Edward Snow's "A Study of Vermeer", first published in 1979 and here presented in an expanded and elaborately revised version, starts from a single premise: that we respond so intensely to Vermeer because his paintings reach so deeply into our lives. Our desire for images, the distances that separate us, the validations we seek from the still world, the traces of ghostliness in our own human presence - these, the book proposes, are Vermeer's themes, which he pursues with a realism always in touch with the uncanny. As Snow traces the many counterpoised sensations that make up Vermeer's equanimity, he leads us into a world of nuances and surprise. "A Study of Vermeer" is passionate and visual in its commitments. Snow works from the conviction that viewing pictures is a reciprocal act - symbiotic, consequential, real. His discussions of Vermeer's paintings are conducted in a language of patient observation, and they involve the reader in an experience of deepening relation and ongoing visual discovery. The book has been designed to facilitate this process: over eighty illustrations, fifty-nine in color (including two full-page foldouts), accompany the text so that the details Snow illuminates will be continually in view. Here is a book to enthrall not only students of Vermeer, but anyone who feels the exhilaration of what Cezanne called 'thinking in images.'
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About the Author
Edward Snow is Professor of English at Rice University. He has published interpretations of Velasquez, Bruegel, Marlowe, and Shakespeare, and has translated three books of Rilke's poetry.
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3.8 out of 5 stars
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24 of 28 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Breathtaking Study of Vermeer
16 Aug 2000
By Donna Marie Artuso
- Published on Amazon.com
Format:Paperback
This revised and enlarged edition is an unusually thoughtful, intelligent and eloquent offering from a scholar of remarkable insight and rare passion. Until I read the book (in one night as I couldn't put it down), I didn't know why I had always liked Vermeer. Dr. Snow's book is a journey of pleasure and discovery. Light, space, colour, desire and luminous revelation fairly crackle with intensity. An historic contribution to the art world, or as Dore Ashton observed, "an authentic contribution to the literature (yes, literature!) of the visual arts".
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
A great book
11 Nov 2012
By A Customer
- Published on Amazon.com
Format:Paperback
It matters not at all whether Vermeer "intended" all of the subtleties that Snow discerns in the paintings. Snow reports on the meanings he makes from looking and looking at these works, and that's what "meaning" is--a dynamic involving perceiver and perceived, not some static element an artist injects into a work like an electrical charge in a battery. This is a book of impassioned seeing.
7 of 10 people found the following review helpful
1.0 out of 5 stars
Barking Up The Wrong Tree...
16 Nov 2006
By Jeffrey
- Published on Amazon.com
Format:Paperback
This book reminds me of Rolling Stone magazine style rock music criticism in which the lyrics are discussed ad nauseum and the music is barely mentioned. Snow has no feel for painting or visual values. The book begins with his reactions to "Girl with a Pearl Earring" which are a preposterous mish-mash of psychological nonsense. One has to feel sorry for someone with so little sensitivity to beauty.
"Everyone wants to understand art. Why not try to understand the song of a bird? ...people who try to explain pictures are usually barking up the wrong tree."
-Picasso
"I'd give the whole of Italian painting for Vermeer of Delft. There's a painter who simply said what he had to say without bothering about anything else."
-Picasso
"Everyone wants to understand art. Why not try to understand the song of a bird? ...people who try to explain pictures are usually barking up the wrong tree."
-Picasso
"I'd give the whole of Italian painting for Vermeer of Delft. There's a painter who simply said what he had to say without bothering about anything else."
-Picasso
›
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3.8 out of 5 stars
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