As photographer of details of architecture, I am conditioned to observe my surroundings carefully. I notice buildings, but I hone in on the line of a corner; the angle of a gable; a fashioned decorative vine on a wrought iron gate and the stone carvings on a façade. Fine tuning a bit more, I visually thrive on the textures used for building: grainy granite, polished marble, satiny wood, rough brick, smooth cold iron. These elements create an environment that promotes creativity for me. And above all the light that permeates the scene sets the tone of my photography. Rembrandt ’s art and the light of his world are the reasons that I recently went to Amsterdam. To know and to understand an artist ’s work on an intimate level, it is essential to see the light with which the artist worked. I believe that the light of Amsterdam defined Rembrandt ’s paintings, drawings, etchings. The way that the master saw his subjects, gave him the framework for the art he created.
Amazingly, in a world that is evolving with split second timing, Amsterdam welcomes the future to blend smoothly with the past. It is quite possible to imagine that you are walking along the canals with Rembrandt in the 1600 ’s. The city is criss-crossed with canals that reflect the soft misty light back into the sky. In late May, when I visited the city, the huge puffy clouds of Rembrandt ’s landscapes were just as low to earth as in his paintings. It seemed as if I could pull off a piece of cloud like cotton candy if I stretched out my arm. The marvelous billows of grays, whites, ochres, yellows, blues and many other colors were dotted with openings, big and small, to the soft sky beyond. Through these portals light drifted in soft shafts. Rays that lit fragments of a building, a tree or a face. The delicate way that the light illuminates in Amsterdam creates a mood of fluidity: seamless values.
When the sky turned darker in the late afternoon, I could see the glow that glorified so many of Rembrandt ’s subjects. The setting sun through the mist that was usually present allowed beams of radiant light to highlight with a luminosity for which the master is famous. The golden shafts of light were slightly blurred by the watery atmosphere to create a soft, ethereal radiance that was both brilliant and subtle. The night sky also presented a much more diffused dark than I have experienced. The celestial bodies, when visible, seemed to have a filmy edge with a sparkling central area that gave the sky a surreal enchantment. Perhaps the same magic that suffuses the nightscapes Rembrandt prolifically painted.
On one extraordinary day, my son Joe, who had generously gifted me with the wonderful trip, and I took an excursion to Ghent and Bruges in the Flemish region of Belgium. Throughout the drive (furthest four hours outside of Amsterdam) there are farmlands and grazing cows, and other farm animals. Occasionally we spotted a windmill. The scenery was so much like being in a Rembrandt work that the experience may have surpassed seeing the master ’s paintings and drawings in the Rijksmuseum. The day was sunny, but the light was, again, as in Amsterdam, filtered, soft, delicate. The pastoral landscape was filled with water trenches that collect the abundant rainfall and irrigate the farms. Enormous clouds hung low and echoed the blues, greens and pale yellows of the countryside. Remarkable light.
Our journey was filled with marvelous sights and delightful chance encounters with people we met along the way. Always, I felt the presence of Rembrandt: walking by the canals, sitting in a charming courtyard or square, traversing the countryside and seeing the light that he saw. Although four hundred years have passed since Rembrandt lived and created art in Amsterdam, he is very much alive there today.
Created by Ellen Fisch On 06/29/09 At 04:43 PM
Traditional Palestinian houses have a separate room that is reserved for entertaining guests. This room is called the Madafah and is an addition to the main house. People entering the Madafah are at ease and in the mood for socializing. There are props in the Madafah that contribute to this phenomenon, namely a Mihbaj which serves as both a coffee grinder and percussion instrument, while the host completes the Mise-en-scène.
In 1989, a close friend and extraordinary artist, Alex Fournier, told me to take in a show at the IBM Gallery of Art and Science in Manhattan. “Joaquín Sorolla y Bastida is an incredible painter,” Alex told me. I happened to be in NYC shortly thereafter, a rainy cold winter mid-week day, and recalled my friend’s suggestion. I don’t remember what I thought before I entered the Gallery, but the paintings I saw that day changed my life. I was literally high on color, light, the mastery of a great master. I bought every book that I could get my hands on and that summer fortuitously went to Spain on a planned family vacation to seek out Sorolla’s work in person. As luck would have it, Sorolla’s home in Madrid is a museum of his work. He also painted murals in the Spanish Institute in NYC. However, it was in Spain that I could have an inkling of the light under which Sorolla painted to create his impressionistic “luministic” (as Henri Rochefort described the paintings) masterpieces. And throughout the experiences I had that year, the name Anders Zorn kept popping up. Sorolla and Zorn were friends (and friendly with John Singer Sargent, as well) as well as colleagues who sought to capture their worlds in Spain and in Sweden, respectively, using light, color and the impressions that they garnered from their environments.
