Is it art?

As you know I recently walked through Rotterdam. It was a nice walk, albeit a bit too busy for my liking. I prefer land and sea to cities. But it was nice to have done it. I showed you a statue of Erasmus (the green one) last week. Made in a new fashion: no more chipping off the old block, oh no. Enter the details in a computer and print in 3D. 

It wasn't however the only piece of sculpture I saw on my walk. The top one shows a very colourful sculpture I found not too far from the Erasmus bridge. It took me a while to realise it had nothing to do with Eurovision being in town, but more to do with the Rotterdam Marathon. It was created by Henk Visch out of iron and the colours represent the nationalities of the runners. On the bottom a lot of plaques with the names of the winners, although several had been removed by souvenir hunters (read vandals).

A bit further on and there were a few heads and names. Nothing to tell me anything else about them. Which meant digging once home. The one I show you is Anthony van Hoboken, who was one of the biggest ship owners of his time. In fact, after the VOC (United Eastindian Company) went bust, he took over most of the sailing. He was very important to Rotterdam as he had ships built and lived in the city as well.

You may 'recognise' the next person. It is Tsar Peter the Great. You may wonder what he had to do with the Netherlands, him being Russian and all, but he was very interested in (again) the building of ships and actually lived among Dutch sailors and lowly shipbuilders for a while. It was made by the Russian sculptor Leonid Baranov and placed in Rotterdam in 1997.

The next sculpture was something I saw on a quayside, but there was no sign to explain what it was. Brom didn't mind though... It might be Poseidon (Greek) or Neptune (Roman), gods of the sea carrying a trident. 

On we walked and I came across this lovely gnome. Unfortunately, funny statues attract people and in this case children. The little girl you see actually stood and stayed still for as long as it took me to take the photo! The minute I put my camera down, she continued playing on it. It is called Santa Claus, although the more common name circulating is Butt Plug Gnome. Yeah, sorry about that! It is by Paul McCarthy.

Then we came to an area with more modern art. Most of it just went straight over my head, but this one did catch my attention and I took several photos of it. I had to look it up, but this is Mother and Child by Carel Visser. The mother figure is holding a baby doll. It is made of objects he found and then bronzed. 

The last statue I am going to show you is not actually in Rotterdam, but in Zierikzee, that lovely small town we visited on another day. It is of Pieter Mogge, who was a rich inhabitant of the town. On his death he left a considerable amount of money to the town to be used for a new university. That never happened though and the money has been used for the upkeep of monuments of the town. Which means that you can still learn things.