Chris Knipp Writing: Movies, Politics, Art


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PostPosted: Sat May 27, 2023 6:34 am 
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DR. WEBER PLANNING THE RIJKSMUSEUM BLOCKBUSTER SHOW "VERMEER" IN CLOSE TO VERMEER

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A film about an extraordinary exhibition

Forget the Mona Lisa. Girl with Pearl Earring* is probably the most famous painting in the world. That makes Johannes Vermeer, the mysterious seventeenth-century Dutch painter, the world's most revered artist. And one of the rarest: there are only 37 of his paintings extant, not all accepted as genuine. Vermeer left no self-portraits, no letters, no notes: the resulting enigma leaves all focus, as it should be, on the marvelous work itself. There is currently the largest Vermeer show ever, 28 paintings, being held for four months, 10 February to 4 June 2023, at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam.

And the show has gotten raves for its curatorship. Laura Cumming in the Guardian called it "One of the most thrilling exhibitions ever conceived," Jason Farago in the New York Times said "The show is just about perfect: perfectly argued, perfectly paced, as clear and uncontaminated as the light streaming through those Delft windows," and Mary Tompkns Lewis in The Wall Street Journal called it ""A staggeringly beautiful, brilliantly realized show unlikely to be repeated." But it's also one of the most exclusive blockbuster shows ever staged. Unless you're one of the lucky ones, you can forget about attending it: the 450,000 places sold out long ago, within three days of the opening.

How much more valuable, then, is the lovely new documentary, Close to Vermeer. What it means, in a way, is Close to "Vermeer", for "Vermeer" is the simple, comprehensive title of the show. Luckily, though not unconventional - why would it need to be? - this is a wonderful film, wholly absorbing, a delight to the eye, and surprisingly suspenseful, but in a very natural way. Suzanne Raes' film takes us closer to the show and to the mysterious and extraordinary world of Vermeer's art. That art: how did he do it? The question will come up more than once. There is no answer. All we can say is that clearly he took a long time. And my God, but the man could paint.

Close to Vermeer is in English, but also contains plenty of the crisp, chewy gutterals of the Dutch language. It introduces us to the show's creator (and curator), the soon to retire Dept. of Fine Arts Director of the Rijksmuseum, Gregor J.M.Weber. When he saw his first two Vermeers, he says, it was in London, he was young, and he fainted. That artworks can make you faint, and also make you weep, is a concept that comes forward in the discussion of Vermeer. This is in its quiet way a deeply emotional film. It will curl your toes. It will give you a lump in your throat. Dr. Weber says a good show should be potentially life-changing. This one doubtless is that. If you got a ticket and went to Amsterdam you will never forget it. The rest of us have this film.

There are other moods evoked here too. First of all is a practical, cheery, almost game-playing one, as Dr. Weber and Pieter Roelofs, another organizer of "Vermeer," move reproductions of the artist's paintings - many of which, not just Girl with Pearl Earring, are famous and familiar - shifting their positions like giant exquisite playing cards around on a table to see which ones go best together. True, the show is the biggest ever, but the reports are that it is also more than that, notable for other qualities: its minimalism, its clarity, its lack of distractions, its subtlety, and its flow, leading to having paintings that "talk" to one another, to logic and to new understanding. And, maybe, to getting your life changed.

But most importantly this film takes us into intimate worlds of specialists: art historians, restorers, and Thomas Kaplan, an enthusiastic collector (mainly of Rembrandt), who lives at the rarified level that enabled him to purchase the only Vermeer not in a museum. If it is one: the exploration of that question brings the excitement of debate and detective work onto the screen and leads to controversy and pretty violent disagreement into the staid, well-heeled world of the world's great museums, the Metropolitan and the Frick in New York, the National Galleries of London and Washington, the Vermeer Centrum Delft, the Mauritshuis in the Hague. We'll spend time at the latter, because it has Girl with Pearl Earring, presided over by art restorer Abbie Vandivere, who has a vibrant personality and a headful of long, flowing blue pigtails.

And for Girl and other Vermeers we get to see them removed, stripped down from, their wood frames and examined under special microscopes. We learn a little of advances in the science of painting restoration in recent decades that enable more and more precision in "taking paintings apart" into layers without actually touching them, analyzing stages, additions, underpainting, washes, to bring them to their best state and evaluate their authenticity and relation to other paintings.

The "Vermeer" exhibition leads to a convocation of a whole long tableful of museum world notables, and to several leading American museum ladies' presenting their provocative argument that one of the paintings isn't a Vermeer at all. This is part of the politics of museums, curators, and experts jostling for position. And part of Close to Vermeer is the tricky, essential step of gathering together the far-flung works to be uniquely united into the show. The organizers must persuade museum curators to lend their Vermeers, the ones they most want. They don't always agree. But the very size of the exhibition is an incentive. Dr. Weber suggests Buckingham Palace won't want to miss their "baby" (Lady at the Virginals with a Gentleman) having a place "at the party." But assurances must be provided, promises given, deals made.

These are practical issues; others are ineffable. One thing that gets forgotten a bit in the debates and discussions, reverent or challenging, in the talk of the artist's presumed use of the camera obscura and analysis of light; the expressions of the women reading letters or playing the virginal or whatever. It's that what makes Vermeer extraordinary isn't any of these things or even how he saw: it's his skill with paint and a brush, the delicacy and verve of it, the way it serves his vision. It's a skill beyond knowing, beyond analysis. That is why it's lucky we hear frequently from Jonathan Janson, an American painter, a modern Vermeer imitator and author of the website essentialvermeer.com, who better than the scientists and restorers understands the secrets of the brush and the magic of his idol.

While its account of the assembling of the "Vermeer" exhibition flows toward completion and excitement over some matters of authenticity holds Close to Vermeer suspensefully together, the beauty of the film is simply that its various focuses lead to there being many of the paintings filling the screen and letting us look at them with the added luminosity of a motion picture. You walk out of the film with the paintings in your head. And that is a life-enhancing experience.

Close to Vermeer, 79 mins., was released in Holland in March. Its US release begins May 26, 2023 at Quad Cinema in New York. A national expansion will follow.
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*Vermeer-related films I've previously reviewed are Girl with Pearl Earring (Peter Weber 2003), Tim's Vermeer (Penn Jillette, Teller 2013), and The Last Vermeer (Dan Friedkin 2019). A YouTube video currently shows interviews with people coming out of the "Vermeer" show and giving their reactions.

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©Chris Knipp. Blog: http://chrisknipp.blogspot.com/.


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