An exhibition of miniature paintings titled “Contemplating Vermeer” will open Nov. 17 at the Sarasota Museum of Art. SAM Executive Director Virginia Shearer believes this program will really blow people away.

Courtesy of the Sarasota Museum of Art

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Sarasota Museum of Art

“I’m a museum junkie myself,” Shearer said. “I’m the kind of person who is afraid of missing out when I find out that the big Monet exhibition is at the National Gallery, and if I can’t go to DC, I feel super, super sad. “This exhibition, ‘Contemplating Vermeer,’ is about that.”

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

Shearer was unable to attend.

“People flew in from all over the world,” says Shearer. “It was impossible to get tickets and they were going to see ‘Girl with a Pearl Earring’, which is probably our most famous Vermeer, among others. Among that group of visitors was a wonderful artist named Joe Fig.”

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

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Sarasota Museum of Art

The author of the acclaimed books “Inside the Painter’s Studio” and “Inside the Artist’s Studio,” Fig is department chair of the Fine Arts and Visual Studies programs at Ringling College of Art and Design. His work has been exhibited nationally and internationally and is in numerous museums, including the Fogg Museum of Art, the Chazen Museum of Art, the Norton Museum of Art, the New Museum of Contemporary Art, and the Toledo Museum of Art. inter alia. He earned his BFA and MFA from the School of Visual Arts in New York and is represented by Cristin Tierney Gallery, New York.

“He is an incredibly talented painter who paints in miniature,” Shearer continued. “Very realistic and very detailed images of people looking at works of art. “He is really interested in capturing the gaze, the visitors, the postures of people, the way people crowd around works of art, but also in capturing those gems, those masterpieces captured in miniature within his paintings.” .

From his own visit to this historic exhibition, Joe Fig created 16 new paintings. In these works, which premiere in “Contemplating Vermeer,” Fig not only pays tribute to the 17th-century painter’s mastery of light, color and verisimilitude, but also reflects on the aesthetic experience in the galleries of the Rijksmuseum. Expanding on her decade-long Contemplation series, she captures her subjects (the artworks and their viewers) and their surroundings, exploring how people interact with or contemplate artworks in public spaces.

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

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Sarasota Museum of Art

“The exhibition will be really fun because we will be in the galleries looking at Joe Fig’s paintings of people looking at Vermeer, so we almost created a painting in the galleries.”

Although Fig’s paintings may resemble snapshots of what he observed, they are the result of a layered artistic process involving numerous formal artistic decisions.

It begins by studying individual works of art and the viewers who are deeply absorbed in them. It focuses on people’s body language, clothing (particularly colors and patterns), and proximity to the works and each other, as well as the specificities of the space.

Fig photographs these moments as source material and then digitally reconfigures the images in his studio: selecting and repositioning figures, adjusting scale, combining different scenes, and adjusting lighting and color. The final compositions, meticulously executed in oil, reflect Fig’s contemplation of the act of looking, both his own and that of others. Each work distills what it means to be a painter.

With great attention to detail, Fig contemplates Vermeer and invites viewers to see the Dutch master’s legacy through a new artistic lens. His work allows people to marvel at its astonishing realism, while also prompting them to examine their own act of seeing. It increases your awareness of your role as viewers, whether you seek to be fooled, captivated, or carried away by the art.

Because his paintings serve as a contemplative reflection on how we encounter art, they introduce us to a long tradition of those who have been amazed by Vermeer’s work.

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

The exhibition will be open until April 13, 2025.

Courtesy of the 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 at the age of 43 on December 15, 1675.

After his death, it fell into oblivion until the 19th century, when it was rediscovered 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 the Sarasota Museum of Art and artist Joe Fig.

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Sarasota Museum of Art

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

Vermeer used very expensive pigments and worked almost exclusively in oil.

He is especially known for his masterful management and use of light in his paintings. Vermeer placed almost all of his paintings in two small rooms in his Delft house (which would have housed his camera obscura technique). Thus, the same furniture and decorations appear in his paintings in a variety of configurations.

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

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Sarasota Museum of Art

Vermeer’s “Girl with a Pearl Earring” (1665), housed in the Mauritshuis museum in The Hague, is the artist’s best-known masterpiece. According to art experts, the girl’s eyes are one of the most intriguing aspects of the work, as they focus on the observer in a fun and anticipatory way.

Located in the Louvre in Paris, Vermeer’s “The Lacemaker” (1669) is his smallest work of art, measuring 9.6 by 8.3 inches.

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

Several Vermeers are located in the United States. Five are on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (“A Sleeping Maiden,” “Allegory of Faith,” “Study of a Young Woman,” “Woman with a Lute,” and “Young Woman with a Jug of Water”), three are part of the Frick Collection (“Girl Interrupted at Her Music,” “Mistress and Maid,” and “Officer and Laughing Girl”), “A Young Woman Seated at the Virginals” is in the Leiden Collection, and four are in the Gallery National. of Art in Washington DC (“A Lady Writing”, “Girl with a Flute”, “Girl with a Red Hat” and “Woman Holding a Scale”).

Courtesy of the 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 and has not been seen since that theft, which included other valuable and important works, including “A Lady and a Gentleman.” by Rembrandt. in black”, “Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man” and the rare seascape “Christ in the Storm on the Sea of ​​Galilee” and “Chez Tortoni” by Edouard Manet.

In 2004, Vermeer’s “Girl Seated at the Virginals” was sold at Sotheby’s to an anonymous telephone bidder for $39.6 million, a record for the 17^th 19th century Dutch painter and the fifth highest price ever paid for an Old Master. It was the first Vermeer to come up for sale at auction in more than 80 years. It is the only Vermeer believed to be in private hands.

Virginia Shearer serves as executive director of the Sarasota Museum of Art at Ringling College of Art and Design. He previously oversaw all areas of the High Museum’s education department, where he was one of six members of an executive team that established strategic priorities for the museum. He holds a bachelor’s degree in liberal arts from Florida State University and a master’s degree in museum education from George Washington University. She also previously participated in the Getty Leadership Institute program and the Getty educational program for museum leaders, and also served as the Southeast Regional Director of the Museum Education Division of the National Art Education Association.

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

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Sarasota Museum of Art

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