Contemplating Vermeer

from "Contemplating Vermeer," paintings by Joe Fig

                                                                                                                                        

If you attended the Vermeer retrospective at the Rijksmuseum back in 2023, you may have been in the crowd with the American artist Joe Fig. You may even have been a subject for one of the paintings in his show "Contemplating Vermeer" at The New Britain Museum of American Art. The idea of painting or photographing a viewer of art is not singular. Most famously the photographer, Thomas Struth, did it in large-scale photographs of museum goers, themselves exhibited at the Met. What is particularly exquisite and breathtaking is the fact that the renditions of the original Vermeers, in Fig's paintings are so small. That’s the feat, the mountain to climb. The inception of these works themselves capture both the light and enclosure of Vermeer’s art. But it’s more than a high wire act since the portraits are not only portraits of paintings but portraits of people. One sidebar. If you remember, the Rijksmuseum show attracted record crowds. Scalpers were able to command large sums for tickets and the galleries were packed. The paintings were in this sense the light within an otherwise claustrophobic interior. The scale of the Vermeer's in Fig's painting create a similar effect.

read "_RT" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

and here's ChatGPT on "_RT"