Amsterdam Watercolour: Apartment View

And so here lies a second painting, in ink and watercolour, of the view from the rear balcony of my old apartment in the Oud-Zuid neighbourhood of Amsterdam.

While the first looked down from the balcony toward two sheds, showing their roofs and yards in autumn with the patternation of fallen leaves, this watercolour shows a perspective across the complex of apartments. I always appreciated the view sitting out on this balcony because – while enclosed – the distance and design was sufficient so that you could be aware of the presence of bodies on other balconies, but rarely noticed anything egregious in their expressions or behaviours. In short, you were well secluded – and the situation reminded me a little of Rear Window, though to the cinema’s potential loss, I never suffered while living there a broken leg.

Amsterdam Watercolour: Two Sheds in Autumn

At the end of last October, my partner and I departed Amsterdam and returned to York. The cause was my commencing a PhD in literature at the University of York. While there were possibilities for undertaking doctoral research at a university which would have enabled us to continue living in Amsterdam – including an excellent opportunity with the University of Antwerp – we ultimately decided that York presented the best scenario for study. Preparations for the move occupied much of late October; there was the fact of the move itself; and then followed the process of finding and inhabiting an apartment in York while also developing a working habit at the University.

That serves as a loose explanation for my lack of posts between last September and mid-March; but as much as I was preoccupied with other things, I simply fell out of the habit of posting. More, during September and October, I began and wrote significant portions and passages for articles which were intended for the site, but never finished. Aside from no longer possessing a surfeit of time, and aside from the diminishing of a regular article-writing habit, the existence of these unfinished pieces served to further pervert the end of publication. As those articles which I had begun became less and less relevant, the inclination was to consider how their material could be repurposed – rather than focusing on what else I ought to write. What had been written became a barrier to further work. The situation in Ukraine and Crimea compelled several pieces last month, and marked my return to posting.

In the last few weeks before we left Amsterdam, I painted a small number of paintings comprising views from the rear balcony of our apartment, in the ‘Oud-Zuid’ of the city. The paintings are in watercolour and ink. Some of their views will be visible in earlier collections of photographs posted on this site; or else via my Instagram account. This first painting looks down upon two sheds, and contains all of the relevant fallen leaves and foliage.

Amsterdam: Photographs via Instagram V

The following fifteen photographs were taken in Amsterdam between April and early May. A number of them feature the water and those streets around the top of the Amstel, including Staalstraat, and a view from Groenburgwal towards Zuiderkerk – the church where Rembrandt buried three of his children; and which was painted by Monet on a visit to Amsterdam in 1874.

There is a shot of Le Moulin de Gooyer, an old mill to the east of the centre; there are sunsets in the Vondelpark and along Prinsengracht; a bronze by gold dome and cupola on the Leidseplein, seen from Marnixstraat; the original façade of the Stedelijk Museum; the Museumplein; and a Dutch flag and orange folk on Queen’s Day, more photographs of which may be viewed here.

A$AP Rocky: Cloud Rap and Live at the Melkweg

A$AP Rocky is sometimes considered as one of the most prominent of a group of young artists whose sound has come to be identified as ‘Cloud Rap’. The term – which originated around 2011, associated with Main Attrakionz and Lil B, and is still in the process of emerging – is a useful one, for it suggests the way in which such artists produce and promote their songs, and the atmosphere their songs evoke.

‘Cloud Rap’ artists typically draw creatively from the diversity of influences and the easy accessibility which are characteristics of cloud computing. The interplay between different genres and styles of music, owing to the internet, is now a central facet of so much of what is being made: indeed, it is an ineluctable quality of the music of those who have grown up on the net, making use of file-sharing to listen to an unprecedented range of sources. So Cloud Rap pulls from a diversity of rap sounds and locales – from the East and West Coasts, the Dirty South, and other assorted artists who emerged from Atlanta; from genres closely related to and deriving from hip hop, including drum and bass, grime, and trip hop; and from R&B, dance, indie, rock, and pop music.

Related terms have been coined and have sought to define adjacent and overlapping movements. ‘Swag Rap’ is a label that appears to explicitly refer to A$AP Rocky, and suggests a focus on ostentatious presentation, on fashion, and on lyrics that celebrate material wealth. There are of course many precedents for such an outlook, for instance in some of the most enjoyable works of the Notorious B.I.G. and Jay-Z ; but that the term would seem to limit our conception of the artists it refers to only serves to show its insufficiency. It either dismisses or ignores the musical processes and the musical complexities of these rappers.

‘Lo-fi Rap’ says something more about the sound of those artists who would be subsumed under its heading: positing a new group of rappers who record experimentally, frequently using readily-available digital audio workstations, without studios and the backing of major labels, it suggests the influence of indie music in a lineage from Pavement to Beck to The Microphones, and recent lo-fi developments in forms of R&B by The Weeknd and How To Dress Well. More popularly, the specific influence of Kanye West and some of his working methods – especially his manipulation of the Roland TR-808 drum machine – is made clear in Main Attrakionz titling their two 2011 mixtapes 808s and Dark Grapes and 808s and Dark Grapes II.

In particular, Cloud Rap often utilises looped samples from female singers, and often from those whose voices have an ethereal quality. Imogen Heap has been sampled on numerous occasions by Lil B and by Main Attrakionz; she also features on A$AP Rocky’s Live.Love.A$AP (on the track ‘Demons’), which includes other samples from Karl Jenkins’ new age project Adiemus (‘Palace’), the S.O.S. Band (‘Peso’), and British new wave outfit Kissing the Pink (‘Kissin’ Pink’).

Over such sample loops, the flow of Cloud Rappers is relaxed and rhythmic, allowing plenty of space in which to breathe. Atmospherically, and frequently lyrically, the songs depict the smoking of weed, and the hazy cloud which ensues tangibly and physiologically. Moreover, Cloud Rappers often begin circulating their work via the internet, releasing songs and mixtapes via blogs, SoundCloud, and temporary hosting sites. The very concept of a mixtape seems to have taken new form through and is emblematic of Cloud Rap: releasing a collection of songs as a mixtape suggests a certain fluidity, a lack of the finality and discreteness that is associated with albums.

Clams Casino is one Cloud Rap’s preeminent producers, and his production did much to define Live.Love.A$AP, the mixtape from 2011 which established A$AP Rocky and saw him earn a major deal with RCA. Clams appears again on Rocky’s debut studio album, Long.Live.A$AP, released in January of this year – but his sound is less predominant on this heavier album, which features a medley of producers including Hit-Boy, Danger Mouse, and Skrillex.

Where there has been criticism of A$AP Rocky, it has often centred on his reliance on production and the supposed limitations of his lyrics. This seems to ignore the nature of music as a cohesive whole, a collection of parts, which is never defined solely by those words which can be meaningfully written or typed on a page. The sonic harmony which Rocky achieves – combining production techniques with a supple, languid yet characterful rapping style, and lyrics which express through sound and rolling, repeating rhythm – is a mark of good art. Live.Love.A$AP has become one of my favourite rap albums, one of the most distinctive in its chilled-out feel, and one of the albums I’ve listened to most over the last couple of years; while Long.Live.A$AP counts as one of my favourite records of the year so far.

A$AP Rocky brings the same sustained energy, engaging personality, and cadenced sound to his live performances. His show at the Melkweg last night was boldly confident and encompassing in its generosity. Scheduled several months ago, Rocky was to play a single show in Amsterdam, supported by A$AP Ferg: when the concert quickly sold out, another date was added, and Ferg – who has been busy recently releasing his ‘Work’ remix, accompanied by a music video; and featuring on YG’s new song, ‘Click Clack’ – was replaced as the support act by Joey Fatts and Aston Matthews. Fatts and Matthews gave a brief but lively and suitably crowd-warming opening set.

Rocky – wearing a green flannel shirt which he later removed for the white t-shirt underneath; white Pyrex shorts; football socks; and white trainers – played a balance of songs from across his two albums; some of his earlier works, notably ‘Peso’ and ‘Purple Swag’, perhaps still most familiar and winning particularly strong responses. The audience’s already boisterous enthusiasm was spurred as Rocky repeatedly called for mosh pits, sing-alongs, and the revelation of female breasts; he slapped hands with people in the front row, and threw out bottles of water so that those endlessly bouncing up and down wouldn’t dehydrate. When other members of the A$AP crew (the acronym originates in a Harlem collective of artists, and stands for Always Strive And Prosper), took to the stage, they and Rocky prowled in diagonals reminiscent of The Clash.

While the show possesses nothing in the way of set design, effective lighting – blacks and whites and purples – and Rocky’s lithe and powerful, enthusiastically open, playfully charismatic stage presence make for a hugely entertaining and involving live experience. Towards the close of the show, Rocky took around twenty audience members onto the stage, to jump and dance during the final few songs. Eventually eschewing any rapping, he dove into and wandered amongst the crowd, allowing the party he had avowedly sought and orchestrated to come to the fore, and to persist on after his departure.

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A Redesign of My Various Tumblr Pages

Towards the end of last week, I revamped those various tumblr. pages which relate to this site. The ‘tumblr’ link in the menu at the top of the site serves as a gateway to these; and they are all linked at the very bottom of the site, in the section suitably headed ‘My Other Sites’.

culturedarm serves to summarise and link to the pieces published here; it contains shorter and slightly looser posts on topics from music to comedy to architecture; audio and video files; and occasional photographs. visualarm provides a sort of visual compendium of what is posted here, at culturedarm, and less frequently amsterdamarm: it allows me to expand visually on whatever I’ve posted elsewhere. audioarm and poetryarm are collections of poetry and music.

My revamp essentially saw me replace the four distinct themes which characterised each of the four pages in turn – and which were drawn and edited from various sources – with a single theme, consistent throughout with minor visual differences. I owe to ‘blink and it’s over’ from http://themecloud.co/ for the new theme. I felt like a change, I appreciate the consistency, and I really like the theme’s layout: I think it is lively and engaging yet still structured and clear, and it supports all manner of posts and insertions faultlessly.

culturedarm:

visualarm:

audioarm:

poetryarm:

The appearance of amsterdamarm remains the same:

Amsterdam: Photographs via Instagram III

The acutely observant follower of this site, or that individual who has, once or twice, idly happened upon it, may have noticed an emerging series in which I post here a selection of photographs taken and initially uploaded via Instagram. The first edition of this series, which took in York and Amsterdam, may be found here; the second edition, with a focus on the Museumplein and Keizersgracht in the snow, is here. And now right here, extending below, are fourteen more photographs. These cover a period from the end of February throughout much of March.

The photographs start around Jachthavenweg and the Nieuwe Meer; show the Rijksmuseum; an area just south-east of the centre, beyond the Sarphatipark and along the Amstel; the Begjinhof, one of Amsterdam’s inner courtyards and home to the English Reformed Church; and come to a close on the Leidsekruisstraat and Prinsengracht with bicycles and boats, canals and cars.

Mike Kelley Retrospective

The Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam’s home of modern and contemporary art and design since 1874, was forced to close for renovation in late 2003. Moving into the Post CS building – situated in the docklands to the north of the city centre – for four-and-a-half years, from 2008 the Stedelijk’s collection was without a home, the museum maintaining a presence through a series of smaller, temporary exhibitions and a programme of seminars, lectures and educational events. With the renovation works progressing, and a new wing, designed by Dutch firm Benthem Crouwel Architects, added to the existing structure, the Stedelijk’s reopening on the Museumplein was scheduled for late September, 2012.

The Stedelijk had been planning, for the first major exhibition after its reopening, to show some of the latest works of American artist Mike Kelley. When Kelley died in January 2012, found in his bathtub in Pasadena, just outside Los Angeles, having apparently committed suicide, the Stedelijk’s plans inevitably changed. Instead, a retrospective of Kelley’s career was organised, and opened at the Stedelijk on December 15. It is the largest exhibition of Kelley’s work ever shown, occupying the expanse of the museum’s new wing; and it is the Stedelijk’s first major international exhibition since it reopened last 23 September. The retrospective will run at the Stedelijk until the end of this week, before moving on to the Centre Pompidou in Paris; MoMA PS1 in New York; and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles.

The retrospective is organised broadly chronologically, rooms on the basement floor showing pieces from the earlier decades of Kelley’s career, while the first floor focuses on his most recent work. Kelley’s artworks span a great variety of media, from found art objects to video installations and performance art, painting, drawing, sculpture, collage, architectural sketches, and pieces which emphasise writing and quotations. The endeavour of any retrospective is to give a full sense of an artist throughout the course of their career, and the Kelley retrospective succeeds in showing and appositely suggesting some of the central themes to which Kelley returned time and again in his work. These themes feel both intensely personal and deliberately social; and demonstrate both figurative and abstract aesthetic concerns.

The first room, a sort of passageway onto the exhibition, shows a group of wall textiles, and a series of drawings which Kelley made after the Sad Sack comic strip – an American comic created during the Second World War, depicting life in the American military. Kelley’s drawings take panels from the comic and remove everything but the rubbish in them, leaving only whatever garbage, dirt and grime appears in the frame.

Opening out, the second room of the exhibition features works from the series Memory Ware Flats (2003). These consist of canvases made up of found objects – predominantly jewellery, but also badges, buttons and bottle tops – and adopt the practises of Canadian folk art. A sculpture of a reptile sits in the middle of the room, reminiscent of Gaudi’s salamander at Parc Güell, but shorn of colourful tiling and looking depressed; and a sound installation hoots away, speakers calling and responding stretched between two boards painted black and white on silver, one depicting a foot, the other something which looks like a toad wearing sunglasses.

Another room shows those related works which make up the assemblage John Glenn Memorial River Reclamation Project (Including the Local Culture Pictorial Guide, 1968-1972, Wayne/Westland Eagle) (2001). There are four facets to the assemblage, which Kelley developed over a couple of visits to Detroit, the city in which he grew up, in 1998 and again in 2001. Kelley’s ‘Artistic Statement’ on the John Glenn Memorial River Reclamation Project ties it to the earlier Memory Ware Flats, through its similar utilisation of found objects, and because it too plays upon philosophical and medical conceptions of memory, figured through the real and reconceived childhood of the artist. The centrepiece of the room is a statue of John Glenn – the first American to orbit the earth, who maintained a long political career after leaving NASA in 1965 – made of shards of coloured glass and ceramics which Kelley obtained by dredging the Detroit River. Glenn’s figure is slightly extended, and Kelley expressed the influence of Alberto Giacometti on the sculpture. Spreading from the plinth on which Glenn stands there are piled deposits of glass and ceramics, organised by colour, and some pushed, stacked or arranged into rising mounds.

Two cabinets bookend the mass of glass and ceramic. These contain vertical drawers, which can be pulled out; and the drawers encase photographs which Kelley took of Detroit local newspaper editions published between 1968 and 1972. On one of the room’s walls, the Black Out project consists of a series of black and white photographs strictly documenting Kelley’s journey down the Detroit River. A further group of colour photographs were intended to show the river’s shoreline, but a camera malfunction left predominantly black images with only slithers of colour.

Kelley ultimately considered this malfunction ‘providential’, feeling the black images served as a point of connection with another project, Educational Complex (1995). Here an extensive architectural model, several rough architectural sketches, and a couple of suspended mobiles endeavour to bring into a single space all of the educational institutions which Kelley attended as a youth; as well as depicting those gaps, those blank spaces and empty sites, which represent facilities and areas which Kelley either does not remember, or does not want to remember owing to upsetting events which occurred there.

The mounds of ceramics; the Sad Sack drawings which were part of Kelley’s Half a Man project, completed in the late 80s; a series of black acrylic paintings of inner organs, painted around the same time and shown elsewhere in the exhibition; and Lumpenprole (1991), a large floor-rug with unidentified lumps: all demonstrate Kelley’s repeated interest in volume and amorphous shapes. That these shapes protrude and exist seems to allow for discovery and for knowledge; yet the shapes consistently subvert knowledge because they are imprecise, posited between different contexts, and cannot be accurately identified. The mounds of the John Glenn River Reclamation Project alternately appear like volcanic rock formations, unplanned yet still somehow designed; or as emergent cities, with the sort of inner logic and ethereality which is expressed in literature in Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities. In these sculptures, in Black Out, and in Educational Complex, Kelley’s work simultaneously emphasises the importance of place to us as individuals, whilst suggesting its incompleteness, its incapacity to serve as a ground for our memories, feelings and personalities.

More Love Hours Than Can Ever Be Repaid and The Wages of Sin (1987) is perhaps Kelley’s most famous work. On a canvas covered by Afghan rugs, there hang numerous stuffed toy dolls and animals. This has variously been interpreted as an homage to childhood; as a comment upon nostalgia; and as criticising the system of labour which results in the production of such toys; whilst Kelley himself most frequently discussed the work within the context of family relations, and their complex patterns of giving and receiving, which for Kelley implicate impossible obligations and unpayable debts. Ah…Youth! (1991) makes similar use of stuffed toys. It features a row of eight portrait, passport-style photographs, seven showing stuffed animals, with Kelley’s face in between. Concepts of animism are evoked, with the stuffed animals appearing more overtly expressive, more full of character, than the portrait of Kelley. Kelley worked with Sonic Youth on several video pieces through the 80s; and the band used one of the portraits from Ah…Youth! for the cover of their 1992 album, Dirty.

Other rooms on the ground floor show collections of photographs which, in the diversity of their subject matter, prefigure an Instagram ‘explore’ page; the corridor from Kelley’s Pay for Your Pleasure (1998), with posters quoting canonical artists and philosophers who repeatedly stress the link between art and crime, but which, as an exhibit, lacks purpose detached from the rest of the Pay for Your Pleasure series; a group of birdhouses which Kelley built out of wood in the late 70s, and named after different architectural movements; and The Banana Man (1983), comprising a costume, drawings and video installations based upon a childhood television character which Kelley never saw himself, but recreated based on the recollections of friends.

On the first floor, the Kandors series involves sculptures and found object art meant to be representative of Krypton, the native world of Superman. The canisters and tubs of Kandor 15 (2007) show the same fondness for bold, discrete colour that is evident in the arrangement of the ceramics in the Detroit River project. In the adjoining room, Day Is Done (2004-05) features 32 installations, utilising video, sound and light. The series was part of a planned but never completed wider project, entitled Extracurricular Activity Projective Reconstructions, which was to comprise 365 pieces which would show as a cycle over twenty-four hours. The Day Is Done installations feature reenactments of scenes which Kelley interpolated from reading high-school yearbooks and local newspapers. As with much of his work, there is a playfulness here that is equally engaging and unsettling; an acting out into excess of what is most layered and difficult to grasp in mundane life.

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Mike Kelley’s ‘Artistic Statement’ concerning the John Glenn Memorial River Reclamation Project (Including the Local Culture Pictorial Guide, 1968-1972, Wayne/Westland Eagle) (2001): http://dia.emsix.com/exhibitions/artiststake/projects/multimedia/kelley_statement.html

A Bomb magazine interview with Kelley from 1993, in which he discusses a number of his earlier projects: http://bombsite.com/issues/38/articles/1502

Amsterdam Photo Series II: Schinkel and Nieuwe Meer

Amsterdam is most often defined pictorially by the canal houses which line the canals in the centre of the city. I have sought to encapsulate Amsterdam in something of the same way, with the ink drawing which heads my updated blog and guide to Amsterdam. Yet there is a great variety of housing across the extent the city, with modernist architecture abounding on the islands and docklands, to the north; with the Oud Zuid, Jordaan and De Pijp areas each possessing their own architectural styles and features, distinct from the canal belt; and within the centre and without, there are both isolated and collected houseboats.

I took a series of pictures recently, starting around the Schinkel river, with its concentration of houseboats particularly along Jachthavenweg; moving then towards the Nieuwe Meer, a lake at the top of the Amsterdamse Bos – a large landscape park which extends into Amstelveen – where people can row and boat, and eat at a restaurant, Het Bosch, overlooking the water.

There are fourteen pictures below; fourteen others over at amsterdamarm; and the full set of fifty-two may be viewed via my Flickr account.

Peter the Great at the Hermitage Amsterdam, and Netherlands-Russia Year

2013 is Netherlands-Russia Year, a year of bilateral events depicting and emphasising, celebrating, and perhaps even serving to enhance the relationship shared by the two countries. Whilst the official opening of this bilateral year is yet to take place – it will be marked on April 8 in the Netherlands, and a month later in Russia – an extensive events programme is already well underway.

The Drents Museum in Assen has, since last November, been host to an exhibition, The Soviet Myth, featuring themes and artists from Russian art as it existed under Stalin, the exhibited pieces drawn from the collection of the State Russian Museum in Saint Petersburg. In Zaandam – a town just north-west of Amsterdam; where Claude Monet would stay four months and paint twenty-four canvases one-and-three-quarter centuries later – work is continuing on the restoration of the house in which Peter the Great stayed (alas, for just over one week) upon his visit to the Netherlands in 1697. In Eindhoven, at The Van Abbe Museum, an exhibition contrasts the art of El Lissitzky with the works of some modern practitioners; the exhibition borrows pieces from the Guggenheim in New York and the Centre Pompidou in Paris, and will subsequently travel to the Hermitage in Saint Petersburg and the Multimedia Art Museum in Moscow.

A project based in The Hague, entitled ‘Now Wakes the Sea’, involving Dutch and Russian groups and institutes, will investigate the effects of changes – scenic, cultural and economic – to coastal areas. A wealth of performances and activities are scheduled for Groningen, including a Russian film month hosted by Forum Images cinema; the first performance of a touring Noord Nederlands Toneel adaptation of Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment; a collobarative exhibition between the Dutch art collective Artcetera and artists from the Saint Petersburg studio Nepokorennye; and an educational course on socialist realism in the arts. An exhibition at Maastricht’s Bonnefantenmuseum, The Great Change – Revolutions in Russian Painting, 1895-1917, will display works by Malevich, Kandinsky, Goncharova, and Tatlin. In Apeldoorn, a range of activities will take place in Palace Het Loo: Peter the Great was encouraged in his shipbuilding and city-building exploits by William of Orange, whom he met on a visit to London, and for whom the Palace was built; and Peter visited the Palace whilst in the Netherlands, staying at the nearby building which is now the Bilderberg Hotel de Keizerskroon.

Events, seminars and exhibitions of the same sort will extend throughout the Netherlands – a broad programme will commence over the coming months in Rotterdam; and also take in Zwolle, Breda, Nijmegen, Enschede, Arnhem and so on – and then increasingly move towards Russia as the year progresses.

Amsterdam, as the capital of the Netherlands and the city where Peter the Great studied shipbuilding for four months in late 1697, occupies a central place amidst all these festivities. Among numerous other events, Foam photography museum is holding an exhibition, Primrose – Russian Colour Photography, which displays Russian photography from around 1850 to the present day, focusing on colouration processes including the luminous glass plate works of Sergey Prokudin-Gorski; and the Muziektheater and De Nederlandse Opera are currently staging Prokofiev’s opera, L’amour des trois oranges.

The Hermitage Amsterdam, as the only dependency of the State Hermitage Museum outside Russia, is singularly well established to celebrate and delineate the cultural connections between the Netherlands and Russia. Whilst recent exhibitions brought together a world-class collection of nineteenth century French, Impressionist and Post-Impressionist painting, and continue to see the museum serve as home to Vincent van Gogh while the Van Gogh Museum undergoes refurbishment, beyond the museum’s two exhibition wings there are permanent displays considering the development of the Hermitage Amsterdam and viewing more widely the relationship between Amsterdam and Russia.

As part of Netherlands-Russia Year, an exhibition entitled Peter the Great, an Inspired Tsar opened at the Hermitage Amsterdam over the weekend. The exhibition brings together a range of paintings, objects and artefacts from the duration of Peter’s life, many of the pieces loaned from the State Hermitage in Petersburg. Featured are clothes Peter wore at home and in battle; a carriage he used to ride about Peterhof; the lathes upon which he worked wood and metal and some of the intricate items which were their products; and statues and ornaments which he used to adorn his palace gardens, including nudes which were controversial as the first to appear in Orthodox Russia (a note explains that Peter had to have guards watching these nudes, protecting them from an agitated public). Alongside Peter’s possessions, there are other pieces indicative of the time: of developments in marine navigation, in building, in weaponry, in anatomy, and in garden design. Most notable, perhaps, is the collection of paintings which Peter acquired – either upon his two extended journeys across Europe, the first a ‘Grand Embassy’ which traveled from 1697-1698, its tour cut short by a rebellion of the Streltsy back home, the second from 1716-1717; or otherwise shipped to him in Russia – which served as the core of the Hermitage collection when founded in 1764 by Catherine the Great.

The standout is Rembrandt’s David and Jonathan (1642), a brilliant work and the only Rembrandt obtained by Peter. In fact, a number of the paintings Peter acquired believing them to be the work of Old Masters turned out not to be so: he thought he had other Rembrandts and works by Italian Rennaisance artists including Raphael, but these works are now attributed to other artists, to students, followers and related schools, or else considered forgeries. David and Jonathan, like a number of the other artworks on display, was hung by Peter in Monplaisir (‘my pleasure’) Palace, the summer residence which Peterhof was gradually built around.

So there is certainly a lot on show at Peter the Great, an Inspired Tsar; and the highlights are significant and the exhibition is well worth visiting. The pieces are nicely displayed, in long glass cases, and with paintings hung on wood panelling which mimics the interior of Monplaisir. There is even a loose fling towards interactivity, with a room in which visitors are able to try on the Russian garments of Peter’s period. Yet the exhibitions is not flawless: for all the objects and art, the exhibition lacks coherence; there are several stories some or all of which it could have told, and it ultimately succeeds in telling none.

The exhibition could have offered an informative, chronological account of Peter’s life; it could have detailed the particular ways in which Amsterdam influenced the conception, design and building of Saint Petersburg; there is even sufficient material for an exhibition focusing purely on the artistic interests of Peter the Great. Instead, the exhibiton serves a muddled, vaguely gesturing and always incomplete look at each of these things. Worst of all, even a strong sense of the broader relationship between Peter’s Russia and the Netherlands is muddied; even the time Peter spent in Amsterdam is made unclear: poorly conceptualised, the sections which show pieces which depict the period of time, rather than pieces which relate specifically to or were owned by Peter, appear inconsequential and tenuous and detract from the exhibition’s flow; and in an eagerness to suggest possible Dutch influences on Peter, actual influences, and the real Dutch figures who he knew and worked with, are lost.

So we see, for instance, Delft tiling which furnished the Menshikov Palace, the first to be built in Peter’s new capital; Peter himself would use similar tiling for Monplaisir’s pantry; but after a room with several landscape drawings and little background or contextual information, the discussion on Petersburg is over. Rooms on navigational equipment and plastination aren’t adequately tied in to Peter’s naval plans or his interest in curiosities. The final, and the largest room of the exhibition attempts to be more informative regarding the course of Peter’s life. It considers the Great Northern War, Peter’s troubles at home, his complex character at once inquisitive and ruthless, and concludes with his death mask, and two paintings of Peter on his death bed. Still, it offers an overview rather than a detailed chronology or a particular interpretation of Peter’s life; and coming at the end of proceedings, gives the exhibition a slightly unsatisfying, back-to-front feel.

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Monplaisir

David and Jonathan, by Rembrandt (1642)

Peter the Great’s Death Mask

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Peter the Great, an Inspired Tsar, will run at the Hermitage Amsterdam until September 13.

The Netherlands-Russia Bilateral Year website, with a full agenda.

Amsterdam: Photographs via Instagram II

A month and a couple of days ago, I posted this piece collating some of the photographs of Amsterdam and York which I had taken up to that point, and uploaded to my account with Instagram. This is a second selection of photographs, again twelve in total, this time devoted solely to photography partaken within Amsterdam. The photographs were taken from late January towards the latter part of February.

It extends from Het Scheepvaartmuseum – the Dutch National Maritime Museum – to to Museumplein, including the Van Gogh Museum and the Stedelijk; then depicts the state of the city over a particularly snowy weekend, round the streets of Reguliersgracht and Keizersgracht, FOAM museum, the Amstelveld, and NeL, the restaurant I wrote about and which figures in one of the photographs, behind a distinctively Jewish sort of tree. The final image is of a vaguely coliseum-like building off Van Baerlestraat, which in fact provides housing rather than a home for gladiatorial combat.