The Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam was catapulted into the highlight early final 12 months when it hosted an exhibition dedicated to Dutch Golden Age painter Johannes Vermeer. Incorporating 28 of the artist’s 37 attributed work held internationally for a once-in-a-lifetime reunion, the crowd-conscious museum discovered itself unable to fulfill the worldwide demand for attendance and offered out of tickets inside days of Vermeer’s public debut. This predicament opened up a singular ticket resale market on eBay, the place single entry passes have been marked-up for upwards of $2,000.
Among the many fortunate few who attended Vermeer on the Rijksmuseum was artist and professor Joe Fig, who made use of eBay resales to go to the present together with his 19-year-old son and determined to immortalize the expertise by way of his personal apply. Fig’s Vermeer Contemplations (2024), now on view on the Sarasota Artwork Museum in Florida by way of mid-April, is a collection of 16 contemplative oil work capturing museum attendees partaking with the Dutch grasp’s work.
Joe Fig’s son makes a cameo look in “Vermeer: The Woman with a Pearl Necklace/Rijksmuseum” (2023)
“The people I’m looking at are not the ones who just take out their phone to take selfies,” Fig stated in an interview with Hyperallergic, explaining that he was the one together with his telephone out to seize attendees in motion.
“As an artist, when we’re fortunate enough to have work at a museum or a gallery, we just want people to take the time to appreciate the work,” he continued. “So I’m honoring those who were really giving a deep thought and respect to the works, really looking at them.”
Even with the fervor across the exhibition, Fig famous that the museum did a very good job with curating for crowd management contemplating the modest scale of Vermeer’s work compared to the frenzied response they garnered. He informed Hyperallergic that he opted to color his collection at a smaller scale to evoke the intimacy elicited from Vermeer’s output, additionally nodding to the meta nature of inviting his personal viewers to take a more in-depth have a look at compositions of museum guests throughout their very own up-close contemplations of the masterpieces earlier than them.
Joe Fig, “Vermeer: Girl with a Red Hat and Girl with a Flute/Rijksmuseum” (2023) oil on linen mounted on MDF board, 7 1/2 x 10 inches (19.1 x 25.4 cm)
Course of-wise, Fig blends all of his snapshots on Photoshop to develop the right composition that permits for the Vermeer work to stay principally seen, but in addition in concord with the assortment of viewers within the frames. Usually, a few of the Vermeer works are too minuscule for Fig’s portray surfaces measuring 15 inches large at most, so he paints viewers from the torso up so as to seize some likeness in his renditions of the framed works on the museum’s wealthy, jewel-toned partitions.
“In some of these paintings, the heads of the Vermeer figures are smaller than the head of a pencil eraser,” Fig defined. “With sorting out the composition on Photoshop, I’m able to have the fun of adding painterly flourishes here and there. Even though they’re highly detailed works, this isn’t a photorealistic series — especially in that I’m making paintings of paintings.”
Joe Fig, “Vermeer: Woman Holding a Balance/Rijksmuseum” (2023), oil on linen mounted on MDF board, 13 1/2 x 14 1/2 inches (34.3 x 36.8 cm)
In Fig’s rendition of individuals admiring Vermeer’s “Woman Holding a Balance” (1662–1663), he included the backs of a “particularly adorable” older couple holding fingers whereas admiring the work.
“I was definitely keeping an eye on them, and then of course the woman had the red jacket with a diagonal red bag strap across her back, which compositionally cuts and leans into the painting and parallels her body language,” he stated.
Related interactions between the viewers and paintings are celebrated all through the collection, together with Fig’s rendering of a blonde museum attendee rising from the underside nook of the portray to see on the determine in Vermeer’s “The Lacemaker” (1669–1670) as if her by way of a small window.
And in that, the viewers itself turns into the paintings — not in contrast to Vermeer’s personal propensity for capturing day by day life in his personal apply.
In response to Hyperallergic‘s inquiry about a potential contemplation series centering visitors at the Sarasota Art Museum engaging with Fig’s Considering Vermeer exhibition, the artist merely chuckled and stated he would have to consider it.
Joe Fig, “Vermeer: The Lacemaker/Rijksmuseum” (2024), oil on linen mounted on MDF board, 7 1/2 x 9 inches (19.1 x 22.9 cm)
Joe Fig, “Vermeer: Girl with a Pearl Earring/Mauritshuis” (2023), oil on linen mounted on MDF board, 13 x 15 3/4 inches (33 x 40 cm)
**Fig famous that “Girl with a Pearl Earring” had been returned to Mauritshuis on the Hague by the point he and his son made it to the exhibition, so the pair took the prepare over to go to the house museum and admire the work in its lavish digs.
Joe Fig, “Vermeer: Mistress and Maid/Rijksmuseum” (2023), oil on linen mounted on MDF board, 11 1/2 x 9 1/4 inches (29.2 x 23.5 cm)
