Filed under: Art,History by Orangemaster @ 9:00 pm
An early Vincent Van Gogh painting was recently bought for 2.8 million euro at Sotheby’s in New York City by the Amsterdam’s Van Gogh Museum together with the Drents Museum in Assen, Drenthe. The auction house has estimated the painting would fetch a mere 650,000. but considering the price that was paid, there’s was quite a bit of interesting in acquiring the painting. The money used to buy the painting comes from funds and lotteries, which acts as art subsidies.
Experts claim that there are only five Van Gogh artworks from his ‘Drenthe period’ and now they are all in the Netherlands. The Van Gogh Museum had three of them, and the Drentse Museum had one. The newly acquired painting, ‘Onkruid verbrandende boer’ (roughly ‘Farmer Burning Weeds’), will be exhibited back and forth between the two museums.
Here’s our online version of reading a book on the beach: let’s all learn about the Dutch origins of New York City and more by American author and historian Russell Shorto who sounds like he could talk about it all day.
The first part is a quick introduction called ‘Why don’t Americans know about their own Dutch history?’, which starts by naming all the British things Americans usually know about their country and exposing the blind spot in people’s knowledge about anything Dutch.
Check out the rest, all short videos. Part 2 starts off with an explanation of the Castello Plan that we’ve used as an image.
The story goes that Nathalie Lubbe Bakker who until recently worked as a barmaid in New York City to pay for her room and board described the loud, lewd and drunk performance of Belgian defense minister Pieter de Crem at her bar in detail on her blog. Then, after some discussion between a representative of the minister and her boss she got fired without any explanation. Lubbe Bakker asked and heard from the defense minister’s representative that the minister wasn’t even supposed to be in New York as his meetings were all cancelled. That last bit was immediately picked up by the Belgian parliament and has been fueling the Belgian media and talk shows as of late. Lubbe Bakker asked the respentative, “didn’t you know beforehand that your meetings in New York were cancelled?”, “oh yes”, answered the representative, “but you know, it’s so quiet in Brussels at the moment, nothing is happening so we’d thought we’d come to NYC since we’ve never been here before”.
Yes, this is not really about the Netherlands, but I was weak. I will repent soon.
UPDATE: The girl is Dutch and lives in Antwerp. I have repented.
Filed under: Art,General by Orangemaster @ 8:50 am
Authorities in New York City have indicted a resident of the Netherlands who came there a ‘graffiti tourist’. According to the International Herald Tribune, US justice officials have issued an arrest warrant for Dutch resident Robbert Boxem, 23, from Zwolle who allegedly went to New York for the international graffiti event Meeting of Styles. He has been indicted on charges of spray painting a subway car and leading police on a dangerous chase, which occurred down the subway tracks! Boxem (aka KRAE) now faces charges of criminal mischief and reckless endangerment. The paper says the 23-year-old from Zwolle could get up to four years in prison if convicted. The warrant was issued on Thursday after he failed to turn up in court.
That’s one way to draw attention to yourself. Terribly insightful comments made on the gothamist site (here below) include, “Dutch art has really taken a dive since the days of Van Gogh, Vermeer and Rembrandt” and “He must have gotten tired of running around in wooden shoes and sticking his finger in dykes.”
Designer Miuccia Prada and her spouse Patrizio Bertelli have bought hundreds of modern art pieces over the years and need a place to display them. They have found a place in Milan where Koolhaas is going to design three new buildings, including a tower with exhibition halls. Koolhaas has already designed the Prada flagship store in New York City (see photo).
