Amsterdam

Saturday morning I hopped on an SAS flight to Amsterdam. I booked myself a room at a fairly inexpensive hotel (Hotel Bellevue) that is right across the street from the central train station (the blue dot in the GPS map shows approximately where I am—I got upgraded to a double room that is quite nice). Last time I was in Amsterdam we only had a couple of hours to walk around—only enough time for a pint, and then it was back on the train to Schiphol. So this time I decided I wanted a slightly longer layover so that I could explore more of the city and also finally get to gaze at the paintings of the Dutch masters. Saturday night my brother came in on the train and we went to a place called the Paradiso, where we took in a pretty good blues show (the Paradiso is supposed to be one of the best places around here for live music—kind of like Greenville's Handlebar or Vancouver's Orpheum I think it was called, or was it the Roxy, I don't recall now, but it's the place with the bouncy wooden floor where I saw Jeff Healey—it was the Commodore Ballroom, thanks M!). Afterward we went to Bourbon Street, another live blues place, where I intend to return to tonight (it's just a tram ride away, so getting to and back is quite convenient). Tonight, as in Copenhagen, I had dinner at a pub and ordered salmon (both times). And both times the salmon was excellent. Some kind of gastro pub thing going on. Meanwhile last night's T-bone steak here was rather dismal (my brother's right on this point: don't order steak in Europe :) (I'm looking forward to Austin, TX in a couple of months, I wonder if McClusky's is still there.) I have a couple of hours to go before they open up Bourbon Street so I think I'll walk around and take some pictures of the area around here, the party zone...

Today I went to the Rijksmuseum where the Dutch masters' works are shown, in particular Rembrandt and Vermeer's famous paintings (e.g., The Nightwatch and the Kitchen Maid; the former is huge, reminding me of Matejko's Battle of Grunwald). Their painting style (along with the Vedutismo, e.g., Canaletto) is my favorite. Rubens is also quite good (and the collection in Munich is worth seeing). Unfortunately, they don't let you take pictures in the museums I visited, with the second being the Van Gogh. I honestly don't see why Van Gogh was exulted to such high status—personally I think his paintings are rubbish. He lathered on the paint so that some of it was so crusty, it looked like some kid had squeezed out colored toothpaste onto canvas. One or two of his paintings were ok, and they certainly were more "vibrant" than the realists' (e.g., looking at them the paintings had a type of moving quality to them, akin to a scintillating grid type of illusion). The museum background on the artist stated that Van Gogh resisted and refused formal training. Not that I'm an expert, but having now walked through several art galleries, I would have to say that in general the lack of training is quite evident in Van Gogh's work. He didn't seem to have a good grasp of lighting, nor were any of his portraits really convincing. In my view my guess as to why he was so "troubled" in life is because he was a failure—as far as I could tell from the paintings' descriptions hardly any really sold well, until perhaps after he shot himself in the chest and died two days later. Maybe that was the only way he could get the paintings to sell? :) The best portrait of Van Gogh that I saw there was not a self-portrait but rather by one of his friends. The best part of the Van Gogh museum (for me) was the Alfred Stevens exhibition. I've never heard of Alfred Stevens before, but his paintings are superb, mainly of well-to-do femmes fragiles in luxurious outfits. And the way he painted those outfits, the various types of cloth and materials was truly remarkable. Check out the two pics below from the museum's website—notice how he painted the cloth folds for example. The only disappointment was the incomplete panorama of "The History of the Century", with portraits of French artists and authors, painted by Stevens with Henri Gervex. There were only two sections of it on display whereas I think originally it was a 360 degree painting that was done for some world exhibition. I don't recall all the facts about it now, only that I wished the whole thing would have survived for us to see.