Amsterdam: Van Gogh Museum

Reminder photo: this is Van Gogh's Starry Night that we saw in NYC at the MoMA (where we were allowed to take photos). Unfortunately, we weren't allowed to take photos at the actual Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. :( But this is the style of his work. Check Wikipedia or Google images for more examples-- he does great work! 

Two of our favorite museums in Amsterdam were the two museums where no pictures were allowed: the Van Gogh Museum & the Anne Frank House. Hopefully my words will suffice to explain the fascinating things and significance about each place.

Van Gogh Museum
The Van Gogh Museum is really two buildings that connect underground, at one end of a plaza/concourse that connects to the Rijks Museum. Surrounding the walkway, there is a huge grassy field where people were having picnics, playing frisbee, reading, and just resting! We got to the museum in the late afternoon, and knew we only had a couple of hours before it closed. Our plan was to go quickly through the ground floor, and spend the majority of our time on the first floor, where there were a wide selection of paintings by Van Gogh, arranged in chronological order. The other two floors and separate building/wing were temporary exhibits or works done with links to Van Gogh, and we figured we could skip those if we were running out of time (or energy). 

R1, Van Gogh's floor, was organized by time periods in the artist's life. It started out with his early work in the Netherlands (1880-1885), then moved to his peak time in Paris (1886-88) and Arles (1888-89), followed by the work he did as his health began to decline in Saint Remy (1889-90) and Auvers-sur-Oise (1890). That's really only 10 years worth of work! 

Going into Amsterdam, and going into his museum, I didn't know much about Van Gogh. I knew "Starry Night," and that he drew sunflowers, and that was about it. Having a whole museum dedicated to his work was awesome to visit, because you could really get a sense of his career and how/why his style changed over the course of his life. He was a very interesting man! In short, he was only active for 10 years, but has 800 paintings and 1,000 drawings preserved in various museums. He was extremely close with his brother, Theo, and people have learned a lot about his life through his own letters. He was largely self-taught as an artist, and really began to flourish when he moved to Paris and began to experiment. Unfortunately, he was ill, and admitted himself into a mental clinic. About a year later, he committed suicide. 

My favorites of his work were definitely from the Paris and Arles time when he used brighter colors in his art. It was interesting to learn that he often reused canvasses to save money, and he also did a lot of self-portraits to save money (as opposed to paying for models). 

Funniest story involving the Van Gogh Museum: Jeff skipped the ground floor entirely because he was still outside finishing his lunch when Jackie and I went in (not super relevant, but he used it as his excuse for the next comment). Halfway through the first floor, he turns to Jackie and says, "Man, he paints this same guy a lot!" Jackie couldn't stop laughing and explained to him that they were all self-portraits-- it was Van Gogh in every portrait! More about Van Gogh 

Interesting grass area outside the museum... maybe they use it for concerts? I'm not sure why it's raised on a slope like that!