Vincent van Gogh is working on one of his famous paintings, Sunflower, when, to his astonishment, the flowers he is painting begin to spin. The puzzled painter sits back in disbelief until the whirring blossoms stop moving.
This scene takes place on a cylindrical music box in the display Van Gogh Automation. The work (pictured) is part of From Musical Clock to Street Organ exhibition, which showcases antiquated mechanical musical devices in the Netherlands, now running at the Guangdong Museum of Art.
The exhibition was shipped in from the Netherlands-based National Museum, which warehouses the world's largest collection of automatic musical instruments in a central mediaeval parish church in the inner city of Utrecht.
The exhibition features 50 pieces dating from 1480 to 1930. All of these mechanical pieces will operate during the exhibition so that visitors could see how they work. One of the highlights among these pieces is Jaquemarts Clock, which was made in 1480.
"Like tulips, wooden shoes, windmills and cheese, automatic music, and especially street organs, are an essential part of the rich Dutch culture," says Dirkjan Haspels, public relations director of the National Museum of from Musical Clock to Street Organ.
"Having Guangzhou host the exhibition for the first time is not coincidental," he says, explaining that the city became one of the musical clock-production centers in China in the 18th century.
"Guangdong and Utrecht share a bond of friendship. And this makes Guangzhou the obvious location for this first exhibition of its kind in China," Haspels says.
Among the musical automata, street organs, which were popular in the first half of the 20th century, are most representatives of Dutch culture, Haspels adds.
"When people hear the music of a street organ, they would come out of their houses cheerfully to dance and sing in the streets," he says.
Time: 9 am- 5 pm, daily except Monday, until November 11
Place: Lobby and Exhibition No 7, Ersha Island
Tel: 020-8735-1468
(China Daily September 22, 2007)
