Van Gogh at Hangaram Art Museum, Seoul Arts Center: A Weekday Visit

Translated from the Korean original.

I went on the Friday right after the holidays. The sky was overcast and cold, as if it might snow. Even so, half of me was excited, so I bravely took the car and off to the Seoul Arts Center!

How long has it been since I did anything cultural? For the record, I don’t much like movies, so it has been over seven years since I set foot in a cinema ^^:: The last one was The Royal Tailor……

Instead, whenever the chance comes up I try to catch exhibitions with early-bird tickets, but even that isn’t easy… Still, last year I made it to the National Museum of Korea for

their Habsburg exhibition, and this year I’m starting off with Van Gogh hehe

Maybe because it was the end of the holidays, once I got inside the line just went on and on… I was stunned…

I got my ticket and waited. They limit how many people enter the exhibition hall at a time… which I actually liked… About 10 minutes? Maybe 15, and then I went in…

There were far too many people whose privacy I had to respect, so I’ll skip photos of the interior and the paintings on display…

This exhibition showed Van Gogh’s earliest works. It centered on sketches, figure studies, drawings and studies, and seeing how he expressed both light-and-shadow and perspective with nothing but a pencil made me think, now that is a true master — I couldn’t help but marvel.

There is one thing Van Gogh said that stays with me. ” A hundred years from now my paintings will be worth more than the paint they are made of.”

I felt like I could sense, even a little, how he must have felt when he said that, and it stung my heart a bit… If I remember right, the only painting sold in Van Gogh’s lifetime was “The Red Vineyard”… Do let me know if I need to correct that ^^

Anyway, pushed along by the crowd, I sort of saw and sort of didn’t see the paintings haha, and out I went.

When you park in the underground lot and come out, you run straight into the Seoul Calligraphy Art Museum. At first I had no idea where I was, so I wandered a tiny bit haha. It has been a whoooole 15 years since I last visited Hangaram Art Museum too.^^:: haha

Back then I came by public transport… Plenty of people were going in here with their children too. Maybe there are classes…

This one is the Opera House… That round four-sided clock right in front…….. isn’t it just lovely? he

Does it remind you of anything? For me, the animated ‘Beauty and the Beast’ came to mind he It was a brief moment of getting lost in memories he

In the photo there are stairs off to the left, and if you come down them you reach the building you see in the first photo

That building is Hangaram Art Museum.

On my way back up to the parking lot after the exhibition, I came across this Vitamin Station…

If you park, you come up to ground level and one floor higher and enter the museum that way.

If you walk over by public transport, the layout has you pass through this Vita Station and take the elevator up…

Actually… on the floor above the Van Gogh show there was a Caravaggio exhibition… That’s one I wanted to see too…

Michel Henry is another exhibition I want to see — the colors are exactly my taste… Are there any of you who love colors like that as much as I do?

Because it’s a photo… it came out blurry and not sharp, but I… I gasped, wow~~, when I saw this picture… The colors look just like real flowers…

The artist is a French gentleman, and quite an elderly one at that…

I think I’ll plan these two exhibitions properly and be sure to go… I’ll post again once I’ve been!!^^

How about all of you picking at least one of these three exhibitions that suits your taste and going to see it?^^