April 20, 2019

Dutch sculpture surprisingly back to original location

Filed under: Art,History by Orangemaster @ 5:23 pm

This week, a bronze sculpture by Dutch artist Hans Ittmann (1914-1972), which has changed location quite a bit, was unveiled again on the Mirandalaan in the South of Amsterdam at the Judith van Swet retirement home.

Peter Lokkerbol, an employee linked to the home who pushed to have it moved to the public space it is at now, had to first figure out who the artist of this sculpture was, as it had no name. The reason for making a big deal out of the unveiling was that it had a interesting history that needed to be celebrated.

Lokkerbol found out that the sculpture was meant to be climbed by children, and that at the à  location of the Judith van Swet retirement home, there used to be a Jewish orphanage ran by the Jewish Le-Ezrath Ha-Jeled organisation, dedicated to helping children. The orphanage was opened in 1965 by Queen Juliana along with the unveiling of Ittmann’s work, which meant the work is now back where it started after 54 years.

Hans Ittmann started with figurative work, and after WWII turned towards abstract work, having travelled through South American and Northern Africa and having been inspired by ethnographic art. He first started making massive wooden sculpture, and as of 1955 worked mainly with metal.

As well, Ittmann designed two pillars that are part of a property not far from 24orange HQ, so we’ll have to go and check that out one days as well.

(Link and photo: hvoquerido.nl)

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April 11, 2019

Nijmegen’s new square has the wrong name

Filed under: Art,History by Orangemaster @ 8:17 pm


The city of Nijmegen, Gelderland has named a square downtown after three figures from the city’s history, but has managed to spell their last name incorrectly.

Name after Medieval painters and brothers Herman, Paul and Johan, the square is called ‘Gebroeders Van Limburgplein’ (‘Brothers Van Limburg square’). Thanks to recent research done by an employee of Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum, the proper spelling appears to be ‘Van Lymborch’, something the museum is calling an important milestone in the lives and work of the brothers.

Famous Dutch historian Johan Huizinga wrote their last names as ‘Van Limburg’ at some point and everybody just followed suit. In English, they were known as the ‘Limbourg brothers’. However, in Nijmegen documents from the fifteenth century, the spelling Van Lymborch was used. Lymborch was a dutchy located between the city of Achen in Germany and the city of Liège in Belgium. Now a city, it is called Limbourg, and has nothing to do with the Dutch province of Limburg as people thought.

Nijmegen’s Gebroeders van Limburg festival will be held in August and also get a name change to the Gebroeders Van Lymborch festival. The name change will not affect any addresses on the square as they are new houses with nobody living in them yet. That’s obviously way better than in Soesterberg where the street changed name overnight (possibly by mistake) and nobody told the residents.

(Link and photo: waarmaarraar.nl)

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April 3, 2019

Van Gogh’s revolver under the hammer in Paris

Filed under: Art,History by Orangemaster @ 3:32 pm

It has been announced today in Paris that the revolver with which Vincent Van Gogh is believed to have shot himself will be auctioned off on June 19. Auction Art calls it “the most famous weapon in the history of art”, the 7 mm Lefaucheux revolver is expected to fetch upwards of 60,000 euro when it is sold on June 19.

“Discovered by a farmer in 1965 in the same field where the troubled Dutch painter is thought to have fatally wounded himself 75 years before, the gun has already been exhibited at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.”

Experts say that Van Gogh shot himself near the village of Auvers-sur-Oise north of Paris where he spent the last few months of his life in 1890. The revolver belonged to the owner of the inn where he was staying. Van Gogh died 36 hours after he wounded himself in the inn and in the dark.

There are still many discussions about whether he actually shot himself or that maybe a local boy shot him inadvertently.

(Link: phys.org)

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March 30, 2019

Dutch art detective retrieves stolen Picasso after 20 years

Filed under: Art by Branko Collin @ 11:36 pm

A Dutch “art detective” from Amsterdam called Arthur Brand has managed to lay his hands on Buste de Femme (Dora Maar), a painting that had been lost since 1999, The Guardian reported yesterday.

On 14 March 2019, two men “with contacts in the underworld” handed Brand the stolen Picasso in his apartment in the east of Amsterdam. According to Brand, stolen art can often be a hot potato. It is difficult to sell and in the meantime the thief or fence is stuck with a stolen item that, if found in their possession, can lead to awkward questions from the authorities.

Having gotten wind of the Picasso, Brand let it be known that he was interested in the painting, worth an estimated 25 million euro.

Brand, whose motto is “if they start to threaten you, you know you are on the right trail”, recovered a pair of bronze horses by Josef Thorak in 2015. The year after he negotiated the return of five stolen painting held by a Ukranian militia.

A day after receiving the painting, he handed it over to representatives of the insurance company.

Pablo Picasso painted the work in 1938.

(Illustration: Pablo Picasso)

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March 23, 2019

Van Gogh in American museum finally authenticated

Filed under: Art by Orangemaster @ 11:43 am

Dutch experts from Amsterdam’s Van Gogh Museum have finally declared that the painting ‘Vase with Poppies’ (‘Vaas met klaprozen’) is a real Vincent van Gogh. The painting, which currently hangs in the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, Connecticut, USA, was painted by the Dutch artist in 1886, just after he moved to Paris.

The painting has been part of the American museum’s collection since 1957, and when a prominent expert in 1990 starting questioning its authenticity, the museum put it in storage. Nowadays, using a Macro-X-ray Fluorescence (MA-XRF) scanner to analyse the painting like they did with Vermeer’s ‘Girl with a Pearl Earring’ last year, the underpainting revealed what looked like a self-portrait, which strengthened its authenticity.

The Wadsworth Atheneum now officially has two Van Goghs in its collection. The other is a self-portrait painted in 1887.

Why does it take so long to authenticate a painting? Well, MA-XRF scanners cost in the hundreds of thousands of euro, which means few museums own them – they usually have to borrow one. Besides getting your hands on such a scanner, the time it takes to scan and proper analyse the findings means the painting is out of view for a while and that your staff is busy doing that instead of other things.

(Links and image: gelderlander.nl, apnews.com)

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March 13, 2019

Religious political party wants UFO-inspired roundabout art gone

Filed under: Art by Orangemaster @ 9:15 pm

The town of Houten, Utrecht features two roundabouts meant as landing pads (‘air strips’) for alien ships, installed some 15 years ago. One of the roundabouts is a kind of traffic tower for the UFOs, similar to what you would see at an airport, while the other is the actual landing pad, a bit like a helipad, but once again for a flying saucer.

A local politician of the SGP, the same religious sad sacks that regularly complain about metal music, paid parking on Sundays and more recently clutched their pearls over a poster of women kissing, forgetting that the law is not the Bible in the Netherlands, said “a landing pad for UFOs has little to do with reality”, at which point I laughed out loud for a few minutes, wondering if the guy realised what he was saying.

The politician said the art has little to do with what Houten has to offer and should be replaced by references to cycling, fruit or forts. The artist, Martin Riebeek is not from Houten, but lives in Breda, Noord-Brabant and is originally from Haarlem, North Holland, and why is this used as an argument is beyond me.

The ‘U’ on the landing pad in the picture does not stand for UFO, but for ‘you’ in the polite form in Dutch (‘U’) according to Riebeek.

(Link: rtvutrecht.nl, Photo of UFO air strip by Jeroen Komen, some rights reserved)

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January 7, 2019

‘Roundabout with pizza cutter needs pineapples’

Filed under: Art,Automobiles,Food & Drink,Weird by Orangemaster @ 1:37 pm

Dutch journalist Lex Boon has just published a book called ‘Ananas’ (‘Pineapple’) about his love of pineapples. In his hometown of Beverwijk, North Holland, there’s a roundabout with a pizza cutter as art.

Boon figured the roundabout could conveniently use a new name and a new look: “My dream is to rename this pizza roundabout’ the ‘Pizza Hawaï Rotonde’ (‘Hawaiian Pizza Roundabout’) as a tribute to the pineapple.”

Putting pineapple on a pizza was a Canadian ‘invention’, thanks to Greek-born Canadian, Sam Panopoulos from Ontario, Canada. Follow the Wikipedia link and read the recent story about Canadian Prime Minister and the President of Iceland ‘debating’ the issue of whether pineapple belongs on pizza.

Boon also interviewed Panopoulos for his book, surely before the summer of 2017 when the latter passed away. The pizza cutter is not an officially commissioned art work, it’s advertisement for a local pizza parlour. Boon would love to see that thing full with piece of pineapple at some point.

I’m off for lunch.

(Link: nhnieuws.nl, Photo of Pizza pie without pineapple by Adam Kuban, some rights reserved)

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December 28, 2018

Embroidery of foreign packaging and food items

Filed under: Art,Food & Drink by Orangemaster @ 1:45 pm

Dutch artist Dagmar Stap of Groningen is fascinated by packaging and likes to create embroidery with said packaging, which is pretty cool. Until 30 December her work can be found at This Art Fair at the Beurs van Berlage in Amsterdam, as well as on her instagram account.

Stap embroiders things such as noodle packages, sweets and tins, all with much attention to detail. “Embroidery takes a lot of time and effort [some 10 days for one piece], but that gives the works more value.” She tends to pick colourful products and products from various countries, especially those she cannot read because of the language. She evens checks with Google translate to see what it is, although many products are from well-known international corporations.

Having studied illustration at the Academie Minerva in Groningen, she would draw and paint packaging she had lying around, out of boredom. Eventually, she began to embroider in order to make the art more tangible.

At this point, she has a whole shelf of embroidered art on display.

(Link and photo: vice.com)

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December 11, 2018

Keep the rotating house rotating or destroy it?

Filed under: Architecture,Art,General by Orangemaster @ 11:55 am

Ten years ago (where does the time go?), we told about the Rotating House (‘Draaiend Huis’) on a roundabout in Tilburg, North Brabant, made by John Körmelings. For quite some time now, the house hasn’t been turning anymore, as it’s broken, and fixing it would cost about 45,000 euro. The artwork cost 400,000 to build, and according to article on Vice.com (see link below), it broke down three times already. This would mean it has been fixed at least twice.

Sadly but not surprisingly at the moment, the Netherlands has a government that doesn’t like high art too much and feels that much of it is overrated. Since Dutch cultural institutions are dependent on government grants as opposed to endowments, sometimes people who don’t like art get to decide what lives or dies art-wise.

There’s currently a discussion about whether the rotating house should be fixed or destroyed. The city of Tilburg wants to fix it, but local youth politicians say the money can be better spent elsewhere like in healthcare. If the house is destroyed, then a lot of money would have been spent for nothing, whereas fixing it up means keeping a world-famous artwork turning for others to drive past and talk about.

Here’s a timelapse video of the ‘Draaiend Huis’ (‘Rotating House’)

(Link: vice.com, Photo: Stinkfinger Producties)

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December 9, 2018

A Frans Hals family portrait re-united

Filed under: Art by Branko Collin @ 12:58 pm

The Toledo Museum of Art in Toledo, Ohio, USA is currently displaying three Frans Hals paintings portraying various members of the Van Campen family from 17th century Haarlem.

What is remarkable about this set is that the three works used to be part of a single painting.

Nobody knows why the original painting was cut up, but it could have been something simple like trying to make it fit the place where it was hung—Rembrandt’s The Night Watch, secretly considered by many Dutch as the greatest painting ever, was famously cut up once because it did not fit through a door.

The two larger pieces had long been considered related, but it was only recently that the connection between the middle and the smallest piece became clear. The Art Newspaper reports that during a restoration of the middle part, Children of the Van Campen Family with a Goat-Cart, a painted-over girl appeared that allowed the restorers to link the painting to Head of a Boy.

The exhibition will last until 19 January 2019, after which the paintings will be displayed in either Brussels and Paris or Brussels and Madrid.

Last week, two other portraits by Hals were sold at Christie’s in London for 11 million euro.

(Illustration: collage of two of the three Frans Hals paintings with white space indicating the presumed size of the original painting)

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