Amsterdam and Art

Since my last post, I finally made it to the European continent, spending a weekend in Amsterdam. I discovered that Amsterdam is a city that it’s really easy to get lost in, and had many adventures because of it. (I don’t really want to post most of those adventures, but if you want to hear more about them, shoot me an email.)

I also discovered that Amsterdam is full of small beautiful things. Lovely houses and lots of canals, but also small striking statues perched on lots of buildings and interesting graffiti in unexpected places. My adventures took me into the Artis Zoo, for one, and in addition to the fun of seeing lions and camels and pelicans and cow-like-things-with-giant-horns, but walking around the zoo (which was founded in 1838) was an aesthetic experience in and of itself. Or, in the words of the Artis website, visitors “enjoy the 19th-century atmosphere of the gardens: the winding paths, majestic trees, the fascinating sculptures and the monumental historical buildings.” I also had a borderline religious experience involving a Buddha statue in the zoo, but that’s another story.

Back in London, I finally walked over to an installation under a bridge of mosaics based on poems and etchings by William Blake and these sound boxes that played readings of his poems. Blake lived for 10 years not far from where I’m living at the moment, and these installations seem to me to serve both as a public commemoration to his work, and works of art in their own right. Some of the mosaics were quite striking, and listening to the lines “O I am nothing: and to nothing must return again:/ If thou withdraw thy breath. Behold I am oblivion,” while trains rumbled overhead was downright creepy.

I really appreciate the positioning of art in a public place, whether it’s the gargoyles or the graffiti of Amsterdam or the installation to honor Blake. I think putting art in a public place, for lack of a more exact phrase, is good for the soul. I’m willing to bet very few people go out of their way to see the Blake installation like I did, but I don’t think that’s the point of it being there, or the point of the small beautiful things in Amsterdam. Coming into contact with the beautiful and the weird unexpectedly jars us, and puts us on the plane of really being human, rather than just running around like machines fulfilling obligations or animals satisfying needs.


A Statue (is that the right word?)



A Stencil


No pics of Blake, I forgot my camera...