Last night I remembered why I hated being an English major.
We watched a special on Vermeer, easily my favorite painter. Instead of showing the paintings or describing the painter’s techniques, the special focused on interviewing art critics.
The art critics focused on hypothesizing absurd, multi-syllabic theories on What Vermeer Really Meant to Say in His Paintings, including detailed explanations of the metaphoric potential lurking beneath the strong light and meticulous fabrics.
Like translators, critics must be paid by the word: nothing else excuses this sort of drivel. Why labor so intensely to ascribe metaphor and allegory to paintings whose genius is to capture the preciousness of what simply is?
Only two of Vermeer’s paintings rely on metaphor for their full meaning. One failed because it was over-contrived (http://www.1st-art-gallery.com/thumbnail/117231/1/Allegory-Of-The-Faith.jpg); the other is one of the loveliest of Vermeer’s portfolio (http://www.fineartprintsondemand.com/artists/vermeer/woman_holding_a_balance-400.jpg). Woman Holding a Balance is perfect because the metaphor is lucid—a delicate linking, as with a spider’s thread, between the pregnant woman holding an empty balance in preparation for her household chores and the painting behind her of the Final Judgment. If the metaphor were as complex as art critics like to think, the painting would feel overwrought. It would tell the viewer what to think, not invite him to muse on the intersection between judgment and Judgment, unborn life and incomplete death, hope and dread in the face of the unknown.
Only one of Vermeer’s paintings is even mysterious—and not because it is laden with layers of meaning, but because it has none. Girl with a Pearl Earring is just a face, contextless (http://static.squidoo.com/resize/squidoo_images/-1/draft_lens2291239module12619353photo_1226772823parel.jpg).
It is a beautiful and interesting face. But the viewer can only appreciate it, not invest it with meanings it does not contain.
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