Three days in Gent

I've been to Gent in the past few days. Wonderful city, actually the best I've seen in Belgium. We stayed in a bed and breakfast, called [ design and breakfast ]. It was quite nice, just outside of the city center and not very expensive. As the name suggests the interior of the house was filled with in design furniture. I was afraid that the absence of the word 'bed'  meant that the owner wasn't very proud of the quality of the beds, but it was quite alright.

We visited 2 museums (SMAK and MSK) and a wonderful exhibition of [ Stephan Vanfleteren ]. At the MSK the most impressive painting was one by Anders Zorn. I could only find a detail of the work on the Net. What I liked especially is not the nude but the way Zorn paints the water. It is so vividly painted that it appears to move. Look at the mirrored view of the woman in the water. Zorn is able to paint the difference in the oscillations at the front and the back of the legs. Really quite strong.

Vanfleteren also was fantastic. The venue of the exhibition was some old factory where it was almost freezingly cold. The images were portrayed at 120 x 100 cm prints. Black and white portraits. Also strong stuff. In the museum store I bought a good book on Umberto Boccioni. Fantastic artist and one of the best Futurist painters (saw his work in Paris in 2008). He made a stupid mistake by going to war in 1916. Already during training he fell off his horse and died at the age of 34.