Last Sunday I spent a fantastic afternoon at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, possibly my favorite museum ever. Johannes Vermeer's masterpiece, The Milkmaid is on loan to the Met from the Rijksmuseum of Amsterdam, and the exhibit of work that's been curated around the painting is exquisite.
One wing of the first floor has been turned into a glorious Vermeer exhibit. The curator has showcased The Milkmaid, along with five other Vermeer painting owned by the Met, plus sketches and rough studies. Each piece is shown in miniature along a chronological timeline, and the master works are hung among pieces by Vermeer's contemporaries, highlighting how exceptional and groundbreaking were his accomplishments: color so vibrant it still sings from the canvas and calls a viewer from across the room, interplay of light and shadow in portraiture that includes the light source within the subject matter, twisting traditional symbolism into subtle, self-referential ironies. Vermeer will most definitely be the subject of whatever non-fiction book I next borrow from the BPL.
The other pieces that caught my eye were a series of sketch studies by Antoine Watteau. In another special exhibit, Watteau, Music, and Theatre, a large body of Watteau's work was displayed through a long, narrow gallery -- rather like an early incarnation of the proscenium stage. While the paintings are, of course, masterpieces, his sketches better held my attention -- rough studies in movement and juxtaposition. Watteau focused on glorious scenes and scapes, for commission, like any artist, but starring actors, dancers, clowns, and courtesans -- individuals of a class too low to be considered proper subject material. And yet, with his own interests cross-secting what was popular artistically, he was able to develop composite scenes embodying the soul and story and symbolism of his patrons in the subject matter of his choice. I know a few contemporary artists who might kill -- or at least consider permanent maiming -- for that ability!
With my Baroque and Rococco dance lessons, I've been paying more attention to posture and line and intentional movement, so one sketch in particular mesmerized me. "Woman spurning a lover's advances" has a fascinating posture; the leering clown is leaning forward from the waist, pressing into the woman, who has her arm raised against him and her face turned away. But her feet, rather than shown in running steps, are still, standing in a traditional foot posture - one foot placed forward with the heel teed against the other instep, legs turned out from the hip to support the spine and elevate the shoulders, neck, and head. She is recoiling back and to her left, bending at the waist, but the revulsion on her face and in her gesture seems irrelevant; interrupted from her typical, proper stance, she's in an impossibly weak, vulnerable position. Its painful to attempt in jeans and trainers (because of course, I tried it), let alone hindered by bustled skirts and a corset. Interesting, to say the least, for a charcoal crayon sketch to hold so much rich observation.
I recommend seeing both exhibits. Vermeer's work is incredibly limited, with just 35 known paintings, and after The Concert was stolen from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston (years before I started spending Friday afternoons there in late 2003), security is very tight. If you can create an opportunity to get to the Met before November 29, 2009, jump at the chance. The lines are worth it, the crowds are worth it -- in some ways it's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
Leave your camera at home, though; photos in the Vermeer exhibit are forbidden, and two girls caught taking them had the camera confiscated and were escorted out of the building. Never thought I'd meet a bouncer at the Museum!
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