A year ago, a visit to the Rijksmuseum’s Vermeer exhibition left me completely astonished.

Obviously, it’s the paintings that are the star here. That unexpected, indescribable presence, the astounding attention to detail, the lifelike quality. They really are utterly unbelievable, completely astonishing.

I was so unexpectedly bowled over by the exhibition that I did something I’ve never done before with any exhibition: I went back the next day. I was so surprised by the strength of my own reaction that I couldn’t quite believe it, and wondered if I’d just been tired or overawed at being back at the beautiful Rijksmuseum. But no: the paintings really are spectacular, unlike anything I’ve ever seen before.

This weekend, Art Fund members—myself included—are being treated to the opportunity to stream the film version of the show, created by Exhibition on Screen. And so, last night, I found myself settling on the sofa to watch.

I was impressed. Obviously, seeing paintings on TV is not nearly the same as standing immediately in front of them. Many of the things I liked about the exhibition, such as its spare use of commentary and explanation which really allowed the work to sell itself, wouldn’t lend itself to film.

Yet, the film really did a fantastic job of bringing across that ineffable quality in Vermeer’s work, the arresting way they pull in the viewer. The experts featured in the film explain that this is partly attributable to Vermeer’s use of light, as I thought when I saw them. They also point out that Vermeer’s brushstrokes are invisible: an attribute I hadn’t noticed independently, though I suppose it should have been obvious.

It was an hour and a half well spent. That the opportunity to watch the film appealed even after seeing the exhibition twice made me reflect on quite how big an impact that once-in-a-lifetime show had made on me. As I said last year, Vermeer got inside my head; he clearly hasn’t left yet.

Whenever I’m at Schiphol, provided I’m in the non-Schengen zone, I try to make time to pop into the tiny branch of the Rijksmuseum. The current exhibition is ‘Longing for Nature’, and I thought it made quite a nice partner to the ‘Essence of Nature’ exhibition I saw at The Laing earlier this summer.

Whereas ‘Essence of Nature’ was about the changing artistic representations of nature, ‘Longing for Nature’ is about the shifting relationship between humankind and the natural world. The exhibition focuses on the 19th century, which was a period of immense change in this relationship. The exhibition posits that, in the early 19th century, nature was considered indestructible and immutable. The Industrial Revolution clearly challenged that perception.

I think that’s a hard case to demonstrate with such a small exhibition. Yet, I was struck by this painting: Orchard at Eemnes by Richard Roland Holst. From ‘Essence of Nature’ I’d learned about how art moved from aiming to be photorealistic in the pre-Raphaelite era to being more about character and atmosphere later on. Seeing this in the context of ‘Longing for Nature’ made me realise that the latter is filtering the scene through the human experience.

Just as popular perception shifts from nature being immutable to humans having an impact, we also started to consider nature in art through the human experience, rather than appreciating its essential quality. That surely can’t be coincidental.

‘Longing for Nature’ doesn’t have a publicly advertised end date but is on now at Rijksmuseum Schiphol.

‘Essence of Nature’ continues at The Laing until 14 October.

I can’t claim to have a deep or long-standing appreciation for the work of Irma Boom, but I think like most of us, I had a vague familiarity with the name and was aware that she was a designer. Having visited this exhibition, I’m much more familiar with her work designing books, and also her work in designing the visual identify of the Rijksmuseum following its 2013 refurbishment.¹

Having said that, I don’t think this exhibition was massively successful. Boom’s entire philosophy, as described in the exhibition, is that books can be turned into powerful works of art because they involve a necessary order and narrative. This is not well demonstrated by sticking the book in a glass case, where the viewer can see only one part of it.²

It also wasn’t massively clear where Boom’s exhibition started and ended. We were told that she had selected some works by others to theme with her own. However, Boom’s works were together in a corner of a gallery, and I’m not certain how much of the other stuff in the room was Boom’s doing, and how much was just permanent collection stuff.

For example, I was particularly taken with Han Schull’s untitled work pictured at the top of this post: a bit of aluminium spray-painted in a single colour and then duffed up, meaning that it looks like there are many colours (or shades) to it, even though in another sense there is only one. I can see the obvious connection between that and bookmaking… but did Boom see that connection, or has the Schull work lived long on that wall?

I was particularly intrigued by two of Boom’s books.

Her book for Chanel No5 which was ‘printed’ without ink was inspired. The texts and images are embossed rather than printed, meaning that the whole book remains plain white. This was a commentary by Boom on the way that the perfume, too, is experienced through senses besides the visual.

Her SHV Think Book was also striking, less for the object itself than for part of the story behind it. SHV had wanted the ‘book’ to be a permanent record, and so had considered creating a CD-ROM—the then-latest technology—rather than a book. Boom advised otherwise, suggesting that a book was likely to be a more timeless option than any modern digital format, and she won out. In retrospect, Boom was obviously correct: in 2023, a book is clearly much more accessible than a CD-ROM. This struck me because I’ve had this same conversation several times, especially with web developers. I once had to explain in terms that one of the major functions of something I was writing was for it to sit on a shelf alongside 100+ older versions—this wasn’t an optional extra.

Finally, there was a bit of what might reasonably be called surrealism to tickle my fancy. As part of Boom’s design work for the Rijksmuseum, she designed the object labels, one of which became an object in this exhibition as a result. And, as if that weren’t enough, from the ceiling hung a Benno Wissing and Jan Hoogervorst design for a directional sign to a toilet, as used in Schiphol Airport. There was no toilet in the indicated direction, of course, for this sign had been re-designated as art. Sublime.

Irma Boom: Art + Books continues at the Rijksmuseum until 7 May.

1. Including, as it happens, that expensive Vermeer catalogue I mentioned. ↩
2. It’s not long since I got frustrated at the same thing in the British Library exhibition of Alexander the Great, so forgive me if you think you’ve heard this rant before. ↩

There are 37 paintings by Johannes Vermeer in this world, and the Rijksmuseum—for the first, and very possibly last, time in history—has gathered 28 of them in a single exhibition.¹ I was lucky enough to go for a gander. And I mean lucky, because with over 200,000 tickets sold, this exhibition is sold out for months.

You’ll probably gather from the photos that I went into this exhibition with a slight sneer: here was an opportunity to see some pictures that are already familiar while peering over people’s shoulders and through their mobile phone screens. I’m not a fan of the sort of literal representative art that makes up Vermeer’s oeuvre. I was going as much to say I’d been as to actually see anything.

I’ve been lucky enough in my life to see any number of fantastically famous artworks, from the Mona Lisa to the Sistine Chapel. And every single time, it has looked just about exactly as I already knew it looked, and I felt no different for having seen it than I did beforehand. I wondered why I bothered.²

Vermeer was different. I don’t have the knowledge or language to properly explain why, but the experience of seeing these paintings in real life is remarkably different to seeing pictures of them. I think it’s something to do with their vibrancy: there isn’t a hint of dullness in the way there is in many historical paintings. They look, in some ineffable way, as though they are alive, or as though the paint is barely dry.

The exhibition was exceptionally well put together. The curators have avoided any muddying of the experience: there are no paintings by contemporaries for comparison, no works inspired by Vermeer to show his continued legacy, no blown-up reproductions to demonstrate his techniques. This is just the 28 Vermeers, spread across no fewer than ten galleries, giving each room to breathe.

Some paintings are on their own. It is objectively absurd to give The Milkmaid, a painting probably smaller than A3 size, an entire gallery to itself. And yet, it commands the space far more than Rembrandt’s huge Night Watch upstairs.

And nowhere in this exhibition does the visitor need to be hindered by bullet-proof glass, ‘which really gives the impression of being very close to the painting.’ Instead, a simple balustrade prevents crowding, but allows leaning over to get a closer look.

But obviously, it’s the paintings that are the star here. That unexpected, indescribable presence, the astounding attention to detail, the lifelike quality. They really are utterly unbelievable, completely astonishing.

I was so unexpectedly bowled over by the exhibition that I did something I’ve never done before with any exhibition: I went back the next day. I was so surprised by the strength of my own reaction that I couldn’t quite believe it, and wondered if I’d just been tired or overawed at being back at the beautiful Rijksmuseum. But no: the paintings really are spectacular, unlike anything I’ve ever seen before.

On my second viewing, I decided that the effect was a combination of the fine detail and the light: a lot of Vermeer’s paintings have a clear light source, often a window, and most of the light falls exactly as it would in reality. But there are exceptions: figures within the paintings seem to be lit more brightly than they probably should be. I think it’s this that gives the paintings such an arresting quality, and it most likely works best ‘in person’ because the light sources probably ‘read’ most correctly when the painting is on a wall. I know virtually nothing about painting, so this may well be a load of rubbish–but the fact that I’m spouting it demonstrates how much the Vermeers got inside my head.

Another illustration of how much the paintings struck me is that on my second visit, I bought the catalogue (I never buy the catalogue). And I know this is reaching a whole new standard of weirdness even for me, but the catalogue smells divine–a very intense new book scent. Oh, and the close-ups in it helped to deepen still further my appreciation of Vermeer’s eye for detail.

This exhibition wasn’t at all what I expected when I followed the blue line through the Rijksmuseum to find it: I’m very glad I went to it.

Vermeer continues at the Rijksmuseum until 4 June.

1. It is a little bit embarrassing to visit as a Brit, and know that one of the Vermeers missing from this exhibiton is squirreled away in the Royal Collection, not just hidden from visitors to this exhibition, but from everyone. ↩
2. My only mention on this blog of seeing the Mona Lisa is a reflection on how many people took selfies with it rather than looking at it, which I think probably underlines my point. ↩