stayed in is a museum.
This guy was like Mr. Rogers. Taught how paint was made in Rembrandt's time. I learned more in 30 minutes than a year in school. Very interesting. And to think we were standing in Rembrandt's studio.
Kade standing where Rembrandt's students learned to paint from the master
outside the Rembrandt home
I was looking for some vintage WWII Red Army coats.
The Dutch have few inhibitions. Certainly not as repressed as we are in the USA.
Compared to Florence and Paris, Amsterdam has a lot of tacky. Oh, and toss fashion standards out the window here......all over the place. They wear what they want. No fat types, though. Been very cold the last two days. Truly like early winter temps back home
a cool montage in a coffee shop down the road from the Van Gogh Museum
Pretty amazing museum. His 80+ self-portraits were worth the admission. Van Gogh lived only to 37, and all his work, which is a goddamn lot, was done over a decade. Shot himself in the chest. Suicide. Of all the people I learned about this trip, the names that have peaked my interest the most, and perhaps will nudge me to do further research, are Medici and Van Gogh.
Although taking photographs inside the museum was mostly prohibited, they had areas where you could take photos in designated areas.....just not in front of Van Gogh's actual art. When we arrived at one such area (above), I offered to take a photo of a couple of ladies who were together. When I was done, I talked with one of them. She was a curly redhead and spoke very good English. She asked where I was from, then mentioned having friends in Delaware and California, and that she's been to the US herself. I then I asked her where she was from, and she said Moscow! That then led to talking about my traveling to and living in Uzbekistan (former USSR) and our fabulous trip to Russia in 2007. She was intrigued, and said I was not like most Americans. What she was saying was that, if you are open to it, and if you use critical thinking, a person's understanding of a place is not going to be as clouded as it would otherwise be, especially when there's an ongoing misinformation campaign. We used to call this propaganda. In that sense, it's like fundamentalist religion. And many people swallow the whole bit. In the US, we have ours. In other countries, they have theirs. She said 2007 were "the good times." We laughed. She and her family have been living in Singapore for years. So when I introduced her to Kade, we had more to talk about. We exchanged emails and I gave her my travel blog address. This was just one of those examples of how traveling to a particular country may expose you to other people of other nationalities. And you can still travel to places (Russia, for example) and enjoy the art, the food, all the historic places and beautiful scenery without really having to worry about politics. I eat in fabulous restaurants in the USA and go to places where the majority of people likely don't share my political views or see eye-to-eye with me on religious matters, yet I still enjoy it all, and have a grand time. I am a firm believer that compartmentalizing can work, and perhaps just saying to yourself, "I may be wrong. They could right on some things. Maybe I have a limited understanding of what's really happening." Humbling, I know.
In parts of Amsterdam, almost a college-town vibe. Thought I was at a fraternity party.
No comments:
Post a Comment