"In October 2022, a man approached Vermeer's 'Girl with a Pearl Earring' in the Mauritshuis museum and rested his shaved head against the painting. He was a climate protester, wearing a T-shirt that bore the slogan 'Just Stop Oil,' and he was seeking to glue himself to the glass that shields the canvas from assault."
"Another study, in 2020, revealed that there was no perceptible hook attaching the earring to the girl's ear; only in our mind's credulous eye do we see an earring at all. Oh, and one small thing: the pearl is not a pearl."
Vermeer, often seen as a domestic artist, grew up in a tumultuous environment marked by war and starvation. His artwork provided refuge from this chaos. In October 2022, a climate protester attempted to glue himself to Vermeer's 'Girl with a Pearl Earring' while another threw soup at the painting, which remained undamaged. Various methods have been used to analyze the painting, revealing that the earring is not physically attached and the pearl is not a pearl, challenging perceptions of the artwork.
Read at The New Yorker
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]