The Illuminations of Utrecht

Art, magic, and a Dutch version of Platform 9¾

By the time you receive this, I will be in my next unplugged destination. Which means that if life feels incomplete without a postcard from Ireland’s second-largest city, this is your chance to rectify that situation.

Now, back to our previous destination. Picture this:

You turn off a canal-side road busy with restaurants and shops onto a silent street, lined with row houses and empty except for your own footfalls. It is night, and the sky is a blueish-black. Jutting out curiously from the homes at regular intervals are what look to be round street lamps, which cast a glow so enchanted it makes you wonder if this isn’t the Utrecht version of Platform 9¾.

As you approach the first lamp on the right hand side of the street, you realize that there is writing on it and that rather than a lamp, it is in fact an illuminated sign. The neat script, black against a parchment-colored background, reads “Evening Time is Reading Time,” with a little circle above the words.

As you are wondering at this message, you look to the next sign and see that the same message is inscribed on it, but that black descends incrementally behind the words on each one. The circle at the top of the first sign becomes clear: it is the pull of a blind gradually drawn as you proceed down the street. By the time you get to the end of the block, the final Evening Time is Reading Time is posed against an entirely black background.

There is more: across the street, a similar row of lighted signs juts out from the houses, but these have vintage-style illustrations and text on them. Some of them appear to be advertisements: There is a sign for a café, and another promising “Bait For All Kinds of Fishing.” A hula girl heralds “Exotic Atmosphere” on one, and a severe-looking man with a gavel insists “You Be the Judge.” Others are more enigmatic. A sign with two chickens reads “Don’t Start Something You Can’t Finish.” One features no text at all, just a drawing of a baby chick with a fish tied like a cape to its back.

When you get to the end of the street, you look back up, and see that the sets of signs have switched places, with the illustrations now running on the left and Evening Time on the right. The signs, you realize, are double-sided. The blind progression runs in both directions, up and down the street.

Is it just me? Or did you too not fall immediately and deeply in love?

I had to know more. There was still no one on the street, so I went back up to the canal. On the corner, I came across an intimidating woman with a thick mane of silver hair washing down the windows of her antiques shop for the night.

I approached her nervously, unsure of how to frame my question. “Do you know what the signs on that street are for?” I asked.

She looked at me as if I were an idiot. “It’s art.”

The antiques lady was not interested in having a conversation with a philistine, but I did manage to extract one critical piece of information from her: the work had been up for a long time. “At least 30 years,” she said, as she packed up her squeegee and headed back indoors.

That evening, and in the ones to come, I would discover other pieces of light art in Utrecht. All of them were part of Lumen, a route of illuminated works that the city puts on each winter. I found most of them uninspiring: colors flashing on the underside of a bridge only reminded me of the scary boat ride in Willy Wonka. If I were a toddler, however, you would not be able to pull me away from the full-scale projection onto the exterior of the Nijnte museum, with its perching birds and falling snowflakes and Miffy herself opening the door for a peek.

In any case, none of the other pieces had the effect of Korte Smeestraat on me, and I kept finding myself drawn back to it. Each time, I would lurk along it, trying to catch someone coming out of one of the houses so I could interrogate them about it. Results were spotty.

Anouk, who was in her 20s and walking a highly adorable beagle, had only lived on the street for about 8 months admitted somewhat embarrassedly that she hadn’t a clue, then hazarded a guess it was for a literacy campaign. “Maybe it is to encourage people to read?”

An older man in a smart wool coat who clearly thought I was trying to sell him something couldn’t get away fast enough. “Nay, nay, not interested,” he said as he brushed past.

Lotte, coming home with her two kids, told me that she thought the signs were from old businesses that had once operated on the street. “But I don’t really get the chicken one,” she admitted. “Maybe they sold eggs?”

Pawel, who was a captive audience due to him fixing his bike chain when I approached, provided the most insight. He had moved onto the block 20 years earlier when he immigrated from Poland and the lights were already there at the time. He too thought that the illustrations represented former businesses on the street, and he appreciated the sentiment on the reverse side. “Evening is good for reading,” he said.

He also directed me toward a plaque at the non-canal end of the street that explained the work, and then, having by now adjusted the troublesome chain, accompanied me there. We were both somewhat disappointed to discover that the ugly blue plexiglas did not, in fact, explain the work, or even the year it was created. But from beneath a swath of spraypaint I could at least make out the artist’s name: Allen Ruppersberg.

Possibly confirming the antique lady’s (and yours?) suspicions, I had never heard of Allen Ruppersberg. But when I got home I did some research and learned that, in addition to being 81, American, and a pretty big deal in conceptual art circles, Ruppersberg created Evening Time is Reading Time for a show for the Centraal Museum in 1991. When it was over, the city bought the work, and it’s been there ever since.

I also came across an interview with him in which he explains that the illustrations are based on what the street’s residents told him about their occupations. That helped with the judge, and I could imagine how “Open All Night,” with its picture of a crying baby, probably referred to a sleepless mom. But I’m still wondering about that chick with a fish-cape.

None of the people I spoke with on Korte Smeestraat got its origins completely right. But, 35 years later, it hardly mattered. They loved living in a piece of art. “The city can never take it down,” Pawel said as we stared at the disappointingly uninformative plaque. “I think the neighbors here would all revolt.”