An exhibition of miniature paintings titled “Contemplating Vermeer” opens at the Sarasota Museum of Art on November 17. SAM Executive Director Virginia Shearer thinks this show will truly blow people’s minds.

Courtesy of Sarasota Museum of Art

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Sarasota Museum of Art

“I’m a museum junkie, too,” Shearer said. “I’m the kind of person who gets scared of missing out when I find out the big Monet exhibition is at the National Gallery, and I’ll be very, very sad if I can’t make it to DC. That’s what this exhibition, ‘Contemplating Vermeer’, is all about.”

In the summer of 2023, the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam hosted a monumental exhibition of Johannes Vermeer’s masterpieces. The museum collected and exhibited 28 of the 35 paintings attributed to the enigmatic Dutch painter.

Shearer was unable to attend.

“People were flying here from all over the world,” Shearer recalls. “It was impossible to get tickets and they were going to see, among others, ‘Girl with a Pearl Earring’, probably our most famous Vermeer. This group of visitors included a wonderful artist named Joe Fig.

Courtesy of Sarasota Museum of Art and Artist Joe Fig.

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Sarasota Museum of Art

Author of the acclaimed books “Inside the Painter’s Studio” and “Inside the Artist’s Studio,” Fig is the Department Chair of both the Fine Arts and Visual Studies programs at the Ringling College of Art and Design. His work has been exhibited nationally and internationally and is featured in numerous museums, including the Fogg Museum of Art, Chazen Museum of Art, Norton Museum of Art, New Museum of Contemporary Art, and the Toledo Museum of Art. She received her BFA and MFA from the New York School of Visual Arts and is represented by Cristin Tierney Gallery in New York.

“He is an incredibly talented painter who paints miniatures,” Shearer continued. “Extremely realistic, highly detailed images of people looking at art. “He is really interested in capturing the looks, the visitors, the postures of the people, the crowds around the works of art, but he is also interested in getting the jewels, the masterpieces, captured in miniature in his paintings.”

Joe Fig created 16 new paintings based on his visit to this historic exhibition. In these works, premiered in the “Contemplating Vermeer” section, Fig not only pays homage to the 17th-century painter’s mastery of light, color and verisimilitude, but also reflects on the aesthetic experience in the Rijksmuseum galleries. Expanding on the decade-long Contemplation series, it explores how people interact with or contemplate works of art in public spaces by capturing their subjects (artworks and their audiences) and their environments.

Courtesy of the Sarasota Museum of Art and artist Joe Fig.

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Sarasota Museum of Art

“The exhibition is going to be really fun because we’re going to be looking at Joe Fig’s paintings of people looking at Vermeer in the galleries, so it’s like creating a painting in the galleries.”

Although Fig’s paintings resemble snapshots of the things he observes, they are the result of a layered artistic process that involves numerous formal artistic decisions.

He begins by examining individual works of art and the audiences who engage deeply with them. In addition to the characteristics of the place, it focuses on people’s body language, clothes (especially colors and patterns), works and their proximity to each other.

Fig photographs these moments as source material, then digitally reconstructs the images in his studio; he selects and repositions figures, adjusts scale, combines different scenes, and fine-tunes lighting and color. The final compositions, meticulously created in oil paint, reflect Fig’s reflections on the act of looking, both his own and that of others. Each work distills what it means to be a painter.

With his keen eye for detail, Fig both reflects on Vermeer and invites viewers to see the Dutch master’s legacy through a new artistic lens. His work encourages people to examine their own acts of seeing, while allowing them to marvel at his uncanny realism. It increases their awareness of their role as viewers, whether it be to be deceived, fascinated, or absorbed by the art.

His paintings serve as a contemplation of how we encounter art, drawing us into a long tradition of those who have remained in awe of Vermeer’s works before his time.

This exhibition is organized by the Sarasota Museum of Art at Ringling College of Art and Design and curated by Sarasota Art Museum senior curator Rangsook Yoon, Ph.D. doing.

The exhibition will last until April 13, 2025.

Courtesy of Sarasota Museum of Art and Artist Joe Fig.

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Sarasota Museum of Art

MORE INFORMATION:

Johannes Vermeer was born on October 31, 1632 and died on December 15, 1675, at the age of 43.

After his death, he fell into oblivion until he was rediscovered in the 19th century by the German art historian Gustav Friedrich Waagen and the French journalist and art critic Théophile Thoré-Bürger. Vermeer is now considered one of the greatest painters of the Dutch Golden Age.

Courtesy of Sarasota Museum of Art and Artist Joe Fig.

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Sarasota Museum of Art

Vermeer worked slowly and may have used the camera obscura, a technique in which images are projected onto a wall in a darkened studio through a hole in a curtain or door. (See “Vermeer and the Camera Obscura” by Philip Steadman (2-17-2011).)

Vermeer used very expensive pigments that worked almost exclusively in oils.

He is especially known for his masterful use and use of light in his paintings. Vermeer placed almost all of his paintings in two small rooms of his Delft house (this room suited his darkroom technique). Thus, the same furniture and decorations appear in various configurations in his paintings.

Courtesy of Sarasota Museum of Art and Artist Joe Fig

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Sarasota Museum of Art

Vermeer’s painting “Girl with a Pearl Earring” (1665), located in the Mauritshuis museum in The Hague, is the artist’s most well-known masterpiece. According to art experts, the girl’s eyes are one of the most interesting aspects of the work because they focus on the observer in a humorous and insightful way.

Vermeer’s “The Lace Maker” (1669), housed in the Louvre in Paris, is the smallest work of art, measuring 9.6 x 8.3 inches.

Next in the list of Vermeers’ most popular and acclaimed paintings is a painting titled “The Painter in His Studio” or “The Allegory of Painting”. Vermeer liked this work so much that he refused to part with it throughout his life, despite his chronic financial difficulties. This work of art, which is owned by the Republic of Austria, is exhibited in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.

There are several Vermeers in the United States. Five of them are on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (“A Sleeping Maid”, “Allegory of Faith”, “The Study of a Young Woman”, “Woman with a Lute”, and “Young Woman with a Jug of Water”), three are part of the Frick Collection (” “The Girl Interrupted in Her Music”, “The Lady and the Maid” and “The Clerk and the Laughing Girl”), “A Young Woman Sitting in the Virgins” are in the Leiden Collection, and four are in the National Gallery in Washington, DC, Department of Art (“A Woman Who Writes”). Girl with the Flute”, “The Girl with the Red Riding Hood” and “The Woman Holding the Balance”).

Courtesy of Sarasota Museum of Art and Artist Joe Fig

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Sarasota Museum of Art

“The Concert” was once part of the permanent collection of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, but the painting was stolen in 1990, a robbery that included many valuable and important works, including Rembrandt’s “A Lady and a Gentleman.” has not been seen since. Black”, “Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man” and the rare seascape “Christ in a Storm on the Sea of ​​Galilee” and Edouard Manet’s painting “Chez Tortoni”.

In 2004, Vermeer’s “Young Woman Seated at the Virginals” sold for $39.6 million at Sothebys to an anonymous telephone bidder; this was a 17th century record.^he The fifth highest price paid for a Dutch painter of the 19th century and an old master. This was the first Vermeer to come up for sale at auction in over 80 years. This is the only Vermeer believed to be in private hands.

Virginia Shearer serves as executive director of the Ringling College of Art and Design Sarasota Museum of Art. He previously oversaw all areas of the High Museum’s education department, where he was one of six members of the management team who set strategic priorities for the museum. He holds a bachelor’s degree in humanities from Florida State University and a master’s degree in museum education from George Washington University. He is also a former participant in the Getty Leadership Institute program and the Getty’s training program for museum leaders, and also served as southeast regional director for the museum education division of the National Association for Art Education.

Courtesy of Sarasota Museum of Art and Artist Joe Fig

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Sarasota Museum of Art

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