Good day everyone, are we ready for some excitement? No? well, get ready!!

Here it is Tuesday and I’m on my way to the Van Gogh Museum to visit with Vincent and his brother Theo. The museum is displays the art as a progression of Van Gogh’s style not just in the order he painted them. let me try  to explain. In previous years the are was presented as itself, all wonderful with some information about his life and where he was at the time. Now the paintings are grouped, in order, but with more emphasis on how he worked, his technique, where he was living and in some cases why.

It is hard to not admire him and his work, his use of colour and the way he used paint to convey his message.

When you look at his work, it seems as though he was being lazy, adding lots of detail to the background and very little to the foreground; he wasn’t lazy he was in fact not just painting the grass or trees but painting the feeling and movement of the grass or trees. Think about a young child “draws” a rabbit hopping across the page. there is no rabbit but a series of arches showing the rabbit’s movement. This is what Vincent was doing. He wanted us to be involved with the image.

I think Helene Kröller-Müller of the Kröller-Müller Museum (My earlier post) saw too.

In the Van Gogh’s gift shop a couple of young ladies were talking about not being able to find anything Canadian. I had to speak up, I said in fact there was Canadian stuff there, ME! we chatted for a bit, they were on a European trip of their own and only had a couple of days in Amsterdam.

I also bumped into quite a few Canadians at the Van Gogh, everyone being surprised and impressed with our good taste in art.

The Stedelijk is a modern art and design museum. filled with all nature of things. Although modern art does not move me, sometimes I just don’t get it, I am not one to deny calling anything art; if Marcel Duchamp can do it, then anything goes.

Part of the museum I did find interesting was the collection of Dutch design,seeing the progression over the years.

Now for the excitement!!

As I’m watching a film THE alarm goes off, horns blaring and a multilingual message telling everyone to leave the museum. Security guards escort us to  the nearest exit all while talking with someone over the radio. we make our way into a back-room filled with a huge shipping crate, then towards the exit.

I made a comment to the other visitors that the alarm added a bit of excitement to a museum visit, that got a few laughs.

As we start climbing the stairs, the guard gets an All-Clear message, we didn’t have to leave and could go look at the art again,

We were locked in limbo, in the room with the shipping crate. I amused myself by reading the notes on the box; size and weight of the case and contents, stuff like that.

A couple of minutes later the guard let us back into the gallery, where I watched him and the other guards reopening the security doors.

I stopped at Maoz for a Falafel then leisurely walk back to Centraal Station for my train ride home.

In all, another good day in Amsterdam.