A Study of Vermeer, Revised and Enlarged edition [Hardcover]

Edward Snow (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 13, 1994

Edward Snow's A Study of Vermeer, first published in 1979 and here presented in an expanded and elaborately revised version, starts from a single premise: that we respond so intensely to Vermeer because his paintings reach so deeply into our lives. Our desire for images, the distances that separate us, the validations we seek from the still world, the traces of ghostliness in our own human presence--these, the book proposes, are Vermeer's themes, which he pursues with a realism always in touch with the uncanny. As Snow traces the many counterpoised sensations that make up Vermeer's equanimity, he leads us into a world of nuances and surprise.
A Study of Vermeer is passionate and visual in its commitments. Snow works from the conviction that viewing pictures is a reciprocal act--symbiotic, consequential, real. His discussions of Vermeer's paintings are conducted in a language of patient observation, and they involve the reader in an experience of deepening relation and ongoing visual discovery. The book has been designed to facilitate this process: over eighty illustrations, fifty-nine in color (including two full-page foldouts), accompany the text so that the details Snow illuminates will be continally in view. Here is a book to enthrall not only students of Vermeer, but anyone who feels the exhilaration of what Cézanne called "thinking in images."

Editorial Reviews

From the Inside Flap

"An exemplary book about seeing: about what the mind can do with great art. Like the sublime paintings which are its subject, A Study of Vermeer is full of sensual and spiritual pleasures."--Susan Sontag

"A rigorously searching analysis of the psychology and subject matter of a master whose paintings are as enigmatic as they are beautiful. This revision is not so much an improvement of the 1979 text as an elaboration of its insights, and with some very interesting reconsiderations."--Guy Davenport

From the Back Cover

"An exemplary book about seeing: about what the mind can do with great art. Like the sublime paintings which are its subject, A Study of Vermeer is full of sensual and spiritual pleasures." (Susan Sontag)

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: University of California Press; Rev Enl Su edition (June 13, 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0520071301
• ISBN-13: 978-0520071308
• Product Dimensions: 9.8 x 7.4 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #5,919,568 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

24 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Breathtaking Study of Vermeer, August 15, 2000

By 

Donna Marie Artuso (Washington, DC United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Study of Vermeer, Revised and Enlarged edition (Paperback)

This revised and enlarged edition is an unusually thoughtful, intelligent and eloquent offering from a scholar of remarkable insight and rare passion. Until I read the book (in one night as I couldn't put it down), I didn't know why I had always liked Vermeer. Dr. Snow's book is a journey of pleasure and discovery. Light, space, colour, desire and luminous revelation fairly crackle with intensity. An historic contribution to the art world, or as Dore Ashton observed, "an authentic contribution to the literature (yes, literature!) of the visual arts".

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Barking Up The Wrong Tree..., November 15, 2006

By 

Jeffrey - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Study of Vermeer, Revised and Enlarged edition (Paperback)

This book reminds me of Rolling Stone magazine style rock music criticism in which the lyrics are discussed ad nauseum and the music is barely mentioned. Snow has no feel for painting or visual values. The book begins with his reactions to "Girl with a Pearl Earring" which are a preposterous mish-mash of psychological nonsense. One has to feel sorry for someone with so little sensitivity to beauty.

"Everyone wants to understand art. Why not try to understand the song of a bird? ...people who try to explain pictures are usually barking up the wrong tree."
-Picasso

"I'd give the whole of Italian painting for Vermeer of Delft. There's a painter who simply said what he had to say without bothering about anything else."
-Picasso

13 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Snow Job, May 31, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: A Study of Vermeer, Revised and Enlarged edition (Paperback)

If you like things analyzed in exhaustive detail - to death, actually - Edward Snow's "A Study of Vermeer" is the book for you. If half of what Snow thinks is going on in these paintings is really there, then the mystery of Vermeer's low 30 plus lifetime production of paintings is answered. He was busy spending years planning each canvas to amaze and confound future art historians, critics, and english professors who take a fancy to his work, before ever picking up a brush. Who was Vermeer the man? You won't find it here. What historical, sociological or personal influences shaped his work? Except for brief passing mention of the "vanitas" not a clue can be found in this book. I award him 3 stars because he did motivate me to really, really look at these marvelous paintings to see what he (Snow) was talking about. Oh, and he credited a few of his students for their readings of the paintings during his course on Vermeer at Rice University, which he used in rewriting this expanded volume. Guess he couldn't figure out when the youngsters were serious or just pulling the old professor's leg.