The Dutch Are Likely Wild for a Reality Television set Exhibit Wherever Artists Compete to Paint Vermeer’s Dropped Masterpieces

Fail to snag tickets to the marketed-out, when-in-a-lifetime Johannes Vermeer exhibition at Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum? There is also a new actuality sequence on Dutch television, in which contestants contend to make paintings that could go for the operate of the Golden Age master.

Titled The New Vermeer (De Nieuwe Vermeer in Dutch), the 6-episode series premiered on February 12, two times soon after the blockbuster museum show, and has been an quick hit. Hosted by Dionne Stax, the pilot episode drew 1.3 million viewers—over seven-and-a-50 percent p.c of the nation’s 17 million population. (The finale will air March 19.)

“This software scores far better than most of the other systems we broadcast — documentaries and drama collection included,” Jan Slagter, chief govt the program’s network, Omroep MAX, told the New York Moments. “What’s important is that it’s about art and culture, but that it is built in a really accessible way.”

The international buzz about the museum blockbuster is likely encouraging Dutch viewers to tune in, as they test to find out extra about the artist who is drawing so several intercontinental readers to the state.

At the Rijksmuseum, the exhibit unites 28 of Vermeer’s 37 recognised extant paintings—the most at any time revealed with each other at 1 time. An original batch of 450,000 tickets offered out in significantly less than four days, leaving the museum scrambling to satisfy demand from customers.

The system is to release a lot more tickets on March 6, both with extended traveling to hours or by raising ability for each time slot.

In the meantime, there is often The New Vermeer, which each 7 days worries two specialist to recreate just one of the 6 identified-but-lost Vermeer paintings, together with The Live performance, stolen from Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in the infamous 1990 heist.

Abbie Vandivere, a conservator from the Mauritshuis museum in the Haugue, teaches contestants on The New Vermeer about how Vermeer manufactured his function. Picture by Mark de Blok, courtesy of Omroep MAX.

That piece was very well documented in pictures, but for other lost Vermeers we only have a written description from inventories or auction information.

Attempting to come up with a convincing Vermeer duplicate without having understanding what the authentic essentially appeared like is a tall get, obviously, but the competitors get four months for the challenge.

They also have assist from the series’ qualified judges, Pieter Roelofs, head of portray at the Rijksmuseum, and Abbie Vandivere, a paintings conservator at the Mauritshuis in The Hague. (The latter institution owns Female with a Pearl Earring, Vermeer’s most popular portray.)

A “Second Minimal Street” by Titus Meeuws from The New Vermeer. Courtesy of Omroep MAX.

Whilst the expert painters are undertaking their greatest to faithfully replicate Vermeer’s portray procedures and inventive resources as very well as time period-appropriate props, a parallel competitors pits 4 modern artists versus a single an additional in the “free category” that aims to channel the Dutch master’s spirit in their very own own fashion.

That has led to Vermeer-encouraged performs in all way of unique mediums, including printmaking and stained glass, as very well as Lego sculpture and an assemblage produced from toys and knickknacks.

In the premiere, painter Nard Kwast bested Maudy Alferink with a canvas of a gentleman washing his fingers. The second episode saw artists Titus Meeuws and Kim van den Enden endeavor to paint a get the job done that could be Vermeer’s “view of some homes in Delft,” which would be the artist’s 3rd city scene, right after his masterpieces Perspective of Delft and The Minor Street.

This week, Arjan van Gent and Adrian de Wolf tackled Vermeer’s lacking mythological scene of Venus, Jupiter, and Mercury.

The winning Vermeer recreations will go on perspective at the Mauritshuis, while the judge’s beloved up to date-type will work will go on present at the Museum Prinsenhof in Delft, the artist’s hometown. (The Mauritshuis is also presently exhibiting supporter versions of Woman With a Pearl Earring in the “My Girl With a Pearl” exhibition by means of June 4.)

You just can’t at present look at the collection in the U.S., but the network is streaming a weekly YouTube “Masterclass” from Roelofs and Vandivere with step-by-step directions on how to how make your individual Vermeer canvas.

There is also a podcast, moreover an online gallery exhibiting all the performs from every episode and an possibility for viewers to ship in their personal choose on a typical Vermeer perform to be shared on the series website.

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