Balram Halwai is not a sympathetic protagonist. Yet the narrative voice of The White Tiger is so powerful that you continue to read with fascination. Aravind Adiga’s debut novel won the Man Booker Prize in 2008. Thanks to a recent film adaptation, the book is now once again in the spotlight. Author Adiga has Indian […]
Art & Culture
Vincent van Gogh, a rolling stone avant-la-lettre
In 1990, one hundred years after the painter’s death, I saw a retrospective of much of Vincent van Gogh’s (1853-1890) work. The Kröller-Müller Museum showed his etchings and drawings, the Van Gogh museum displayed the paintings. Seeing the oeuvre of the Dutch painter develop from day tot day I had the idea of understanding him […]
Johan Bakker | | Art & Culture | Amsterdam, art, Auvers-sur-Oise, France, Impressionism, painter, Paul Gauguin, Theo van Gogh, Van Gogh museum, Vincent van Gogh | 0 Comments
The Ghent Altarpiece
Standing eye to eye with the restored Ghent Altarpiece (or the Adoration of the Mystic Lamb, 1432) is an awesome experience. The Mystic Lamb is small, but its human eyes seem to notice everything. That those eyes remained hidden for many centuries is one of the mysteries connected to this intriguing work of art. Behind […]
Johan Bakker | | Art & Culture | Ghent, Hubert van Eyck, Jan van Eyck, The adoration of the Mystic Lamb | 0 Comments
Apollo 11, A human dream that came true
The hazy images of the first people on the moon were barely sharper than the visual blurs that a television set produced on normal nights. But the knowledge that my father and I were looking directly at this giant leap in the human evolution made an overwhelming impression on me on July 20th, 1969. Fifty […]
Johan Bakker | | Art & Culture, Blog | apollo 11, Buzz Aldrin, Claire Foy, First Man, Michael Collins, Neil Armstrong | 0 Comments
If Beale Street Could Talk brings Baldwin back in the spotlights
The successful Hollywood movie If Beale Street Could Talk brings James Baldwin (1924-1987) back in the centre of the spotlights. The Afro-American author and social critic wrote many essays about racial relations in the sixties and seventies. His work was imitated when Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote Between the world and me in 2015. That pamphlet resembles […]
Johan Bakker | | Art & Culture, literature | essays, Film, If Beale Street Could Talk, James Baldwin, literature, racism, USA | 0 Comments
Xaviera Altena’s colourful, positive and funny illustrations
In the summer of 2018 I came across an eye-catching Loesje poster in the city center of Rotterdam. I was struck by its powerful brightly red illustration and its positive caption: ‘To say what you think, can also be something nice’. I wondered who had created the image. I found out that this was a […]
Johan Bakker | | Art & Culture, Books | art, design, Glastonbury, illustrations, pop art, xaviera altena | 0 Comments