March 22, 2011
Spring and the Keukenhof, the world’s largest flower garden that attracts visitors from around the world has a new red-brown tulip named after Vincent van Gogh.
Omroep Brabant got an explanation from Amsterdam’ Van Gogh Museum that there is no relation whatsoever between the flower and Van Gogh. He’s never even painted tulips, but he did like flowers.
(Link: vangoghmuseum, omroepbrabant.nl, Photo of Van Gogh tulip by vangoghmuseum)
Tags: Keukenhof, tulips, Vincent van Gogh
April 5, 2010
It would seem corn and Van Gogh’s The Starry Night are indelibly connected in the American imagination. First Don McLean wrote a popular song about the painting, and now pupils of Sky View high school in Smithfield, USA, have recreated the work in breakfast cereal.
Using the school’s gymnasium as a canvas, 150 pupils poured two tons of colourful Malt-O-Meal on the floor to create a 22 x 27 metre masterpiece. The school hopes that this will get students to appreciate art. The project was finished on Saturday and was removed afterwards and fed to pigs.
Fox has photos.
Tags: cereal, USA, Vincent van Gogh
February 27, 2010
A painting by French neo-impressionist Paul Signac and estimated to be worth 100,000 euro has been discovered in Hotel Spaander in Volendam, spokes person Marcel Rutten confirmed to AD yesterday.
The painting was a payment for the painter’s stay at the hotel in 1894. Hotel Spaander has a collection of about 1,400 paintings. It billed itself as a painter’s hotel back in the day, still does, and apparently it was not uncommon that residing artists paid their bills with their art. The Signac’s value though was unknown to management, which estimates that this is the best paid bill in its history.
The Signac representing a view of the harbour used to hang off a rusty nail in the lobby. Artists who wish to stay at the hotel can still do so in exchange for paintings, as long as the subject is Volendam, according to RTL Nieuws.
Signac was a contemporary of Vincent van Gogh, with whom he corresponded.
The painting’s true value was discovered during the preparations of an exhibition of the hotel’s art for the Zuiderzeemuseum in Enkhuizen.
(Photo of the roof of Hotel Spaander by Flickr user FaceMePLS, some rights reserved)
Tags: France, Hotel Spaander, hotels, Paul Signac, Vincent van Gogh, Volendam
February 24, 2010
Museum De Fundatie in Zwolle has a painting in its collection that it claims was made by Van Gogh. The painting is called De molen ‘Le blute-fin.’ According to the museum, the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam has confirmed its authenticity.
Although it was known in the art world that this painting existed, people so far have refused to attribute it to Vincent van Gogh. According to NRC it has motifs that were atypical for the 19th century painter. It was originally discovered in 1975 by Dirk Hannema, the museum director who let himself be fooled by Han van Meegeren’s fake Vermeers, and that also would not have helped.
See also: ‘Hidden’ painting by Van Gogh discovered, about a different painting.
Tags: Vincent van Gogh, Zwolle
October 18, 2009
English translations of Vincent van Gogh’s letters to his brother Theo have been released in a 6 volume boxed set by the Van Gogh Museum in a 15-year-long cooperation with the Huygens Instituut. The original letters in French and Dutch have also been reproduced.
The entire set contains all the pictures referenced in the letters, that is, all 4,300 of them, The Guardian reports.
If you don’t feel like shelling out the 325 UKP that the set is undoubtedly worth, you can also read the letters and their translations at vangoghletters.org. The Huygens Instituut is part of the Dutch academy for sciences.
Story via Eamelje.net (Dutch), who in a totally unrelated story also points out that another Dutch giant of the 19th century, writer Multatuli, published his masterpiece Max Havelaar 150 years ago last Tuesday. The Havelaar has been in translation for a long time, and a public domain English version can be found at Google Books.
If you do not like PDF or EPUB, you might be able to extract the HTML version from the EPUB file (which is just a ZIP archive under a different name).
Tags: copyright, Eduard Douwes Dekker, Max Havelaar, Multatuli, public domain, Vincent van Gogh
July 3, 2009
The Wiki Loves Art contest that I reported about earlier is over, and all that is left is for the judges to declare a winner.
One of the extraordinary things about this contest is that the Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam opened its door to amateur photographers. That must have been a frightful decision to take, what with all the paintings worth millions just a camera stand leg away from scratching, so I hope it was a good experience for them.
Painting above is The Harvest (1888), photo taken by Flickr user Pachango. View the 4,500+ contest photos here, or just the 450+ Van Gogh ones here. (I edited the colours into oblivion, but I just could not agree with the red hue that Pachango’s version had, or the yellow hue on the museum’s website.)
Tags: Amsterdam, contests, copyrights, public domain, Van Gogh Museum, Vincent van Gogh, Wikipedia
July 30, 2008
A new technique allows pictures which were later painted over to be revealed once more. An international research team, including members from Delft University of Technology and the University of Antwerp, has successfully applied this technique for the first time to the painting entitled ‘Patch of Grass’ by Vincent van Gogh. Behind this painting is a portrait of a woman.
It is well-known that Van Gogh often painted over his older works. Experts estimate that about one third of his early paintings conceal other compositions under them. A new technique, based on synchrotron radiation induced X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy, reveals this type of hidden painting. The techniques usually used to reveal concealed layers of paintings, such as conventional X-ray radiography, have their limitations. Together with experts from the Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron in Hamburg and the Kröller-Müller Museum, TU Delft materials expert and art historian Dr Joris Dik, and University of Antwerp chemistry professor Koen Janssens therefore chose to adopt a different approach. The painting is subjected to an X-ray bundle from a synchrotron radiation source, and the fluorescence of the layers of paint is measured. This technique has the major advantage that the measured fluorescence is specific to each chemical element. Each type of atom (e.g. lead or mercury) and also individual paint pigments can therefore be charted individually. The benefit of using synchrotron radiation is that the upper layers of paint distort the measurements to a lesser degree. Moreover, the speed of measurement is high, which allows relatively large areas to be visualised.
(Link and photo: eurekalert.org)
Tags: Delft University of Technology, Kröller-Müller Museum, painting, paintings, Vincent van Gogh
