Rijksacademie open weekend
This weekend has been open weekend at the Rijksacademie here in Amsterdam. It’s more or less the place that you want to be if you are a young and exciting artist in the Netherlands, and as such it seemed like it was worth a visit to see what is going on there.
I had been busy all day Saturday and working in the Sláinte until 5pm on Sunday, and so I only caught the last few hours before it closed on Sunday evening. This was however more than enough for me. I find these type of situations very difficult and stressful, what with all those crowds of trendy people with a glass of wine in one hand and the exhibition catalogue in the other expounding the virtues of this or the other promising new talent. I had to sit down somewhere dark for a few minutes upon arriving, and even after doing so I still felt totally disorientated and out of place. Maybe there was good work to be seen, maybe not, but in any case it was all the same to me. I left feeling lost and quite disappointed.
Thinking about this later, I believe that the problem came from the experience of balancing between two worlds very remote from each other. Throughout the day, I had been serving beer and all-day-breakfasts to the type of stereotypical British tourist who we see so much of in the Sláinte, the type of person whose interests and mentality lie a million miles away from the Rijksacademie. Within 20 minutes of leaving work I had arrived there, and found myself almost on another planet.
It is not only in this particular situation that I have felt this way, but also in a more general sense. I find it just as hard to identify with the art world as with the pub/drinking/partying world which I have always spent so much time in; neither really feels like home.
