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 […]
Art & Culture
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
Rembrandt and Britain
The National Galleries Scotland in Edinburgh present a beautiful exhibition of Rembrandt’s work from a British perspective. Rembrandt not only painted British buildings, people can also see little known work like as an (alternative) Reading old woman, a windmill in a landscape that inspired many other artists and beautiful etchings and selfies, a genre that […]
Johan Bakker | | Art & Culture | Amsterdam, art, Edinburgh, Great-Brittain, Leiden, Rembrandt, Scotland, United Kingdom | 0 Comments
Train journey through Scotland
Travelling by public transport often leads to surprises when using unfamiliar routes. The bus ride from Amsterdam Central to Port IJmuiden seems to pass a historic site that has been on my list of places to visit for ages: Ruigoord. A squatted stronghold with an artistic attitude somewhere between hippie visions and punk ideals. Once […]
Johan Bakker | | Art & Culture, Blog, Travel | Ben Nevis, Edinburgh, Fort William, Glasgow, Harry Potter, Indepence, Inverness, Oban, Portree, public transport, Rannoch, Scotland, United Kingdom, Walter Scott | 0 Comments