Papers by Benjamin Binstock
Artibus et historiae: an art anthology, Mar 7, 2013
Seven paintings currently attributed to Johannes Vermeer and one related work do not fit in with ... more Seven paintings currently attributed to Johannes Vermeer and one related work do not fit in with his distinctive approach, level of skill, use of materials, or gradual development, yet were based on the same interiors, furniture, objects, and family members as models. Several of these compositions also copy, adapt, and combine elements from his paintings. Vermeer did not have any official students, but he was not required to register his own children as students. Here I argue that his eldest daughter Maria Vermeer became his apprentice around 1672 at roughly the age of eighteen. Maria's features as model for her father's paintings are also recognizable in her earliest self-portrait studies. Over the next three years, she based her compositions on Vermeer's paintings, using herself and other family members as models. The eight paintings examined here share mutual idiosyncrasies, strategies, and a palpable development. They were created in a complex artistic dialogue with Vermeer, and ultimately influenced him in turn. My account is based primarily on the visual evidence of the paintings, starting with a coherent chronology of Vermeer's works, which can be related in turn to the chronology of Maria Vermeer's paintings from her brief period as his apprentice. Another dimension involves the family members they portrayed, primarily Vermeer's second eldest daughter Elisabeth. A last crucial factor are written documents: an agreement between the painter's widow and a baker to pay a large debt for bread, and the 1696 auction of Vermeer paintings that were originally owned by Vermeer's patron. All these elements are inter-related in a complex puzzle that is inextricable from the riddle of the Sphinx of Delft — his unique approach, vision, and genius.
This collection addresses interiority as a concept debated by artists and philosophers, historian... more This collection addresses interiority as a concept debated by artists and philosophers, historians and sociologists alike. From Augustine to Montaigne, from the monk’s cell to the Renaissance studiolo, the artist’s studio and the modern library, the interior has provided subjectivity with a protective layer that defined one’s identity and its relation to the world. The goal of this interdisciplinary collection is to approach interiority and the interior as relational entities that interact with architectural spaces, visual arts and music, social and political ideologies, geographical and historical structures. How does the interior—of mankind, of the earth, of architecture—affect identity, its historical, cultural and artistic representation? How do we think of the interior other than as Cartesian solipsism or as a volatile architectural decorum? How does the Earth’s interior relate to the world we experience every day? Just as the façade relates a building to the public space and betrays something of its interior structure, the interior is hereby approached as a space that mediates between the psyche, its history and its impact onto the world.
Palgrave Communications, 2017
Johannes Vermeer may well be the foremost painter of interiors and interiority in the history of ... more Johannes Vermeer may well be the foremost painter of interiors and interiority in the history of art, yet we have not necessarily understood his achievement in either domain, or their relation within his complex development. This essay explains how Vermeer based his interiors on rooms in his house and used his family members as models, combining empiricism and subjectivity. Vermeer was exceptionally self-conscious and sophisticated about his artistic task, which we are still laboring to understand and articulate. He eschewed anecdotal narratives and presented his models as models in "studio" settings, in paintings about paintings, or art about art, a form of modernism. In contrast to the prevailing conception in scholarship of Dutch Golden Age paintings as providing didactic or moralizing messages for their pre-modern audiences, we glimpse in Vermeer's paintings an anticipation of our own modern understanding of art. This article is published as part of a collection on interiorities.
Schabaker 1972. Roger van der Weyden's Seven Sacraments of c. 1450 depicts a conventional sacrame... more Schabaker 1972. Roger van der Weyden's Seven Sacraments of c. 1450 depicts a conventional sacramental marriage ceremony with a couple in a church chapel joining their right hands, which a priest binds together with his stole.
Illustrations Preface and Acknowledgments Introduction: It's a Vermeer! 1. In Search of Verme... more Illustrations Preface and Acknowledgments Introduction: It's a Vermeer! 1. In Search of Vermeer 2. Origins and Originality 3. Fabritius's Phoenix 4. An Art of Women 5. Painting and Procreation 6. The Fat Lady Sings 7. The Apprenticeship of Maria Vermeer Appendices
Jan van Eyck’s Arnolfini Marriage Portrait of 1434 still poses fundamental questions. An overlook... more Jan van Eyck’s Arnolfini Marriage Portrait of 1434 still poses fundamental questions. An overlooked account explained the groom’s left hand holding his bride’s right hand as a secular, legal morganatic marriage with a bride of lower social rank and wealth. That would explain Van Eyck’s presence as witness in the mirror and through his inscription, and corresponds to the recent identification of the bride and groom as Giovanni di Arrigo Arnolfini and his previously unknown first wife Helene of unknown last name. Van Eyck’s scene can be called the first modern painting, as the earliest autonomous, illusionistic representation of secular reality, provided with the earliest artist’s signature of the modern type, framing his scene as perceived and represented by a particular individual. That is why Jan van Eyck was here. Summary 1 What is being disguised: religious symbolism or secular art? – 2 A morganatic, left-handed marriage. – 3 The sitters: Giovanni di Arrigo Arnolfini and his firs...
Res: Anthropology and aesthetics, 1999
Res: Anthropology and aesthetics, 1999
Johannes Vermeer may be the foremost painter of interiors and the interiority of figures in the h... more Johannes Vermeer may be the foremost painter of interiors and the interiority of figures in the history of art, although we have not necessarily fully understood his achievement in either domain or their complex relation. This essay explains that Vermeer based all his interiors on rooms in his house and all his figures on family members as models, which he sometimes also adapted in minor ways, a "subjective empiricism." He followed Rembrandt in using family members as models and drawing on his personal circumstances in his art, which anticipated and partly inspired Romantic artists. Vermeer's emphatically empirical approach to his models culminated a strain of radical naturalism in early modern art beginning with Caravaggio. In contrast to Rembrandt's use of family members and others as models for (fictional) biblical characters, and fellow genre painters' use of anonymous models in anecdotal (fictional) scenes of everyday life, Vermeer approached his family models as models, in the "real" studio situation of his home. His strategy anticipated and corresponds to modernism as self-consciousness about modern life and painting as painting. Vermeer's revolutionary reflection on the concrete conditions of his artistic production lay at the heart of his convincing interiors and his figures' compelling interiority, and constitutes his still unrecognized, primary contribution as an artist. These explanations offer solutions to impasses in previous scholarship. Scholars have debated whether or not Vermeer used a camera obscura, a forerunner of the modern photographic camera, as a compositional aid, and based his scenes on empirical observation of his surroundings and specific persons. Vermeer's use of particular rooms and models have also never been related to one another. Accounts of the content of his scenes have further remained limited to subjective guesses about what his figures might be feeling, their relations, and our feelings about them, or conversely abstractions about Vermeer's feelings about humanity and "the feminine." Nor has the wealth of concrete information about Vermeer's family uncovered by J. M. Montias ever been brought to bear directly on Vermeer's paintings. This essay follows Vermeer's gradual, cumulative, self-conscious development with new readings of his Procuress, Drunken Girl Asleep, Letter Reader, Music Lesson, Woman with a Balance, Woman in Blue, Art of Painting, and Allegory of Faith. This new account is also predicated on the recognition of several "misfit" paintings currently assigned to Vermeer that do not correspond to his approach, which embody the distinct vision and alternative interiority of another artist, the painter's eldest daughter and secret apprentice Maria. The field has so far resisted an earlier formulation of these groundbreaking explanations, whereas this condensed presentation and new formulation of Vermeer's strategies and their significance for his primary contribution as an artist has revolutionary potential for Vermeer studies.
Rembrandt's Syndics the Drapers' Guild of 1662 is widely recognized as the crowning achievement o... more Rembrandt's Syndics the Drapers' Guild of 1662 is widely recognized as the crowning achievement of his career. Yet scholars cannot agree on what the five "sample-masters" positioned aroundma table are doing, or who they are looking at, if anyone. I propose that Rembrandt portrayed the samplemasters looking up from his studies of them in their account book and out at him. His brilliant solution for
a specific artistic problem was based on the concrete circumstances of his process of composition and selfconsciouslyn reflects on portraiture as a process in space and time. Rembrandt reveals himself as "hidden
master" or invisible viewer, engaging his sitters in a dialectical relation, which we vicariously experience in
turn.
Dutch Crossing, 2001
A bstract. Who would dare to defend the 'Romantic myth' that Rembrandt's Nightwatch caused a scan... more A bstract. Who would dare to defend the 'Romantic myth' that Rembrandt's Nightwatch caused a scandal in its time? I would. Beginning with Alexander Korda's film Rembrandt, I argue that Romantic accounts are historically more accurate and aesthetically more sophisticated than current explanations, and more relevant, since they can accommodate our own relation to Rembrandt's art. Romantic constructions can also be traced back to Rembrandt's innovations. Conversely, confusion about Rembrandt's autograph oeuvre results from the efforts and investments of later commentators, not Rembrandt. Drawing on the work of Walter Benjamin, Jacques Derrida, and Alois Riegl, I propose that Rembrandt's works can be understood as 'ruins,' or historical phenomena of artistic significance to our time, understood belatedly, in an ongoing, imperfect process.
Wiener Jahrbuch für Kunstgeschichte, 2004
... His major works include Foundations for a History of Ornament, Late Roman Art Industry, and T... more ... His major works include Foundations for a History of Ornament, Late Roman Art Industry, and The Group Portraiture of Holland. Riegl's Historical Grammar of the Visual Arts, which brings together the diverse threads of his thought, is now available to an English-language ...
The Art Bulletin, Jun 1, 2000
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Papers by Benjamin Binstock
a specific artistic problem was based on the concrete circumstances of his process of composition and selfconsciouslyn reflects on portraiture as a process in space and time. Rembrandt reveals himself as "hidden
master" or invisible viewer, engaging his sitters in a dialectical relation, which we vicariously experience in
turn.
a specific artistic problem was based on the concrete circumstances of his process of composition and selfconsciouslyn reflects on portraiture as a process in space and time. Rembrandt reveals himself as "hidden
master" or invisible viewer, engaging his sitters in a dialectical relation, which we vicariously experience in
turn.