Day 3 (Thu 20170608) Stedelijk Museum

The Stedelijk Museum is situated right beside Van Gogh Museum. Indeed, it's modern art museum that gives a totally different flavour, compared to the Rijksmuseum and the Van Gogh Museum. The most obvious difference in the "style" in painting and of course the degree of "abstractness" - here, I saw sharp distinctive lines in the art pieces, which are absent from traditional paintings, that emphasize a lot more in colour blending, and to some extent blurred edges (to create a softer touch).

Website: http://www.stedelijk.nl/en

It was the first time I brought myself to a modern art museum. Ok... actually I thought I expect something that's so abstract that I would not be able to figure out anything. True enough, there are such art work that fits into this category nicely. However, I also discovered some interesting stuff - to my surprise.

Indeed, I was googling as I stood in front of many of the art pieces, noting down the name of these artists.  This was something I did not need to do in the two other museums.

Why?

I was googling not for more information about the work but where to find these works in the internet so that I could use them as teaching aids! Haha... got the clue?

Below are examples of work I saw in the museum. Instead of taking photos of the work, I noticed that they could be easily found in the internet, except the short descriptions of the work, which I decided to take photos of them.

E.g. 1: A master piece that is made up of 3 straight lines (one per frame)

Click HERE to read more about the artist

E.g. 2: Notice what are the geometrical shapes involved to create the face of the drinker?

Click HERE to read more about the artist

E.g. 3: A masterpiece that exists in both 2-dimensional and 3-dimensional formats

Click HERE to read more about the artist

E.g. 4: Jacob Bendien's "Twee Kopen" that is created with arcs of circles!

Click HERE to read more about the artist

E.g. 5: Chris Beekman's "The Dogcart"

Do you notice the use of straight lines and angles in this piece of work?

Click HERE to read more about the artist

Something to note is, except those that depict some form of livelihood, mostly, primary colours are used - red, blue and yellow; of course, apart from black and white.

Indeed, after going through the work of these artists, I felt encouraged!
It seems like anyone of us could be an artist, too!
What's important now is to find a means to interpret (or perhaps should be "articulate") the story behind the art piece.

On another note, could I say I have discovered new teaching and learning resources for the topic, Basic Geometry? I wonder.

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This is an installation that uses moving shadows to tell a story.
How? By having the images printed on some rotating transparent cylinders suspended in mid-air; of course, coupled with some 'scary' sound effect (based on the theme of the story it tells).

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Design/ Modern art for Humanitarian work:
The following seemed a bit out of place - of which the exhibition displayed some of the equipment/ resources designed or invented that the UN adopted and used. However, one could not deny that there were lots of considerations to be taken into consideration when resources are to be applied in places that have limited access to resources, not forgetting that language barrier could be one of the biggest challenges faced.

An example of designs displayed is the Refugee emojis, which anyone could easily identify with the icons - that speak a common language that is understood by people of different nationalities.
Website: http://refugee-emojis.org/
(screenshot from website)

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