They are delightful pieces, in which knowledgeable people get excited about the simplistic image of art published in contemporary television formats. Erik Voermans, music critic of The Parool† gave plenty of work to his annoyance at the meaningless stick-waving of celebrities in Maestro: “Conducting is not: moving your arms without any sense and letting yourself be overwhelmed by music you barely know.”
Visual artist Erik Mattijssen made two weeks ago in De Volkskrant turn on the stove with the conservatism of painting contest Project Rembrandt and with the marketing-driven Rembandt worship in The Master’s Secret (AvroTros): “The public broadcaster pretends nothing has happened in the visual arts since 1669. It shows the meticulous coloring of a traced line drawing of a photo of the Night Watch, in four episodes.”
Now there are left The Master’s Secret nice things to say too. I once saw a phenomenal episode in which artist Charlotte Caspers re-created a wonderful asparagus still life from 1697 by Adriaen Coorte with heart, soul and brush and finally concluded with emotion: “Coorte knew very well what an asparagus is.” A reconstruction can best show the nature of a work of art, although the hugged Night Watch may not be the best candidate.
Caspers’ successor Lisa Wiersma has already come a long way with her Night Watch, it turned out on Tuesday in the third episode by The Master’s Secret† She eloquently told about the moments when she “slipped through” while painting, only to see from the original that the same had happened to Rembrandt in that place. No coincidence: “Then you know that you are doing the pranks in the same way.”
People are now busy with the varnish: the dark glow that hangs over the painting is largely caused by the many layers of varnish that were brushed over the Night Watch in the nineteenth century. “They loved that golden glow.” It is a beautiful metaphor for the Dutch approach to the seventeenth century: the view of reality is seriously hindered by the layers of varnish that were painted over the past in the nineteenth century, because people were so attached to a ‘golden’ glow.
addicted art thief
Much closer, the wonder that art can be was approached on Wednesday in the Norwegian documentary The Painter and the Thief by Benjamin Ree about the painter Barbora Kysilkova. After two paintings are stolen from her, she tracks down the thieves and asks one of them – the drug addict Bertil – to pose for her.
Barbora can already see that she gets a gleam in her eye when she looks at Bertil. The scene in which she shows her special model’s portrait is beautiful. Bertil widens in astonishment, falls silent and starts to cry uncontrollably – a man who suddenly feels like a human being again. The friendship between the painter and her thief gradually grows closer: she begins to fantasize about how his life could have turned out differently. “Sometimes I think he could have become a suicide bomber if things had gone differently. Or Prime Minister of Norway.”
She continues to paint Bertil, making him pose with his girlfriend. Barbora’s friend does not trust this intimate friendship with the addicted thief: “I see your fascination with the destructive in it.” In the end, Bertil nearly drives himself to death in a stolen car, after which Barbora takes care of him. When she finally shows him her latest painting, she turns out to have painted herself instead of Bertil’s now ex-girlfriend. The chance is small that this canvas will ever be painted on television, but it contains as many layers of meaning as the varnish on the Night Watch.