The Liberty In Seeing

As a museum frequenter, I have already formulated my opinion when it comes to the curator's use of museum space as well as the overall layout of the museum. I typically prefer a chronological layout, one in which the curator or museum directs me in a specific direction to make the most of the information presented. The Rijksmuseum completely deterred from my preference and at first stirred in me a frustrated irritation. I found the layout of the museum erratic, particularly when attempting to find the modern and contemporary works. Yet, despite this frustration, the museum structure felt fitting for the subjects on display.

In lecture, I enjoyed learning how the merchants' breaking of feudalism coincided with citizenship and liberty. It therefore makes sense to me that the landscape motif rose in popularity during the 17th century. The openness of the land provides the perfect metaphor for the new liberties afforded the Dutch people. The invention of the microscope and telescope, two devices used in the viewing of objects and affording the Dutch people a new means of viewing the world during the time of their inventions, serves as a metaphor of how the world was now being seen and thought about in new ways. With a new way of seeing, the Dutch people and especially the artists began to think differently, more opening, more liberally, touching once again on the liberal qualities that definitely characterizes the Dutch identity as I currently understand it.

Once inside the museum, I saw a variety of landscape works embodying these motifs of openness, liberty, and free thinking, to the point that it got repetitive. Rembrandt's work provided the perfect contrast to these other painting, something more. I was impressed by the movement he captured in his painting "Night Watch." The painting is neither landscape nor portraiture, though I feel it embodies traits of both. It's horizontal orientation embodies that style more akin to landscape painting due to the openness afforded its subject. The painted figures in the painting are characteristic of portraiture, yet the persons in the painting are in no way still. There is a sense that the bodies and the action of the scene have been captured without their knowledge, a characteristic unlike the posed quality of portraiture. In addition, his use of shading to highlight his central ideas was one technique not often used and therefore steps outside the painting tradition characteristic of this period.

Similarly, once I began to examine the museum's works and think about them and the museum's layout in context with the country's history, I came to realize that the museum actually emulates the sense of liberty and freedom born during this time period in which this art was created. It very cleverly provides the viewer with a similar sense of freedom that is captured in its paintings.

 

Sophia