Vermeer

There was a time when I found Dutch art completely uninteresting. After connecting some of the historical dots between hermeticism and the art of the European Renaissance, my view changed. And just after that I fell in love with the work of Johannes Vermeer.

The symbols Vermeer's work are the things that get me. His work reminds me of hieroglyphics or ancient Christian icon painting, except with more dimension and detail. I like that he incorporates lutes and other kinds of stringed instruments that allude to love, poetry and the creative muse. I appreciate the windows that have the eight-pointed stars making reference to the light that comes from knowledge as well as the throne-like chairs ornamented with lion’s heads because they seem to speak of Sekhmet, neter of wisdom. I find it intriguing that he used the camera obscura to add precision to his work. And I adore the periodic appearance of that electric, azure blue.

Much of the reason Vermeer gets my respect is because of how he advanced some of the messages of antiquity into his own time, place and culture. To me he is a wonderful example of the way that Old Europe was not the cultural bunker that many people of today imagine it to be. It was and remains a place of cultural transfer. A crossroads in a most magnificent sense. A place where domestic and imported ideas, philosophies and dreams flowered and converged. Like so many other parts of the world, Spain and Portugal were places where there was an amazing overlapping of traditions—Moor, Christian, Jew and so many others. This coming together laid the foundation for the Spanish Golden Age. This time of Spain being on top, of course, led to various colonization campaigns. One place they colonized was Vermeer’s native land, now called the Netherlands. And then eventually there came a Dutch Golden Age which came just on the heels of the Dutch ousting their former Spanish colonizers. It seems that a lot was channeled in to the Netherlands through Spain (as earlier much had been channeled into the Iberian peninsula from elsewhere) especially when it came to art and science.

Though I also like The Astronomer, Christ in the House of Martha and Mary as well as The Geographer, Woman Holding a Balance is probably my favorite Jan Vermeer painting. I like it because of the way that it connects to the ancient Egyptian concept of Ma’at.

In Woman Holding a Balance, the central figure is a pregnant woman of apparent material means. Hanging on the wall to the woman’s right is a painting of the Last Judgment, the descending figure of the Savior illuminated in a ball of light. The light in this Last Judgment painting is similar to the light that comes from a window above the woman’s own head. In this woman’s right hand is a small scale. Her delicate left hand rests on a table in front of her large belly. On this table she has emptied the contents of a jewelry box and unbundled a bolt of cobalt blue cloth. On the wall directly in front of this woman is a mirror and just above that mirror is a window that lets the subtle glow of daylight into the shadowed room. Underneath her blue coat with its fur that seems to allude to clouds, the woman’s dress is the same saffron-gold color as the sun. The woman does not look in the mirror. It is not hard to imagine this woman silently reciting some version of the 42 Declarations of Innocence as she keeps her gaze fixed intently, yet gently on leveling her scale.

In visual art as well as literature, no symbol goes to waste. The artist includes everything for a reason. So, it seems that this main figure reminds the viewer that each must stand in front of the mirror of her soul in an act of self reflection. In every life there must be a personal day of reckoning. To know God, we must heed the advice of the ancients and know ourselves before we can expect to bring anything meaningful into being.

I like the story this artist tells about how she used Vermeer's painting as a reminder of the need to balance material with spiritual as well as the hauntingly beautiful film, Girl with a Pearl Earring.

Want more? Check out these links:

Essential Vermeer

Ma'at

Metropolitan Museum Islamic Art and Geometric Design

Our Grandmothers Were Green

On the original cover of her classic memoir-cookbook The Taste of Country Cooking, Ms. Edna Lewis stands, lithe and muscular, in a green field looking over the fruit shc's selected for making a meal. Her face is serene and contemplative. She's magnetic and seems to beam though she is not smiling. Her hair, perhaps lightly hotcombed, is as natural as the food she puts on her table. She wears the long, cottony silver strands brushed away from her face and tucked in a neat chignon gathered in back of her head. Contrasting with her simple, starched cotton dress Miss Edna's only flourish is a pair of dangling ornate silver earrings that lend a little of the Far East to her look.

Music. Food. Writing. It's said that all of these absorb all of the elements and energy that go into the making of them. When I see Ms. Edna's face and read what she has to say, it brings me calm because I get a sense of some of those things that went into the making of her. She is earthy and elegant, full of culture, memory and vitality. The kind that Alice Walker writes about in "Longing to Die of Old Age" (from Living By the Word). A foremother to ones like Dori Sanders.

A friend who knows how much I take to heart Jessica Harris' words that "There is history in the pot," recently sent me this "What is Southern?" piece, a prose poem/letter written by Edna Lewis and published a couple years back in Gourmet magazine. I'm sharing with the hope that we all enjoy, remember, preserve and do all we can to pass forward these traditions. Even if it's just telling the story that begins with the words, "There once was a time when..."

Changes, Changes

Inspired by Judith Gleason's Oya: In Praise of An African Goddess, I've put together a humble ode to one of the Yabas, or triad of Yoruba goddesses who survived transplant to the West, the fearsome one Oya/Iansa.

There are many spellings of her name, and depending on the vantage point the name might change all together. Some know her as Lady of Candelaria, Buffalo Woman, Sekhmet, Neb-het, Kali or Artemis. However you spell it, whatever one calls it, the energy is the same and it seems to speak directly to the (st)age we are now hobbling our way through.

I have much more to say about Oya being a kind of poster girl for the winds blowing across continents and shaking things up from where we stand to as far as the eye can see. Except, I promised myself that I wouldn’t meander too long online. So I’ll post the rest of my thoughts once I work through them. For now, I'll call out my salutation and toss my copper coins.


Oya, The Tempest

Lady of storms with sword in her hand
Dares all to guess where her blade will land.
She cuts away illusion, gets down to the core
Revealing those things that lay hidden before.

Great House mistress, Life’s keeper of keys
She tears, she rips, then sweeps away the debris.
This red woman walks with a thunderous step.
She twirls on the cusp of this life and the next.

She gallops, she rides about on horseback
With flowing skirt of rainbows, swift wind at her back.
Iyansan, the mother of nine daughters and sons
Ushers in the new day when the old one is done.