1.
Rotterdam
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Rotterdam is a city in the Netherlands, located in South Holland, within the Rhine–Meuse–Scheldt river delta at the North Sea. Its history goes back to 1270 when a dam was constructed in the Rotte river by people settled around it for safety, in 1340 Rotterdam was granted city rights by the Count of Holland and slowly grew into a major logistic and economic centre. Nowadays it is home to Europes largest port and has a population of 633,471, ranking second in the Netherlands, just behind Amsterdam. The Greater Rijnmond area is home to approximately 1.4 million people, Rotterdam is part of the yet larger Randstad conurbation with a total population of 7,100,000. The city of Rotterdam is known for the Erasmus University, riverside setting, lively cultural life, the near-complete destruction of Rotterdams city centre during World War II has resulted in a varied architectural landscape including sky-scrapers, which are an uncommon sight in other Dutch cities. Rotterdam is home to some world-famous architecture from renowned architects like Rem Koolhaas, Piet Blom, Ben van Berkel and others. Recently Rotterdam was listed eighth in The Rough Guide Top 10 Cities to Visit, the port of Rotterdam is the largest cargo port in Europe and the 10th largest in the world. Rotterdams logistic success is based on its location on the North Sea. The rivers Rhine, Meuse, and Scheldt give waterway access into the heart of Western Europe, the extensive distribution system including rail, roads, and waterways have earned Rotterdam the nickname Gateway to Europe, and, conversely, Gateway to the World in Europe. The settlement at the end of the fen stream Rotte dates from at least 900 CE. A dam on the Rotte or Rotterdam was built in the 1260s and was located at the present-day Hoogstraat, on 7 July 1340, Count Willem IV of Holland granted city rights to Rotterdam, which then had approximately 2,000 inhabitants. The port of Rotterdam grew slowly but steadily into a port of importance, becoming the seat of one of the six chambers of the Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie, the greatest spurt of growth, both in port activity and population, followed the completion of the Nieuwe Waterweg in 1872. The city and harbor started to expand on the bank of the river. The Witte Huis or White House skyscraper, inspired by American office buildings and built in 1898 in the French Château-style, is evidence of Rotterdams rapid growth, when completed, it was the tallest office building in Europe, with a height of 45 m. During World War I the city was the worlds largest spy centre because of Dutch neutrality, many spies who were arrested and executed in Britain were led by German secret agents operating from Rotterdam. MI6 had its main European office on de Boompjes, from there the British coordinated espionage in Germany and occupied Belgium. In WWI an average of 25,000 Belgian refugees lived in the city, as well as hundreds of German deserters, during World War II, the German army invaded the Netherlands on 10 May 1940. Adolf Hitler had hoped to conquer the country in just one day, the Dutch army was finally forced to capitulate on 15 May 1940, following Hitlers bombing of Rotterdam on 14 May and threatening to bomb other Dutch cities
2.
Netherlands
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The Netherlands, also informally known as Holland is the main constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. It is a densely populated country located in Western Europe with three territories in the Caribbean. The European part of the Netherlands borders Germany to the east, Belgium to the south, and the North Sea to the northwest, sharing borders with Belgium, the United Kingdom. The three largest cities in the Netherlands are Amsterdam, Rotterdam and The Hague, Amsterdam is the countrys capital, while The Hague holds the Dutch seat of parliament and government. The port of Rotterdam is the worlds largest port outside East-Asia, the name Holland is used informally to refer to the whole of the country of the Netherlands. Netherlands literally means lower countries, influenced by its low land and flat geography, most of the areas below sea level are artificial. Since the late 16th century, large areas have been reclaimed from the sea and lakes, with a population density of 412 people per km2 –507 if water is excluded – the Netherlands is classified as a very densely populated country. Only Bangladesh, South Korea, and Taiwan have both a population and higher population density. Nevertheless, the Netherlands is the worlds second-largest exporter of food and agricultural products and this is partly due to the fertility of the soil and the mild climate. In 2001, it became the worlds first country to legalise same-sex marriage, the Netherlands is a founding member of the EU, Eurozone, G-10, NATO, OECD and WTO, as well as being a part of the Schengen Area and the trilateral Benelux Union. The first four are situated in The Hague, as is the EUs criminal intelligence agency Europol and this has led to the city being dubbed the worlds legal capital. The country also ranks second highest in the worlds 2016 Press Freedom Index, the Netherlands has a market-based mixed economy, ranking 17th of 177 countries according to the Index of Economic Freedom. It had the thirteenth-highest per capita income in the world in 2013 according to the International Monetary Fund, in 2013, the United Nations World Happiness Report ranked the Netherlands as the seventh-happiest country in the world, reflecting its high quality of life. The Netherlands also ranks joint second highest in the Inequality-adjusted Human Development Index, the region called Low Countries and the country of the Netherlands have the same toponymy. Place names with Neder, Nieder, Nether and Nedre and Bas or Inferior are in use in all over Europe. They are sometimes used in a relation to a higher ground that consecutively is indicated as Upper, Boven, Oben. In the case of the Low Countries / the Netherlands the geographical location of the region has been more or less downstream. The geographical location of the region, however, changed over time tremendously
3.
Geographic coordinate system
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A geographic coordinate system is a coordinate system used in geography that enables every location on Earth to be specified by a set of numbers, letters or symbols. The coordinates are chosen such that one of the numbers represents a vertical position. A common choice of coordinates is latitude, longitude and elevation, to specify a location on a two-dimensional map requires a map projection. The invention of a coordinate system is generally credited to Eratosthenes of Cyrene. Ptolemy credited him with the adoption of longitude and latitude. Ptolemys 2nd-century Geography used the prime meridian but measured latitude from the equator instead. Mathematical cartography resumed in Europe following Maximus Planudes recovery of Ptolemys text a little before 1300, in 1884, the United States hosted the International Meridian Conference, attended by representatives from twenty-five nations. Twenty-two of them agreed to adopt the longitude of the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, the Dominican Republic voted against the motion, while France and Brazil abstained. France adopted Greenwich Mean Time in place of local determinations by the Paris Observatory in 1911, the latitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle between the equatorial plane and the straight line that passes through that point and through the center of the Earth. Lines joining points of the same latitude trace circles on the surface of Earth called parallels, as they are parallel to the equator, the north pole is 90° N, the south pole is 90° S. The 0° parallel of latitude is designated the equator, the plane of all geographic coordinate systems. The equator divides the globe into Northern and Southern Hemispheres, the longitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle east or west of a reference meridian to another meridian that passes through that point. All meridians are halves of great ellipses, which converge at the north and south poles, the prime meridian determines the proper Eastern and Western Hemispheres, although maps often divide these hemispheres further west in order to keep the Old World on a single side. The antipodal meridian of Greenwich is both 180°W and 180°E, the combination of these two components specifies the position of any location on the surface of Earth, without consideration of altitude or depth. The grid formed by lines of latitude and longitude is known as a graticule, the origin/zero point of this system is located in the Gulf of Guinea about 625 km south of Tema, Ghana. To completely specify a location of a feature on, in, or above Earth. Earth is not a sphere, but a shape approximating a biaxial ellipsoid. It is nearly spherical, but has an equatorial bulge making the radius at the equator about 0. 3% larger than the radius measured through the poles, the shorter axis approximately coincides with the axis of rotation
4.
Art museum
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An art museum or art gallery is a building or space for the exhibition of art, usually visual art. Museums can be public or private, but what distinguishes a museum is the ownership of a collection, the term is used for both public galleries, which are non-profit or publicly owned museums that display selected collections of art. On the other hand, private galleries refers to the commercial enterprises for the sale of art, however, both types of gallery may host traveling exhibits or temporary exhibitions including art borrowed from elsewhere. In broad terms, in North American usage, the word gallery alone often implies a private gallery, the term contemporary art gallery refers usually to a privately owned for-profit commercial gallery. These galleries are found clustered together in large urban centers. Smaller cities are home to at least one gallery, but they may also be found in towns or villages. Contemporary art galleries are open to the general public without charge, however. They usually profit by taking a portion of art sales, from 25% to 50% is typical, there are also many non-profit or collective galleries. Some galleries in cities like Tokyo charge the artists a flat rate per day, curators often create group shows that say something about a certain theme, trend in art, or group of associated artists. Galleries sometimes choose to represent artists exclusively, giving them the opportunity to show regularly, a gallerys definition can also include the artist cooperative or artist-run space, which often operates as a space with a more democratic mission and selection process. A vanity gallery is an art gallery that charges fees from artists in order to show their work, the shows are not legitimately curated and will frequently or usually include as many artists as possible. Most art professionals are able to identify them on an artists resume, University art museums and galleries constitute collections of art that are developed, owned, and maintained by all kinds of schools, community colleges, colleges, and universities. This phenomenon exists in both the West and East, making it a global practice, although largely overlooked, there are over 700 university art museums in America alone. This number, in comparison to other kinds of art museums, throughout history, large and expensive works of art have generally been commissioned by religious institutions and monarchs and been displayed in temples, churches, and palaces. Although these collections of art were private, they were made available for viewing for a portion of the public. In classical times, religious institutions began to function as a form of art gallery. Wealthy Roman collectors of engraved gems and other precious objects often donated their collections to temples and it is unclear how easy it was in practice for the public to view these items. At the Palace of Versailles, entrance was restricted to wearing the proper apparel – the appropriate accessories could be hired from shops outside
5.
Kunsthal
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The Kunsthal is a museum in Rotterdam, which opened its doors in 1992. The museum is situated in the Museumpark of Rotterdam next to the Natuurhistorisch Museum Rotterdam, entrance to the Kunsthal is from the Westzeedijk. The building was designed by the Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas, the Kunsthal has no permanent collection, but organises a wide range of temporary exhibits. The large space available 3,300 m2 allows various exhibits in parallel, the range of exhibitions presented at the Kunsthal ranges from 20th century masters to current contemporary art movements. Recently the museum had exhibitions featuring artists such as Chuck Close, Andy Warhol, on October 16,2012, seven paintings were stolen from the museum. At the time the museum was showing avant-garde art work by more than 150 artists from the Triton Foundation as part of their 20th anniversary celebrations, the robbery took place that morning at around 3,00 AM. Even though the alarms had gone off the thieves had left the premises by the police arrived. According to Rotterdam police, The alarm system in the Kunsthal is supposed to be state of the art, weve got no reason to believe that its not but somehow the people responsible for this found a way in and a way out. Director of Art Loss Register suspects that the most valuable paintings were targeted, however, the paintings had been registered as stolen in their database. The alleged thieves were arrested in Romania in July 2013, however, investigators found pigments and nails of the correct age for the stolen paintings in her fireplace. The art of stealing, The tragic fate of the masterpieces stolen from Rotterdam
6.
Natural History Museum Rotterdam
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The Natuurhistorisch Museum Rotterdam is a natural history museum in Rotterdam in the Netherlands. It had 44,009 visitors in 2015, in 1922, the Rotterdam section of the Nederlandsche Natuurhistorische Vereeniging founded the Vereeniging tot Oprichting en Instandhouding van een Natuurhistorisch Museum. In 1927, the Natuurhistorisch Museum opened, the museum is located in Villa Dijkzigt at the Museumpark, close to the Kunsthal and Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen. The villa dates from 1852 and was built by J. F. Metzelaar for the Van Hoboken family. In 1995 it was extended with a glazed pavilion which was designed by the Dutch architect Erick van Egeraat. The museum includes a shop and a library, the museum has a collection of an estimated 400,000 objects of which 253,119 objects are registered. Kees Moeliker has been the director since 2015. Bram Langeveld has been the museum curator since 2016, the museum had 37,814 visitors in 2012 and 44,009 in 2015
7.
Medieval art
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The medieval art of the Western world covers a vast scope of time and place, over 1000 years of art in Europe, and at times the Middle East and North Africa. It includes major art movements and periods, national and regional art, genres, revivals, the crafts. Art historians attempt to classify medieval art into major periods and styles, in addition each region, mostly during the period in the process of becoming nations or cultures, had its own distinct artistic style, such as Anglo-Saxon art or Norse art. Medieval art in Europe grew out of the heritage of the Roman Empire. These sources were mixed with the vigorous barbarian artistic culture of Northern Europe to produce an artistic legacy. Indeed, the history of art can be seen as the history of the interplay between the elements of classical, early Christian and barbarian art. The period ended with the self-perceived Renaissance recovery of the skills and values of art. Since a revival of interest and understanding in the 19th century it has seen as a period of enormous achievement that underlies the development of later Western art. Many regions did not regain their population levels until the 17th century. The population of Europe is estimated to have reached a low point of about 18 million in 650, doubling by 1000, in 1450 it was still only 50 million. To these figures, Northern Europe, especially Britain, contributed a lower proportion than today, and Southern Europe, including France, the increase in prosperity, for those who survived, was much less affected by the Black Death. Until about the 11th century most of Europe was short of labour, with large amounts of unused land. The medieval period saw the falling away of the invasions and incursions from outside the area that characterized the first millennium. The impression may be left by the works that almost all medieval art was religious. Most churches have been rebuilt, often times, but medieval palaces and large houses have been lost at a far greater rate. The situation is similar in most of Europe, though the 14th century Palais des Papes in Avignon survives largely intact. Paper became available in the last centuries of the period, but was extremely expensive by todays standards. Art in the Middle Ages is a subject and art historians traditionally divide it in several large-scale phases, styles or periods
8.
Contemporary art
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Contemporary art is the art of today, produced by artists who are living in the twenty-first century. Contemporary art provides an opportunity to reflect on contemporary society and the relevant to ourselves. Contemporary artists work in a globally influenced, culturally diverse, and their art is a dynamic combination of materials, methods, concepts, and subjects that challenge traditional boundaries and defy easy definition. In vernacular English, modern and contemporary are synonyms, resulting in some conflation of the modern art. Some define contemporary art as art produced within our lifetime, recognizing that lifetimes, however, there is a recognition that this generic definition is subject to specialized limitations. The classification of art as a special type of art, rather than a general adjectival phrase. In London, the Contemporary Art Society was founded in 1910 by the critic Roger Fry and others, as a private society for buying works of art to place in public museums. A number of other institutions using the term were founded in the 1930s, such as in 1938 the Contemporary Art Society of Adelaide, Australia, particular points that have been seen as marking a change in art styles include the end of World War II and the 1960s. There has perhaps been a lack of natural break points since the 1960s, and definitions of what contemporary art in the 2010s vary. Art from the past 20 years is likely to be included, and definitions often include art going back to about 1970, the art of the late 20th and early 21st century. Many use the formulation Modern and Contemporary Art, which avoids this problem, smaller commercial galleries, magazines and other sources may use stricter definitions, perhaps restricting the contemporary to work from 2000 onwards. One of the many people have in approaching contemporary artwork is its diversity - diversity of material, form, subject matter. It is distinguished by the lack of a uniform organizing principle, ideology, or -ism that we so often see in other. Broadly speaking, we see Modernism as looking at modernist principals - the focus of the work is self-referential, likewise, Impressionism looks at our perception of a moment through light and color as opposed to attempts at stark realism. Contemporary art, on the hand, does not have one. Its view, instead, is refracted, prismatic, and multi-faceted, reflecting the diversity of the world today, in all of its complexities, contemporary art reflects life as we know it. It can be, therefore, contradictory, confusing, and open-ended, there are, however, a number of common themes that have appeared in contemporary works. Post-modern, post-structuralist, feminist, and Marxist theory have played important roles in the development of theories of art
9.
Rembrandt
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Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn was a Dutch draughtsman, painter, and printmaker. A prolific and versatile master across three media, he is considered one of the greatest visual artists in the history of art. Having achieved youthful success as a painter, Rembrandts later years were marked by personal tragedy. Yet his etchings and paintings were popular throughout his lifetime, his reputation as an artist remained high, Rembrandts portraits of his contemporaries, self-portraits and illustrations of scenes from the Bible are regarded as his greatest creative triumphs. His self-portraits form a unique and intimate biography, in which the artist surveyed himself without vanity and his reputation as the greatest etcher in the history of the medium was established in his lifetime, and never questioned since. Few of his paintings left the Dutch Republic whilst he lived, but his prints were circulated throughout Europe, because of his empathy for the human condition, he has been called one of the great prophets of civilization. Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn was born on 15 July 1606 in Leiden, in the Dutch Republic and he was the ninth child born to Harmen Gerritszoon van Rijn and Neeltgen Willemsdochter van Zuijtbrouck. His family was quite well-to-do, his father was a miller, religion is a central theme in Rembrandts paintings and the religiously fraught period in which he lived makes his faith a matter of interest. His mother was Roman Catholic, and his father belonged to the Dutch Reformed Church, unlike many of his contemporaries who traveled to Italy as part of their artistic training, Rembrandt never left the Dutch Republic during his lifetime. He opened a studio in Leiden in 1624 or 1625, which he shared with friend, in 1627, Rembrandt began to accept students, among them Gerrit Dou in 1628. In 1629, Rembrandt was discovered by the statesman Constantijn Huygens, as a result of this connection, Prince Frederik Hendrik continued to purchase paintings from Rembrandt until 1646. He initially stayed with an art dealer, Hendrick van Uylenburgh, Saskia came from a good family, her father had been a lawyer and the burgemeester of Leeuwarden. When Saskia, as the youngest daughter, became an orphan, Rembrandt and Saskia were married in the local church of St. Annaparochie without the presence of Rembrandts relatives. In the same year, Rembrandt became a burgess of Amsterdam and he also acquired a number of students, among them Ferdinand Bol and Govert Flinck. In 1635 Rembrandt and Saskia moved into their own house, renting in fashionable Nieuwe Doelenstraat, in 1639 they moved to a prominent newly built house in the upscale Breestraat, today known as Jodenbreestraat in what was becoming the Jewish quarter, then a young upcoming neighborhood. The mortgage to finance the 13,000 guilder purchase would be a cause for later financial difficulties. Rembrandt should easily have been able to pay the house off with his income, but it appears his spending always kept pace with his income. It was there that Rembrandt frequently sought his Jewish neighbors to model for his Old Testament scenes, in 1640, they had a second daughter, also named Cornelia, who died after living barely over a month
10.
Claude Monet
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Monets ambition of documenting the French countryside led him to adopt a method of painting the same scene many times in order to capture the changing of light and the passing of the seasons. From 1883 Monet lived in Giverny, where he purchased a house and property, Claude Monet was born on 14 November 1840 on the fifth floor of 45 rue Laffitte, in the 9th arrondissement of Paris. He was the son of Claude Adolphe Monet and Louise Justine Aubrée Monet. On 20 May 1841, he was baptized in the parish church, Notre-Dame-de-Lorette, as Oscar-Claude. Despite being baptized Catholic, Monet later became an atheist, in 1845, his family moved to Le Havre in Normandy. His father wanted him to go into the familys ship-chandling and grocery business and his mother was a singer, and supported Monets desire for a career in art. On 1 April 1851, Monet entered Le Havre secondary school of the arts, locals knew him well for his charcoal caricatures, which he would sell for ten to twenty francs. Monet also undertook his first drawing lessons from Jacques-François Ochard, a student of Jacques-Louis David. On the beaches of Normandy around 1856 he met fellow artist Eugène Boudin, Boudin taught Monet en plein air techniques for painting. Both received the influence of Johan Barthold Jongkind, on 28 January 1857, his mother died. At the age of sixteen, he left school and went to live with his widowed, childless aunt, when Monet traveled to Paris to visit the Louvre, he witnessed painters copying from the old masters. Having brought his paints and other tools with him, he would go and sit by a window. Monet was in Paris for several years and met other painters, including Édouard Manet and others who would become friends. After drawing a low number in March 1861, Monet was drafted into the First Regiment of African Light Cavalry in Algeria for a seven-year period of military service. His prosperous father could have purchased Monets exemption from conscription but declined to do so when his son refused to give up painting. While in Algeria Monet did only a few sketches of scenes, a single landscape. In a Le Temps interview of 1900 however he commented that the light, after about a year of garrison duty in Algiers, Monet contracted typhoid fever and briefly went absent without leave. Following convalescence, Monets aunt intervened to get him out of the army if he agreed to complete a course at an art school and it is possible that the Dutch painter Johan Barthold Jongkind, whom Monet knew, may have prompted his aunt on this matter
11.
Vincent van Gogh
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Vincent Willem van Gogh was a Dutch Post-Impressionist painter who is among the most famous and influential figures in the history of Western art. In just over a decade he created about 2,100 artworks, including around 860 oil paintings and his suicide at 37 followed years of mental illness and poverty. Born into a family, Van Gogh drew as a child and was serious, quiet. As a young man he worked as an art dealer, often travelling and he turned to religion, and spent time as a Protestant missionary in southern Belgium. He drifted in ill health and solitude before taking up painting in 1881 and his younger brother Theo supported him financially, and the two kept up a long correspondence by letter. His early works, mostly still lifes and depictions of peasant labourers, in 1886 he moved to Paris, where he met members of the avant-garde, including Émile Bernard and Paul Gauguin, who were reacting against the Impressionist sensibility. As his work developed he created a new approach to still lifes and his paintings grew brighter in colour as he developed a style that became fully realised during his stay in Arles in the south of France in 1888. During this period he broadened his subject matter to include trees, cypresses, wheat fields. Van Gogh suffered from episodes and delusions and though he worried about his mental stability, he often neglected his physical health, did not eat properly. His friendship with Gauguin ended after a confrontation with a razor and he spent time in psychiatric hospitals, including a period at Saint-Rémy. After he discharged himself and moved to the Auberge Ravoux in Auvers-sur-Oise near Paris and his depression continued and on 27 July 1890, Van Gogh shot himself in the chest with a revolver. He died from his injuries two days later, Van Gogh was unsuccessful during his lifetime, and was considered a madman and a failure. He became famous after his suicide, and exists in the imagination as the quintessential misunderstood genius. His reputation began to grow in the early 20th century as elements of his style came to be incorporated by the Fauves. The most comprehensive source on Van Gogh is the correspondence between him and his younger brother, Theo. Their lifelong friendship, and most of what is known of Vincents thoughts, Theo van Gogh was an art dealer and provided his brother with financial and emotional support, and access to influential people on the contemporary art scene. Theo kept all of Vincents letters to him, Vincent kept few of the letters he received, after both had died, Theos widow Johanna arranged for the publication of some of their letters. A few appeared in 1906 and 1913, the majority were published in 1914, Vincents letters are eloquent and expressive and have been described as having a diary-like intimacy, and read in parts like autobiography
12.
The Glorification of the Virgin
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The Glorification of the Virgin is a 15th-century painting attributed to Geertgen tot Sint Jans. The painting was made in circa 1490–1495 and was part of a diptych. It shows the Virgin Mary holding Jesus and surrounded by three rings of angels, the panel is in the collection of Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam, Netherlands. Media related to The Glorification of the Virgin at Wikimedia Commons
13.
Geertgen tot Sint Jans
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No contemporary documentation of his life has been traced, and the earliest published account of his life and work is from 1604, in Karel van Manders Schilder-boeck. According to van Mander, Geertgen was probably a pupil of Albert van Ouwater, both painters lived in the city of Haarlem, where Geertgen was attached to the house of the Knights of Saint John, perhaps as a lay brother, for whom he painted an altarpiece. In van Manders book he states that Geertgen took the name of St. John without joining the order, thus his last name tot Sint Jans was derived from the orders name and means unto Saint John. The assignment of Leiden as his birthplace is traceable to a 17th-century print by Jacob Matham, there is no known archival evidence for this claim by Matham. This print of The Lamentation of Christ from 1620, shows in the left corner Cum privil. M. – Gerardus Leydanus Pictor ad S. Ia Bapt, harlemi pinxit indicating he was a painter from Leiden at St John the Baptist in Haarlem. In the lower hand corner it says Theodorus Matham Sculpsit. Iac Matham excud. which means that son Theo made the sketch from the painting and it was printed in Haarlem in 1620, indicating that the painting was still there at that time. Both side panels are quite fragile and are located in museums today. Modern acceptance of Leiden as Geertgens birthplace is traceable to Johann Kesslers dissertation of 1930. He died, probably still in his twenties, around the year 1495, in Haarlem, modern scholars have attempted to calculate the artists death date with the information from The Painting-Book by Karel van Mander, published in 1604. Should he have gone to work for one or two years as a journeyman, then the age at which he began to live by his art correspondingly rises, accordingly, Geertgen worked a maximum of ten years independently. Though it seems a sleepy little community of Amsterdam today. It was the second largest city in historical Holland after Dordrecht and before Delft, Leiden, Amsterdam, Gouda, in 1429 the city gained the right to collect tolls, including ships passing the city on the Spaarne river. At the end of the Middle Ages Haarlem was a city with a large textile industry, shipyards. Around 1428 the city was put under siege by the army of Jacqueline, Haarlem had taken side with the Cods in the Hook and Cod wars, and thus against Jacoba of Bavaria. The entire Haarlemmerhout wood was burnt down by the enemy, in 1469 the commandry of St. John in Haarlem was promoted to a special status that fell directly under the grand Prior of Germany. Before that it was a commandry of the Balij of Utrecht
14.
The Tower of Babel (Bruegel)
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The Tower of Babel was the subject of three paintings by Pieter Bruegel the Elder. The first, a painted on ivory, was painted while Bruegel was in Rome and is now lost. The two surviving paintings, often distinguished by the prefix Great and Little are in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, both are oil paintings on wood panels. The Rotterdam painting is about half the size of the Vienna one, in broad terms they have exactly the same composition, but at a detailed level everything is different, whether in the architecture of the tower, the sky and the landscape around the tower. In Vienna the tower rises at the edge of a large city, Bruegel had visited Rome in 1552–1553. The Tower was also symbolic of the turmoil between the Catholic church and the polyglot Protestant religion that was increasingly popular in the Netherlands. The subject may have had a specific topicality, as the famous Polyglot Bible in six languages, although at first glance the tower appears to be a stable series of concentric pillars, upon closer examination it is apparent that none of the layers lies at a true horizontal. Rather the tower is built as an ascending spiral, the workers in the painting have built the arches perpendicular to the slanted ground, thereby making them unstable and a few arches can already be seen crumbling. The foundation and bottom layers of the tower had not been completed before the layers were constructed. Lucas van Valckenborch, a contemporary of Bruegels, also painted the Tower of Babel in the 1560s and later in his career, both were part of a larger tradition of painting the tower during the 16th and 17th centuries. The story of the Tower of Babel was interpreted as an example of pride punished, moreover, the hectic activity of the engineers, masons and workmen points to a second moral, the futility of much human endeavour. Nimrods doomed building was used to illustrate this meaning in Sebastian Brants Ship of Fools Bruegels knowledge of building procedures and techniques is considerable and correct in detail. Both towers are shown partly-built with stone facings over a massive brick framework, grand and formal architecture of this sort is not a usual interest of Bruegel in either paintings or drawings, although it was typical subject matter for many of his contemporaries. There are no surviving drawings that are studies for this or any other of Bruegels paintings and this is despite indications that Bruegel did make use of preparatory studies. Both Tower versions are full of the type of details which are likely to have worked out in sketches first. Except for a lack of mountains, the paintings contain the ingredients of the world landscape. The Vienna tower is built around a very small mountain. The Vienna painting is signed and dated Brvegel, M. CCCCC. LXIII, on the stone block directly in front of the king
15.
Pieter Bruegel the Elder
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He also painted no portraits, the other mainstay of Netherlandish art. After his training and travels to Italy, he returned in 1555 to settle in Antwerp and he does the same with the fantastic and anarchic world developed in Renaissance prints and book illustrations. He is sometimes referred to as Peasant Bruegel, to him from the many later painters in his family. From 1559, he dropped the h from his name and signed his paintings as Bruegel, the two main early sources for Bruegels biography are Lodovico Guicciardinis account of the Low Countries and Karel van Manders 1604 Schilder-boeck. Guicciardini recorded that Bruegel was born in Breda, but van Mander specified that Bruegel was born in a village near Breda called Brueghel, nothing at all is known of his family background. Van Mander seems to assume he came from a peasant background, in keeping with the over-emphasis on Bruegels peasant genre scenes given by van Mander and many art historians. Breda was already a significant centre as the base of the House of Orange-Nassau, with a population of some 8,000, from the fact that Bruegel entered the Antwerp painters guild in 1551, it is inferred that he was born between 1525 and 1530. His master, according to van Mander, was the Antwerp painter Pieter Coecke van Aelst, between 1545 and 1550 he was a pupil of Pieter Coecke, who died on 6 December 1550. Bruegel possibly got this work via the connections of Mayken Verhulst, maykens father and eight siblings were all artists or married an artist, and lived in Mechelen. In 1551 Bruegel became a master in the Guild of Saint Luke of Antwerp. He set off for Italy soon after, probably by way of France. He visited Rome and, rather adventurously for the period, by 1552 he had reached Reggio Calabria at the tip of the mainland. He probably continued to Sicily, but by 1553 was back in Rome, there he met the miniaturist Giulio Clovio, whose will of 1578 lists paintings by Bruegel, in one case a joint work. These works, apparently landscapes, have not survived, but marginal miniatures in manuscripts by Clovio are attributed to Bruegel, with one exception, Bruegel did not work the plates himself, but produced a drawing which Cocks specialists worked from. In 1563 he was married in Brussels, where he lived for the rest of his life, while Antwerp was the capital of Netherlandish commerce as well as the art market, Brussels was the centre of government. Van Mander tells a story that his mother-in-law pushed for the move to him from his established servant girl mistress. By now painting had become his main activity, and his most famous come from these years. His paintings were sought after, with patrons including wealthy Flemish collectors and Cardinal Granvelle, in effect the Habsburg chief minister
16.
Wassily Kandinsky
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Wassily Wassilyevich Kandinsky was a Russian painter and art theorist. He is credited with painting one of the first recognised purely abstract works, born in Moscow, Kandinsky spent his childhood in Odessa, where he graduated at Grekov Odessa Art school. He enrolled at the University of Moscow, studying law and economics, successful in his profession—he was offered a professorship at the University of Dorpat—Kandinsky began painting studies at the age of 30. In 1896 Kandinsky settled in Munich, studying first at Anton Ažbes private school and he returned to Moscow in 1914, after the outbreak of World War I. Kandinsky was unsympathetic to the theories on art in Communist Moscow. There, he taught at the Bauhaus school of art and architecture from 1922 until the Nazis closed it in 1933. He then moved to France, where he lived for the rest of his life, becoming a French citizen in 1939 and he died at Neuilly-sur-Seine in 1944. Kandinskys creation of work followed a long period of development. He called this devotion to beauty, fervor of spirit. Kandinsky was born in Moscow, the son of Lidia Ticheeva and Vasily Silvestrovich Kandinsky, Kandinsky learned from a variety of sources while in Moscow. He studied many fields while in school, including law and economics, later in life, he would recall being fascinated and stimulated by colour as a child. His fascination with colour symbolism and psychology continued as he grew, in 1889, he was part of an ethnographic research group which travelled to the Vologda region north of Moscow. In Looks on the Past, he relates that the houses and churches were decorated with such shimmering colours that upon entering them and this experience, and his study of the regions folk art, was reflected in much of his early work. The artist is the hand plays, touching one key or another. Kandinsky was also the uncle of Russian-French philosopher Alexandre Kojève, in 1896, at the age of 30, Kandinsky gave up a promising career teaching law and economics to enroll in the Munich Academy where his teachers would eventually include Franz von Stuck. He was not immediately granted admission, and began learning art on his own and that same year, before leaving Moscow, he saw an exhibit of paintings by Monet. He was particularly taken with the style of Haystacks, this. Later, he would write about this experience, That it was a haystack the catalogue informed me and this non-recognition was painful to me
17.
Dutch art
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Dutch art describes the history of visual arts in the Netherlands, after the United Provinces separated from Flanders. Earlier painting in the area is covered in Early Netherlandish painting and Dutch, after the end of the Golden Age, production of paintings remained high, but ceased to influence the rest of Europe as strongly. The Hague School of the 19th century re-interpreted the range of subjects of the Golden Age in contemporary terms, Amsterdam Impressionism had a mainly local impact, but the De Stijl movement, of which Mondrian was a member, was influential abroad. Dutch Golden Age painting was among the most acclaimed in the world at the time, there was an enormous output of painting, so much so that prices declined seriously during the period. From the 1620s, Dutch painting broke decisively from the Baroque style typified by Rubens in neighboring Flanders into a realistic style of depiction. Types of paintings included historical paintings, portraiture, landscapes and cityscapes, still lifes, in the last four of these categories, Dutch painters established styles upon which art in Europe depended for the next two centuries. Paintings often had a moralistic subtext, the Golden Age never really recovered from the French invasion of 1671, although there was a twilight period lasting until about 1710. Dutch painters, especially in the provinces, tried to evoke emotions in the spectator by letting him/her be a bystander to a scene of profound intimacy. Portrait painting thrived in the Netherlands in the seventeenth century, many portraits were commissioned by wealthy individuals. Group portraits similarly were often ordered by prominent members of a civilian guard, by boards of trustees and regents. Often group portraits were paid for by each portrayed person individually, the amount paid determined each persons place in the picture, either head to toe in full regalia in the foreground or face only in the back of the group. Sometimes all group members paid a sum, which was likely to lead to quarrels when some members gained a more prominent place in the picture than others. Allegories, in which painted objects conveyed symbolic meaning about the subject, were often applied, favourite topics in Dutch landscapes were the dunes along the western sea coast, rivers with their broad adjoining meadows where cattle grazed, often a silhouette of a city in the distance. Rembrandt had by 1631 established such a reputation that he received several assignments for portraits from Amsterdam. In about 1640, his work became more sober, reflecting the family tragedies that he had suffered, exuberance was replaced by more sincere emotions. Biblical scenes were now derived more often from the New Testament instead of the Old Testament, one of his most famous paintings is The Night Watch, which was completed in 1642, at the peak of Hollands golden age. The painting was commissioned to be hung in the hall of the newly-built Kloveniersdoelen in Amsterdam. Johannes Vermeers works are admired for their transparent colors, careful composition, vermeer painted mostly domestic interior scenes, and even his two known landscapes are framed with a window
18.
Hieronymus Bosch
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Hieronymus Bosch was a Dutch/Netherlandish draughtsman and painter from Brabant. He is widely considered one of the most notable representatives of Early Netherlandish painting school and his work is known for its fantastic imagery, detailed landscapes, and illustrations of religious concepts and narratives. Within his lifetime his work was collected in the Netherlands, Austria, and Spain, little is known of Boschs life, though there are some records. He spent most of it in the town of s-Hertogenbosch, where he was born in his grandfathers house, the roots of his forefathers are in Nijmegen and Aachen. His pessimistic and fantastical style cast a wide influence on art of the 16th century. His paintings have been difficult to translate from a point of view. Today he is seen as a hugely individualistic painter with deep insight into humanitys desires, attribution has been especially difficult, today only about 25 paintings are confidently given to his hand along with 8 drawings. Approximately another half dozen paintings are attributed to his workshop. His most acclaimed works consist of a few triptych altarpieces, the most outstanding of which is The Garden of Earthly Delights, Hieronymus Bosch was born Jheronimus van Aken. He signed a number of his paintings as Jheronimus Bosch, the name derives from his birthplace, s-Hertogenbosch, which is commonly called Den Bosch. Little is known of Boschs life or training, nothing is known of his personality or his thoughts on the meaning of his art. Boschs date of birth has not been determined with certainty and it is estimated at c.1450 on the basis of a hand drawn portrait made shortly before his death in 1516. The drawing shows the artist at an age, probably in his late sixties. Bosch was born and lived all his life in and near s-Hertogenbosch and his grandfather, Jan van Aken, was a painter and is first mentioned in the records in 1430. It is known that Jan had five sons, four of whom were also painters, Boschs father, Anthonius van Aken, acted as artistic adviser to the Illustrious Brotherhood of Our Blessed Lady. It is generally assumed that either Boschs father or one of his uncles taught the artist to paint, Bosch first appears in the municipal record on 5 April 1474, when he is named along with two brothers and a sister. In 1463,4,000 houses in the town were destroyed by a catastrophic fire and he became a popular painter in his lifetime and often received commissions from abroad. In 1488 he joined the highly respected Brotherhood of Our Lady, a religious group of some 40 influential citizens of s-Hertogenbosch
19.
Maurizio Cattelan
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Maurizio Cattelan is an Italian artist. He is known for his sculptures, particularly La Nona Ora. Cattelan started his career in the 1980s making wooden furniture in Forlì and he made a catalogue of his work, which he sent to galleries. This promotion gave him an opening in design and contemporary art and he created a sculpture of an ostrich with its head buried in the ground, wore a costume of a figurine with a giant head of Picasso, and affixed a Milanese gallerist to a wall with tape. During this period, he created the Oblomov Foundation. Cattelan’s personal art practice has led to him gaining a reputation as an art scene’s joker and he has been described by Jonathan P. Binstock, curator of contemporary art at the Corcoran Gallery of Art as one of the great post-Duchampian artists and a smartass, too. Discussing the topic of originality with sociologist, Sarah Thornton, Cattelan explained and it is an evolution of what is produced. Originality is about your capacity to add, Cattelan is commonly noted for his use of taxidermy during the mid-1990s. Novecento consists of the body of a former racehorse named Tiramisu. Another work utilizing taxidermy is Bidibidobidiboo, a depiction of a squirrel slumped over its kitchen table. In 1999 he started making life-size wax effigies of various people, another of Cattelan’s quirks is his use of a ‘stand-in’ in media interviews equipped with a stock of evasive answers and non-sensical explanations. Between 2005 and 2010 his work has centered on publishing and curating. Along with long-term collaborators Ali Subotnick and Massimiliano Gioni, Cattelan also curated the 2006 Berlin Biennale and he frequently submitted articles to international publications such as Flash Art. His work was based on simple puns or subverts clichéd situations by, for example. Frequently morbidly fascinating, Cattelan’s dark humour sets his work above the simple pleasures of well-made visual one-liners, maurizo Cattelan utilizes media to expose reality as well as blur the lines between reality and myth. Several of Cattelan’s works play off of the modern day spectacle culture and this is a culture that harbors such an immense obsession with images, that the obsession might be easily comparable to idolatry. If a Tree Falls in the Forest and There is No One Around It, the work consists of a taxidermied donkey with its head bowed low, carrying a television on its back. It is meant to conjure up the image of Christ riding into Jerusalem on a donkey, the television taking Christ’s seat on the Donkey serves a blatant representation of media culture’s replacing tradition as the new object of praise
20.
Mark Rothko
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Mark Rothko, born Markus Yakovlevich Rothkowitz, was an American painter of Russian Jewish descent. Although Rothko himself refused to adhere to any art movement, he is identified as an abstract expressionist. With Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning, he is one of the most famous postwar American artists, Mark Rothko was born in Dvinsk, Vitebsk Governorate, in the Russian Empire. His father, Jacob Rothkowitz, was a pharmacist and an intellectual who initially provided his children with a secular and political, rather than religious, according to Rothko, his pro-Marxist father was violently anti-religious. In an environment where Jews were often blamed for many of the evils that befell Russia, despite Jacob Rothkowitzs modest income, the family was highly educated, and Rothko was able to speak Russian, Yiddish, and Hebrew. Fearing that his sons were about to be drafted into the Imperial Russian Army. Markus remained in Russia, with his mother and elder sister Sonia and they arrived as immigrants, at Ellis Island, in late 1913. From that point, they crossed the country, to join Jacob, jacobs death, a few months later, from colon cancer, left the family without economic support. Sonia operated a cash register, while Markus worked in one of his uncles warehouses and his fathers death also led Rothko to sever his ties with religion. After he had mourned his fathers death for almost a year at a local synagogue, Markus had started school in the United States in 1913, quickly accelerating from third to fifth grade. In June 1921, he completed the level, with honors, at Lincoln High School in Portland. He learned his fourth language, English, and became a member of the Jewish community center. Like his father, Rothko was passionate about issues such as workers’ rights, at the time, Portland was the epicentre of revolutionary activity in the U. S. and the region where revolutionary syndicalist union Industrial Workers of the World, was strongest. He heard Emma Goldman speak on one of her West Coast activist lecture tours, with the onset of the Russian Revolution, Rothko organised debates about it. Despite the repressive political atmosphere, he wished to become a union organiser. Rothko received a scholarship to Yale, at the end of his freshman year in 1922, the scholarship was not renewed, and he worked as a waiter and delivery boy to support his studies. He found the Yale community to be elitist and racist, Rothko and a friend, Aaron Director, started a satirical magazine, The Yale Saturday Evening Pest, which lampooned the schools stuffy, bourgeois tone. In any event, Rothkos nature was more that of a man than a diligent pupil, One of his fellow students remembers that he hardly seemed to study
21.
Edvard Munch
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One of his best known works is The Scream of 1893. Edvard Munch was born in a farmhouse in the village of Ådalsbruk in Løten, United Kingdoms of Sweden and Norway, to Laura Catherine Bjølstad and Christian Munch, Christian was a doctor and medical officer who married Laura, a woman half his age, in 1861. Edvard had a sister, Johanne Sophie, and three younger siblings, Peter Andreas, Laura Catherine, and Inger Marie. Both Sophie and Edvard appear to have inherited their artistic talent from their mother, Edvard Munch was related to painter Jacob Munch and historian Peter Andreas Munch. The family moved to Christiania in 1864 when Christian Munch was appointed medical officer at Akershus Fortress, Edvards mother died of tuberculosis in 1868, as did Munchs favorite sister Johanne Sophie in 1877. After their mothers death, the Munch siblings were raised by their father, often ill for much of the winters and kept out of school, Edvard would draw to keep himself occupied. He was tutored by his mates and his aunt. Christian Munch also instructed his son in history and literature, and entertained the children with vivid ghost-stories, as Edvard remembered it, Christians positive behavior toward his children was overshadowed by his morbid pietism. Munch wrote, My father was temperamentally nervous and obsessively religious—to the point of psychoneurosis, from him I inherited the seeds of madness. The angels of fear, sorrow, and death stood by my side since the day I was born, Christian reprimanded his children by telling them that their mother was looking down from heaven and grieving over their misbehavior. The oppressive religious milieu, plus Edvards poor health and the vivid ghost stories, helped inspire his macabre visions and nightmares, one of Munchs younger sisters, Laura, was diagnosed with mental illness at an early age. Of the five siblings, only Andreas married, but he died a few months after the wedding, Munch would later write, I inherited two of mankinds most frightful enemies—the heritage of consumption and insanity. Christian Munchs military pay was low, and his attempts to develop a private side practice failed, keeping his family in genteel. They moved frequently from one flat to another. Munchs early drawings and watercolors depicted these interiors, and the objects, such as medicine bottles and drawing implements. By his teens, art dominated Munchs interests, at thirteen, Munch had his first exposure to other artists at the newly formed Art Association, where he admired the work of the Norwegian landscape school. He returned to copy the paintings, and soon he began to paint in oils, in 1879, Munch enrolled in a technical college to study engineering, where he excelled in physics, chemistry and math. He learned scaled and perspective drawing, but frequent illnesses interrupted his studies, the following year, much to his fathers disappointment, Munch left the college determined to become a painter
22.
Willem de Kooning
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Willem de Kooning was a Dutch-American abstract expressionist artist who was born in Rotterdam, Netherlands, and moved to New York in 1927. Willem de Kooning was born in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, on April 24,1904 and his parents, Leendert de Kooning and Cornelia Nobel, were divorced in 1907, and de Kooning lived first with his father and then with his mother. He left school in 1916 and became an apprentice in a firm of commercial artists, until 1924 he attended evening classes at the Academie van Beeldende Kunsten en Technische Wetenschappen, now the Willem de Kooning Academie. In 1926 de Kooning travelled to the United States as a stowaway on the Shelley, a British freighter bound for Argentina and he stayed at the Dutch Seamens Home in Hoboken, New Jersey, and found work as a house-painter. In 1927 he moved to Manhattan, where he had a studio on West Forty-fourth Street and he supported himself with jobs in carpentry, house-painting and commercial art. De Kooning began painting in his time and in 1928 he joined the art colony at Woodstock. He also began to some of the modernist artists active in Manhattan. None of them were executed, but a sketch for one was included in New Horizons in American Art at the Museum of Modern Art, De Kooning met his wife, Elaine Fried, at the American Artists School in New York. She was 14 years his junior, thus was to begin a lifelong partnership affected by alcoholism, lack of money, love affairs, quarrels and separations. They were married on December 9,1943, at this time, de Koonings work borrowed strongly from Gorkys surrealist imagery and was influenced by Picasso. This only changed when de Kooning met the younger painter Franz Kline, Kline died young and he was one of de Koonings closest artist friends. Klines influence is evident in de Koonings calligraphic black images of this period, in the late 1950s, de Koonings work shifted away from the figurative work of the women and began to display an interest in more abstract, less representational imagery. He became a US citizen in 1961 and moved to East Hampton in 1963 and this became his primary residence and he remained there until the end of his life. On Long Island de Kooning, in addition to his painting, inspired in part by the work of Henry Moore, de Kooning created highly abstracted figurative sculpture very reminicent of his figurative paintings. It was revealed toward the end of his life that de Kooning began losing his memory in the late 1980s and had been suffering from Alzheimers disease for some time. This revelation has initiated considerable debate among scholars and critics about how responsible de Kooning was for the creation of his late work, succumbing to the progress of his disease, William de Kooning painted his final works in 1991. He passed away in 1997 at the age of 92, upon death William de Kooning was cremated. His final place of rest is publicly unknown, De Koonings paintings of the 1930s and early 1940s are abstract still-lifes characterised by geometric or biomorphic shapes and strong colours
23.
Yayoi Kusama
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Yayoi Kusama is a Japanese artist and writer. In 1957, she moved to the United States, settling down in New York City where she produced a series of paintings influenced by the abstract expressionist movement. Switching to sculpture and installation as her primary media, Kusama became a fixture of the New York avant-garde during the early 1960s where she associated with the pop art movement. Kusama is also a published novelist and poet, and has created work in film. Major retrospectives of her work have been held at the Museum of Modern Art in 1998, the Whitney Museum in 2012, the Tate Modern in 2012, in 2006, she received a Womens Caucus for Art Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2008, Christies New York sold a work by her for $5.1 million, in 2015 Artsy named her one of the Top 10 Living Artists of 2015. Born in 1929 in Matsumoto, Nagano, into an affluent family of merchants who owned a plant nursery and seed farm, Kusama started creating art at an early age, and began writing poetry at age 18. Her mother was physically abusive and Kusama remembers her father as. the type who would play around. I had an obsession with sex, when I was a child, my father had lovers and I experienced seeing him. My mother sent me to spy on him, I didn’t want to have sex with anyone for years. The sexual obsession and fear of sex sit side by side in me, when Kusama was ten years old, she began to experience vivid hallucinations which she has described as flashes of light, auras, or dense fields of dots. She was reportedly fascinated by the white stones covering the riverbed near her family home. When Kusama was thirteen years old, she was sent to work in a factory, where she was tasked with sewing and fabricating parachutes for the Japanese army. Her childhood was influenced by the events of World War II. She went on to study Nihonga painting at the Kyoto Municipal School of Arts and Crafts in 1948, by 1950, Kusama was depicting abstracted natural forms in watercolor, gouache and oil, primarily on paper. She began covering surfaces with the dots that would become a trademark of her work. Kusama on polka dots, a polka-dot has the form of the sun, which is a symbol of the energy of the world and our living life, and also the form of the moon. Round, soft, colorful, senseless and unknowing, Polka dots are a way to infinity
24.
The Wayfarer
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The Wayfarer is a Hieronymus Bosch painting. It is currently in Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam and this painting is round and 71.5 cm in diameter. It is one of the fragments of a partially lost triptych or diptych, which included the Allegory of Gluttony and Lust, the Ship of Fools and Death. The figure is similar to the man depicted in The Path of Life panel on the exterior of The Haywain Triptych. The character has been interpreted as choosing between the path of virtue at the gate on the right or debauchery in the house on the left, tim Storriers self-portrait The Histrionic Wayfarer won the 2012 Archibald Prize. The Pedlar at Google Cultural Institute
25.
Hieronymus Bosch drawings
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This is an incomplete list of drawings by Hieronymus Bosch, many of which have survived to the present day. A number represent alternate incarnations or preparatory sketches for his paintings, Boschs works are generally organized into three periods of his life dealing with the early works, the middle period, and the late period. According to Stefan Fischer, thirteen of Boschs surviving paintings were completed in the late period, Boschs early period is studied in terms of his workshop activity and possibly some of his drawings. There are no surviving painting attributed to before 1485
26.
The Roulin Family
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The Roulin Family is group of portrait paintings Vincent van Gogh executed in Arles in 1888 and 1889 on Joseph, his wife Augustine and their three children, Armand, Camille and Marcelle. This series is unique in many ways, although Van Gogh loved to paint portraits, it was difficult for financial and other reasons for him to find models. So, finding a family that agreed to sit for paintings — in fact. Joseph Roulin became a good, loyal and supporting friend to Van Gogh during his stay in Arles. To represent a man he admired was important to him. The family, with children ranging in age from four months to seventeen years, rather than making photographic-like works, Van Gogh used his imagination, colours and themes artistically and creatively to evoke desired emotions from the audience. This series was made during one of Van Goghs most prolific periods, the work allowed him to pull artistic learnings over the past several years towards the goal of expressing something meaningful as an artist. Van Gogh moved to Arles in southern France in 1888, where he produced some of his best work and his paintings represented different aspects of ordinary life, such as portraits of members of the Roulin family. The sunflower paintings, some of the most recognizable of Van Goghs paintings, were created in this time and he worked continuously to keep up with his ideas for paintings. This is likely one of Van Goghs happier periods of life and he is confident, clear-minded and seemingly content. In a letter to his brother, Theo, he wrote, Painting as it is now, promises to become more subtle - more like music and less like sculpture - and above all, as a means of explanation, Vincent explains that being like music means being comforting. Van Gogh, known for his landscapes, seemed to find painting portraits his greatest ambition and he said of portrait studies, the only thing in painting that excites me to the depths of my soul, and which makes me feel the infinite more than anything else. Van Gogh wrote further of the meaning he wished to evoke, I want to paint men and women with that something of the eternal which the halo used to symbolize, and which we seek to communicate by the actual radiance and vibration of our colouring. As much as Van Gogh liked to paint portraits of people and he found a bounty in the work of the Roulin family, for which he made several images of each person. In exchange, Van Gogh gave the Roulins one painting for each family member, as the Roulin family was similar in size to Van Goghs own, in his psychological approach Lubin suggested that Van Gogh may have adopted them as a substitute. Van Gogh painted the family of postman Joseph Roulin in the winter of 1888, the family included Joseph Roulin, the postman, his wife, Augustine, and their three children. Van Gogh described the family as really French, even if they look like Russians, over the course of just a few weeks, he painted Augustine and the children several times. The reason for multiple works was partly so that the Roulins could have a painting of each member, so that with these pictures and others
27.
On the Threshold of Liberty
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On the Threshold of Liberty refers to two oil on canvas paintings by the Belgian surrealist René Magritte. The work depicts a room with the walls paneled with different scenes or windows. Each panel reveals a different subject, a sky, fire, wood, a forest, the front of a building, a pattern, a female torso. Inside the room is a cannon, the original painting was completed in 1929 and is currently part of the collection at the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam. A second version was commissioned in 1937 by Magritte patron Edward James, for this version, the orientation was changed from horizontal to vertical leading to an increase in the area of the room depicted. It is currently on display at the Art Institute of Chicago, in 1983 the American composer and trumpeter Mark Isham composed a piece of music titled after this painting
28.
Not to Be Reproduced
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Not to be Reproduced is a painting by the Belgian surrealist René Magritte. It is currently owned by the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam and this painting was commissioned by poet and Magritte patron Edward James and is considered a portrait of James although Jamess face is not depicted. This painting was one of three produced by Magritte for the ballroom of Jamess London home, the other two were The Red Model and Time Transfixed. The work depicts a man standing in front of a mirror, but whereas the book on the mantelpiece is reflected correctly, the book on the mantel is a well-worn copy of Edgar Allan Poes The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket. Poe was one of Magrittes favorite authors and he made references to the author in his work. For example, the title of the painting The Domain of Arnheim was taken from the Poe short story of the same name, Magritte painted another portrait of Edward James titled The Pleasure Principle. It depicts James from the front, sitting at a table, however, in 1977, Graham Hughes made a reference to the painting as the cover art for Roger Daltreys third solo album One of the Boys. A loose recreation of the painting appeared in David Koepps 2004 film Secret Window and in Richard Ayoades 2013 film The Double
29.
The Face of War
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The Face of War is a painting by the Spanish surrealist Salvador Dalí. It was painted during a period when the artist lived in California. The trauma and the view of war had served as inspiration for Dalí’s work. He sometimes believed his vision to be premonitions of war. This work was painted between the end of the Spanish Civil War and beginning of the Second World War, the painting depicts a disembodied face hovering against a barren desert landscape. The face is withered like that of a corpse and wears an expression of misery, in its mouth and eye sockets are identical faces. In their mouths and eyes are more identical faces in a process implied to be infinite, swarming around the large face are biting serpents. In the lower corner is a hand print that Dalí insisted was left by his own hand
30.
Curator
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A curator is a manager or overseer. Traditionally, a curator or keeper of a heritage institution is a content specialist charged with an institutions collections. A traditional curators concern necessarily involves tangible objects of some sort—artwork, collectibles, historic items, more recently, new kinds of curators have started to emerge, curators of digital data objects and biocurators. In smaller organizations, a curator may have responsibility for acquisitions. In very small, volunteer-based museums such as historical societies. Such institutions can have multiple curators, each assigned to a collecting area. In the museum setting, a curator in the United Kingdom may also be called a keeper, in Scotland, the term curator is also used to mean the guardian of a child. In the United States, this job is multifaceted and dependent on the particular institution, however, in recent years, the role of a curator has evolved alongside the changing role of museums. As museums in the United States have become increasingly more digitized, curators find themselves constructing narratives in both the material and digital worlds. Historian Elaine Gurian has called for museums in which “visitors could comfortably search for answers to their own regardless of the importance placed on such questions by others. ”This would change the role of curator from teacher to “facilitator and assistor. ”In this sense, the role of curator in the United States is precarious, as digital and interactive exhibits often allow the public to become their own curator. Citizens are then able to educate themselves on the subject they are interested in. More recently, advances in new technologies have led to a widening of the role of curator. This has been a focus in major art institutions internationally and has become an object of academic study, in contemporary art, the title curator is given to a person who selects and often interprets works of art. In addition to selecting works, the curator often is responsible for writing labels, catalog essays, such curators may be permanent staff members, guest curators from an affiliated organization or university, or freelance curators working on a consultant basis. The late twentieth century saw an explosion of artists organizing exhibitions, the artist-curator has a long tradition of influence. Notable among these was Sir Joshua Reynolds, founder of the Royal Academy of Arts, in some US organizations, the term curator is also used to designate the head of any given division of a cultural organization. This has led to the proliferation of such as Curator of Education. The term literary curator has been used to persons who work in the field of poetry
31.
Nederlandse Omroep Stichting
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The Nederlandse Omroep Stichting, English, Dutch Broadcast Foundation, is one of the broadcasting organizations making up the Netherlands Public Broadcasting system. It has a statutory obligation to make news and sports programmes for the three Dutch public television channels and the Dutch public radio services. The NOS also acts as technical co-ordinator for the Dutch public broadcasting system as a whole, the NOS does have correspondents in multiple countries, including a permanent studio in Washington DC. Programmes produced by the NOS include its daily television and radio bulletins, parliamentary reports are shown from a special studio in The Hague. It also supplies news programmes aimed at children, teens and young adults and sports fans, programmes are made available via television, radio and online. The NOS also broadcast text pages and a website, which are often used by the public. The Netherlands Radio Union was established in 1947, the associations were responsible for their own output, but studios, orchestras and outside broadcast facilities were managed by the NRU. Weekly radio plays were also the domain of the NRU and would run until 1986, the NRU became the Dutch founding member of the European Broadcasting Union in 1950. Meanwhile the Netherlands Television Service was created in 1951, two years after public television returned to the airwaves, the NTS served as a similar organization to the NRU, in that broadcast and transmission facilities were supplied to member associations for making programmes. It wasnt until 1956 that the NTS itself produced its first programme and this was followed by a sports round-up, Sport in Beeld in 1959, and in 1967 of Langs de Lijn, a joint production of several broadcasting associations. A new Media Act was passed into law in 1967, merging the Netherlands Radio Union, the new organization, the Nederlandse Omroep Stichting was created on 29 May 1969. The NOS, as was its predecessors, was tasked with co-ordinating the whole public broadcasting system, as well as providing news and it also inherited the technical and production facilities needed to make and broadcast radio and television programmes. All broadcasting members of the NRU and the NTS were made members of the NOS, on 2 May 1977, a strike by sound engineers affected television news broadcasts. Upset viewers called on all broadcasters to resolve the situation, on 1 April 1980 the NOS launched its teletext service, in the framework of supplying news and information. It first experimented with teletext in 1977, on the 25th anniversary, the NOS aired its first televised youth news bulletin, called the Jeugdjournaal. The Media Act of 1988 meant several changes to NOS and the broadcasting system, the Netherlands Broadcast Production Company consisted of those facilities, mainly based in Media Park in Hilversum. The Media Act also required broadcasting association members take up positions on the NOS Board of Directors, a new government commission oversaw content and financial matters, as well as admitting potential new broadcasting associations. In 1995, saw another Media Act enacted which saw the broadcasting duties of the NOS greatly reduced, the NPS took on the programming tasks of the NOS concerning culture, art, children, education and ethnic-minorities, whilst the NOS concentrated on news, sport and live events
32.
Trouw
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Trouw is a Dutch daily newspaper appearing in compact size. It was founded in 1943 as an orthodox Protestant underground newspaper during World War II, since 2009, it is owned by De Persgroep. Trouw received the European Newspaper Award in 2012, cees van der Laan is the current editor-in-chief. Trouw is a Dutch word meaning fidelity, loyalty, or allegiance, the name was chosen to reflect allegiance and loyalty to God and Country in spite of the German occupation of The Netherlands. Trouw was started during World War II by members of the Dutch Protestant resistance, hundreds of people involved in the production and distribution of the newspaper were arrested and killed during the war. The newspaper was published irregularly during the war due to lack of paper, in August 1944 the Nazi occupying forces tried to stop publication by rounding up and imprisoning some 130 of the couriers. They issued an ultimatum to the leaders of Trouw, however, amongst the people that lost their life during the war due to their involvement with the newspaper was Trouw co-founder and resistance member Wim Speelman. After the war the paper became a daily, its allegiance to the Reformed Churches in the Netherlands. By 1967, though, the chief editor made it clear that Trouw was not to be considered a paper only for Christians. Circulation at the end of the 20th century was a little over 133,000, on 3 February 2005 Trouw changed its format from broadsheet to compact. Today, Trouw is a part of the De Persgroep Nederland, NRC Handelsblad, Het AD, Het Parool and de Volkskrant are also owned by De Persgroep Nederland. NRC Handelsblad was sold before the summer of 2010, letter&Geest is the weekly supplement of Trouw. Trouw is considered one of the Dutch national quality newspapers – next to NRC Handelsblad, partly due to its history, and more than those other two, it pays specific attention to religion, Christianity, Islam and all the other world religions. Dutch underground press List of Dutch newspapers List of non-English newspapers with English language subsections Official website Illegale Trouw, underground issues from 1943-1945
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NRC Handelsblad
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NRC Handelsblad, often abbreviated to NRC, is a daily evening newspaper published in the Netherlands by NRC Media. NRC Handelsblad was first published on 1 October 1970 after a merger of the Amsterdam newspaper Algemeen Handelsblad, the papers motto is Lux et Libertas – Light and Freedom. In February 2006, NRC Handelsblad started a newspaper, nrc•next. Editor Folkert Jensma was succeeded on 12 December 2006, by Birgit Donker, after a dispute with the new owners Donker had to step down on 26 April 2010 and was replaced by Belgian Peter Vandermeersch. On 7 March 2011 the paper changed its format from broadsheet to tabloid, the circulation of NRC Handelsblad in 2014 was 188,500 copies, putting it in 4th place among the national dailies. In 2015 the NRC Media group was acquired by the Belgian company Mediahuis
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Rijksmonument
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A rijksmonument is a national heritage site of the Netherlands, listed by the agency Rijksdienst voor het Cultureel Erfgoed acting for the Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture and Science. To be designated, a place must be over 50 years old, there are around 51,000 designated rijksmonuments in the Netherlands. The program was started during the Hague Convention in 1954, the current legislation governing the monuments is the Monumentenwet van 1988. The organization responsible for caring for the monuments, which used to be called Monumentenzorg, was recently renamed, and is now called Rijksdienst voor het Cultureel Erfgoed. In June 2009, the Court of The Hague decided that individual purchasers of buildings that were listed as rijksmonuments would be exempt from paying transfer tax, previously this exemption had only applied to legal entities. Many Dutch tourist attractions are rijksmonuments, such as castles or windmills, among the rijksmonuments are also many churches. A provincial monument is a monument designated by a province, in the Netherlands there are only two provinces that assign monuments, North Holland and Drenthe. The designation allows the provinces to protect the monuments and are a base for the regulation of subsidy for restoring the monuments, a municipal monument is a monuments designated by a municipality. A municipal monument is not of importance but it is important for the region or city/village. List of Rijksmonuments List of heritage registers Monumentenregister, official database of heritage sites Monumenten. nl
35.
Virtual International Authority File
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The Virtual International Authority File is an international authority file. It is a joint project of national libraries and operated by the Online Computer Library Center. The project was initiated by the US Library of Congress, the German National Library, the National Library of France joined the project on October 5,2007. The project transitions to a service of the OCLC on April 4,2012, the aim is to link the national authority files to a single virtual authority file. In this file, identical records from the different data sets are linked together, a VIAF record receives a standard data number, contains the primary see and see also records from the original records, and refers to the original authority records. The data are available online and are available for research and data exchange. Reciprocal updating uses the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting protocol, the file numbers are also being added to Wikipedia biographical articles and are incorporated into Wikidata. VIAFs clustering algorithm is run every month, as more data are added from participating libraries, clusters of authority records may coalesce or split, leading to some fluctuation in the VIAF identifier of certain authority records
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Integrated Authority File
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The Integrated Authority File or GND is an international authority file for the organisation of personal names, subject headings and corporate bodies from catalogues. It is used mainly for documentation in libraries and increasingly also by archives, the GND is managed by the German National Library in cooperation with various regional library networks in German-speaking Europe and other partners. The GND falls under the Creative Commons Zero license, the GND specification provides a hierarchy of high-level entities and sub-classes, useful in library classification, and an approach to unambiguous identification of single elements. It also comprises an ontology intended for knowledge representation in the semantic web, available in the RDF format
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National Library of Australia
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In 2012–2013, the National Library collection comprised 6,496,772 items, and an additional 15,506 metres of manuscript material. In 1901, a Commonwealth Parliamentary Library was established to serve the newly formed Federal Parliament of Australia, from its inception the Commonwealth Parliamentary Library was driven to development of a truly national collection. The present library building was opened in 1968, the building was designed by the architectural firm of Bunning and Madden. The foyer is decorated in marble, with windows by Leonard French. In 2012–2013 the Library collection comprised 6,496,772 items, the Librarys collections of Australiana have developed into the nations single most important resource of materials recording the Australian cultural heritage. Australian writers, editors and illustrators are actively sought and well represented—whether published in Australia or overseas, approximately 92. 1% of the Librarys collection has been catalogued and is discoverable through the online catalogue. The Library has digitized over 174,000 items from its collection and, the Library is a world leader in digital preservation techniques, and maintains an Internet-accessible archive of selected Australian websites called the Pandora Archive. A core Australiana collection is that of John A. Ferguson, the Library has particular collection strengths in the performing arts, including dance. The Librarys considerable collections of general overseas and rare materials, as well as world-class Asian. The print collections are further supported by extensive microform holdings, the Library also maintains the National Reserve Braille Collection. The Library has acquired a number of important Western and Asian language scholarly collections from researchers, williams Collection The Asian Collections are searchable via the National Librarys catalogue. The National Library holds a collection of pictures and manuscripts. The manuscript collection contains about 26 million separate items, covering in excess of 10,492 meters of shelf space, the collection relates predominantly to Australia, but there are also important holdings relating to Papua New Guinea, New Zealand and the Pacific. The collection also holds a number of European and Asian manuscript collections or single items have received as part of formed book collections. Examples are the papers of Alfred Deakin, Sir John Latham, Sir Keith Murdoch, Sir Hans Heysen, Sir John Monash, Vance Palmer and Nettie Palmer, A. D. Hope, Manning Clark, David Williamson, W. M. The Library has also acquired the records of many national non-governmental organisations and they include the records of the Federal Secretariats of the Liberal party, the A. L. P, the Democrats, the R. S. L. Finally, the Library holds about 37,000 reels of microfilm of manuscripts and archival records, mostly acquired overseas and predominantly of Australian, the National Librarys Pictures collection focuses on Australian people, places and events, from European exploration of the South Pacific to contemporary events. Art works and photographs are acquired primarily for their informational value, media represented in the collection include photographs, drawings, watercolours, oils, lithographs, engravings, etchings and sculpture/busts
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Media related to Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen at Wikimedia Commons