April 1, 2020

What are we going to do with all the potatoes?

Filed under: Food & Drink by Orangemaster @ 8:51 am

In The Netherlands many snacks bars have shut down due to the COVID-19 pandemic, although a lot of places do offer take away, but that means there are now a lot of leftover potatoes – not couch potatoes! – hanging around all day, doing nothing.

I say make some vodka, but that takes the right people to sort that out. It’s probably illegal and dangerous as well, so I’m just riffing here.

Since The Netherlands is one of the main producers of potatoes for making fries, some 1.5 million tons of potatoes, two thirds of which cannot be sold, are going to waste, awaiting a compensation package for the agricultural sector.

“Corona is impacting all sectors. Brussels is not going to regard this as a priority.” The stagnating market is having a knock on effect on potato processing firms, such as Aviko, which produces some 15 million potato products in a normal week. Deep fried chips are being made until the company runs out of space to store them.

Getting rid of a billion kilos of potatoes is not easy to do and only some of the potatoes are going to food banks, probably because they don’t boil very well. Other possibilities to process the potatoes include bio fermentation and use in the animal fodder and potato starch industries.

And since you have heard it already, a Van Gogh was stolen in Laren while museums have shut down due to the Corona virus.

(Link: dutchnews.nl, Photo: Vincent van Gogh potato-flavoured ice cream from Ede)

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November 14, 2019

Van Gogh painting finds its way back home

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.

(Link and image: trouw.nl)

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May 11, 2016

Van Gogh painting replicated using plastic bottles

Filed under: Art,General by Orangemaster @ 1:41 pm

A painting by Vincent van Gogh, ‘The Starry Night’, has been replicated by a Taiwanese company using four million colourful plastic bottles with the goal of promoting recycling.

Taking up 53 hectares of the Starry Paradise park on the outskirts of Keelung City, the installation was opened to the public early this year to mark the 125th anniversary of van Gogh’s death.

“We were thinking of combining the idea of environmental protection with PET bottles and this landscape to create a piece of art, so that everyone can get to know another side of recycling,” explained Aisin Yeh, of the Unison Developing Co. Ltd, which undertook the project.

The project cost USD 2.6 mln and took four months to complete, according to the video. Have a look:

(Link: www.reuters.com)

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February 6, 2016

Van Gogh exhibition free for women in high heels

Filed under: Art by Orangemaster @ 7:36 pm

A multimedia Van Gogh exhibition in Moscow is letting women with high heels in for free and giving 50% off to men named ‘Sergey’ inspired by a music video of the band Leningrad and their song ‘Exponat’, a fact most sources have failed to mentioned altogether. Shame on you all because the video is funny, although yes funnier if you understand Russian like I do. And it’s been viewed 34 million times and counting.

In an attempt to pick the right outfit for a date to a Van Gogh exhibition with an eligible older man, a woman realises what she really needs is a pair of Louboutin high heels. And that goes horribly wrong.

The video features modern Russian humour and has jokes about a very pretty yet insecure woman worried about everything, including her butt. Luckily her mom is there to help her fit into her skinny jeans. And that goes horribly wrong, too.

(Links: www.thestar.com, www.usnews.com)

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December 26, 2012

Dutch masters recreated through ironing

Filed under: Art by Branko Collin @ 6:10 pm

A Philips ad for the company’s line of irons has been doing the rounds on the Internet.

In it an anonymous artist recreates portraits by famous Dutch painters such as Girl with a Pearl Earring by Vermeer and self-portraits by Van Gogh and Rembrandt using little more than a white sheet and a steam iron.

The ad was made by the Russian branch of DDB, a worldwide advertising agency.

(Photo: crop of the video. Link: Trendbeheer)

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May 10, 2012

Van Gogh Museum buys its first Van Gogh in five years

Filed under: Art by Orangemaster @ 3:49 pm

For the first time in five years the Van Gogh Museum has purchased a work of art by Vincent van Gogh. For the sum of 1.5 million euro, it scored a watercolour entitled ‘Knotswilg’ (‘Pollard Willow’), a particular work from Van Gogh’s The Hague period (July 1882) that has not been on display very often. The museum is proud to add it to its collection, as it didn’t have any works from that specific period.

A spokeswoman for the museum explains that while paintings are continuously on display, works on paper are sensitive to light, so they are showcased for a few months and then put in the depository to be shown again later, making them more special. The watercolour already shows some discoloration, but then that’s quite common.

(Link: www.at5, Photo of Van Gogh Museum poster by Elias Rovielo, some rights reserved)

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