the night watch

Via MuseumResearch&Study, a Dutch flashmob adventurously arrives at the mall on horseback in a dramatic reconstruction of Rembrandt's most famous (and controversial) painting, The Night Watch (De Nachtwacht), or The Shooting Company of Frans Banning Cocq. 

Fascination around bringing the renowned work of art further "to life" is not new, including several films, music, possibly even the second movement of Gustav Mahler's 7th symphony.

Russian artist Alexander Taratynov created a bronze-cast representation of the painting - Nightwatch 3D - first exhibited in 2006, and now permanently installed in front of Louis Royer's 1852 cast iron statue of Rembrandt at the Rembrandtplein  in Amsterdam (shown in photo to the left, source: wikipedia, uploader: Hippolyte). Which the actors' rendition may show a more immediately apparent resemblance to.

According to wiki and Rembrandt The Nighwatch blogspot, The Night Watch is notable for its sense of motion - versus the more static military postures employed - along with the painting's large size and rendition of light and color.   The painting has had a long and colorful history of its own, including several alterations (also removing two characters), storage in a Dutch castle throughout World War II, theft, conspiracy theory, and two major acts of vandalism - one by a man throwing an acid, and another by an unemployed schoolteacher with a bread knife who later committed suicide.

 

As for that surprising and enjoyable shoppers' *treat*, those actors (in seventeenth century outfits - and also swinging in from the ceiling) were promoting the re-opening of the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, and following an extensive restoration program since 2003.  The Night Watch is housed there - the Dutch national museum, that is, which is located in Museum Square, Amsterdam South, close to the Van Gogh Museum, the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, and the Concertgebouw.

*Photo credit, bottom/Wikipedia/public domain without source information/Recreation of Rembrandt's The Night Watch, the lines showing how the present painting was cut down from the artist's original.   You can see the two excluded characters to the viewer's left.