The biggest exhibition of Johannes Vermeer’s paintings ever opens this week at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. Twenty-eight pieces are being brought in from all over the world to present the most complete retrospective of the Dutchman’s work ever. Like many others, I already have my tickets to visit the Rijksmuseum in early March.
For me though, this is more than just a chance to submerge myself in the quiet, stillness of the artist’s views of seventeenth century domesticity. It is a chance to revisit the art that I was making when I first moved to the Netherlands. At the time, Vermeer’s work was hugely important to me, and I was engaged with a visual and conceptual exploration of these icons of art history.
I was exploring the nature of the art object, the painting as it is found in the museum, the role of the reproduction of images in our experience of art and indeed the place that the re-presentation of art has in Vermeer’s work itself.
I made paintings, drawings, collages, constructions and even installation work. It was, for me, a rich vein of work that seems on reflection a strangely perfectly fitting body of work for my own arrival in the country.
So, in the light of all the fanfare around the Rijksmuseum exhibition, my own modest online Vermeer display. A small collection here. A more extensive collection on my other site that can be found here: Vermeer series
Peter Sansom 