Discovering Vermeer.
categories:
- “art”
Author's Note: This entry predates the excellent movie starring Scarlett Johansson.
12 Dec 2003
Uh, wow. Using Charlie's link to web around, I checked www.fimoculus.com, which linked me to an in-depth site on Vermeer's painting “Girl With a Pearl Earring.” Holy mackeral. I spent 18 years as a projectionist in a previous life, and for a while entertained illusions of participating in the great content-engine of the moving picture. So I got fascinated with light. I can still, lo these many years since, make a decent guess at color-temp and f-stop. I have a near-teen who knows what “magic hour” is and can tell you when it's happening.
The point is, I've never seen this work until tonight, and had no friggin' idea that some guy was doing what every phtog, cinematog, and image-hacker is still trying to reach. Only this here Dutch guy did it in the 17th century. You've got to find an online image of this painting. I mean for god's sake, there are EYE LIGHTS in this painting. I mean pointilist-sized eyelights. And they're absolutely RIGHT in that entirely WRONG way. That is, like the airbrushers at Playboy, they're exaggerated only just enough that they READ. The pose, the look, the parted lips.
I like art in that distant way that says, wow, cool, what's next. But this is staggering, this is four HUNDRED years old, and it could be passed off as the cover shot for some mag. Seriously, let's get a casting call out there, I'll bet we can get a model that's PERFECT. Restage the shot. Shoot it all nice and digital. Then put it on whatever. Plaster the cover with teases for the stories inside, and no one at the grocery store would even think it's werid. Heck, redo this experiment using precisely a print of the painting. The only diffs would be the black background (covered with type though in this trial) and the ever so slight unsharpness granted by the brush strokes.
God that would be a great experiment, just to make a couple of dozen copies, put them at the check out, fake the entire mag. Greek all the interior, with fake ads, fake content. Then video how many people pick it up to thumb through. What a painting. I guess now I'll have to go see the original. Wish I'd known about that when I was in the Netherlands back then... Oh well, a plan for the soon-to-be-teen. Or “then-teen” since it'll be a while. I'll post some more art links soon, there's an abstract bust I like.
Fear no art.