In his painting Atelier, Edson Campos performs a postromantic pastiche of two of Jan Vermeer’s most famous paintings: Girl with a Pearl Earring and The Art of Painting. Vermeer (1632- 1675) is of course well known for being a painter of women, of domestic scenes and, more generally, of psychological intimacy. In Girl with a Pearl Earring, the gaze of the young woman is both transparent and mysterious, provoking curiosity, wonderment and speculation. Even the girl’s position—she turns to look over her shoulder at her viewer in a move that seems spontaneous and her lips are slightly parted as if she were about to speak—convey not only external verisimilitude, but also a psychological depth and agency that are characteristic of Vermeer’s paintings. The dark background against which the girl is set highlights the realism and three-dimensional quality of the young girl.
Campos undermines the naturalist effect of the famous Vermeer painting. The dark background that rendered Girl with a Pearl Earring all the more realistic serves the opposite function in Campos’s pastiche: namely, that of underscoring that the world which appears real is only a reproduction, a representation. In Campos’ pastiche, Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring appears small, framed and visually overwhelmed by the dark background. No illusion of reality is fostered by Atelier. Yet the painting is nonetheless represented faithfully, in minute detail and free hand by the artist. Once we observe the luminous and much larger image of the beautiful young woman who forms the fulcrum of Campos’ painting, we realize that this postromantic pastiche is an homage to Girl with a Pearl Earring. The depiction of the beautiful young woman with auburn ringlets, a frank, powerful and penetrating gaze and luminous hair and lips that glimmer with the same light play and life-like quality that we find in Vermeer’s portrait modernizes the beauty of the Renaissance painting. The dark background blends into the richness of a dark brown silk curtain whose texture is as palpable as in Vermeer’s masterpiece.
Then Atelier smoothly transitions to its second reproduction, Vermeer’s The Art of Painting. In this allegorical picture, Vermeer represented Clio, the Muse of History, holding a trumpet in her right hand that represents Fame and a book in her left hand that represents History. The rich texture of the curtain to the left not only gives a sense of realism to the work but at the same time a theatrical feel. Campos does not convey a modern interpretation of this painting, the way he did with Girl with a Pearl Earring. Instead, his pastiche plays upon the contrast between the works it portrays. By coherently juxtaposing these two very different Vermeer paintings—one which shows realism, human psychology, contemplation; the other which is overtly theatrical and allegorical—Campos illustrates that both elements remain essential to contemporary art. The reproduction of The Art of Painting underscores the fact that an image is only an image, as modern art critics tell us. No matter how much it tries it cannot fully reproduce reality, it will always remain on the level of representation, of stories within stories which stimulate the imagination without prescribing set interpretations.
You can view Edson’s postromantic paintings on the links below:
Claudia Moscovici, postromanticism.com
Romantic and Postromantic Art
EdsonCamposArt 