Came across a marvelous book called Mysteries of the Rectangle by Siri Hustvedt while looking through the Bellevue library yesterday. In it she talks about how mesmerized she was standing in front of Vermeer's Woman with a Pearl Neckace.

She stood so long and got so close to it that the guard got nervous and waved at her to step back.

During the four hours she stood there, she had this strange feeling that it was "something other then what it appeared to be." (p. 12)

As Hustvedt explains, the woman seems to be looking in a mirror, but there's so much light coming in the window that she almost seems to be looking out the window. She's holding up the necklace, but it is so subtly rendered the pearls don't seem to command much attention. She stands completely still, not really caught in a moment of action.

Unlike so many other Vermeers, this painting has an empty center. Vermeer had placed a map in the wall but x-rays show that he eliminated it. He covered much of the floor with great folds of cloth. He eliminated a musical instrument that had been on the chair. Nothing interrupts her gaze. She is not aware of any onlooker either.

As Hustvedt looks, she thinks about all those paintings in the genre of women at their toilet, but can't shake the feeling that this seems to be about something else, as well. The woman does not seem to be yearning for antyhing, nor is she caught up in her own vanity. All of a sudden, she says the word "Annunciation" popped into her mind. A pursuit of this possible allusion of Vermeer's sends her scurrying to art books, and she turns up several paintings in which Mary looks just as self-possessed and contemplative; her arms are raised this way, as well.

While Hustvedt is careful not to reduce the painting to this only possibility, she does feel there may be something suggested here by the artist. She notes the shape of the woman, who does look as though she might be pregnant. She is also somewhat amazed to notice what appears to be an egg in the window sill. Of course, she admits this is likely an architectural window detail, the painter doesn't include it in any of his other many-windowed paintings. Here's a slightly larger version; the egg is on the top of the sill by the drapes.


So, what do you think? While others have pointed out that Vermeer manages, through his use of light, to make the everyday somewhat sacred, she suggests that in this painting he might be intending to provide an allusion that hasn't been noticed before. (By the way, Vermeer scholar Arthur Wheelock was there at the exhibit and she mentioned this idea to him. He agreed it was possible.)

Don't you think Vermeer deserves more than one day? I think I've been avoiding him because he's just, as my 13 yr old might say, like so awesome, totally. Okay, she doesn't say "totally" very often. She doesn't say anything now that she's finally got a phone and can text everyone.

Mute people, especially women, are so often the focus of Mr. Awesome's gaze. In the Young Woman with a Water Pitcher, I find his use of negative space seems to really lock the shapes of the composition in place - the sliver under her left arm, between her left hand and the chair, and especially above her left shoulder where the map of Holland is aimed right at her. Although apparently her clothing was typical for a woman of means at that time, the use of the water pitcher, the window, all that blue - he certainly seems to be making sure we'll think of Mary.

While I think the word "luminous" is overused in a zillion contexts, it does apply to his paintings. His ability to conjure up a room bathed in light is all the more magical when you consider that Delft is under gray skies as many as 300 days a year. He must have had a remarkable memory to reproduce a special quality of soft, warm light not seen everyday.

It's small, only 18 X 16, and it's at the Met in New York. Better to see this than stand outside those studios watching for Matt or Meredith, don't you think?

Got up too late to make lunches AND write about Vermeer, so Vermeer had to wait. When he died in his forties he left 11 children - glad I'm not making those lunches. . .

I think it's intriguing when researchers are able to x-ray paintings and see what decisions artists made about what to add or eliminate. In A Woman Asleep (also called A Girl Asleep), although it's very hard to see, there once was a dog in the doorway on the right and a man in the back room. Vermeer decided to paint both of them out. Of course we'll never know why, but it seems that in many of his paintings, he liked to provide a few clues as to what the scene was, a letter arriving for instance, and then leave the rest of the narrative (there's a modern word) to the viewer's imagination. (Others have pointed out that he probably got the notion for this painting from a similarly-posed sleeping maid in a Rembrandt work. I have so far been unable to find a copy of that painting, but I'll keep working on it. - A few hours later, I came across Rembrandt's Girl Asleep at a Window.


I don't know, but it seems to me that A Woman Asleep is a tad more interesting without all the detail. We can see there is some sort of overturned goblet and that the table covering is bunched up. A big gathering to clean up after? Legitimately tired after hard work? Or shirking her duties after a few drinks? Critics have naturally noticed and commented on the cupids on the wall behind her. We don't know more and never will and that's what I like about it. What do you think?

P.S. Since another Vermeer, The Milkmaid, below, came to the Met in NY last fall, there's been a lot written about whether or not there is a good deal or just a little suggestiveness intended by Vermeer in his depiction of her. Click on the Met's link in this paragraph to read more.

I love what Michael Kimmelman, art critic for the NY Times, has to say about Wayne Thiebaud's work. In his book on the consolations of art he talks about why they appeal to us, and I think he nails it. What do they possess that other deceptively simple works lack? Above is Pies, Pies, Pies from 1961.

Kimmelman says:

After a while Thiebaud's pictures prompt something more complicated than plain joy -- as with Chardin, closer to the nature of memory, which is always a tricky affair. This reaction slowly registers in our minds as the gap between what actually was -- between those cloying Boston cream pies that we really ate nad the gum-ball machines that ate our pennies - and the world as we wished it to be. Thiebaud gave us not real cheese but Platonic cheese, as the writer Adam Gopnik once put it. And this gap between reality and desire ushers in, in Thiebaud's art, even more than in Chardin's a sadness after the first leaping rush of pleasure. Thiebaud's art is not about the perfect world. It is about the fact that the world never was and still isn't perfect, except perhaps the little imaginary part of it to which we can briefly retreat in these paintings and thereby glimpse the way all things ought to be. (p. 222-3, The Accidental Masterpiece)

I think he may be right. He goes on to consider the artist's depictions of people and explains his view that Thiebaud's people are more like Vermeer's than Hopper's lonely figures. They may be minutely described, but we can read just about anything into those faces. We cannot ever really know more about them than we can about strangers we pass in the store or on the street. Here's Vermeer's Girl with a Pearl Earring along with Thiebaud's Two Kneeling Figures.


What do you think? Do you agree? Are they ciphers?