Customer Reviews

A Study of Vermeer, Revised and Enlarged edition

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

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".

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

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.

In early adolescence I fell in love with a young girl who inhabited a picture frame in the corridors of our high school.Our gazes were mutually netted. In 1982, whilst touring Holland, I detoured to den Hague to renew that engagement, only to see in her stead a plaque indicating she was on loan to a Texan museum for 12 months.But it's some consolation to encounter Edward Snow's study of Vermeer, whose cover is adorned by that image of my adoration. Even better, Snow is an adept reader of Vermeer's vision of inner equilibrium and imperturbable calm. Lawrence Gowing provided my 1960's art college template, but I think no serious admirer now should overlook this book. The subtlety of thought and feeling in Vermeer has found appropriate eloquence. Vermeer's 'hermetic inwardness','magical silence', his 'unity of being as structured by perception', his contemplation of women caught in precious domestic moments of equanimity & pleasure in the happiness of their mere visibility, are given appropriately intimate treatment. There are telling parallels made with Degas's pursuit of feminine imagery. And Snow isn't averse to pointing out Vermeer's 'failures', which, he argues, reflects the artist's proclivity for negative reflection.' I'm sorry I can't enthuse over the recent film,'Girl With A Glass Earring'. In spite of the set pieces, and the attractiveness of the actors; the enigmas of Vermeer remain opaque.The book, however, is an absolute master stroke. For more on art visit>rodmoss.com