Vermeer: The Greatest Exhibition

Writers: David Bickerstaff and Phil Grabsky

Director: David Bickerstaff

Hailed as a “once in a lifetime” experience, the Vermeer exhibition, currently at the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, is the art world’s hot ticket. While the event has sold out, in their latest film, Exhibition On Screen have granted us access all areas. Vermeer: The Greatest Exhibition looks not only on the paintings, but at the research and conservation underpinning what we see in the gallery.

The documentary starts by emphasising how much of a big deal this exhibition is: the retrospective brings together 28 works out of the 37 Vermeer is known to have painted. Due to the scale and cost, involving galleries and museums from around the world, the chance of seeing these paintings again in one place, is extremely unlikely.

Exhibition On Screen applies its usual format points (close-ups of the art and interview footage on the artist), but what is different here is that we know little about Vermeer’s life, there are no letters, no diaries. In the absence of biography, all we have to go on is the art. The documentary pivots, and leans into the visual aspect.

The film’s privileged viewpoint gives us detailed readings of Vermeer’s work. The unhurried way in which the camera surveys the paintings, is entirely appropriate for an artist dealing in quietness and subtlety. There is an understanding that Vermeer’s paintings don’t demand our attention, they ask for our time. The contributors (including staff from the Rijksmuseum itself) frame Vermeer as an innovator. In Girl Reading a Letter at an Open Window (c.1657-58) Vermeer moves away from his early religious paintings to find his niche: the interior; both domestic space and psychological intent. Vermeer makes the audience the voyeur, we step into a freeze frame, a scene interrupted.

Vermeer is compared to a film director and it’s not hard to see why. But he captures unassuming moments that wouldn’t necessarily get onto the film poster. A milkmaid makes pudding; a wealthy woman enthusiastically pens a letter while her maid stares out of the window. They read like film stills. Painted by Vermeer, these everyday scenes become ethereal.

The technicality of Vermeer is also represented: his application of light in Girl with a Pearl Earring (1664-67), is discussed. How it settles on the skin, on the eponymous pearl earring. The lustre is different for both, and Vermeer’s painstaking process results in a finish where you struggle to see the brush strokes. But as we work our way through the gallery, it is the enormity of Vermeer’s vision that resonates. Recording the mundane and finding psychological depth.

Exhibition On Screen’s aim to make art accessible comes into its own here. With most of us unable to experience the exhibition in real life, EOS becomes our indispensable tour guide, offering an untrammelled view of the gallery spaces, along with fresh insight and perspective on Vermeer. Exhibition on Screen have not only removed the barriers to this incredible show, but their film, crucially, bears witness to the sheer effort it took to bring it together.

Vermeer: The Greatest Exhibition is in UK cinemas from 18 April.