The recent trend of selfie-friendly exhibits and immersive experiences with the great masters is discouraging for the museum lover who’d simply like a quiet moment to sit and appreciate a favorite work of art. Suzanne Raes’ Close to Vermeer documents the Rijkmuseum’s preparation for an exhibit that brings together more works by Dutch master Johannes Vermeer than ever assembled under one roof before. Obviously, it’s not as good as being there, but this gripping film lives up to its title, immersing you in art without resorting to kitschy spectacle.
Cinematographer Victor Horstink even situates the film’s characters into shallow-focus compositions that may be as close as you can get to the Dutch masters in 21st century cinema (see Peter Greenaway’s A Zed and Two Noughts for a possible 20th century equivalent). Raes intimately but unobtrusively follows the converging backstage dramas that go on behind launching such an exhibit, and which start with but don’t end with the complicated logistics of gathering artworks from institutions around the globe.
On one thread there’s the wheeling and dealing, as curators Gregor Weber and Pieter Roelofs visit partner museums and make the small request of asking them to loan out the priceless Vermeers that visitors may well have made a pilgrimage to see. One humorless curator, whose galleries seem sparsely attended, refuses outright. Others, like Washington’s National Gallery of Art, engage in a more complicated dance: what can the Rijkmuseum do for us, curators ask? Ok, so the Dutch promise a reciprocal agreement in exchange for lending out their four Vermeers. But wait: over the last few years, NGA staff have closely examined Girl with a Flute, long attributed to Vermeer, and have concluded that the painting is not by Vermeer after all.
Which leads to the other behind-the-scenes thread, the one that truly gets you closer to the art: conservation. The filmmakers follows art conservators like Abbie Vandivere and Anna Krekeler, who examine the canvases under a microscope, and their contributions are, from an archival view, practically action scenes. We watch as conservators gingerly remove these treasured canvases from their frames, gently brush their surfaces and, at intimate distances that in some culture would require a promise of marriage, look so closely and intently at these celebrated, centuries-old objects that even museum directors may envy the proximity.
“Wow,” as Weber frequently says throughout. And that enthusiasm in light of scholarly endeavor is part of what makes Close to Vermeer so compelling and infectious. The film is made with great craft, but also with respect, meting out a kind of thrill in the middle of intellectual exploration. As reverent as the film is, there’s room for humor, as a curator marvels at the level of gift shop merchandising on view in the Mauritshuis in The Hague, home to the ubiquitous Girl with a Pearl Earring. Yet the prevailing tone is one of awe. When painter-curator Jonathan Janson talks about how moved he was when, at the age of 71, he made a pilgrimage to see the one extant Vermeer, you’re kind of moved, too, even if such journeys are beyond the means of most of the world’s art lovers.
Sure, on some level Close to Vermeer is about privilege. But even if you’ve never been able to see a Vermeer in person (this writer is lucky to have seen several), it’s a privilege to get this close, even at a digital remove.
Photo courtesy of Kino Lorber
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