Vermeer v. Watteau at the Metropolitan




Very complex questions of preference. At the most abstract becoming questions almost or even of morality.

Also Robert Frank
Vermeer has always bothered me. I assumed he used a camera obscura but the work's famous "photographic" qualities are after all mechanical qualities, and his sensibility is manifest in a sort of estheticized mechanically produced affect. It's not the technique that's the problem. Photography is a technology, soft focus is a trick, producing a reflexive response. Vermeer is a great painter that's not the issue.