Van Gogh Exhibition Photos - see yourself surrounded by sunflowers, and Van Gogh's Bedroom

 

Surrounded by a riot of yellow sunflowers. Photo of and by Trevor Sharot. 

Contrasting with the crowde of flowers, is Van Gogh's simple, spartan room. It has four hooks, three hooks for hanging clothes and one hook for his hat. Photo by Trevor Sharot.

Reproduction of Van Gogh's bedroom. The backdrop of the window and and door are painted. Trompe l'oeuil. But the furniture is real. Photo by Trevor Sharot.

Van Gogh Exhibition in Jakarta. Photos by Trevor Sharot.

The exhibition is in a beautiful, spacious shopping mall in Jakarta. Jakarta is the current capital, on the island of Java. a complete contrast to the ultra modern Van Gogh Exhibition is the National Museum.

trevor spent a long weekend in Indonesia, climbing a dormant volcano. The last day was in Jakarta with a flight out at night. He planned his museums trips in the city in a line so he ended up near the airport in the evening.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Van_Gogh_immersive_experience

https://www.vangoghmuseumshop.com/en/shop

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See Van Gogh Alive Exhibition, in Jakarta, Indonesia, Singapore, France the USA, Worldwide and Online

 

Angela Lansvury wearing a Van Gogh scarf, souvenir from the Van Gogh exhibition in Jakarta, Indonesia. Photo by Trevor Sharot.

The Souvenir Scarf

My husband brought me this Van Gogh scarf back from Indonesia. I was very pleased with it. he said that it was hard for him to choose the colour because the scarves were folded in a see through cellophane cover. he did not buy the yellow sunsflowers but the blue with red because he thought those were my colours. I would have been equally happy with the yellow.

But the dark blue goes with a black outfit and so is more useful and versaitile.

You can buy amazing things online. Not only scarves but also dresses. My friend Sylvia in Singapore had a Van Gogh dress she bought which I admired.

You can even buy Van Gogh wallpaper and skateboards.

https://www.vangoghmuseumshop.com/en/shop

The Van Gogh Exhibition

The exhibiton was in Jakarta, Indonesia. It was previously in Singapore. It has visited many countries.

The price is expensive, compared to other museums in Jakarta, but different and worthwhile. My husband said, "I don't normally like multi-media and modern things, but this was wonderful. You start in a room full of flowers and mirrors at the back make it look as if it goes on forever.

Another room has a reproduction of van Gogh's bedroom. ery spartan. Three hooks for clothes. The room is like a theatre, with a painted backdrop for the windows and doors. But real furniture, a bed and chair.

Another room has music with the paintings. One mural is animated with a train which he painted running along the track.

The amazing thing is the way they extend a painting across the ceiling and the floor and around three sides of the room.

It seems to be still in Singapore until October 10th.

https://feverup.com/m/119247

Also in France and the USA.

Useful Websites

Wiki includes an entraning video.

From Wikipedia.

Description	English: Van Gogh immersive exhibit, at the Carrières de Lumière former quarry in Les Baux-de-Provence, France.
Date	29 May 2019, 16:00:54
Source	https://www.flickr.com/photos/154265517@N03/48038494441/
Author	.marc carpentier

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Van_Gogh_immersive_experience

https://www.vangoghmuseumshop.com/en/shop

For more photos see Sept 12 post.

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Van Gogh Expo In Singapore

 

The Van Gogh experience exhibition in Singapore is on Sentosa island.

You might want to wear something suitable.

See post 526 about Sylvia's black and white outfit from Light in the box.

The Van Gogh museum has a huge range of nifty socks. I liked the Sunflower socks, bright yellow.

If you wear Crocs or sandals and feel that plain white or black socks make you look like a child in school uniform, then these sophisticated socks could be the answer to upgrade your outfit.

The museum also sells sunglasses, silk scarves, and kimonos and clutch bags.  I found sunflower brooches and pendants. Bum bags. And a wheelie suitcase with a yellow sunflower pattern.

Kimono from Van Gogh Museum.

Sunflower umbrella just over 20 Euros.

Samsonite four wheel spinner suitcase.

Useful Websites

https://www.vangoghmuseumshop.com/en/all-fashion-accessories?gclid=Cj0KCQjwgLOiBhC7ARIsAIeetVDmF4uNTh49thgS-bFx12QEHQSVico-O1Pl0ymptj2ZVbTYW5dgQkAaAviwEALw_wcB

https://vangoghexpo.com/singapore/?utm_source=Facebook_Desktop_Feed&utm_medium=ad&utm_campaign=119247_sin&ad_id=23853757745700713&fbclid=IwAR1__mv16qe5IiIsf9H59Q4ubIUhQ1oQrpMJEDf9ZH44vaGtVz5BbQnYem0

Best Belgian Battlefields, People and Places To See: Sad Surrealist Magritte and Mad Van Gogh

Flag of Belgium

Problem
Driving across Belgium, leaving Dover and landing at Calais in France, or going to Ostend, you can route via Brussels, into Wallonia, as you cross France en route to Belgium or Belgium en route to France or Germany, the Netherlands, Luxembourg and other countries, such a waste not to stop somewhere interesting en route. I have always wanted to see the Magritte Museum but seen to arrive before or after it opens, in a hurry to get somewhere else, or on the day it's closed.

Answer
"I've got a little list," as the Gilbert and Sullivan song says. I've compiled it alphabetically, by town. Plot the place and time, month and day, of your visit.

Charleroi - Rene Magritte (1898-1967)
1 Art Deco belfry
Unesco listed clock tower and belfry. I must admit I would not have realised it was art deco, but now they come to mention it. Looking at the photo in the tourist brochure I see that it has round-topped arches, and lots of parallel lines.
2 Rene Magritte paintings in Museum of Fine Arts
Rene's father was a tailor. The family had money problems and kept moving house. Moving house is nowadays known as one of life's stressful experiences.
The river Charleroi was where Magritte's mother, a dressmaker, drowned herself in 1912 when he was 14, found seventeen days later with her night-dress wrapped around her face. Three years later seventeen year old Magritte left for Brussels. But never forgot, as his paintings show.He knew de Chirico, was successful, panted murals, and lived to the age of 69.

Liege - Paul Delvaux (Painter) 1897-1994 (died age 96!)
Another Surrealist painter.
1 La Boverie, art museum, has Delvaux paintings.
2 Wine route. See www.liegetourisme.be
BE, of course, stands for Belgium.

Mons - Vincent Van Gogh (Painter)
1 Mons Memorial Museum
See uniforms, guns and drums of the military, plus exhibits on civilian life
2 Saint-Symphorien Military Cemetery
Among the little grey-white gravestones surrounded by green grass under the peaceful green trees are:
Two WWI gravestones:
First British soldier killed on the Western Front, Private John Parr, a teenager, in the Middlesex regiment; and nearby
Last British soldier killed on 11,11.1918, Private George Ellison.
See graves of British and German soldiers.
3 Mons Battlefield
Diary Date - November 2018 commemorations in Mons.
4 In nearby village of Cuesmes, see the brick-built Van Gogh House house where Van Gogh lived, now a museum. Van Gogh was a lay preacher, a would be minister to the miners from 1878, but was too pious for the practical miners, who called him 'the Christ of the coalminers' so he turned to painting and wrote to his brother Theo, "I felt my energy return".

Namur
1 Félicien Rops Museum (Musée provincial Félicien Rops

Tournai - Roger Van Der Weyden (painter)

(More later. I'm resting before New Year's Eve. I see that they have already celebrated with fireworks, first in tiny islands, then in Sydney, Australia. The Far East is next. Then Europe including England and Scotland, with Hogmanay. Then America and Canada.)

Story
For me the most memorable story, visually, is that of Magritte, who does the weirdest paintings, spooky. Yes, spooky. There's such a sad story behind his paintings. His mother committed suicide and was found with a cloth wrapped around her face. He was a young lad at the time. Clearly haunted by this, his pantings have a woman lying prone, deathly white, with a missing or covered face.

Some of the jollier famous Belgian-born notables do not have places commemorating them. But you may wish to cheer yourself up thinking of Sax who invented the Saxophone, the man who invented roller skates (adapted from ice skates which already existed), Georges Simenon (1903-1989) the prolific writer of the Inspector Maigret stories. (You have plenty of choice - 75 novels and 28 short stories if you want to read something by him on your trip. He went to live in Paris and the USA and died in Switzerland but received honours from Belgium).

Finally, take a tour around a brewery, stay in a format hotel, and for a bit of colourful fun, a delight for two senses, a gourmet hotel which tickles your tastebuds, then retire to your bedroom whereto can change the colour of your bedroom to your taste by flicking a light switch.

Tips
More Details from Wallonia tourist board which has a booklet on the area and the famous people and beers, wines, chocolate, cheese and other food.
www.belgium-tourism.co.uk
visitmons.co.uk

AUTHOR
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker. Follow me on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube. Like and share my posts.

Ted Hughes statuette in Barnsley, Yorkshire, England

Homage to Ted Hughes. Painting by Reginald Gray. Photo from Wikipedia Commons. Public domain. A stone carved with Ted Hughes dates is in Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey.

A statue of poet Ted Hughes is in Barnsley where he used to live. The sculptor has included elements from the poets' life and poems.

You can follow the links back from national newspapers to local newspapers for details.

What do I remember of the poet? At school reading a rather nasty poem about a pike. Learning that he had had two wives or girlfriends who committed suicide. (Wife Sylvia Plath. I used to confuse her with Stevie Smith who wrote the poem about not waving but drowning.) The two facts about the vicious pike poem the and wife's suicide together rather put me off Ted Hughes poetry when I was at a younger and more sensitive age.I wasn't the only one. Or I was influenced by the others. The whole story is rather grim. After he left Sylvia she committed suicide. The women he left her for, Assia Gutmann Wevill also committed suicide. Eventually, so did Hughes' and Plath's son Nicholas.

Looking for negatives, I find the quotation from Ted Hughes: Nobody wanted your strange glitter, your floundering life and your efforts to save yourself.

In his defence it should be said that Sylvia had been suicidal before she met him. Their daughter has written in defence of her parents.

But then as soon as you discuss figures from the past, people you have not met, memory shuffles them altogether in a drawer.

I tend to feel the whilst somebody is alive to support them and their work is channeling money and attention and adulation (admiration and praise, worship) in their direction. I steer clear or being hurt by their actions, or by approving their actions.

Yet, what if you love their earlier work? What if you have been a fan for years? What do you feel about Woody Allen and Roman Polanski? What if their next of kin hate them? Or support them?

Does their work reflect their lifestyle and beliefs? Or is it totally separate? Does their work lead you into following their lifestyle? What about Wagner? What about Woody Allen's humorous comment on Wagner that whenever Woody hears Wagner he feels like invading Poland? That's a comment on Woody Allen, and a comment on Wagner.

However, after an artist has died, it is too late to have any influence on them. Their descendants are not to blame for anything and indeed may be victims.

Many artists, and indeed famous and successful people of any sort,  have private lives, or public works, which some people find distasteful. Take nude statues and paintings. Impressionists. Lady Caroline Lamb described Byron as: Mad, bad and dangerous to know.

Mad is mostly a matter of opinion. Except for those who were in mental asylums. Several cases of those exist. Van Gogh had what I instinctively and succinctly think of and describe as his 'ear trouble'. Was Sylvia more mad than her husband Ted Hughes? Does one have to take sides?

As for literature, Victorian era bowdlerised Shakespeare. Chaucer was bawdy. D H Lawrence was banned.

Activities go in and out of fashion. Even the leaders of great cultures, such as the Greeks and Romans, and major religions, have been accused of all kinds of immorality.

So now I am prepared to take another look at Ted Hughes' poetry, and admire the statue.

I'll be checking facts I half remember for accuracy or at least a source closer to the poet and other than myself and posting more later.I want to check his poems and find an out of copyright picture of the poet and the statue. Even if I have to wait six months until I have a chance to photograph the statue myself. In the old days I used to go back and update blog posts. Now that I have so many, and so much to say, I feel it would be more appropriate to give a link from one to another written at a later date.

Wikipedia neatly sums up his success and the controversy.

Edward James "Ted" Hughes, OM (17 August 1930 – 28 October 1998) was an English poet and children's writer. Critics routinely rank him as one of the best poets of his generation.^[1] He served as Poet Laureate from 1984 until his death.

Hughes was married to American poet Sylvia Plath from 1956 until her suicide in 1963 at the age of 30.^[2] His part in the relationship became controversial to some feminists and some American admirers of Plath. His last poetic work, Birthday Letters(1998), explored their complex relationship. These poems make reference to Plath's suicide, but none addresses directly the circumstances of her death. A poem discovered in October 2010, Last letter, describes what happened during the three days before her death.^[3]

In 2008 The Times ranked Hughes fourth on their list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945".^[4]

http://www.barnsley-chronicle.co.uk/news/article/11267/sculptor-unveils-memorial-for-poet
Please follow me on the blog posts, or Facebook, or link to me on Linkedin and check out my books on Lulu.com and Amazon. I hope to add some ebooks in 2016. If you are likely to meet me at a speakers or writers' meeting, I can bring along a book for you to browse and maybe buy, and will be happy to sign it for you.

Ted Hughes

by Angela Lansbury

The poet's statue stand and stares

He's gone and lost, with no more care

But left behind his leaping mind

But left us all steel words to share

From writer's block to solid rock

The poet, reader, sculptor find

All gain profit of a different kind

His ripe thoughts rippling everywhere

The weak and strong, the right and wrong

The endless fight, the day and night

Flowing but tight, both dressed and bare

As we gaze at his statue there

Too late to correct or condemn

We must just save, see good, in men.

Copyright Angela Lansbury Nov 24 2015.

If you wish to quote me, please quote up to but no more than four lines and refer the reader back to my post with a link. Thank you. For commercial use of the poem, please contact the author in writing.

In case you had not noticed, my poem follows a sonnet form of three four line verses ending with a couplet.

The writer's block is the block of stone which makes the sculpture, as well as the writer's hesitation before starting to write. Steel is also a pun on steal. Profit is financial and spiritual.

Flowing but tight can mean the construction of a poem. Dressed and bare, the statue or the thoughts. Correct and condemn applies to both the poet's actions in life and his verse. Men refers to both mankind and the tendency of men to dominate women and be the fighters.

Barnsley
Barnsley is in South Yorkshire. If you drive north from London and use Barnsley as a stopover, in addition to the Ted Hughes statue, you might also visit the town hall, a listed building containing a museum.The area is also known for the Bard of Barnsley, glass making, the former coal mining, brass bands, and the sign of the the Stork shop, which said it stocked everything except the baby.

Quotes from Ted Hughes
Nobody wants your ...
... the words look after themselves, like magic.

TED HUGHES MEMORIALS & PLACES TO VISIT
1  Westminster Abbey, London, England
Poets Corner. Stone.

2 White Bear Inn, Barnsley
The 16 inch maquette or model Ted Hughes is at The White Bear in the town centre and includes a pike, fox and crow.
The sculptor is local man, Graham Ibbeson.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barnsley
http://www.barnsley-chronicle.co.uk/news/article/11234/woman-who-ran-famous-shop-dies
http://www.wearinns.co.uk/our-pubs/51/The-White-Bear-Barnsley-South-Yorkshire
http://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/Restaurant_Review-g528795-d4106647-Reviews-The_White_Bear_Pub-Barnsley_South_Yorkshire_England.html

3 Mexborough, Yorkshire (15 miles from Sheffield)
Birthplace of Ted Hughes
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexborough (Lists Ted Hughes)

4 Gravestone of Sylvia Plath, Heptonstal, Yorkshire
Photo of grave in Wikiquote.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sylvia_Plath
http://www.thetedhughessociety.org

In the USA Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath were in Massachusetts.

Made in Mexborough: Ted Hughes's South Yorkshire by Steve Ely.

Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer.

The Wellington Gourmet Pub Restaurant Near Welwyn

The Wellington is a gourmet pub serving yummy food in a historic beamed building. Easy to find in the centre of the old village of Welwyn near the later and larger area of Welwyn Garden City. 

The restaurant menu handily tells you the history of the building and the surrounding including the old church you can see from the front windows.

Upstairs they have bedrooms.

At the back is a car park.

The house next door to the car park has a circular history plaque which you see as you drive in and out. It says that the house was occupied by the sister of the famous Impressionist painter Van Gogh. She taught French at the local school. Van Gogh walked all the way here from the southern coast of England to see her.

On the restaurant walls are many amusing pictures including a wall of cartoons. In addition the wonderful surroundings, the place serves interesting food. You can find conventional food on the main menu. But I suggest you opt for the special of the day written up on a board over the fireplace. We had a vegetarian dish with a mustard sauce.

The Wellington

www.wellingtonatwelwyn.co.uk

Illuminated Cycling paths - cycling in the Netherlands, London, England, and Africa

Fit or fat, cycling on holiday is the answer for you. Two of the best places are the Netherlands and London, England. Amsterdam is known for biking. But so is the whole of the Netherlands. Why is The Netherlands so keen on cycling?  Because it's flat.

London, England
London, England, because there are banks of Boris bikes that can be picked up, paid for with a credit card, and dropped off at your destination or any time of day or night when you return. Cycle paths are all over London, not just in the city centre. In the UK I see a cycling club gathering outside Fellini in Hatch End on Sunday mornings.

Netherlands
Todays news is about the glow in the dark cycle path in the Netherlands, copying van Gogh's Starry Nights painting. Turning paths into paintings. Preventing you from getting lost or having accidents in the dark.

UK
Wasn't there a pop song about 'starry, starry nights'? Glow in the dark was not a new idea for roads. We've had cat's eyes, an invention inspired by cat's eyes, down the middle of roads in the UK for years. Reflectors are on posts edging roads, and on the backs of cars and bikes and other vehicles. You can use luminous paint to illuminate your house number to help visitors find you.

Africa
But the glow in the dark paths are the thing of the future, helpful all over the world including African countries.

Is you are simply interested in the technology, without any immediate plans, watch the interesting video on the BBC site.

Before you plan a cycling holiday for yourself, a couple, a group, or friends, you need to think about the cost, or saving, the timing, the routes, your shoes , goggles, and gloves and illuminated jacket for safety and helmets. And maps. Maybe a camera attached to your helmet as evidence in case there's an accident, and for saving the story of your journey as a journal or souvenir or to entertain friends and family.


If you are thinking of hiring a bike for a holiday, e.g. in The Netherlands look at the advice on Tripadvisor.

http://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/Attraction_Review-g188590-d2631766-Reviews-I_Cycle_Holland-Amsterdam_North_Holland_Province.html

I was looking for a photo of the Boris Bike - oops - it's now the Barclays Bike new sponsorship or sale of advertising space I presume.