Lesson from the Masters: Vermeer

Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum, in addition to its usual Rembrandts and Hals’s, is currently hosting the world-famous Vermeer exhibit, in which most of the surviving works by Johannes Vermeer are displayed side by side. (Oddly, “Girl with a Pearl Earring” was not part of the exhibit; no word on why The Hague didn’t loan it.)

The exhibit has been sold out for months, but the concierge at our hotel gave us a tip: buy timed tickets for the main museum for the 9:00 opening, then go straight to the ticket counter as soon as we get in and ask if they had any Vermeer tickets — and they did.

So thanks to our very clever concierge at the Kimpton De Witt Hotel, I am able to bring you two Lichtenbergian lessons from Vermeer.

Let’s start with two early paintings:

Saint Praxedis (1655), The National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo

Christ in the house of Martha and Mary (1654–55), National Galleries of Scotland, Ediburgh

Oho, what’s all this then?, I hear you cry, and you are not amiss. Surely the Vermeer we know didn’t paint these? Where are the calm, comfortable interiors, the lacquer-like finish and the pellucid air?

At this early point in his career, Vermeer was trying to figure out what sells on the hot art market of 1600s Holland, and the exhibit said bluntly what I sensed when I walked in the room: Vermeer was STEALING FROM THE BEST — seeing what other artists had done successfully (Tintoretto, et al.) and trying it on for size.

As an appreciator of art in general and of Vermeer in particular, you probably already know about “Girl Reading a Letter at an Open Window,” how it was discovered via x-rays and other technology that the calm white wall behind the girl…

Girl Reading a Letter at an open Window (1657), Gemaldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden

…was not what Vermeer painted. Sometime in the 18th century, someone painted over…

…a very large painting of Cupid! Who knows why?

But that brings us to this painting:

The Milkmaid (1658–59), Rijksmuseum, amsterdam

See that lovely blank wall? Was it always empty? Did someone paint over some other symbol of Netherlander coziness and prosperity?

Actually, yes, someone did, and it was Vermeer himself. (I have a suspicion that whoever painted over the Cupid in “Girl Reading a Letter” did so because of “The Milkmaid.”) You can read all about it here, but essentially it was the process we Lichtenbergians know (and love) as ABORTIVE ATTEMPTS > GESTALT > SUCCESSIVE APPROXIMATION. He started out sketching a shelf full of jugs, then stepped back and noped right out of that painting.

Let me repeat that: Vermeer started painting one painting but after some evaluation decided to essentially erase it and keep going in a different direction.

So here’s the lesson: if Vermeer — one of the most admired artists in the world for his serenely perfect paintings — if he started by copying successful artists, if he couldn’t “start at the beginning, go until he reached the end, then stop,” then why should any of us think we have to produce serenely perfect work without breaking a sweat?

Make art. Badly. Then make it betterer.