Posted on

Paper cuts in the Netherlands

I just learned that the Netherlands has a long history of paper cuts, the artworks made by cuttiing a single sheet of paper. Hardly information about the Dutch tradition is available in English so I gathered together a few highlights. (Incidentally I also just found out there is a Jewish paper cut tradition going back 500 years. You may have seen Chinese paper cuts around; they’re much better known.) One Dutch paper cut artist I like a lot is Hil Bottema (1913-1968). Much of her work is printed matter based on paper cuts. I don’t know whether she did them originally as paper cuts or just drew them in that style.

My favorites are her New Year’s cards.. Click images to enlarge.

Postage stamps and pages from an informational booklet that accompanied them. The stamps are for Christmas and other holidays and have a surcharge that benefits children’s charities.

Continue reading “Paper cuts in the Netherlands”

Posted on

New England, March 2020

We were in New Haven and rural New England just before Covid hit. Everything was gorgeous. The food was great and there was lots of agrodiversity and local produce and small producers even in the smallest towns, things that you essentially can’t get, by the way, here in Berlin where I live. Hard as it may be to believe, they somehow have only barely started getting the memo on eating local. The pictures may look a little gloomy because this was “mud season”, the time in March after the beautiful snow has melted and before spring has started. The trees are bare, mud is everywhere, and many sights, shops and restaurants are closed or have reduced hours. They even advise tourists to avoid March but we had a wonderful time.

Pictures of the excellent Yiddish Book Center in Amherst are here.

New Haven

Continue reading “New England, March 2020”

Posted on

The Yiddish Book Center – Amherst, Massachusetts

This is the Yiddish Book Center which lies four hours north of New York City in Amherst, Massachusetts, adjacent to Hampshire College. It’s really great and you should visit. It’s an archives, museum, and cultural center housed in a gorgeous new building recalling a rural eastern European village. A big draw for me was Shtetl in the Sun: South Beach, Miami 1977-1980, an exhibition of photographs of Jewish retirees.

Continue reading “The Yiddish Book Center – Amherst, Massachusetts”

Posted on

Vienna – sights and places

Vienna is picture-postcard gorgeous. I still need to post my photos of pre-World War II storefronts that are still intact including their shop signs, which is one of the extraordinary things about the city. Even in Paris hardly of these have survived. Vienna even has some modern ones from the 1950s-60s , which are even rarer because they’ve never been considered historical or important. I did see lots of Klimt and Schiele  art in the museums but did not take pictures because those are easy to find on line.

Posted on

“Paraphrase on the Finding of a Glove” – Symbolist and Surrealist artworks you don’t see every day

A few interesting and little-known works from the Symbolist and Surrealist movements.

Continue reading ““Paraphrase on the Finding of a Glove” – Symbolist and Surrealist artworks you don’t see every day”

Posted on

Exhibition in Paris: “Globes: Architecture and Science Explore the World”

This was an exhibit on globe-shaped and globe-inspired buildings since 1700, some actually built and some just proposed, at a museum called Cité de l’Architecture (click to enlarge)

Continue reading “Exhibition in Paris: “Globes: Architecture and Science Explore the World””