Escher in het paleis, Den Haag

I(Chris) was visiting The Hague, Holland – in May 2017 and spent a few hours to see the Escher in Het Palais. The semi-permanent exhibition is held in the former Winter palace of Queen Mother Emma of the Netherlands – Lange Voorhout Palace, which was built in the 1700’s.

The regular exhibition features fantastic, mathematics-inspired woodcuts, lithographs, and mezzotints created by Maurits Cornelius Escher (1898-1972). You would likely have seen his works before.

 

Escher’s art became well known especially after it was featured by Martin Gardner in his April 1966 Mathematical Games column in Scientific American.

While his works were well recognized, the art world did not pay much attention. Perhaps, because the works often reflected a mathematical-mechanical theme, his works are being considered a lesser accomplishment.

I first saw Escher’s art in the Douglas Hofstadter’s 1979 book Gödel, Escher, Bach. And later I collected postcards of his works (when I went through a phase of buying a ton of postcards after every museum trip).

Early in his career, he drew inspiration from nature, making studies of insects, landscapes, and plants, all of which he used as details in his artworks.

His work features mathematical objects and operations including impossible objects, explorations of infinity, reflection, symmetry, perspective, truncated and stellated polyhedra, hyperbolic geometry, and tessellations.

Here is an explanation of tessellation – the art of tiling a surface with repetitive irregular shapes.

A special exhibition entitled “Escher Close Up” was running. It shows for the first time, a selection of photos from Escher’s personal archive.

Three versions of the Metamorphosis, from the first small one, to the third, of 7 meters, shown in a circle. To appreciate it, you need to be there.

The exhibit is spread out on three floors, each room decorated with a chandelier made of crystals to form a shape (it has nothing to do with Escher).

In the atrium, a string of crystal artefacts were on display suspended from the ceiling.

The third floor of the museum is dedicated to optical illusion – many of which were featured in Escher’s works.

In this illusion, as you walk through the door way, there is a moment when you look as if you are inside the cube. There is a video monitor to show you the effect.

This illusion features an endless pit in the floor.

Very glad to have gone to visit the palace.

The Police Married Quarters 元創方, Hong Kong

Almost forgot this post which we wrote earlier in the year.

We visited The former Hollywood Road Police Married Quarters, now renamed PMQ 元創方 in Sheung Wan, Hong Kong earlier this year. The buildings and grounds have been turned into a landmark for the creative industries. It is truly a great place to wander and shop as well as to soak up some local history and creative culture.

The history and preservation efforts of the site are well researched and documented here officially. Much of the writings below have been taken from various Hong Kong government sources.

In 1951, the site started as the Hollywood Road Police Married Quarters — the first dormitory for Chinese rank and file police officers. The site included 140 single rooms and 28 double rooms, with a semi-open design that allowed greater interaction between the residents. The site had been vacant since 2000.

The two buildings have been refurbished and upgraded for new uses. Residential units have been converted into design studios and shops, offices for creative enterprises and lodging for visiting designers. The buildings of PMQ are of modern style, feature a simple and clean appearance with a more utility approach for the design of space and form. This style emerged in the early 1950s when there was a great increase in population, resulting in great demand in buildings which required fast and efficient construction.

In order to cope with this, the design of building aimed at meeting the minimum requirement and standard which resulted in a simple and functional design. Buildings of this style are mainly built of strictly utilitarian reinforced concrete with flat roofs with minimal decoration.

This place turns out to be the childhood homes of both Hong Kong ex-Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying and his predecessor Donald Tsang.

When the government was going to auction the land, conservationists launched a campaign, citing social historical values embedded in the buildings and the fact it was once the site of Hong Kong’s first government school offering Western-style education.

Given that nearly HK$600 million of public funds has been spent on its renovation, PMQ is seen as a major test case on how Hong Kong conserves and revitalises historic buildings.

We thought about Common Ground in Seoul (see post here) – which is also a cool place for locals and tourists to socialize and shop.  Common Ground is more commercial while PMQ is more artsy – perhaps it can afford to be so as some of the tenants are sponsored.

PMQ’s mission statement says it wants to nurture the best design entrepreneurs in town, put them on the path to commercial success and become a popular destination for tourists and locals in its own right.

On the ground and first floors, there are fancy eateries and established designers and retailers like Vivienne Tam and G.O.D. Having known designer names on the premises is vital to the sustainability of the whole project, not just because of the higher rent that they pay, but also their crowd-pulling power.

We rested our feet with a few drinks at the Tai Lung Fung which adopts a certain vintage Hong Kong eatery designs.

The style is before our time and we cannot tell if it is accurate but it looks authentic.

 

Highly recommended.

Random photos #326 – 335

These are the photos I (Chris) took and posted on Facebook. The series was started in March of 2013. There is no theme – just something random and visually interesting. We gave each a title and noted where it was taken (to the extent we could remember the city).

random photo #326 – cubicles no. 1 & 2 – budapest

random photo  #327 – early – aosta

random photo #328 – big wheel – budapest

random photo #329 – alpine

random photo #330 – double trap

random photo #331 – baconized

random photo #332 – view – chexbres

random photo #333 – sent – budapest

random photo #334 – partitions – milano

random photo #335 – coast – san juan

If you are interested in seeing other Random Photos, click on the  random  tag on the left.

We have nothing to do with the ads below.

Random photos #316 – 325

These are the photos I (Chris) took and posted on Facebook. The series was started in March of 2013. There is no theme – just something random and visually interesting. We gave each a title and noted where it was taken (to the extent we could remember the city).

random photo #316 – well-heeled – Budapest

random photo #317 – thought control – Miami

random photo #318 – blurry danube – Budapest

 

random photo #319 – white – Lausanne

andom photo #320 – nurture – Budapest

random photo #321 – follow – near Asti

random photo #322 – strings – miami

random photo #323 – covered – alba

random photo #324 – fresh – budapest

random photos #325 – new cart / old building – san juan

 

If you are interested in seeing other Random Photos, click on the  random  tag on the left.

We have nothing to do with the ads below.

Cardiff Castle, Wales

In June, we went to Cardiff to see the Champions League final match between Real Madrid and Juventus. Real won.

We stayed an extra day and visited the famous Cardiff Castle which is in the middle of the city. It was also used as to host hospitality services to sponsors of the match and their guests.

The Castle was a Roman fort, has an impressive Norman castle and an extraordinary Victorian Gothic fantasy palace, created by art-architect William Burges for the 3^rd Marquess of Bute, one of the world’s richest men at his time.  The Bute family brought prosperity to Cardiff by exporting coal all over the world.

In 1947 the Castle was given to the people of Cardiff by the 5th Marquess of Bute.

Within the walls of the Castle are tunnels which came into their own as air-raid shelters during the Second World War.

The Norman castle has an outer walls which provides a shell for smaller buildings within it.

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From the top of the Keep, one has panoramic views of the city of Cardiff.

The stadium is just visible behind the clock tower.

The house was renovated in 1865 and the process lasted 16 years. There are a number of opulent, highly decorated rooms in the main house.

The Arab Room is stunning.

Almost a theme park but this is real – somebody with serious money lived in it.

The house is being used to host various functions, both governmental and private.

We walked through the library where they had shelves full of old or antique books, all topics from science to literature. E.g., a set of books about English gardens in four seasons.

The Clock Tower was built on the site of a Roman bastion and completed in 1875.

It is a great tourist attraction.

Cymru !