Is it Rembrandt?, The Hague, and Rotterdam

This week started out with a guest lecturer (wearing awesome shoes I might add).  He basically believes that most paintings said to be Rembrandts are actually done by his students.  Really he was kind of an asshole who really liked to listen to himself talk and had quite an ego.  But I think you have to have an ego to be spouting some crazy theories about centuries dead artists.

We spent a lot of time in front of this painting.  It is considered the pride of the Netherlands.  (Don't worry if you don't get why, neither do I.)  It is the Night Watch by Rembrandt.  He pointed out all the sex in the painting.

Such as the shadow of the main guy's hand grabbing at the crotch of the guy next to him while he holds a huge spear thing.  A bit of a reach (no pun intended), but at least he actually agreed that Rembrandt painted this painting.

On Wednesday we visited the Hague (a city) and the Gemeentemuseum.  It has a really great collection of modern and contemporary art.

One of their exhibitions was of this guy's amazing sculptures.  My favorite though was this bed where the curtains were made of crystals and there was a crystal crown on top.

Then I walked into a room and saw Orville! I think I gasped out loud.  For those who don't know what this is I have included a video.

They also had a exhibition about Mondrian.  It included this painting.  Which I have to say is one of the four or five I actually like of Mondrian's.  Just don't tell my professor.

I skipped on Thursday.  Sue me, I'm tired and didn't want to go on an architecture tour.

On Friday we went back to Rotterdam.  First we went to the NAi (the Netherlands Architecture Institute).

I spent the whole time in the kid's section drawing, building with legos, and coloring.  There were these awesome cutouts that you could color and build into your own city.

They even included a pile of dog poop.  How nice of them. (Sorry, it was hard to get the poop in focus).

Next we went to the Sonneveld House Museum.  It is a house where these rich people lived from the 30s to the 50s.

We got to wear these awesome shoes covers to protect the floors.

The entire house was very modern at the time it was built.  It had crazy things like dumbwaiters and ten shower heads in each of the showers.  It was very ahead of its time, but really all we wanted to do while there was act out Mad Men and have cocktails.

The best part was this little lamp which looked like the families hiding place for the KKK hoods when not in use.

That night I stuck around in Rotterdam to watch the Battle of the Drums.  Three different drum/brass cores played.  It was amazing.  Especially watching kids being ghetto in Dutch.  Some words are the same in both languages.

Eventually the rain started and this was all I could see.  Leave me to be stuck in a rain storm in a white shirt the only day I don't bring either a raincoat or a sweater.  I was not a good girl scout today.

Germany

This weekend I decided to head to Munster, Germany.  (I can't figure out how to put the umlaut over the "u".)  It is an adorable town when not everyone speaks English.  I ended up doing a lot of pointing at menus.

I stayed at a hotel that is on old brewery.  It was very debilitated factory looking.

But they had some awesome decorations.  (This is the ceiling of the lobby.)

And my room was pretty nice. And it had a big pink bean bag chair.  I can say I have never seen that in America.

The first night I was there I walked into town and stumbled on a flea market/fair.

I drank some beer and tried to figure out how I could get this gem back to America if I bought it.

I then wandered around town and took a million pictures.  Especially of the churches (of which there were ton).  All the pictures are up on my facebook if you want to see more.

I soon got tired and realized I hadn't eaten all day.  So I headed back towards the hotel to eat.  On the way I stopped at the grocery store to stock up on German candy.

I ate at this little restaurant next to the hotel.  I pointed at the menu to order a carafe of wine.  Turns out it was a whole bottle.  It would have been rude for me not to finish it.  Good thing I only had to walk a few hundred feet to get to my room.

The next day I went to the Picasso museum.  (This was the reason I picked Munster.)  The museum has a lot of his lithographs and graphic work.  The exhibit they had up was of his work in the theater and in politics.  Including this famous piece.

They also have the original of my newest tattoo.  These pictures just do not do justice to his work, even his lithographs.  I am always amazed how much emotion he could communicate with just a few lines.

Plus it was so nice to go to a museum and look at what I wanted to look at and to not learn a damn thing.  I just enjoyed the art. 

The museum also had an exhibit of German expressionists.  There was a series by Max Beckmann called Beckmann's Circus.

I also discovered an artist that I fell in love with.  His name is Hap Grieshaber.  He worked mostly in woodcuts.  They were amazing.  (Sorry the picture is so blurry.  I got caught taking photos at this point and had to sneakily take this one with my phone.  Art crimes.)

The next day I headed back to Amsterdam.  But not before catching this quality shot.  I swear I thought the statue was helping them read their map.

Eindhoven and the Ghetto of Amsterdam

I haven't posted for awhile.  Mostly cause this week was a bit of a hard one.  It has been a month since my dad died and it hit me really hard on Monday night.  I just miss him so much.  So due to lack of sleep I skipped our Tuesday tour. 

But on Wednesday I got my ass out of bed and joined the class on a trip to a section of Amsterdam that can be considered a "ghetto".  (But not really at all.)  It consisted of all these horribly maintained high rise buildings until 1992.

In 1992 a military transport plane crashed into one of the buildings.  (These tiles are part of the memorial.  They are all made out of pieces of the destroyed buildings.) To this day they have no idea what the plane was carrying or how many people died.  There are still people getting sick from whatever was in the plane.

After the plane crash the city decided to rebuild the area and make it safer.  They destroyed some of the high rises, but others they sold apartment by apartment to people for 1 euro.  But then they were responsible for refurbishing it.  They also added features like green spaces and public art.

They also added a petting zoo.

Needless to say it was hard to get us away from there.

Although my favorite part was the artist's apartments (seen in yellow).  Artists only have to pay 300 euros for rent (about $365).  Maybe I will move to the Netherlands.

After our tour we got Suriname food.  Don't worry I didn't know where Suriname was either.  It is right above Brazil.  And they have delicious food.

Thursday was lecture, so nothing fun there.  On Friday we took the train to Eindhoven.  It is a town towards the south of the Netherlands.  We went to the Van Abbemuseum.

 I didn't like most of the museum.  There was a restropective of a Dutch artist.  Most of his work are bow ties.  (Okay really they are commentaries on the art gallery setting, but all I saw was bow ties.)  This is one of his piece I really liked.

There were two parts of the museum that I did like.  Covering a huge part of the entrance were all these drawings commenting on political issues done by a Romanian artist.

This is an example of the drawings.  They were all very ironic and hilarious.

The other part of the museum that I liked was a reproduction of an exhibit from Sao Paulo. The art work was hung on these glass panels.  (These pieces are by one of my new favorite artists, a Dutch artist named Charley Toorop.  Her faces are just amazing.)

The artist's information was written on the back side of the glass panels.  So what you saw first was the art, then the information.  This stopped people from doing that thing that I know we all do in museums.  Before looking at the art you look at the name to see if you should care about the piece.  This exhibit forced you to make your decision about if you liked it based on the artwork alone instead of what people have told you.  After that long and stressful day I enjoyed a few glasses of wine before biking home slightly tipsy.

This weekend I am heading off to Munster, Germany.  I plan on drinking beer, seeing Picasso, and sleeping in a room by myself.  It will be very exciting and relaxing.  Plus I will have tons of pictures when I get back.  (And if I get lucky I will meet these awesome guys.)

Old Shipping Wharf and Leiden

On Thursday we went on a architecture tour of a part of town that used to be the harbor, before the harbor moved farther out to make room for more people.  And don't let this picture fool you.  It was cold and rainy for most of the time we were there.

They want to keep the feel of the land in this area so they use a lot of the existing structures and materials to make housing and buildings.  These are student apartments made out of shipping containers.  (although technically they are pre-fab)

This is an office building that was built on top of the structure of a crane that used to unload cargo from ships. 

 There is even a guy who lives in an old tram.

There are tons of artists in the area (including the headquarters of MTV Europe).  One of the old warehouses was divided up into artists studios and offices.

The designers of the space built these metal skeleton structures that they would then sell to the artists.  Then the artists could build anything they want in their space.

 This resulted in a little town inside a warehouse of all these cool little structures filled with artists.

And of course, since they are artists, some of the structures get really interesting.

I also saw my first PBR since coming to Europe.  Apparently it is hard to get here so the hipsters drink Corona instead.

All around these buildings are amazing outdoor sculptures and art.

This one is made of tons of pint glasses.

There is even a pancake boat that gives you unlimited pancakes on an hour and half boat ride.

And an old submarine.  Needless to say if I moved to Amsterdam I would want to live in this area.

On Friday we went to Leiden which is about an hour south of Amsterdam.  It is an old town (big surprise) that is famous for being under siege for almost a year in the 16th century.  During the siege almost half of the town's inhabitants died from either hunger or the plague.

We went to a museum which unfortunately doesn't allow photographs.  Luckily there were some amazing public art around town.

After we returned to Amsterdam we went to this amazingly tacky floating Chinese restaurant called the Sea Palace.  Then we looked at the menu and decided it was way to expensive so we left.

Instead we went to this Italian place inside the library that was delicious and super cheap (a good combo).  The only table with enough seating for us had a huge tree in the middle.  So my professor decided to make random jungle noises all through dinner.

Here we celebrated Katy's birthday (she's the one covering her face with embarrassment as we sing happy birthday in English and Dutch to her). 

We decided walking home would be a good idea since I had a lot of wine.  (2 euro 50 for a HUGE glass!)  We took a strange route but got to see tons of amazing little houses and decorations along the way.

That night we all gathered in one of our rooms for a little drinking.  (Its like we are college students or something.)  Anna (the girl in this photo) brought a bottle of wine that only cost her about 1 euro 50.  (That is about $1.85 in America.)  Then she made us all try it.  As you can see from Mario's reaction it tasted like cleaning solution.  We later found out that it was probably cooking wine.  After that it was time for me to sleep of the alcohol and look forward to the weekend.