Leseprobe

24 the entire painting available to viewers in isolation, for it is in a black wooden frame that itself has an assertive physical presence in spite of its function of demarcating the pictorial world of the painting from the actual world in which it exists. 6 That actual world begins with the blue wall onwhich the framed painting hangs. Also on the blue wall, immediately next to the framed painting, is its label that the viewer must find impossible to exclude from her field of vision. From a moderate distance, the blue wall seems to threaten to overwhelm the painting. This is inevitable, for no wall on which a painting hangs can dematerialize (although displays of paintings on transparent free-standing panels or by suspension within independent armatures have been contrived). On either side of the Geographer are further paintings, placed at a tactful distance, but an unavoidable presence nonetheless (Fig. 2). These paintings—including the Geographer —constitute an ensemble whose elements interact with one another. The relative importance of the Vermeer is signalled by the distance between it and the next painting on either side being greater than the distance between those flanking paintings and the other ones immediately adjacent to them. Not only the central placement of the Vermeer emphasizes its precedence, but 6  Jacques Derrida discussed aspects of the effects of framing in La vérité en peinture , 1978. I do not see a difference in kind between literal framing (including those artefacts associated with many pictures in the Europeanmanner) and the placement of an item so as to be deliberately framed by its surroundings. Figure 1: Johannes Vermeer, The Astronomer , 1668, oil on canvas, 50×45 cm. Paris, Musée du Louvre; and The Geographer , c. 1668–1669, oil on canvas, 53×46.6 cm. Frankfurt, Städel Museum.