Party City Eindhoven

Electro-friendly boys and girls, here's one more opportunity to set the dance floor on fire. Two more dance parties are up for this week:


1) Party : 220 Volt
Where : Gaslab, TU/e campus
When : 21:00 - 2:00, Thursday 24th of March

2) Party : Global aura vs u-niks festival
Where : Temporary Art Centre
When : 14:00 - 2:00, Saturday 26th of March

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Thanks once again to Amateur Artist for his notification!

First days of spring

Spring has finally arrived in Netherlands: a triumphant sun defies the clouds for the last few days, temperatures have risen to 15 degrees and the ice cream car has returned to the campus. Everywhere, people are out enjoying the first warm and sunny days of the year. Everywhere? Well, except for those working in the lab, of course!

Image by Dr. Jorge Cham

TAC

Keeping up with the artistic spirit of the last few days, this post is about the Temporary Art Center of Eindhoven, located (temporarily?) opposite the Philips stadion. In addition to contemporary art exhibitions, TAC has a quite interesting music program. A lot of acts, ranging from electronic music to metal and experimental folk, perform regurarly at the center. The concerts usually have a very small entrance fee, or some times are even totally free. The truth is that you will have never heard of the musicians performing before, but chances are that you'll enjoy a concert there more than another night spent in Stratumseind. So, give it a try and the let an unknown experimental band surprise you!

Home Brewed Art

Hello dear artistic souls of Eindhoven!

TU/e is from times to times organizing art exhibitions on the base floor of the Main Building (Hoofdgebouw). This time the occasion is more special: Students and employees of the University were asked to contribute their own art. The main concept is to also boost art that is created in experimental ways. The exposition will take place from the 15th of March until the 3rd of May. As we said the place is TU/e's Main Building, base floor. Where is this? Come on people, don't tell me that you don't know!

See you there!

Music in the Church

Here's one of the nice little hidden things that you should know about Eindhoven. Every Saturday, from 15:00 to 16:00 hours, there is free concert taking place in the main Cathedral; the Catharinakerk. The music presented in each concert varies from organ music, to a capella, to chamber music up to even contemporary stuff. For more information about the place and the schedule of the concerts you can have a look here. This can be a nice break if you are shopping around the center on Saturday. And remember: Entrance is for free!

Jan Toorop

Dear visitor, the following article may become more appealing shall you press beforehand the play button:

In just a few decades, from the late 19th to the early 20th century, the evolution of western art was unprecedented. As it comes also to painting, many artistic styles blossomed and disintegrated in this very short period, only to be followed by the stagnation of abstract art. These few artistic styles represented the rise of western empires and their consecutive decadence as a result of their extraordinary wealth. Among these short-lived artistic sparks there appears Symbolism.

As an answer to the prevailing fashion of Naturalism, which cherished the depiction of routine activities in the lives of common people, Symbolism proceeded to portray spiritual and majestic themes. In a Symbolistic painting, there is a subtle concept to be implied by the picture. The focus is not on the material object that is depicted but the high ideals that the object/figure symbolises. In other words, many things,faces and events express an implicit beauty that is not of this world and should not be drawn as such.

One of the most famous works of Symbolism: Jean Delville's Parsifal

Symbolism appeared mostly in the second half of 19th century and it was embraced by the artistic communities of the Netherlands and Belgium. Looking from a local perspective, an important and slightly underrated Dutch artist of this movement was Jan Toorop. Having Indonesian origins as well, Toorop left his own fingerprint in Symbolism before the style went "out of fashion". He started as an impressionist, then moved on to Symbolistic art. In his final years he presented more religious aspects since he was eventually converted to Catholicism. As a small commemoration of his work, hereby lay some of his illustrations.

Dame en Blanche 1886 (Impressionistic)

Dolce (Meisje met zwanen) 1896

Venise Sauvee 1895

O grave, where is thy Victory 1892

Psyche 1898

Godsvertrouwen 1907

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The images of Jan Toorop's works were taken from The Jan Toorop Research Center website. There you may find the most extended digital collection of his known works.