After centuries apart, these two women have just met in Dallas.
What are they saying? Do you know who the third guest is, that bearded man?
The Meadows Museum, in the Texas city, one of the main institutions in the United States focused on the study and presentation of the art of Spain, has been in charge of organizing this historic meeting.
Their relationship was known, but they had never been together Woman in Blue Reading a Letter , a painting by Johannes Vermeer in 1663, and her alter ego in The Disappearing Image , from 1938, a version by Salvador Dalí in which he reinterprets the Dutch work.
For this appointment, one traveled from the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam and the other from the Dalí Theatre-Museum in Figueres. They share dialogue from this week and until January 15, 2023.
“Not even Dalí could see them like that,” says Amanda W. Dotseth, interim director of the Meadows and museum curator, in a zoom conversation.
The idea arose as the result of an exhibition that this institution dedicated to the genius of the Empordà in 2018. It was titled Poetics of the small (1929-1936). “Many revolutionary artists of the 20th century looked to the past for inspiration. Salvador Dalí was no exception,” Mark A. Roglan, director of the Meadows until his death in late 2021, wrote in the catalog. One he revered the most, according to Roglan, was Vermeer. In that catalog, the two women are "photographed" together. The challenge was to collect them.
The surreal visual language that Dalí developed incorporated countless references to Vermeer, experts say.
“In Dalí's work there are many citations to Vermeer. One of the most interesting examples is The Lacemaker, which is in the Louvre, of which he made a copy, in the possession of the New York Met”, explains Dotseth.
But he emphasizes that with Woman in Blue he did something more unique. He took advantage of the original painting to “conquer or appropriate” that work and introduce his own vision of it and his personal modifications.
In The Image Disappears, Dalí does not intend, points out Dotseth, both to imitate Vermeer's technique, as he did in other paintings, and to vindicate the composition. In this way he observes how he replaces the map of the Netherlands with one of the Mediterranean coast of Spain, which visibly includes his native Catalonia.
The nationalist factor is not the only variation. Vermeer's wife is still seen reading the letter in Dalí's work, but she replaces the original luminous blue with a palette of muted earth tones.
The work of the baroque master indicates the tension in the woman's hands, the melancholy, the suspense of her parted lips. Other details also suggest an enigma, such as an open chest, some papers.
Dalí's version goes further by introducing the double image. He distorts the figure of the woman so that she in turn represents the profile of a man: her head becomes an eye; her upper torso, into a nose; her arm and her letter, in a mustache; and her skirt, in a beard. Vermeer's own image? "We don't know for sure, but we think it's Diego Velázquez," says Dotseth. Two for one in his tribute to the masters, or did he send a message to Vermeer?
