Amsterdam Day 3: The Wonder of Sunflowers
I was, indeed, at the Amsterdam Hermitage when it opened--15 minutes before, in fact, and was the first person in the door. I checked my bag (taking my notebook and my wallet with me), got my audio tour equipment, and made a beeline for my intended goal: the Vincent Van Gogh exhibit. Remember how I mentioned that 2012 seemed to be the year for museums to renovate? Well, this year the Van Gogh Museum is renovating as well, and is closed for the duration of the work. The Amsterdam Hermitage provided several galleries to the Van Gogh to display selected works and artifacts from the collection, and that was my destination.
I've loved Van Gogh's work since I was a kid, and nothing was going to keep me from seeing as much of it as was available. They did some wonderful things with this exhibit, which makes me wonder exactly how awesome the Van Gogh Museum itself is when it's open and complete. There were letters from Vincent to Theo. There were artifacts that Vincent used in his still lifes so you could compare the actual item with its depiction--a green vase, a white sculpture of a horse--and the box of yarn that Vincent used to experiment with color before using it on a canvas.
I took pages and pages of notes about the paintings I saw. I won't bore you with all of them, but I'll talk about three that left me breathless.
The first was the Bedroom. We've all seen this image a hundred times. What you don't get from a reproduction is how Van Gogh almost sculpted the paint on the canvas, so that you can see the wrinkles in the pillows and the texture of the wood from which the night table is made. The yellow of the bed frame was delicious to my eyes, bright and solid and yet somehow clearly painted, textured wood.
The second thing that impressed me was his trio of paintings after Jean-Francois Millet. Millet made a career of doing monochrome drawings of peasant life. Van Gogh did color studies of at least three of these drawings, and while Millet's are beautiful, Van Gogh's are dynamic and alive. I was especially taken with the Woman Binding Sheaves: a woman in blue bending over to bind a sheaf of wheat. I couldn't stop looking at it.
And then, I came to the painting of sunflowers. My breath caught when I saw it. Tears actually ran down my face. I wasn't sobbing or anything; I just couldn't help myself. It's so beautiful, so full of life, so tangible. The paint is applied so that you can sense the fuzzy thickness of the center of a sunflower. That's the thing that most drew me in--the center of those flowers, and then, of course, those delicious, brilliant yellows. These are flowers just past their prime, only one or two still fully in bloom. The rest have petals pulling back, pulling away, creating a slight melancholy. But they are still robust and alive. No reproduction can do this painting justice. In fact, after I went and saw the rest of this exhibit, and visited some Monets and other Impressionists, I went back to the Sunflowers. It was the last painting I saw before I left the museum. All these hours later as I sit on the airplane writing this, I still get choked up when I think about that painting. I'll never see it the same way again.
A last farewell
I got back to the hotel exactly when I promised them I would to clear out my room. My protector wasn't there, but when I checked out, the man behind the desk actually called him so he could say goodbye to me. He said he was sorry to see me go, sorry that he failed to convince me to stay, and hoped that his Beautiful Lady would come back.
Home we go
I got to my flight with a little bit of time to spare. When I boarded, I was seated next to a young Danish woman on her way to Hawaii to visit a friend. We ended up spending a very congenial 10 hours with each other. She spoke English extremely well and we had a fine flight talking about everything from her career hopes to the surprises of aging to men to, well, everything. It was a perfectly lovely trip in her company.
And so ends my trip to Europe. I'll make another post later with general thoughts and impressions. In the meanwhile, I couldn't have asked for a better finale to such a wonderful adventure.
I've loved Van Gogh's work since I was a kid, and nothing was going to keep me from seeing as much of it as was available. They did some wonderful things with this exhibit, which makes me wonder exactly how awesome the Van Gogh Museum itself is when it's open and complete. There were letters from Vincent to Theo. There were artifacts that Vincent used in his still lifes so you could compare the actual item with its depiction--a green vase, a white sculpture of a horse--and the box of yarn that Vincent used to experiment with color before using it on a canvas.
I took pages and pages of notes about the paintings I saw. I won't bore you with all of them, but I'll talk about three that left me breathless.
The first was the Bedroom. We've all seen this image a hundred times. What you don't get from a reproduction is how Van Gogh almost sculpted the paint on the canvas, so that you can see the wrinkles in the pillows and the texture of the wood from which the night table is made. The yellow of the bed frame was delicious to my eyes, bright and solid and yet somehow clearly painted, textured wood.
The second thing that impressed me was his trio of paintings after Jean-Francois Millet. Millet made a career of doing monochrome drawings of peasant life. Van Gogh did color studies of at least three of these drawings, and while Millet's are beautiful, Van Gogh's are dynamic and alive. I was especially taken with the Woman Binding Sheaves: a woman in blue bending over to bind a sheaf of wheat. I couldn't stop looking at it.
And then, I came to the painting of sunflowers. My breath caught when I saw it. Tears actually ran down my face. I wasn't sobbing or anything; I just couldn't help myself. It's so beautiful, so full of life, so tangible. The paint is applied so that you can sense the fuzzy thickness of the center of a sunflower. That's the thing that most drew me in--the center of those flowers, and then, of course, those delicious, brilliant yellows. These are flowers just past their prime, only one or two still fully in bloom. The rest have petals pulling back, pulling away, creating a slight melancholy. But they are still robust and alive. No reproduction can do this painting justice. In fact, after I went and saw the rest of this exhibit, and visited some Monets and other Impressionists, I went back to the Sunflowers. It was the last painting I saw before I left the museum. All these hours later as I sit on the airplane writing this, I still get choked up when I think about that painting. I'll never see it the same way again.
A last farewell
I got back to the hotel exactly when I promised them I would to clear out my room. My protector wasn't there, but when I checked out, the man behind the desk actually called him so he could say goodbye to me. He said he was sorry to see me go, sorry that he failed to convince me to stay, and hoped that his Beautiful Lady would come back.
Home we go
I got to my flight with a little bit of time to spare. When I boarded, I was seated next to a young Danish woman on her way to Hawaii to visit a friend. We ended up spending a very congenial 10 hours with each other. She spoke English extremely well and we had a fine flight talking about everything from her career hopes to the surprises of aging to men to, well, everything. It was a perfectly lovely trip in her company.
And so ends my trip to Europe. I'll make another post later with general thoughts and impressions. In the meanwhile, I couldn't have asked for a better finale to such a wonderful adventure.