English
They say more than a traveler has dreamed of following a route stopping only at places where you can see paintings of Johannes Vermeer van Delft. Although this would lead them to a reduced set of countries and cities, separated, therefore, by large streams and oceans, folds in space and time in such a journey would be abysmal.
Others are content with going from town to town to see just those of his pictures where maps appear. Although in principle they would have to visit many fewer cities, this would probably be only the prelude to a much longer journey. An endless journey, endless as all Vermeer’s pictures seem to be. Vermeer is one of the artists most directly associated with the idea of the mystery of everyday life, with that Lorca-wounded-pulse thing that gets close to the other side, which Cortazar was so much fascinated about.
What’s curious about Vermeer is the fact that this other side is expressed most often through the clarity of light with an almost photographic precision. Perhaps this is one of the reasons why Vermeer is so much an essentially literary artist. If it’s true that literature’s destiny is silence, as Rimbaud’s case seems to illustrate, this is one of the greatest protagonists of Vermeer´s paintings, all things left unsaid, unread, without expressing, below or above the literalness of the scenes of that incomparable quality of still lives made of human figures that characterizes his work better than perhaps any other painter known.
Not only in the letters, but also in Vermeer’s maps there is a metaphor of the world, that silent reality to be interpreted. There is always an abyss, a mystery in all maps; no matter how clearly and precisely they are drawn. It’s the same vertigo a character in the Tarkovsky´s film Sacrifice perceives and expresses, when observing the curious shapes of ancient geographical maps, notes how curious it is the fact that all cultures have always thought that his portrayal of the world was correct and accurate.
The cartographic accuracy of the maps that appear in Vermeer´s paintings seem to cry out to be interpreted, decoded. But with the only instruments of the imagination, desire and memory -perhaps like life itself- as, in case we have ever had them, we lost the key needed for it, perhaps even in some of the places contained in the representation of these maps.
This way, Dali did not only find in them a fabulous place, the “Upper Mongolia”, that country we have so much desired”, but he also sent a team of explorers to make a documentary film which is, starting by the name, a direct homage to Raymond Roussell, another famous explorer of, pardon the redundancy, imaginary maps.
Paul Oilzum
Rent apartments in Vienna and visit its Kunsthitorisches museum where Vermeer’s The art of painting is exhibited (January 26 – April 25, 2010). It does not seem a bad place to start the crossing.
Translated by: salome antigone
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