haunting obsession with Vermeer

I really really really want to go to the New York to see this collection at the Frick,
where 15 Vermeer paintings from the Mauritshuis in the Hauge are on exhibit until January 19.

Why I Love Vermeer

1. Power.

When I moved to my new house, I thought I’d lost all my Vermeer books. I was frantic for days. How could I have lost track of them “even for the least division of an hour”? Even the most inadequate reproduction (and they’re all inadequate) has the power to move me. Lately, though, merely looking at them hasn’t seemed enough. But what more can one do? What more do they want? What are they going to ask of me now?

2. Personal reasons.

The women in the paintings—opening a window, reading a letter, pouring milk, holding a glass of wine—remind me, in their eyes, their smiles (giving, inward), their “centeredness,” remind me of certain people I love; especially (this gets more complicated), especially my mother.

3. Profundity.

Their network of contradictions (clarity and mystery; reticence and bravura; heroism and humility—not necessarily a contradiction) suggests an intelligence, an inner life, beyond the other “little” Dutch masters—and equal, it seems to me, in its way, to the nakedness and tragedy of Rembrandt. “Rembrandt ist Beethoven,” I heard an old woman say to herself in the Rijksmuseum, “Vermeer ist Mozart.” Why must one choose either over the other?

4. Rarity.

So few survive (thirty-six, fewer than the number of Shakespeare plays; and one attribution has recently been called into question). Each one—taken in, loved for itself—calls into mind each of the others.

5. Inaccessibility.

The summer of the great retrospective in Europe (including all the Vermeers still in private collections), I had to go. Obsessed, I kept traveling to see as many more as I could. In Germany, I lied to get into a closed museum. At what wouldn’t I stop?

6. Accessibility.

I grew up in New York, which has more Vermeers (eight) than any other city in the world. Any other country (there are only seven in Holland). I’ve never lived in a city without a Vermeer.

Lloyd Schwartz

From Goodnight, Gracie (University of Chicago Press)

"At the Frick, it gets a room all to itself. The young girl, wearing a blue and yellow silk turban, is just turning her face to watch you entering the room. She may even be slightly distracted by someone else a little off to your right, maybe someone she knows better than you. Her mouth is slightly open, as if she's just taking a breath and is about to say something. The light falling on her is reflected not only on her earring but in her large shining eyes ("Those are pearls that were his eyes," Shakespeare's Ariel sings in The Tempest) and on her moist lips. There's even a little spot of moisture in one corner of her mouth.

Art historians tell us that this painting was not intended as a portrait, but was a type of painting — a study of a figure in an exotic costume. But there's something so particular about this girl's beauty and expression, she seems much more than just a model. Her presence is totally palpable. She's right there, in the room with you and radiating unique and individual life.

[...]

You can also see the Frick's own Vermeers. This is a rare occasion when all three are exhibited together, on a wall that allows you to see them more closely and in better light than in their usual locations. The poignantOfficer and Laughing Girl is my personal favorite, but so is the ravishing Mistress and Maid, in which a woman wearing another pearl earring, writing a letter, is interrupted by her maid handing a letter to her — maybe from the same person she's just been writing to?

I still needed to see more Vermeers, and there are five more at the Metropolitan Museum, half a mile up Fifth Avenue. For the first time all of them, including another painting of a young woman with a huge pearl earring, have also been gathered into the same room. It's a rare chance to see so many Vermeers together, to compare the subtle and sometimes dramatic differences.

One more thing: the scholarship on Girl with a Pearl Earring reveals that the pearl isn't really a pearl. No pearl that big has ever come to light. No oyster could be big enough. So the famous pearl is probably just glass painted to look like a pearl. But of course the pearl — the pearl of great price, perhaps — is a visual metaphor for the girl wearing it: glistening, radiant, a creature brought to life by light itself. Or if not the girl, then Vermeer's painting of her."

poem via {npr fresh air}

news blurb via {npr}