Vermeer film puts historic art exhibit on screen

The intimate, scenes-of-daily-life paintings of the 17th-century Dutch artist Johannes Vermeer (1632-1675) have been considered masterworks since his work was “rediscovered” by European art critics in the 19th century. Since then, he’s been the subject of dozens of books, research projects, documentaries and even the 2003 feature film “Girl With a Pearl Earring” starring Scarlett Johansson.

His reputation as a “master of light,” as opposed to simply a master of color, was established in just a few paintings — he is believed to have produced only 45 paintings or so during his short lifetime, and of those, only 37 authenticated works were known to have survived until modern times. (One of them was stolen in 1990 and its fate is unknown.)

The Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, one of the great exhibition spaces for European art and in particular the work of Dutch masters, is hosting the largest ever retrospective of Vermeer paintings, with 27 of them on display until June 4. Tickets sold out days after its February opening was announced, and extended hours also sold out quickly. I was lucky enough to score tickets to the exhibition earlier this year, but local art lovers will have the chance to see it in the film “Vermeer: The Greatest Exhibition,” which will be screened seven times starting Friday until July 1 at the Honolulu Museum of Art’s Doris Duke Theatre.

Directed by U.K.-based filmmaker David Bickerstaff, who specializes in films about art, the documentary delves with loving detail into every painting in the exhibition, with commentary by Rijksmuseum experts and art critics. It’s not quite as uplifting as seeing the works in person, but it’s interesting and informative. Visually, it’s about as good as it can get.

You will come to appreciate the painstaking effort it must have taken to produce “The Little Street,” a work in which the artist faithfully painted in hundreds of tiny gray lines to depict the mortar between the brick walls of buildings, as well as the aesthetically pleasing decision to pose people in the picture to create a quiet energy in the scene.

The film traces some of Vermeer’s early, religion-oriented works, and how even they were unique for their time — one of them depicts the obscure Saint Praxedis — then goes into the domestic scenes for which Vermeer is most famous. We see several paintings of young women reading letters, prompting comments on the “storytelling” quality of his paintings. It’s kind of like someone reading text messages on their phone and an observer trying to figure out whether the news is good or bad by their facial expressions or body language.

Works like “The Milkmaid” also are detailed from the conservator’s perspective, revealing that this tranquil scene of a servant making bread pudding started out with fancy decorations on the wall that might have been distracting, prompting Vermeer to paint over them and leave the wall blank. The viewer can appreciate how Vermeer made key aesthetic decisions to bring focus on his main subject.

By the time I got to Amsterdam, “The Girl With the Pearl Earring” had already returned to its permanent home at the Mauritshuis, a museum in The Hague. It was only about an hour’s train ride from Amsterdam, and while it was well worth the trip to see it, I would have liked to see it in the Rijksmuseum exhibition because as it is presented in the film, it stands alone for its simple, concentrated subject matter — a girl, half-turned, wearing a chartreuse-colored coat, a blue scarf in her hair and a huge earring hanging from her ear. There’s no furniture, no musical instruments, no windows letting in that warm light from the left side. And yet, “he captures light on her skin, her lips, on the pearl, every detail in such a way, that it really simmers,” says commentator Taco Dibbits, general director of the Rijksmuseum.

With no diaries or letters left behind, not much is known about Vermeer’s life, which only adds to his mystique, particularly in terms of his technique. Much has been made about whether he used a camera obscura — a darkened chamber with either a pinhole or small lens on one side — to project images onto his canvas, and whether that might have been a form of “cheating.”

With volumes already devoted to the subject, the film barely addresses this issue. It focuses instead on the quiet, yet lively intensity of Vermeer’s paintings, which even on film seem to have a warm, almost eerie glow to them. In person, that quality came through strongly, and was even intensified by the surprisingly small size of many of the paintings. That required the crowd to get up close to get a good view; fortunately, people moved along at a good pace.

This film is about 90 minutes, and even with standup interviews and behind-the-scenes shots, that’s just about right to get an appreciation for Vermeer’s stunning creations.

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“Vermeer: The Greatest Exhibition”

>> Where: Doris Duke Theatre, Honolulu Museum of Art, 900 S. Beretania St.

>> When: 2 p.m. Friday, 7 p.m. Saturday and 2 p.m. June 8. Also screens at 2 p.m. June 15; 7 p.m. June 23; 7 p.m. June 30; and 2 p.m. July 1.

>> Cost: $15 ($12 members)

>> Info: honolulu museum.org/ theatre or 808-532-6097