Thursday, October 01, 2009

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.

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