Still Life in Amsterdam

It is Monday near the west end of Vondelpark and there is a musty, not yet rancid, smell of smoke in the room. I twist the bag off my shoulders and turn open the window a few steps away.

Street lamps expose the underbelly of a low hanging night and checkered squares of warm third-storey windows squint from behind tall transparent trees. A car slows along the street and turns willingly into another, closer to home. Damp air drifts around the branch ends, promising cold rain.

let's meet thursday in berlin. i am not afraid giving you my bed/room (because you could be a monster killer). I am stronger than you. and i have a big sister here! she is very tall. in general the whole week is free. stay as long as you want.

I close the window and observe the empty side of the bed. 

For days I’ve been feeling my wind cracked lips. Sometimes they split and bleed when I smile. I haven’t done much exercise lately and I see and feel how much my arms have shrunk. Should I work out the acid in my abs?

I feel my empty stomach move, the only part of me that isn't in transit, and I leave these and myriad thoughts for a tram to the city to stuff my hunger at December markets.

I breathe a gush of air and wait. We met fast in a dimly lit concert. How often then do bright eyes disappoint in bright light? Figures lose their shape? Smiles their delight? You always have to feed instant attraction. Will it fade quickly? Will she think the worse of it and call it off?

The tram travels a line of Protestant misery past the city's great museums that house Rembrandt, Vermeer and van Gogh. There are no markets. There is no hot wine on the street. No bratwurst in brötchen. I get off and track back to a Spanish restaurant near the hotel where I order red meat and salad and drink a little wine.

In the hotel the stale smell of someone else’s weekend has seeped into the sheets. Rain spits against the glass. I sleep restlessly and go late the next day to the Rijksmuseum in search of the still life I must live with for another two days.

Vermeer and van Brekelenkam

I find Vermeer in the last room.

Johannes Vermeer, The Milk Maid, c1657-58

What intrigues me about the Milk Maid is his use of light and form and line to draw us to the milk. Most of the light is on the chipped back wall, the least important part of the scene, while the most intense light is on the smallest element, the milk. Between the two is the maid’s contemplation. What lets us revisit her thoughts is the rhythm created by the difference between the wall’s pale objectivity and the milk’s deliberate flow; a rhythm complemented by the quiet exchange of milk between two unadorned vessels, as if she is pouring her thoughts from one to the other.

The foot warmer and the cupid tiles on the floor behind her indicate she could be thinking about a man, and the size of the jug’s mouth may be a reference to her sex organs, suggesting arousal. (See Wikipedia.)

If this is right, the milk may be a symbol for one or all of innocence, femininity, semen and fertility; and the painting an allegory about the advantage of duty over passion, as underneath her apparent calmness may lie the maid's silent worry over an unwanted pregnancy following the consummation of a carnal desire.

As I peer into it I think of how it was

too bad that you did not visit the old masters gallery in Dresden. vermeer is the Master of lights and if i was there with you, i could tell you so much about his "brieflesendes Mädchen" (girl reading a letter). the question is: in which language! scientists put this painting under roentgen radiation and found out that there was a cupid hanging as a painting in the painting.

You can tell me about Vermeer in Dresden and then I will tell you about Vermeer in Amsterdam :) I replied.

Two other elements impel us: the basket and the shadow of the silver container above the jug ascribe an arc that would join with the line of the milk if the maid's hand did not interrupt it; and the reverse perspective on the table opens the scene to the bowl into which she pours it.

We return to the milk not just because its light is more intense, or that its movement holds the maid’s silent thoughts, but because Vermeer’s creates a rhythm of line and form and light that lets us see to the edge of the canvass before returning to an off-centre focal point.

***

Hardly anyone looks at Quiringh van Brekelenkam’s Tailor’s workshop. Maybe his name is too complicated for people to be interested; maybe it looks dull hanging on a wall next to three Vermeers. Regardless, it is one of the most interesting in the gallery. It is a simple scene: two girls sew while a tailor discusses a business matter with a client.

Quiringh van Brekelenkam,
The Tailor's Workshop, 1661

The shadow formed by the girl in the foreground shows that light enters the workshop from behind her left shoulder. The edge of this shadow is parallel with the tailor’s gaze towards his client and the line between his hand and his client’s arm, upon which the garment rests. Light enters the scene perpendicular to the direction it enters the room.

Perhaps van Brekelenkam wanted to show the tailor is someone who can deflect complaints with polite reason. Maybe he just wanted to draw us closer in.

And what does it mean for us 350 years later? Does the light’s perpendicularity soften the scene and let us watch them more easily at their work. Does it suspend them in a scumbled wash that lets us stand and walk about the figures unobtrusively as if we in the room too? Or something else?

Stillness and silence

Although these paintings contain audible movement, they imply stillness and silence. Vermeer's milk pours thinly into the pot; but if we watch it in contemplation as the maid does, do we really hear it? The tailor’s outstreched hand in van Brekelenkam’s scene suggests a pause in conversation that lets us hear the quiet pull of thread by the girls sewing on the table.

Silence is usually thought of as the absence of sound, and that is how my Shorter Oxford defines it. The word absence has two stems – ab meaning away from, and sens meaning existence. The silence of absent sound leads us away from life. It is the silence of expiration or of not having lived at all. It allows nothing. It is a void. The vacuum left after the last speck of dust has been ripped apart and dispersed into Space.

There is another possibility.

Silence is from the Latin silentium meaning stillness or quietness, and it is related to the verb sileo – to be still, quiet, noiseless. This silence, the silence of still existence, is the silence of our sensitivity to sound and to what surrounds us. It is the silence of imagination and of unique possibilities.

These paintings by Vermeer and van Brekelenkam’s are not still lifes, but they let us suspend ourselves in the scenes as if we were still. They imply silence for us in the moment we see into them enough to catch their almost inaudible meaning.

Abraham Mignon, Still life with fruit, oysters
and a porcelain bowl (detail), c1670

Typical still lifes go further. They might suggest movement, but each object is fixed in time. The artist’s invitation is for each of us to consider the scene as if we were too; because every still life object on a 17th century Dutch canvass – every cracked and spilling pomegranate, every plump grape, every limp feathered foul, every decanter of wine, pitcher of water, every instrument de musique and hollow skull – reminds us, in the perfect moment of their suspension, of life’s brevity, the inevitability of decay, and of the sublime experience of pausing our lives for a moment. In these moments we stop pretending our lives will never end, and we begin to see what we still dream to do in the instant we look away.

I look to a place where I can anticipate everything and assume nothing. Like Vermeer's foot warmer, Berlin smoulders in the background; but in two days I will turn to see just how much heat is left.