A book reviewer for the Wall Street Journal recently spent an exhausting 1,000 words on an exhibit of the works of Dutch painter, Johannes Vermeer (1632-1675). He did not even mention Vermeer’s masterpiece, “Girl with a Pearl Earring.”
The exhibition, “Vermeer and the Masters of Genre Painting,” will show in the Louvre in Paris until May 22. The exhibit travels to Dublin and then exhibits in the National Gallery of Art in Washington beginning Oct. 22. The show is a must for art lovers.
Art historians, art scholars and art specialists agree with the poor judgment of the WSJ reviewer.
In 2006 Kultur company printed a 50-minute DVD on Vermeer as part of The Dutch Masters series. The director of the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford devoted just 15 seconds to the “Girl with a Pearl Earring.”
Nevertheless, I, an ignorant country bumpkin, thinks “Girl with a Pearl Earring” is the best of Vermeer’s 30 paintings.
A few years ago in the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, I was so fascinated by the painting that I doubled back to see it a second time. Both times I gazed at it for 10 minutes, looking up and down, looking at it from left to right, right to left, staring at every inch of the canvas.
The lovely young girl is wearing a blue oriental turban with yellow “drapery.” It is hanging in an obscure corner of the Met. It too misjudges a gem.
All of my adoration proves that this hick knows nothing, let alone about anything as sophisticated as art.
Art lovers know better than the august critics. The editors of Time-Life Books ran a 30-volume boxed series of art books in 1967, one entitled “The World of Vermeer.” In one volume is a full-page portrait—9 x 11 inches—of “Girl with a Pearl Earring.”
The text rightly describes it as “a miracle of painting.”
Based on a book by artist David Hockney, the DVD version (2003) constantly focused on “Girl with a Pearl Earring.” It stars Colin Firth as a Vermeer who is obsessed with the maid, played by Scarlett Johansson. Firth constantly and meticulously repositions her to get the light absolutely right, seeking perfection.
The result: one of history’s greatest paintings.
THE GREAT FRANKLIN A DEIST
“An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.” — Ben Franklin
The renowned Benjamin Franklin was a multifaceted genius who lived from 1706 to 1790.
His career began as an obscure postmaster in Philadelphia. But his genius was irrepressible as he blossomed into a fine printer, editor, essayist, author, inventor and maker of wise and witty axioms.
But in one area he disappointed the religious faithful: he was a deist, midway between a theist and atheist. He showed scant interest in religion and less in attending Sunday services.
According to Jeffrey Butz in his book, “The Secret Legacy of Jesus,” published in 2009, Franklin “believed in the deity but felt the most acceptable service to God was doing good to man. He was tolerant of all sects, particularly those who worked to make the world a better place.”
Like other Founders of America, Presidents Washington, John Adams and Jefferson, Franklin was a deist, often called in those days a freemason.
MILLAY NO. 1 AMERICAN POET?
Here is my nominee for America’s greatest poet: Edna St. Vincent Millay. After a recent re-reading of a book of her verses, she vaulted past my previous ranking. It had been: 1) Walt Whitman 2) Edgar Allen Poe 3) Emily Dickinson 4) Robert Frost and 5) Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
Millay gave us many fine lines but here are some choice ones from Millay’s best poem:
RECUERDO (Memory)
We were very tired, we were very merry—
We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry.
It was bare and bright, and smelled like a stable—
But we looked into a fire, we leaned across a table,
We lay on a hill-top underneath the moon;
And the whistles kept blowing, and the dawn came soon.
We were very tired, we were very merry—
We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry;
And you ate an apple, and I ate a pear,
From a dozen of each we had bought somewhere;
And the sky went wan, and the wind came cold,
And the sun rose dripping, a bucketful of gold.
We were very tired, we were very merry,
We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry.
We hailed, “Good morrow, mother!” to a shawl-covered head,
And bought a morning paper, which neither of us read;
And she wept, “God bless you!” for the apples and pears,
And we gave her all our money but our subway fares.
The poem particularly pleases me because two ferry-boat riders get pleasure and a total stranger gets joy.
Jake Highton is an emeritus journalism professor from the University of Nevada, Reno. (Jake.Highton.1496@gmail.com)
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