Vermeer and Psychology in Art - Essay Example

155603 VERMEER AND PSYCHOLOGY IN ART Jan Vermeer belongs to the elite world of Dutch painting and its Golden Age. He was a great artist, who could draw beauty from limited subjects. He depicted Dutch life and usually created brilliant art from mundane day-to-day happenings. He never felt the necessity of looking for gorgeous beauty. His paintings belonged to the ordinary social life of Dutch people and he was part, which any other artist would have thought uneventful. He is also called the 'painter of light' because of his stunning capability of bringing light into canvas and make the creations a play of light and shadow. "Vermeer did not do a preparatory drawing to be filled in by color. The first stage of his paintings consists of a structure of clearly contrasting light and shade where form emerge without drawing," Arasse (1993, p.52). MISTRESS AND THE MAID http://essentialvermeer.20m.com/catalogue/mistress_and_maid.htm One of his celebrated paintings, Mistress and the Maid clearly expresses the suppressed motion and activity, where maid brings a letter to the already letter-writing mistress and both seem to be aware of the importance of incoming letter. The letter writer has stopped writing while gazing at the letter in maid's hand. It is a painting full of motion, activity, and both women are caught in mid-conversation. Vermeer, born in 1632, son of a silk merchant, had excess to the world of fashion and fine clothes and his paintings reflect this knowledge in a sophisticated and effective way. They grant opulence to the painting and its dcor. Exceptionally luminous figures, almost three dimensional against the dark background are highly coherent in their fashion and movements. If the mistress is showing the high fashion of the day of genteel families, maid, though representing a lower salaried class, is extremely neat, correctly attired and almost as attention-catching as the mistress in luminous yellow. It is not a mean feat, as maid is wearing almost a merging colour and she is pitted against the bright yellow full of life worn by a more beautiful woman. Still Vermeer does not fail in making them equally attractive. Many of his women were bright yellow and golden yellow. The cut and style of head dresses of those days was very different from styles of other countries. They are entirely Dutch styles of the day. Hair is kept simple without elaboration. In this painting, fashionable wardrobe helps to bring across the visual dialogue between the two women, while showing the difference in class, work and attitude. It is difficult to miss the intense psychological impact created by the just arrived letter. Vermeer is famous for using 'camera obscura' to view his subjects and present them in a moment of fluidity. MUSIC LESSON http://essentialvermeer.20m.com/catalogue/music_lesson.htm A famous painting of excellent composition, brilliant and uncommonly real foreground, with a double bass on the floor, Music Class reflects a tender moment between the pupil and music teacher. Some critics have mentioned that Vermeer might have immortalised love, pointing out the blue chair and untouched double bass on the floor; but this could be mere speculation. Painting catches a moment of arrested action as per the blurred reflection in the mirror. Most of Vermeer's painting colours show the costumes of rich Dutch merchant class in mid 17th century. After the execution of Charles I, Cromwell's administration was not a particular period of art's supremacy in England and France was plagued with internal troubles and hence, Holland had the centre stage for fashion in Europe and this has reflected many times in his paintings. The ebony framed mirror which reflects the girl from a rather impossible angle that cannot be noticed in her demeanour becomes the focal point of the painting. Vermeer, who had a special penchant for light and shadow display clearly gave more attention to that pleasure than to his subjects and it could be seen in both paintings that light has been used with 'palpable' force. The reflection in mirror catches the head, face, shoulders and the upper arms of the woman at the clavecin. The man with the cane is not reflected in the mirror and we see his profile looking at the pupil and this is the only painting of Vermeer where viewer can clearly see a reflection. Man is attired in elaborate and rich dressing gown. Young woman is caught while giving him a surreptitious and hesitating almost fragile look. Reflection in the mirror makes the entire painting so sensitive almost similar to the look the maid gives to the mistress in the other painting. Here it is uncertain; but maid's look has understanding, participation, and cooperation. "The mirror thus functions within The Music Lesson a revisionary double for the narrative of courtship hinted at in the figures of the man and the woman. The mirror alters their relationships, echoing without repeating what it sees. It eliminates an image of the listening man from its self-contained world while casting the artist, or his visual surrogate, in his place," Wolf (2001, p.206). Most of the women are wearing indoor garments, because Vermeer mostly painted interiors and hence, costumes are more comfortable. They are not highly socialising garments. Perhaps they changed from their heavy garments to simpler house dresses. The indoor dress usually is shaped like a jacket, open at the front and reached down the floor. Women wore a simpler coif or lace cap at home. Usually the house garment and cap both are richly trimmed with lace. The Mistress is wearing an exceptionally beautiful net on her hair trimmed with lace. In the Music Lesson we have to deduce that these garments are not only worn casually at home, but also are worn while receiving visitors and hence, are not simple retiring garments of the time. Pale yellow, bright red and black are used for the young pupil. Vermeer could always achieve poignancy in the scene by various skills like opulent dresses, luxuriant and authentic high fashioned garments, exceptional hair arrangements and luminous skins. . It has to be remembered that it was the Dutch high fashion, uniquely different from the rest of European countries. Sometimes a small decorative apron is worn over these dresses and they are suitable for receiving informal visitors. He represented every day life of the upper middle class families. He never aimed at spectacular, but was happy to paint every day life's mundane matters. Dutch hairstyles between 1630 and 1660 were different from any other European hairstyles of the period. The mistress has beautiful golden ringlets that frame her face naturally. He always used smashing cloth colours. All women usually wore some kind of head covering. Some of them also were wearing some kind of covering from cleavage. Most of the working women wore some kind neck clothing. Affluent women and ladies wore billowy, open wide hoods that could be seen from his other paintings. Old women, servants and maids wore tight fitting coifs mostly with hoods over them. Another peculiarity in those days was Dutch women wearing aprons, even though they are wearing rich garments and were not exactly working. http://www.kipar.org/baroque-costumes/costumes_female_focus.html Flemish gowns were popular in 17th century and bodices with front and side laces. They were considered to be highly fashionable among rich women. "It seems that some of the collared and open necked 'partlets' that are tucked into stays and bodices might be high necked smocks after all. Particularly those that are worn where the corset underneath is visible. The high necked smock was worn in the first half of the 17th c. notably the 1620s and 30s, but practical middle and working class fashions do not change that quickly" http://www.kipar.org/baroque-costumes/costumes_female_focus.html In Vermeer's days, the town of Delft was a rich town characterised by its city walls and fortifications. It is a historical town with flourishing trade links. It was politically well connected with the House of Orange and was a comfortable place for artistic pursuits. Netherlands though not threatened by radicals in any way, was touched by radical ideas that were raging everywhere in European continent. People were modern, fashionable and adventurous in their modes of dressing and were conscious of the social class they represent. Delft was full of canals, mills and its twenty-four towers lent it distinctive appearance. Canals assured busy transactions into and out of city. It also had a religious background and many wealthy Catholics lived there. "The political, economic and religious differences between the north and south had consequences for the development of art in both areas. In the southern provinces the church and the monarchy remained the main sources of artists' commissions; in the Northern provinces however, a free art market developed", Netta (pp. 67-68). This enabled artists to work without being commissioned in the way they liked and on subjects of their own choice. Even though the free market did not flourish well enough to ensure a livelihood, it was not totally ineffective either. Most of the artists like Vermeer had another main job for a living. Of all the Dutch artists of the period, Vermeer had the best way of translating his subjects into art. "And in his genre scenes, Vermeer would concentrate on what the mirror of The Music Lesson shows: a woman, under the gaze of the (absent) painter, in an interior. In this premonitory reflection, Vermeer has pruned away all superfluous, supplementary iconography. Through a musical theme caught in the mirror of art, he has declared painting to be a "cosa mentale," done "amoris causa," Arrasse (1993, p.38). Nothing much has been known about Vermeer other than a few facts that have been collected with great difficulty; but it is almost definitely established that he lived in the world of art, even without producing paintings. "Vermeer was an art dealer and connoisseur and, if the backgrounds of his paintings are taken as evidence, he owned many different kinds of pictures which included seascapes and landscapes as well as religious and mythological works," Wright (1976, p.7). What impresses most about his paintings is the way he used psychology while painting them. Music Lesson shows a tender connection between the man and woman and their psychological connection with one another. Mistress and the Maid is the picture of trust and comradery between the two. There is a very strong psychological bond between those two women and the painting is a narration of that understanding. "Vermeer is a psychologist of consciousness whose strategies for partitioning the private self from the social grow increasingly complexIn the Music Lesson the woman's girlish back masks a slyness her (slightly) blurred image in the glass discloses and conceals" Pops (1984, p.96). Both the paintings, even though there is nothing sad about them, sometimes look as though they are harbingers of sadness. There is a melancholia beyond the coy glances, understanding, trust and comfortable surroundings. Vermeer was capable of creating an unexplainable sadness in his paintings. "The visible world appears doubly encompassed by a watchful maternal aura, to be sure, but also by an impersonal, disembodied consciousness brooding on vacancy and the slow, imperceptible passing of what seems unchanging," Snow (1994, p.116). Both the paintings are masterpieces by their own right and are mysterious. They are the fashion statements of Dutch fashion of the day and Vermeer never forgot any accessory of women fashion and style and this could be deduced from his various paintings. Because of the ordinariness of the subjects, it is very easy to see the reality and possibility of all his paintings. There is no doubt a strong connection between the two paintings, social, psychological and circumstantial. But there are dissimilarities too. Both paintings are full of past, present and future and are complete stories by their own right. Vermeer's every painting has a fluent story of its own. BIBLIOGRAPHY: 1. Arasse, Daniel (1993), Vermeer, Princeton University Press. 2. Blankert, Albert, Vermeer, Granada, London. 3. Goldscheider, Ludwig (1958), Jan Vermeer, Phaidon Press, London. 4. Gowing, Lawrence, Vermeer, Faber and Faber, London. 5. Hertel, Christiane (1986), Vermeer, Cambridge University Press. 6. Netta, Irene (2004), Vermeer's World, Prestel, London. 7. Pops, Martin (1984), Vermeer, Consciousness and the Chamber of Being, Umi Research Press, Michigan. 8. Snow, Edward (1984), A Study of Vermeer, University of California Press. 9. Wright, Christopher (1976), Vermeer, Oresko Books Ltd., London. 10. Wolf, Bryan Jay (2001), Vermeer and the Invention of Seeing, University of Chicago Press. ONLINE SOURCES: 1. http://www.kipar.org/baroque-costumes/costumes_vermeer_dress.html 2. http://www.kipar.org/baroque-costumes/images/vermeer/color_f9.jpg 3. http://www.kipar.org/baroque-costumes/costumes_female_focus.html 4. http://essentialvermeer.20m.com/catalogue/music_lesson.htm 5. http://essentialvermeer.20m.com/catalogue/mistress_and_maid.htm 6. Read More