Somewhere in the German Forests

Friday, July 16, 2010 at 10:59 AM
I’m currently traveling through the German country side, through thick forests and rolling hills. I never imagined Germany to be so picturesque. In contrast to the flatlands of the Netherlands, Germany is full of hills and tall trees. The trees form a carpet covering the hills, broken only in the low areas to make room for fields of wheat and corn. I’ve never seen the Sound of Music, except for one scene where the main character swirls around singing in the hills. The Germany I see looks just like that scene. This is interesting to me because I imagine the difficulties the Romans had in conquering Germany. The dense wood must have been difficult to dominate.

Amsterdam was all in all a pretty fun experience. It was a welcomed four days of relaxation, after a busy week in Paris seeing art and eating food. We saw two small museums in Amsterdam, the Rijksmuseum and the Van Gogh museum. Other than that, we spent our free time in the bars, kicking back and taking in the lively Dutch culture.

We saw the Van Gogh museum our last day there, which was an educational experience. Having seen an entire museum dedicated to the man, I have to say I don’t enjoy his artwork, but I do respect its significance. Van Gogh’s biggest contribution to art, in my opinion, is his influence on future artists and styles. The fact that he was an artist for only 10 years further impresses me of his skill. Van Gogh learned to paint at a time when the Impressionists were popular, but he took his art further. Instead of describing nature by accurately painting it, he expressed what he saw in nature in his paintings. It is from this that Expressionism, Cubism, and other modern arts evolved from.

The Van Gogh museum organized itself chronologically, so that we could see the difference in Van Gogh’s technique as he developed his art. From the beginning, Van Gogh starts by depicting common scenes to learn basic drawing skills. Most of these paintings are dark and bland in color, and the brush strokes are relatively thick. I thought compared to Franz Hal’s strokes, Van Gogh’s were less refined, and not as realistic. I also noticed that the style seemed similar to Impressionist work, but apparently Van Gogh disliked Impressionist work at the time. In any case, I also noticed that there wasn’t a focus on light that the Impressionists were famous for. His most famous piece from this time period is titled the Potato Eaters, which I actually like (it was widely panned).

Van Gogh’s next period comes when he moves to France, and comes into contact with several Impressionist painters. He changes his opinion about Impressionism, and begins to learn Pointillism, using many dabs of paint to paint a scene. I noticed that here too he doesn’t seem to be that great at it, especially compared with some of the Monet’s that I saw on this trip. Van Gogh didn’t focus on the effect of light on his scene; rather, he just made everything really bright and sunny. I thought his colors were too bright, to the point of making the picture seem artificially colored..

It is in Van Gogh’s next period that I think he’s finally gone beyond the learning stages, and starts to really create something that will become influential for future artists. Van Gogh uses even more brilliant colors than in his Impressionist period, and also starts to experiment with lines. He chooses artificial colors to depict nature, and adds waviness to the lines in the paintings. At times, I think his color choice is pretty interesting. I remember one picture where he uses different shades of red to show a person’s shadow. The waviness in his lines is plainly evident in perhaps his most famous piece, Starry Night.

Not long after this period, Van Gogh shot himself, and died. He suffered from mental illness, and despaired that his art had reached itself potential.

As far as our eating experience in Amsterdam went, we mostly ate south east asian food. The Indonesian places were highly recommended, although we never made it to any that were good. We had a few good Thai meals, which reminded me of how much I like curry. Especially curry made using coconut milk. No pictures for these, though you aren’t missing out on much.

-Howitzer

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