Van Gogh...genius or fraud?

While in Holland again, we took the opportunity to spend some more time in Amsterdam, and explore the neighbouring fishing villages for Volendam and Edam.

Our plan was to be as Dutch as possible and cycle from Volendam to Edam (famous for it’s cheese), but sadly we there on a Sunday and the bike hire shops were closed. Not to be deterred, we enjoyed the (rare) Dutch sunshine and walked instead. It was quite lovely – soaking up the spring atmosphere with lots of ducklings paddling in the canals.

From there, we made our way back to Amsterdam. We’ve pretty much gone a full circle from actively disliking it to actually really loving it. Ignoring the drugs and the red light district, the city is stunningly beautiful, has a great atmosphere and some of the most unique and breathtaking architecture in Europe. We took the opportunity to do a ‘free’ walking tour and it was quite interesting learning a bit more about it’s history, seedy underside and culture.

We were also lucky to have the opportunity to visit the Van Gogh museum. It was pretty fascinating – he certainly liked to experiment. It’s interesting to compare musicians with artists. With a musician, they can sit in their bedroom and practice different styles and genres and nobody hears their mistakes or their random experimentations - people only ever hear the perfect, polished finished product. With artists though, all of the experimenting is captured forever. Van Gogh seems to have a few classic paintings that he got famous for (after he died), but the vast majority of the rest of his work was quite random…and dare we say it…fairly average. Upon reflection, perhaps this can be explained by how he got into art in the first place. Apparently he was in his late-twenties, lost his job, and then just decided to be come an artist….having never painted before. Go figure.