Typical early September weather today.
Menacing clouds and light rain one minute, clear blue skies and sunshine the next.
When the sun comes out it is wonderful to be walking here in the breeze along Singel and Herengracht canals.
The bright September sun is sparkling on the water.
The leaves on the trees are a luminous late summer green.
There aren’t many tourists around on this laidback Monday morning.
Most of the people out and about seem to be locals.
One of them sits with a coffee and a cigarette on the steps leading up to her canal-side office.
On the water, coots, ducks and gulls float around contentedly, too early in the day for territorial squawking.
The elegant canal-side buildings lurch and lean at their crazy drunken angles.
My destination is the Van Gogh Museum, so I walk along Herengracht as far as Leidsegracht and saunter along Leidsegracht for a few minutes until I reach Lijnbaansgracht.
This short stretch of Leidsegracht is one of the most charming parts of Amsterdam’s canal network.
Just slightly off the beaten track, it is quiet and settled, not making any attempt to woo passers-by. It exudes understated civic pride. Here and there it has strikingly beautiful architecture that is worth pausing to admire.
I am soon at the Paulus Potterstraat entrance to the Van Gogh Museum.
Before coming here I had wondered whether it was worth buying my entry ticket to the museum online in advance, as that is recommended as the way to avoid lengthy queues to get in.
The only reason I hesitated to buy the ticket this way was that on a recent visit to Schiphol airport to catch a flight somewhere, I had forgotten to check in online the day before but when I got to the airport, for dropping off bags there was a queue of people who had checked in online whereas I, who hadn’t done so, was able to drop off my bags immediately without queueing.
I thought something similar might happen at the Van Gogh Museum – if everyone buys their supposed queue-beating ticket online in advance, then there will be a long queue of such people whereas those who just show up on the day to buy a ticket at the front desk might get in quicker.
But I decided anyway to buy my Van Gogh Museum ticket online.
As it turns out, I get in straightaway as there is no one at all in the advance purchase queue.
The queue for walk-ups is very short and seems to be moving quite steadily.
This is a promising start to the visit; none of the horrendous queues that one is always being warned about.
The Van Gogh Museum is in two parts: the main building designed by Dutch architect Gerrit Rietveld, and the exhibition wing designed by Japanese architect Kisho Kurokawa.
The two buildings are joined by an underground passage.
From the outside, near the Paulus Potterstraat entrance, the main building looks underwhelming; a disappointing, unattractive grey box.
But inside, it is wonderful. It is spacious and filled with light. The geometric forms used by Rietveld give the interior of the main building an edgy modern feel that complements rather than contradicts the nineteenth-century art that it contains.
In the permanent exhibition there are numerous superb paintings by van Gogh to feast your eyes upon.
I like the brooding melancholy of ‘In the Café: Agostina Segatori in Le Tambourin’ (1887), in which the painter depicts his ex-lover sitting at an elegant tambourine-shaped table, gazing wistfully into the middle distance; the deep, vibrant, life-affirming colours of ‘The Yellow House’ (1888), where the yellow of the house contrasts vividly with the brilliant blue sky; and the idyllic southern French landscape of ‘The Harvest’ (1888).
After enjoying the permanent collection, I wander through to the Exhibition Wing to check out the current exhibition, ‘Van Gogh in Antwerp and Paris: New Perspectives’.
The Paris segment of the exhibition shows how van Gogh’s immersion in the Parisian art scene, and in the many and varied delights of late nineteenth-century Montmartre, contributed to the artist’s evolution from realist painter of rural scenes into the modernist visionary that has assured him his artistic immortality.
The Montmartre pictures are wonderful: the surprising turquoise tones of ‘Terrace and Observation Deck at the Blute-Fin Mill, Montmartre’ (1887); the bleak muddiness of ‘The Radet Mill, on the Corner of rue Lepic and rue Girardon’ (1900); and what for me is the highlight of the exhibition, the fresh and celebratory take on daily life that is ‘Interior of the Restaurant du Chalet’ (1887), in which the foreground tables and chairs are unoccupied, awaiting diners, whilst in the background the tables are beginning to fill up with the day’s customers. A bright, light palette gives this picture its invigorating quality.
Before leaving the museum I drop into the museum shop, where two books vie for my attention.
The first is Vincent van Gogh Paintings 2: Antwerp & Paris by Ella Hendriks and Louis van Tilborgh. But that book is a 616-page doorstopper. It looks like it would need a forklift truck to prise it up off the shelf. And it comes with a price tag of equal heft – 145 euros, although it can be had for the only slightly less giddy price of 99.50 euros during the exhibition.
So I opt instead for the other book that catches my eye, Van Gogh and Montmartre by Nienke Bakker, which weighs in at a much more manageable 84 pages, for the princely sum of ten euros.
Walking around art museums always leaves me hungry and thirsty, so after this morning’s van Goghing I head off for lunch at Eetcafé ‘t Pakhuis, an unpretentious down-to-earth place on Voetboogstraat.
Service in this restaurant is friendly and efficient, but the lighting level is very low; I decide to switch tables so that I am not totally enveloped in the ambient gloom.
The background music, though, is bright and cheery Cuban salsa with a dash of Juan Luis Guerra merengue, which lightens the atmosphere.
Half-metre high figurines of Laurel and Hardy perch quirkily on the ceiling beams in the restaurant section.
In a Dutch restaurant, bar or café you have got to be ready to order a drink the instant your rear end makes contact with your chair.
Or sometimes even quicker than that: on occasion, I have been asked my order while still taking off my jacket before sitting down.
The technique I have adopted is to order some still water in this initial encounter with the waiter, because if you ask for a couple of minutes to think about your order then you won’t see the waiter again for half an hour.
Dutch waiters have a disturbing habit of vanishing, sometimes permanently, if you don’t give them an order immediately.
Another vaguely disconcerting trait among Dutch waiters is that they often give a blank look when asked a challenging question, like “What beers have you got?”
Rarely has this staple question of mine been satisfactorily answered.
You would think it would be an easy question to answer, but there are two different reactions to it: one is for a look of confusion to cloak the waiter’s face; the other is for the waiter to recite “Err…Heineken, err…Amstel, Duvel…”, a litany of drab mainstream brands that may in fact be supplemented on the establishment’s beer list by other more interesting beers which the waiter just can’t be bothered to tell you about.
So the “Some still water, please” response buys time to peruse the menu, and it also gives a far greater likelihood of the waiter returning within the next hour than if you simply ask for a couple of minutes to think about what you want.
But here at ‘t Pakhuis today the service is fine.
Having been here before, I already know what I am going to order – La Chouffe Blonde, which is served in a nice hourglass shaped glass. This delicious Belgian beer accompanies a tasty tomato soup which comes in a deep, seemingly bottomless bowl, and a very satisfying chicken satay with salad and chips.
From ‘t Pakhuis I make the short walk to Cinecenter on Lijnbaansgracht where director Lars von Trier’s ‘Melancholia’ is showing at 3.30 p.m in Screen 1.
I didn’t much like the trailer for Melancholia, but director von Trier’s dark twisted masterpiece ‘Forbrydelsens Element’ (The Element of Crime) which I saw years ago in Lisbon was amazing, so I decide to give Melancholia a chance.
From its opening seconds, ‘Melancholia’ is enthralling.
Visually, the beginning and end scenes of this film are stunning.
What comes in between may not be as spectacular, but it is just as captivating.
A moody twilight feel pervades ‘Melancholia’, a sustained brooding atmosphere both ethereal and brusquely present.
Some crabby humour and bitchiness amongst the assembled wedding party guests adds a humane dimension to a tale that may appear bleakly pessimistic but which in fact asserts the beauty and grandeur of life.
A superb cast gels well in this film: Charlotte Gainsbourg, Kiefer Sutherland, John Hurt, Charlotte Rampling, and Stellan and Alexander Skarsgård, are all excellent.
But it is Kirsten Dunst as Justine who most intensely embodies the downbeat lyricism of ‘Melancholia’.
Justine’s blend of sensuality and depression haunts me long after the film finishes.
Related Post: ‘Nocturnal Animals’, Curzon Chelsea, London