For the second time I visited the exhibition. It is so unique. To see so many paintings together is more than a treat. Things that you normally don’t realize/see come to mind. There were paintings I hadn’t seen in a long time and even one I had not seen yet.
The big joy was to see the painting from Dresden for the first time.
What struck me was how low the head of the woman is in the composition and how small (as in so many). It shows that for Vermeer the light was the main player, not the human being.
An Italian friend who visited almost all Dutch museums said he thought Vermeer number one over Rembrandt number two. When I asked why, he told me that Vermeer looked at the world like an alien. Because at that time it hurt me I replied that if Vermeer was an alien he was 0 and Rembrandt 1... Now I can tolerate and appreciate his opinion, but let nobody dare touch Rembrandt!!!
Maybe a bit a far fetched thought but Rembrandt was protestant, read the Bible and Vermeer turned to Catholicism, left all to the priests... Humanism against alienism. Vermeer painted the fruit with the same attention as the woman. The woman thus becomes sort of part of a still life.
That Vermeer manipulated/orchestrated his compositions carefully shows the red curtain, the movement leads you to the head.
How beautiful the green of the curtain repeated in her dress, the repetition of the movement of the red curtain in the table cloth, the shadow on the wall as a contrast to the light on the dress, then the shadow part of the dress contrasting the light on the wall.
In the Frick painting of the ‘man looking at a woman’ notice the upper part of the window frame pointing to the head of the woman. No coincidence. A feeling of far far away distance, a bit scary... The woman (main object therefor lit; the baroque trick) is such a small object in the painting and not even halfway hight. Do his words reach her or die half way?
And here again that glowing of the colors. The exhibition is in two parts of the museum and when I walked on the bridge that connects the two looking down on reality (the entrance hall with the many visitors) the colors looked dull, bleak.
Another one where the main subject is almost like a coincidence is the ‘woman tuning the lute’ of the Met. Above her so much wall… He softened the face to avoid her from jumping to the foreground. Here the light is dimmed...
A painting I have seen a hundred times is the woman reading a letter of the collection of the Rijksmuseum. If you look at her head and follow it down it reminds me of the song of Atahualpa Yupanqui: Canción para Pablo Neruda:
‘Thank you for the tenderness you gave us.
For the swallows that fly with your verses. From boat to boat. From branch to branch. From silence to silence.’
(click on the above image to go to the song)
The colors and the Clair-obscur of the head, bow ties, jacket and background twinkle from ‘silence to silence.’ Those subtle touches of his brush…
The same twinkling touches of the little bow ties around the head, the earrings, the pearl necklace and the nails on the box and chair. What spotty happiness...
More subtle solutions in the ‘woman holding a balance’. The black frame that covers part of the light of the window, the frame above the hand where the two golden lines don’t light up. The yellow curtain and the orange on her stomach with a little in between bounce on the inside of the box. There is just too much…
The ‘lacemaker’. A very small painting where the threads are almost liquid light. A mini red waterfall pours out of the cushion.
It becomes so clear that the impressionists discovered his uniqueness, his genius.
Where until then painters foremost painted objects on which the light falls, in for example the cap of Vermeer's ‘milkmaid’ it is (on the left side) the light that takes the main stage over the volume/shape of the object. Next to her head the cap blends in with the background.
Seeing all this makes me so sad to think of all the banal screaming of so much contemporary art. Can we accuse the public of so much ignorance? Just going for the loud moralistic kitsch?
Reading a few articles and seeing the programs about the exhibition I guess the critics and art historians are more to blame. Probably because they never held a brush in their hands, they cannot but talk about side issues. No knowledge about what painting is or can be is their trademark.
So they talked about the rush and said that exhibitions like these harm the arts. Ok, one can complain about the many visitors that make you having to be patient to really see a painting.
And finally I think to understand why so many took photos even under an inclination of 45 degrees. They must think that by having the image in their mobile, they sort of own it a little. Sadly the opposite occurs. If you take a photo you step out of the direct confrontation, you put the camera between you and the object. And at home what do you see? You can show friends you were there and did not see a thing...
Sometimes I feel like a dinosaur. I know so little people I can really talk with. Scream yes, but that doesn’t interest me. I go for the whisper of Vermeer…
P.S.: The titles may not be the right ones (who cares) and I sometimes showed details of paintings to make my case. If you want the whole images of all, be quick, go to the RIJKSMUSEUM and take photos!
