Tuesday 12 November 2013

Vermeeresque again


 
Oh dear. Since I saw the film about Vermeer, they're everywhere: quiet, luminous women, reading or writing by a window, looking like a painting. What a cliché. But a sweet one, and all the sweeter when so many sit or stand or walk absorbed in their phones or tablets: that absent, abstracted indifference to surroundings and compulsive inability to put the damned thing down. Seeing someone read a book or write in a notebook never feels as alienating. Yes, of course they may be equally abstracted, and of course good stuff, as well as mindless or super-stressful, proceeds through all those 'devices'. Still, a proliferation of dwellers in the global city who evoke an old Dutch painting seems no bad thing.

6 comments:

Dick said...

There's an entire collection in this, Jean. Go for it!

Jean said...

Not sure this works if you go around consciously looking for something, Dick. But time will tell.

Natalie d'Arbeloff said...

So beautiful! The colour and the light, absolutely Vermeeresque

Jean said...

Thanks, Natalie! Your comment didn't disappear - I've had to switch on comment moderation.

Zhoen said...

I love that these women are busy. They are not aware of being looked at, aren't thinking about how they look, they are *busy*.

Jean said...

yes!