Vermeer: A Study

In the visual history of the western world, some images and authors have become real icons for entire generations of painters, photographers, and common people. How could they remain so vivid in our memory, defeating oblivion? What was their secret? In this essay, Max Kozloff talks about one of the most emblematic and fascinating artists of our visual tradition, Johannes Vermeer; about his XVII century Dutch interiors, plunged into a palpable and magic light; and about his ability to create refined images and atmospheres that are still able to move and seduce contemporary society. In this book, the author attempts to decipher the symbols hiding in Vermeer’s paintings and to find out the secret thanks to which his works have managed to remain so popular and appreciated even today.

Max Kozloff: Historian and critic of modern art; photographer. Kozloff graduated from the University of Chicago in 1953. Between 1954-1956 he served in the U.S. Army and then returning to the University of Chicago for his A. M. in 1958. He entered New York University's Institute of Fine Arts in 1959 for his Ph.D.. He taught at NYU, joining the Nation as art critic in 1961 (remaining until 1968) and Art International. Kozloff was awarded a Fulbright fellowship for the, 1962-1963 year winning a Pulitzer Prize for critical writing for the same time period. He left NYU without a degree in 1964 and began contributing to Artforum as an associate editor. In 1965 he earned the Frank Jewett Mather Award for art criticism from College Art Association of America. He married the artist Joyce Blumberg in 1967 and became a contributing editor to Artforum the same year. Kozloff was awarded a Guggenheim fellowship for 1968-1969. He wrote the volume on Jasper Johns for the Abrams artist series in 1968. In 1972 he was named an associate editor of books at Artforum. He published his book Cubism/ Futurism in 1973. Kozloff was executive editor of the magazine between 1975 and 1977. A second Jasper Johns book appeared in 1986. In 1989 he joined the faculty of the School of Visual Arts.

Kozloff switched careers, becoming an art photographer in 1976. He held numerous shows, initially photographing store windows, and then to the people of New York, intentionally following the path of Jewish itinerant photographers of the city. His subsequent notions of photography were criticized, especially the notion that Jewish photographers have a special way of making images.