Exhibition: "All those Amsterdam people ... 1935-1975"

 

I went to see the oldest document that mentions Amsterdam and found something else, no less interesting: City Archives on Vijzelgracht has long been one of my favourite places in town, because they always have excellent exhibitions, interesting subjects and imagine the entrance is actually free (where for other museums you need to pay ticket) - I have my annual museumkaart anyway, but its just great to know I can bring friends here and introduce them to the place. Currently there is exhibition titled "All those Amsterdam people... Photos 1935-1975"  that covers citizens of Amsterdam from 1930s to mid1970s and majority of the photos was carefully selected black & white work from artists like Charles Breijer, Piet Goede, Dolf Kruger, Sem Presser and Maria Austria. 

I thought it was excellent, specially the post WW2 period with its little caffees and people smoking everywhere, totally different city than today. Sure, the only constant thing is change and its natural that city eventually completely changed its profile - these pictures bring celebration and melancholy at the same time. 

Happy Birthday Cleo Laine

One of my all-time favourite singers, Cleo Laine (officially known as Dame Cleo Laine) is celebrating 95 years these days and I just thought about her this morning. I have discovered Laine during my "London years" when I was much younger and always loved her voice, her beauty, her music - she started in post WW2 UK and established herself as British Jazz royalty together with her husband John Dankworth - together they performed around the world and created a brilliant body of work that covered everything from Jazz to movie soundtracks, pop, easy listening, Shakespeare sonnets and Carole King. Along the way she eventually became discovered in US where she won "Grammy"  in 1986, appeared on a theatre stage, in movies and musicals, opened a concert hall in her backyard (famous Stables) and recorded a long discography that is worth searching for, as her artistic inspiration resulted in many different directions and collaborations. 

One of the albums long out of print but still worth searching for is 1982. "Smilin' Through" with Dudley Moore. This elegant, classy and sophisticated collaboration sound so natural and spontaneous that its actually wonder why it did not happen before - Dankworths and Moore were old friends from back in the 1960s swinging London but it took forever for them to get together and collaborate on an album. In the meantime Dankworths became international Jazz sensation and Moore a Hoollywood star - its easy to imagine them meeting again somewhere in Los Angeles and planning this long overdue album together. It is also a welcome return to Jazz music for Laine who has spent a good part of 1970s recording middle of the road pop crossover music and its good to hear her doing what she does best. Moore is an excellent pianist, Laine sounds excellent as always and this is superb album, nominated for 1983. Grammy. 

Sun smiling

 

"A Nasa satellite captured an image of what appeared to be a happy face pattern on the sun earlier this week, prompting the US space agency to say the sun was seen “smiling”.

The Birthday of Amsterdam

Amsterdam is 747 years old now.

And we know it because the oldest document that mentions the name of the city dates from 1275 and it was signed by legendary Count Floris V (killed in that same Muiderslot castle that I have visited). The document itself is a tiny piece of goat skin and it mentions "Aemstelredamme" as Floris gives its citizens right to travel freely without having to pay tolls at bridges, locks, and dams. This toll-free document is the beginning of Amsterdam as a city and its on display in City Archives that i am re-visiting tomorrow. 

Gabriel Gruchy

 Gabriel Gruchy (1831-1906), French painter. The Old Flower Dealer, 1880-90.

Exhibitions

I have neglected my blog but in fact I was very busy with a lot of exhibitions. 

First, I went again again to Hermitage, this time because I wanted to share the exhibition with my friend Ruth who used to be my work colleague and we are constantly visiting cinema & museums together - I have enjoyed that exhibition very much and wanted to show it to her. To my biggest surprise she knew and recognised many of the people on the portraits, which completely blew me away and I was delighted that she knows about Mary Shelley, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, etc. It was our first time together in Hermitage so we roamed around the whole building and later I even showed her a Holocaust monument nearby. 

Than I went to Van Gogh Museum - its one of the most totemic places in Amsterdam and I usually avoid it as a plague, because its focus of tourist attention, which means crowded and busy - but now I just had to see a new exhibition tribute to Austrian artist Gustav Klimt whom I knew and loved for a long time. So off I went, booked a ticket online, reserved a time slot and used my museumkaart membership - it was excellent! I have already seen Klimt's painting in Vienna but this exhibition presented several different faces of his talent, first as a classically trained painter, than in a full bloom of his fantasy work (inspired by no less interesting Dutch artist Jan Toorop) and later some quite amazing big paintings of nature. Sadly, Klimt was only 55 when he died (from combination of stroke and Spanish flu) but his work is immortal and timeless. 

We have visited only Gustav Klimt part of museum, the rest deserves another visit - the main building is large enough to spend the whole afternoon there.

The most recent exhibition I visited was in famous Nieuwe Kerk - 15th century church standing next to the Royal Palace and now serves as museum - I just love how this fantastic, historical place can always be completely transformed depending to occasion. At the moment they have exhibition about late Queen Juliana and her life - it was very well visited and quite crowded with locals, but also very interesting for me as I love history and don't know much about local royal family. Apparently its a family where first child inherits the throne and it just happened that three generations of women served as queens (husbands providing the children and living in the shadow) - the genetics are incredibly strong in the family and all these ladies resemble each other a lot - each of these ladies eventually abdicated in favour of their child who than took over the duties. It was very interesting exhibition and I was very pleased to be there, will probably go again because I need to show it to friends.