What is going on? All over Europe there are recessions. People struggle to pay the interest on the loan, and at the grocery store they squint more and more often at the price tag. But on the auction website Ebay there is a bidding party. That is to say: There is at least one product that is rising in price while eager bidders are frantically pushing in ever higher sums. There are tickets to an art exhibition at the great Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. FAMOUS: Perhaps Johannes Vermeer’s most famous picture, “Girl with a Pearl Earring,” was only allowed two months in Amsterdam before it had to be sent back to The Hague. Photo: AP The exhibition is simply called “Vermeer”, and displays 28 of the total of 37 pictures by the Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer (1632-1675). The tickets originally cost around NOK 400, but they have long been sold. Anyone who visits the website of the museum is greeted by an impatient tone that may remind a little of an exhausted mother of five. Yes, all tickets are sold. Yes, all press tickets have been taken. No, it won’t help to call. No, don’t write to us. No, the ticket to the permanent exhibition does not apply to “Vermeer”. But the second-hand sale of tickets is legal in the Netherlands, and the tickets on Ebay go quickly for over three thousand kroner. What do they really get, those who win these bidding wars? “This is an exhibition to die for,” wrote The Guardian’s Jonathan Jones. “A blockbuster,” wrote Jason Farago in the New York Times. “It will find its place in history as the definitive Vermeer exhibition.” These are unusually large words to use for a small collection of images, some of which have already been sent back to the museums where they normally belong. But “Vermeer” is as beautiful as it is rare; one of the possibilities that exists right now in the spring of 2023, and is unlikely to return. EVENT: The Rijksmuseum’s major exhibition “Vermeer” has become a phenomenon. But now a tired tone can be sensed in the messages from the museum, which are belittled by people who want tickets. Photo: AP It has taken seven years of negotiations between the Rijksmuseum and the other Vermeer owners to achieve something like this. The fact that it was possible at all was due, among other things, to the fact that the Frick Museum in New York had to renovate its premises, and had to close for a period – and thus be able to loan out its three Vermeer paintings. Several of the pictures are in such bad condition that it was very risky to let them travel across national borders. It is questionable whether the owners will take that chance once more. One thing is that the pictures are few and, for the most part, small. Another thing is the relatively everyday motifs. We are indoors, almost always, in the same rooms of Vermeer’s own home in Delft. Those we look at are people — some men, but mostly women. They do their own thing, they do housework or practice instruments. IN THEIR OWN WORLD: A visitor takes a photo of “Girl reading a letter by an open window”. The girl at the window is one of many women in Vermeer’s paintings who are lost in their own world. Photo: AP Some receive guests. Some have their heads bent over a letter. They are calm, beautiful scenes, in coordinated colors. From the window, because it is almost always a window, come what we can imagine are the sounds and smells of the world outside. But above all, the windows are sources of light, the indescribable light that Vermeer throws over his figures, so that they shine towards us. And then there is the conundrum itself. On the one hand, not much happens in Vermeer’s paintings. On the other side, there is a lot going on. THE LIGHT FROM THE LEFT: One of the characteristics of Johannes Vermeer’s paintings is that the artist lets a soft light from the left shine on the people he paints. Photo: AP The women we are looking at are concentrated, intensely present, absorbed in the moment. Perhaps they are performing a task that requires undivided attention, like the famous “Milkmaid”, who lets a faint trickle of milk flow out of a dark jar. Perhaps they are mindlessly busy reading a love letter, like “Girl reading a letter by an open window”. Perhaps they are drawn into a flirtation or a courtesan that is all they think about. A girl leans forward and laughs ecstatically at a man, who sits with his back to him, his hand at his side. He radiates power, or maybe he puffs up a little, for the sake of the girl? A man looks with an intense but inscrutable gaze at a young woman drinking a glass of wine. Maybe he is the one who gave it to her. Her face is completely hidden by the glass. SEDUCTION: A visitor takes a selfie in front of the “Wine Glass”, where a young girl drinks a glass of wine given to her by the standing man. Photo: AFP In their own way, they make the spectators feel like curious flies on the wall. We peek into moments that are private, secret. We have nothing to do there. The latter is emphasized by the fact that some of Vermeer’s models stare back at us. They turn their heads, abruptly, it may seem, without smiling, as if we have disturbed them. Johannes Vermeer himself is a mystery. He spent his entire life in Delft, working slowly and meticulously on his paintings. Those were efforts for which he did not get much in return. He died a poor man. No one knows whether he realized how much better he was than the vast majority of his contemporaries. But for those who have the opportunity to compare, it is striking. In 2017 I was at an exhibition called “Vermeer and his contemporaries” at the Louvre in Paris. It was a reminder that so many painters of Vermeer’s time painted exactly the same thing. Here there were plenty of women with letters and musical instruments. FAMOUS: The painting “The Milkmaid” is one of Vermeer’s most famous. In the museum shop of the Rijksmuseum, the image can be found on notebooks and umbrellas and surfboards, and much more. Photo: AFP But only Vermeer’s works had this sense of something urgent. Of being faced with an individual who was at least as complicated as yourself, with an inner life so deep and complex that it would be impossible to understand it. But then the picture gave you the chance to get close to them, nevertheless. Perhaps it is an increasingly greater attention to the individual, to the individual, that makes Vermeer an increasingly towering figure in the history of art. Or maybe it’s even simpler. In everyday life that is full of bullet points and messages and taps on the shoulder, perhaps there are many who long to be in a room and just be present, right there. Reading a letter like that then and there means everything in the world. To see the milk trickling.
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This exhibition costs thousands of kroner to see – Statement
