I regularly see fantastic art in consecrated museum and gallery spaces across the Netherlands. One of my favorite features of Dutch visual culture, however, is a decidedly more egalitarian matter. Very large, revealing residential windows are one of the most striking characteristics of the Dutch urban landscape. These adorned spaces, which mediate public and private life, offer much for one to enjoy (discretely!) on a daily basis.
It is customary for people to leave their curtains open day and night, often with nothing but a plant or hanging piece of frosted glass to obscure the view inside. Accordingly, there are unspoken social norms related to the acts of looking in and looking out. I once waved at a typically friendly neighbor from inside my living room. She ignored me, but the horror on her face was clear. I had broken some implicit rule, shattering an imagined sense of the threshold’s privacy.
There is thus a strange tension in a space meant to obfuscate and communicate simultaneously. Thoughtful decorations attract attention and speak about the taste or aspirations of the dweller. At the same time they guard an exposed interior space. These window spaces allow inhabitants the opportunity to both monitor and project a public image of themselves.
I like to think of Dutch windows as personal exhibition spaces. Holiday decorations and elaborate birth announcements pop up occasionally, but most windows have some adornment year round. I commonly see the meticulous arrangement or seemingly haphazard assemblage of flowers, plants, statuettes, handicrafts, poems, stuffed animals, posters, toys, advertisements, paintings, photos, candles, books, and assorted knick-knacks, and pause to consider the impulse behind these installations. All the things listed above can be seen on my street alone, and my partner and I shamelessly identify some of our neighbors based on their design choices.
I am most intrigued by one neighbor whose window exhibits American bumper stickers, a Dutch poem, an Obama figurine, toy cars, a Masonic “watchful eye”, and seashells (among other things!). Down the street, a window proudly displays a menagerie of cheerful, though slightly creepy, plush toys. In one of my personal favorites, a neighbor employs colorful handmade cutouts both to decorate and conceal her open living room. Visible decorations are generally relegated to ground floor windows, though one neighbor has cantilevered half a bicycle from a second story window.
Windows are used worldwide to convey messages, most notably in commercial spaces. Shops like Anthropologie and Urban Outfitters take the “art” of window display to new levels, and Selfridges in London has been known to commission contemporary artists to create their whimsical arrangements. These exhibitions seduce, selling an idea or a lifestyle achieved by purchasing a product; they also attract, causing a passerby to stop for an aesthetic experience of sorts. Residential windows operate in a similar way, only their designers are not selling a product, but an idea of themselves.
I often wonder what my own display “says” to people when their children pull them off the street to talk animatedly about the toy dinosaurs and improbable chemistry molecule inhabiting my windowsill. I’d like to think the things in my window, mostly gifts and found objects, suggest that I don’t take myself too seriously. But perhaps it just seems like I’ve got young aspiring scientists under my roof?
Dutch windows are liminal spaces of concealment and discovery. Their decorations fortify their boundaries all the while offering a glimpse into the professed lifestyles of their occupants. They entice you to admire them, but be careful while doing so. You might find someone, none too pleased, looking right back at you.
----- Andrea Alessi
(Images: Courtesy Andrea Alessi, Bike Window; Fruit Window; Animal Window; My Window)
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