Day 5

Sunday June 03, 2012

 

Rainy day again.  I am finding that it is true that there is often a gray sky across the Netherlands, maybe another reason why dwellings are built to maximize the amount of possible daylight.  I thought it would be nice to rest my feet today and not go anywhere far, but decided to head back to the Van Gogh Museum and the Stedjelik museum.  Turns out that the Stedjelik museum is closed for renovation until September 23!  That's too bad.  But I did get to see more of the Van Gogh museum, and what was a nice surprise, the extension which housed a great exhibit about Dreams of Nature, particularly Symbolism in landscape paintings, a style that acted as a backlash against the reductivism of modernity.  The exhibit text explained it well:

"Symbolism was an important movement in European art between 1880 and 1914.  In many ways it was a reaction to the modernity of the period - notable industrialization and urbanization - and to the realism of contemporary paintings and novels.  The Symbolists, by contrast, were more interested in suggesting than in describing reality.  Their aim was not to produce a superficial likeness, but to evoke inner meanings, to conjure up moods and dream states. 

Symbolism drew inspiration from various sources in science, music, and literature.  Among these were the ideas of the French poet Charles Baudelaire about the interconnectedness of the senses (correspondances), and the music of the German composer Richard Wagner, who fused different art forms to produce a comprehensive work of art (Gesamtkunstwerk).  There was no fixed style of symbolist painting, however.

Landscape was an ideal subject for symbolist painters.  It provided universally recognizable motifs with particular association: twilight evokes peacefulness and calm, for example, and the sea conjures up visions of infinity.  Artists used their various styles to suggest moods, strange worlds, and spiritual enlightenment."

What I find somewhat off-balance is the differentiation between suggesting and describing in the Dutch tradition.  It is clear that these differ.  Martin Jay classifies one of his scopic regimes of modernity as the "Dutch art of describing."  However, Piet Mondrian, a Dutch De Stijl painter during the period of Modernity, was one of these Symbolist painters (in his early works - Windmill/Sea After Sunset).  Mondrian wrote in a letter to H.P. Bremmer dated 29 January 1914, "Nature (or that which I see) inspires me, provides me - as it does every painter - with the emotion by which I am moved to create something, but I want to approach the truth as closely as possible, abstracting everything until I come close to the foundation - still only an outward foundation! - of things."  This quote sums up the tension between the emotion/empirical and the reason/rational that collide often in Dutch art and architecture.  Here, Mondrian was not purely suggesting what could be, but rather describing in novel ways (leading to abstraction) that incorporated emotion.  His later abstract work which corresponds with the De Stijl movement (Rietveld, et. al.) on the other hand, perhaps lacks the direct emotional element, but retains all the rest.  Jay (p. 10-15) was referring to early (Golden Age) Dutch art, particularly Vermeer and the "disincarnated" gaze which is a second order perspectivalism with the first being Cartesian, with influences in Italian Renaissance art.  It is highly ironic then, that there saw a split in what could be considered Dutch art during this period of modernity, and that Dutch art was no longer merely an art of "describing" at a literal level, but something more.  We can see this in architecture beginning with the Amsterdam School - I would argue that Berlage is less successful than de Klerk, but that can be explained later.  Cuypers is an odd case too, but there is a definite trajectory between him and de Klerk (teacher and pupil).  In any case, I've just started to dig into this phenomena; more research will commence later.

It's hard to tell if Mondrian's paintings fit in with the agendas of the rest.  However, I found some artists to be truly compelling.  There was George Fredric Watts, with "After the deluge: the 41st day" which was supposed to be a telling of Noah's ark, but reminded me of Barnaby Furnas's contemporary "Red Sea" series...basically painting the great flood or the end of the world.  There was Leon Spilliaert's "Royal galleries Ostend" which was a dark Ballardesque scene if I had ever seen one, before Ballard obviously, in 1908.  There was Cazin who paints scenes that register in the hour between light and dark, the feeling of eternity.  And my favorite was August Strindberg, a Swedish painter and scientist who captures perfectly the struggle between the rational and the irrational.

After I explored the museum to its fullest, I decided to get a bite to eat at the café.  I got a slice of quiche, a Dutch strawberry-yogurt drink (don't ask, it was oddly tasty), and this slice of what looked like cheesecake but what turned out to be a very light, almost fluffy custard with deliciousness inside and a somewhat tangy and sweet glaze on top.  I can't even tell you what it was (like most Dutch food), but it was amazing.  I've decided that the Dutch are so bad at making savory meal items (as far as I can tell), that they have to compensate by making extra delicious sweet things.  

After the museum, the rain had slowed a bit so I wandered back to the Vondelpark, the church designed by Cuypers, and the house in which he lived.  The neighborhood was quite, and a completely different character than the other areas of Amsterdam (as they all seem to differ quite a lot).  This area seemed very well-to-do.  Then I walked around the Amsterdam Oud-West to snag some photos of some other contemporary housing projects.  Some very interesting work.  Made it home before my feet gave out.  Turns out my 'not-so-much-walking' strategy did not go as planned.  Oh well!