Category: Cultural Travel

2009 The Hague Sculpture – Mexican Javier Marin’s solo Exhibition

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In a couple of days “2009 The Hague Sculpture”, an open air sculpture exhibition, will open. The exhibition will run from June 9, 2009 till September 9, 2009. This year the steering committee has deemed it fit to have a one sculptor exposition rather than a multi sculptor exposition. The sculptor chosen is Javier Marin. His work is more than life size and will work excellent between the green of the trees of the location, the recently refurbished Lange Voorhout. Yesterday and today some impressive sculptures have been put on their places already. Time for me to stroll (or bike) along the site with my camera(s). I believe the exposition itself will be worth a visit to The Hague!

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About Javier Marín
Javier Marín was born in Uruapan, in the region of Michoacán in Mexico in 1962. He graduated from the Academy of San Carlos in Mexico City – the city where he now works and lives.

His original focus was on painting and graphics, but he later concentrated on working in terracotta, resin and bronze.

From 1983 on, he took part in a group exhibition in the Casa de la Cultura in Morelia (Mexico). In 1986 he had his first solo exposition in Mexico City. Since that time, his work has been displayed in the Museo de Bellas Artes in Mexico City, the Espace Pierre Cardin in Paris, at the 50th Venice Biennial in 2005, on the Plaza de Cibeles in Madrid, on the Piazza del Duomo in Pietrasanta, and currently in the Rotonda di via Besana and on the square in front of the Scala in Milan.

More to follow

Art Amsterdam 2009, 13 may until 17 may 2009 in the Amsterdam RAI.


All the galleries at Art Amsterdam will be staging a solo exhibition. This means that 120 artists will have solo exhibitions devoted to their work, which is unique at a contemporary art event. This is how Art Amsterdam will celebrate its 25th anniversary in the period from Wednesday May13, 2009 – Sunday May 17 2009. 120 galleries will display the latest developments in contemporary art at Art Amsterdam 2009, with paintings, photos, sculptures, installations and videos. The participating galleries include all the top-flight Dutch galleries, plus 31 foreign galleries from Germany, Great Britain, Belgium, France, Denmark, Austria, South Africa, Japan and Korea.

Art Amsterdam 2009, 13 may until 17 may 2009 in the Amsterdam RAI.

Travel (or Cruise) to Knit

I admit I’m a bit influenced by my Dear Quilting Wife, but I keep repeating my only prediction for 2009 and beyond: The Future is: Back to Knitting.

Now I can connect knitting with travel, since I found the Blog Textile Travel: They advocate Travel to Knit!

First I thought “How on earth can textile be an excuse for traveling?” Stupid thought, I concluded, when I remembered that DW used to organize bus tours to various Quilt Exhibitions across Europe successfully for a couple of years, and that I even traveled with her to one in Barcelona, which was actually my first and only visit of Barcelona.

Via Textile Travel I found out in August 2009 there is a cruise scheduled in the Mediterranean by the Holland America Line (Yes originally a Dutch firm, presently with its seat in the Dutch Antilles) for yarn aficionados like knitters and crocheters. Here is the Travel plan and Registration From. So they also Cruise to Knit!

From there to the site of one of the Cruise Guides Knot Just Knitting by Prudence Mapstone who has an amazing creativity and who Travels by Knitting if you look at her Workshops and Tours for 2009….

But you can also reverse the caption in Knit to travel. If you consider how much the tiny pieces of textile they call a bikini cost you as opposed when you knit or crochet it yourself:-)

Prudence could also inspire you to knit and to travel and leave your knitting as an enrichment of the landscape:

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Photo by Christl Rijkeboer

Another fiber artist, but now a Dutch lady who is intrigued by Human Hair, Christl Rijkeboer, could inspire you to keep yourself warm when traveling with this bivouac.

Hah and in between I found a Down Under Guerrilla Knittin Lady Blog: Grrl + Dog Lol.

Paris (2): The undiscovered Panhard Levassor X73 Cabriolet

At Retromobile in Paris there are many historic cars on show to be auctioned during the show by Bonhams.
Lot no. 141 the Panhard Levassor X73 Cabriolet was undiscovered, because it had been several decades in storage. It is amazing to see a car with such patina. The storage coverage dust stil in tact.

It fetched €37,950.- in the auction.

To compare: Lot number 138 A, 1931 Panhard et Levassor 3½-Litre SS Special Saloon Chassis no. 80141 Engine no. 80141 was not sold (offer With Reserve) and was estimated at €80,000 – 100,000.

Bonhams’ notes:

Panhard et Levassor’s Type X73 first appeared in 1934. Designated ‘CS Special’, it superseded the 2½-litre 6CS model. The Type X73 was powered by a six-cylinder sleeve valve engine with a capacity of 2,861cc, which was rated at 16CV for taxation purposes. Its larger engine made the X73 a better performer than its predecessor, the top speed going up from 125 to 135km/h (84mph). After September 1934, the range was updated with more modern styling and the X73 continued in production until June 1938.

Panhard et Levassor offered a ‘Velun’ convertible on the X73 chassis. Exclusive even by Panhard’s standards, it was built in limited numbers: only one was sold in 1934, 31 in 1935, 25 in 1936 and six more in 1937. But the ‘Velun’ coachwork, built by Jansen, was different from that of the car offered here, so it seems reasonable to assume that this particular car’s is the work of another coachbuilder.

Close inspection of this car’s coachwork leads us to believe that it was produced by Meulemeester Frères, whose office was located at l’Ile Robinson, in Clichy-sur-Seine and the workshop at 7 rue Traversière. This coachbuilder exhibited for the first time at the 1927 Le Salon de l’Automobile and in 1933 offered an aerodynamic convertible on a Peugeot 301 chassis, very similar in appearance to our Panhard convertible. It is expected that further information will be available at time of sale.
Preserved in remarkably original condition, having been stored for several decades on chassis stands, this Panhard et Levassor X73 convertible evokes the typically intense feelings of nostalgia associated with such ‘barn find’ vehicles. The car affords four-seat accommodation under its folding soft-top, while the two doors are hinged at the rear as was customary at that time. In short: it represents a unique and elegant variation on a reliable and sporting chassis from that most celebrated pre-war marque, Panhard et Levassor. Deserving a high quality restoration, this rare car would make a worthy addition to any collection dedicated both to technology and aesthetics.

Lot Notice
The coachbuilder is Gangloff not Meulemeester

Real Nostalgia!

The Bonhams sale included some extraordinary results:

€3,417,500 for the Ex-Earl Howe 1937 Bugatti Type 57S Atalantiuq;
€2,427,500 for ‘Black Bess’ – the ex-Roland Garros Bugatti Type 13; and
€337,500 for a Citroen DS23 EFi Cabriolet.

BTW this is the third way of presentimng a slide slow…just copy and paste the embed code from Flickr..What do you think?

Paris (1): Retromobile

retromobile-poster

I spent a couple of days in Paris for the first time in 36 years. Last time I visited it was in February 1973, on our honeymoon. I visited it also in 1969 a year after the 1968 student revolts. For various reasons we decided to skip it ever since. In the meantime I had visited it on various business occasion, but when on business you actually don’t look at a city as you do when you spent some holidays. My conclusion now is that back in the late 60ies ans early seventies we didn’t have enough money to spent and stayed in the wrong districts. Especially the Montmartre district looks a bit seedy to stay in as it was seedy already in those days. But now we have decided that we will be back.

This time we stayed in the vicinity of the Eiffel Tower (XVI), but more about that in later posts.

Paris is an excellent city for cultural travel. I believe Historic cars do belong to our cultural heritage, so traveling to see them is part of cultural travel.

Therefor I would like to tell a bit about my visit of the 34th Retromobile. According to the Historic car aficionados (several of my friends) it is a must see. One of the biggest shows in its sort in Europe.

The 2009 theme is very much on topic: New forms of Energy that are already more than one hundred years old:

Depending on the different periods, generations of inventors have imagined steam, petroleum gas, compressed air, alcohol, electricity or hybrid powered vehicles…

The twenty or so vehicles on exhibition, some which will be able to be driven all have one thing in common: they are the forerunners of clean energy vehicles of today!

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Among the photos I made is the Jaimais Contente (never content):

The “Jamais Contente” (1899) is the star of Rétromobile’s 2009 poster

The ”Jamais Contente” was created by the engineer Camille Jenatzy and was an electric car which was in the shape of a torpedo on wheels. The bodywork was carried out by the coachbuilder Rothschild and was made of partinium, an alloy of laminated aluminum, tungsten and magnesium.

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Mind you this car drove over 100 km / hr in 1899 on electricity!

It was the first French car to break the barrier of 100km/h, on 1 May 1899 in Achères (the Yvelines region, near Paris). Its characteristics were impressive: it had two electric engines which were placed at the back of the car behind its wheels, (Postel-Vinay ones), its maximum horsepower was 50kW (that is to say 67 hp), its power was provided by Fulmen batteries (80 pieces constitutingy nearly half of the vehicle’s total weight!). The “Jamais Contente” which is exhibited at Rétromobile is a replica which was made in 1992 and belongs to the Lions Club.

See for more photos of the show my Flickr set Retromoblie à Paris