Edition of 14 copies
9” x 14” x 2.5” closed; 72.5” x 14” open
2022
In 2018 in Madison, Wisconsin I chanced to be a houseguest of a computer engineer who thought I might be interested in his research regarding art history. He was right. But my four year attempt to convey the contributions of William Sethares (University of Wisconsin, Madison) and his co-author Richard Johnson (Cornell University) to computational art history expanded beyond its original scope. Since I was going to make sixteen drawings of computer files mapping the raw canvas used by the Dutch genre painter Vermeer, why not address the artist’s complete oeuvre and artistic practice? In doing so, I was surprised to learn that Vermeer left nothing to chance in his paintings. Every prop and object on the wall, table or floor had a role to play in conveying meaning. Commentators have described my own editions as puzzles to work out. Vermeer was a master of emblematic puzzles.
Though I had never imagined creating a piece about Vermeer’s work, I have been a fan since middle school after visiting the National Gallery of Art and bringing home a poster of “Girl in the Red Hat” for my bedroom wall. I was also acquainted with “The Concert,” later stolen from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, accessible to me from the Boston suburbs. I felt no need to analyze what Vermeer wanted to communicate. I just enjoyed the play of light and color, the textiles and wooden furnishings, and the black and white tiled floors.
This mirrored my contemporaneous experiences of Calder, Kandinsky and other abstract artists in the museums of Boston, New York and Washington, not to mention my grandmother’s own abstract work, hanging on our wall. I have always loved colorful abstraction. But my own art process entails the communication of knowledge; I willingly harness chance, but I do not permit myself to engage in the purely abstract. WeaVermeer provided me with the opportunity to appear to make abstract, colorful art, though in actuality it is tied to facts, or numbers: thread counts per square centimeter of woven linen converted into color with an algorithm. What appears abstract is not always so. There are works by Hilma af Klint and Kandinsky that codify spiritual ideas.
Vermeer signed his work IV Meer. His father was a silk weaver and art dealer who exhibited paintings in the tavern he ran below the family apartment in Delft. The researchers analyzed the weaves of thirty-four Vermeer canvases, allowing us to see that some paintings were cut out of the same rolls of raw canvas. The tavern patrons of Vermeer’s childhood and in his paintings raised their tankards, and I am toasting collaborations between scientists and art historians which help us learn more about art, who made it and how. This explains the title.
Description of the object:
WeaVermeer resembles a cloth caddy with pockets for painter’s brushes or artisan’s tools which rolls up and closes with a cloth tie. The caddy is created out of European raw linen painters’ canvas, appropriate for a piece focused on the counting of the threads in Vermeer’s raw canvases. This work was produced in an edition of fourteen copies, as the Roman numerals I and IV figure in the sum of Vermeer’s attributed canvases (34) and in his signature IV Meer. And there are 14 paintings that have relationships to each other – rollmates cut from the same cloth.
At right, the “gallery” display:
The white outlines of the 16 Vermeer canvases with weave matches recall both tailor’s chalk and correction fluid. The tailor’s chalk concept highlights artists’ use of dressmaker dummies with draped, sized (cloth was dipped in glue or other sizing and hardened) or pinned fabric to alleviate excessive posing of subjects in uncomfortable, cold or inhospitable artists’ studios. Tailors and artists make marks not visible in the final work. There is evidence of sketching underneath Vermeer’s paintings in the preparatory stage, which included marks to aid perspective.
The use of correction fluid relates to elements of paintings that Vermeer changed, and painted over (known as a pentimento, or pentimenti in the plural, which means a regret in Italian). This sort of forensic work examining the under paintings is a reason the museums took the x-rays in the first place. At a later date, the computer scientists repurposed the scans in order to count the threads, using magnifying glasses.
The series of 16 color pencil preparatory drawings were scanned and printed on canvas, subsequently cut out and glued to archival museum conservation board. The blue rubber stamp number on the back of the canvases and on the linen caddy correspond to the Liedtke index for Vermeer’s works on canvas and panel. Archival picture wire with rust-proof snap is attached to the back of each of the 16 mini-canvases which are displayed as eight diptychs rendering the eight known weave matches. They are diptychs because Vermeer cut them from the same roll of canvas (before he painted upon them). Alternatively, the diptychs may be stored in the caddy pockets below.
The pockets of the caddy are formed with faux pearl pins: from the left, a hand blown vintage glass pearl button from Venice, a real pearl from South Asia and a modern fake pearl from Italy. A linen string attached to the first pin represents the pin holes discovered in the x-rays which show where Vermeer attached string to nails in order to mark the perspective for his under-drawings. The string would first be coated with chalk, then pulled taut and plucked to transfer the line to the canvas. Artists wouldn’t necessarily be able to afford large pearls for their models, so they frequently used oversized blown glass pearls from Venice in their paintings. The smaller, real pearls came from South Asia.
The palette was chosen for conceptual reasons relating to where and what Vermeer painted. Orange stands in for the House of Orange, the royal Protestant family which ruled The Netherlands. The Prince of Orange chose to live in Delft, where Vermeer lived, so I utilized Delft blue as well as ultramarine, an expensive pigment Vermeer was fortunate to have access to. Lead-tin yellow recalls the frequent prop of the yellow jacket, and light blue for a similar jacket. I began with light yellow paper – Vermeer used tinted canvases.
Where the thread count is higher, more dense per centimeter, the color is warm – a deeper orangey red. Where the thread count is lower, or less dense per centimeter, the color is cool – represented by the darkest blue.
I wondered why some of the weave maps seemed to have more regular lines that matched up with the others, and why others seemed much more glitchy or crude. The computer scientists explained that this can result from whether the two paintings from a single canvas roll match up along the weft threads or the warp threads.
First the warp threads are set up, exceedingly long parallel threads on a loom. Apparently these threads were of higher quality and regularity, tending to create more consistency in terms of how many threads ended up in a square centimeter. The weft threads, woven next from right to left and back, were of less regular quality to begin with, and were then squished together with more or less pressure by the heddle. With more variables, the wefts show more variation in the final thread count per centimeter. So if the weave match is on the weft threads, it is less obvious in terms of being a continuous pattern from one canvas to its roll-mate cut out beside it.
At left, the “letter rack” area:
The last area of the edition to be unfolded, at left, represents the part of an artist’s studio in Vermeer’s time with prints and maps and props and source materials scattered about. These materials are slotted into a faux letter rack. Vermeer adapted his source material such as maps by changing the scale of the map depending on the composition. The maps utilized by Vermeer and others were chosen for very specific reasons – nothing was left to chance. Allegory, history or thematic content was carefully conveyed through the material culture in each painting.
Two “letters” in the letter rack signify both letters and music as frequent motifs in Vermeer’s paintings. Both have faux seals (with acrylic paint) impressed with an antique Indian seal ring purchased in India. One letter opens with “Dear reader” and features the text above that opens this description. It is a summary colophon within the work to aid viewers should they immediately want to learn the title, its meaning, and the genesis of the work.
The second sealed “letter” unfolds to display a famous madrigal by Italian composer Monteverdi titled “Cruda Amarilli” photographed at Bologna’s Music Museum. Music figures prominently in Vermeer paintings, but this specific piece was chosen because of its connection to the renowned Dutch art collector (and amateur musician) Huygens. This collector was one of the earliest people on record to recommend Vermeer’s work; he encouraged other collectors to visit Vermeer’s studio. It is also known that Huygens saw Monteverdi perform in Venice. Being such a prominent madrigal, it seemed a fitting soundtrack for this piece, together with folk music from public houses such as the one Vermeer’s father owned, lived above and sold art in. The official, condoned Protestant music of Vermeer’s time highly contrasted with the love songs of madrigals and local popular songs.
The map nestled behind the letter rack was photographed at Bologna’s University Museum. It was printed by the premier Dutch cartographer Blaeu, and shows a detail with Vermeer’s hometown of Delft. While maps are important elements within paintings of Vermeer’s time, this map does double duty; it has an index of Vermeer’s paintings on the back, known as the Liedtke index, and the institution where each painting lives. WeaVermeer showcases all of his catalogued paintings on canvas and panel, not just the ones with weave matches, necessitating a complete index close at hand.
Next to and behind the map, twenty black and white hand-silkscreened images on white European starched linen slot into the faux letter rack. Their index number is hand-stamped on the back. These prints mimic the x-rays of the 20 Vermeer canvases that do not have any rollmates, or weave matches with other paintings. The original x-rays are interesting in that they are fairly hard to read – many have the wooden canvas stretchers blocking the image. Seeing Vermeer paintings as x-rays highlights the essential characteristics of light in the paintings. It usually comes from a window casement at left: bright white flecks of starched linen collars and letters, or white spots shining on pearls, glasses, and pitchers. The rough scans in black and white transform the figures, now barely recognizable, into new people.
One blank canvas, with the number 16, slots into the rack at bottom. This number refers to the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum’s “The Concert” which was stolen in 1990. Sixteen is also significant regarding the inventory of Vermeer’s studio (and house) after his death; there were 10 prepared blank canvases and 6 prepared blank panels =16 total.
Also in the inventory, two easels were left in his studio after death. This indicates perhaps that Vermeer worked on multiple paintings at once. Liedtke numbers for two paintings on wood panel are written on two wooden easels left behind in my grandmother Carmen Z. Simpkins studio (which she used for her miniature paintings). One of the paintings on panel, “Girl with a Flute” is now attributed to Vermeer’s studio, as opposed to Vermeer. According to the written record, he is not known to have assistants or students but it is certainly possible that a daughter was assisting and painting in his studio. The changing of the National Gallery of Art attribution centers on the methodology of the various layers of paint.
A bone ring attached next to the letter rack (bone black was another pigment Vermeer was known to have used) is both something common in a sewing kit or domestic environment but also emblematic of the contemporary European trade in Ivory and enslaved people that created the wealth to collect art.
What can be learned from this digital humanities collaboration?
The information from the weave maps is an additional tool to use together with other aspects of art historians’ analysis. It can help with attribution. When two or more paintings were cut from the same cloth, it is possible to establish a painting as genuine, as happened recently with a Rubens painting. It turned out that a canvas of uncertain attribution was actually part of a triptych by the Flemish master.
Beyond offering additional information regarding attribution, in Vermeer’s oeuvre a case may be made for establishing two paintings as a pendant pair. In one case, the paintings remained together, and are still hung one on top of another.
Angelonium 