Sarasota Art Museum paintings exhibit puts the focus on the viewers

Life can get pretty meta these days. No, we’re not talking about the parent company of Facebook, but the concept of a thing within the thing.

Case in point: Imagine sitting on a bench with artist Joe Fig in the Sarasota Art Museum, where his one-man show “Joe Fig: Contemplating Vermeer” is on display. Fig is explaining how he would use photography and software to create a painting of SAM visitors looking at his portrait of museumgoers studying Johannes Vermeer’s “Girl with a Pearl Earring.”

As they used to say back in the ’60s — mind-blowing.

Fig, department chair of the Fine Arts and Visual Studies programs at Ringling College of Art and Design, traveled to Amsterdam with his son in May 2023.

Like more than 660,000 visitors from over 100 countries, father and son were drawn by the Rijksmuseum’s unprecedented Vermeer exhibition. The show included 28 of the 36 surviving masterpieces said to have been painted by the Dutch painter.

The trip was motivated by the desire to see the epic exhibition, but Fig also had it in his mind to paint portraits of those looking at the Vermeer paintings.

Fig, who is represented by the Cristin Tierney Gallery in New York City, is known for his detailed paintings of the intimate spaces where artists create their work. He is the author of “Inside the Artist’s Studio” and “Inside the Painter’s Studio.”

Demand for tickets to the Rijksmuseum’s Vermeer exhibition was high, but Fig managed to get there with a bit of luck as well as some wheeling and dealing.

“Tickets sold out in two days, but then my friend told me about a second round of ticket sales. After waking up in the middle of the night and hitting the refresh button on my computer over and over, I was able to get one,” Fig says.

He ended up selling the ticket on eBay. Fig made enough money on that transaction that he was able to buy two new tickets, allowing him to take his son on the trip.

Among the Vermeers on display at the Rijksmuseum show were “The Girl in the Red Hat” from the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., as well as three paintings loaned by the Frick Museum in New York. The Frick was undergoing renovations and was willing to temporarily part with “The Girl Interrupted at Her Music,” “Officer and Laughing Girl” and “Mistress and Maid.”

Those who want to learn more about the horse-trading involved in getting all those Vermeers to the Rijksmuseum should watch David Bickerstaff’s 2023 documentary, “Vermeer: The Greatest Exhibition,” which takes viewers behind the scenes of the negotiations between museum officials in various countries.

Seven of the 28 paintings in the Rijksmuseum exhibition had never been seen publicly in The Netherlands before, including those from the Frick and “Girl Reading a Letter at an Open Window” from the Gemaldegalerie Alte Meister in Dresden, Germany.

A short train trip saves the day

Unfortunately, by the time the Figs arrived at the Rijksmuseum toward the end of the exhibition, Vermeer’s iconic “Girl with a Pearl Earring” had been returned to its home in the Mauritshuis in The Hague.

Although all of Vermeer’s works are celebrated, “Girl with a Pearl Earring” has taken on a life of its own, thanks to Tracy Chevalier’s 1999 novel imagining the life of the servant girl painted in 1665. The heat only intensified with a subsequent movie starring Scarlett Johansson in the titular role.

At first, the Figs were crestfallen to have missed the master’s most famous work. “Then we figured out that the Mauritshuis was only a 50-minute train ride from Amsterdam,” Fig recalls.

What’s more, the Hague museum was nearly deserted, making it easier for the Sarasota artist to do the legwork to create his painting of visitors contemplating “Girl with a Pearl Earring.”

Here’s how it works. First, Fig uses his cellphone to photograph art lovers contemplating a painting. He takes lots of pictures of the museumgoers.

When he is back home, Fig uses Photoshop to cut and paste viewers from various photographs and artfully arrange them in front of the painting he wishes to commit to canvas. Once he has a composite scene he likes, Fig begins to paint.

As he explains inside SAM, a contemporary museum owned by Ringling College housed in the former Sarasota High School, Fig sees his subjects not as human beings, but as objects like red scarf and black shirt. He imagines how those elements would look in front of various paintings.

When an interviewer asks if the process represents a wee bit of “cheating” to achieve the desired scene, Fig says he sets rules for himself. “People have to be in the same museum as the painting. I can’t take a visitor at the Met in New York and place him in front of an artwork in another museum,” he says.

In doing reconnaissance to find the subjects who will populate his small paintings (His “Vermeer: Girl with a Pearl Earring” is 13-by-15 3/4 inches.), Fig looks for “engaged” viewers. He ignores those who are just there to score a selfie with a famous painting that they can post on social media to impress their friends.

And, of course, he’s looking for memorable details that he lovingly commits to canvas with tiny brushes. He relies only on his glasses to paint those details, shunning magnifying devices.

How granular does Fig get? He recalls how once when he was painting an artist’s studio, he spotted an address book that was left open on the artist’s desk that had his daughter’s Social Security number in it. Presumably, she didn’t become the victim of identity theft. (We didn’t pursue this line of questioning with Fig because we didn’t want to stray too far from Vermeer.)

Thinking on a grand scale

Before the SAM exhibition of 16 paintings, Fig had never done a full series of paintings inspired by a museum show, just one or two portraits. “Because Vermeer was such a blockbuster, I decided I wanted to try and capture that scope and energy,” he says.

Toward that end, he was conscious of the different colors for the backgrounds of his paintings and how they would interact with each other. “I wanted all the paintings in the show to work well together,” he says.

Oddly enough, although attention to detail was prized by some of Vermeer’s peers, he was more concerned with the overall scene and is celebrated for his depiction of light.

Born in 1632 in Delft, renowned for its blue-and-white pottery, Vermeer was the son of a weaver and an art dealer whose business he inherited when his father died. Little is known about his decision to become an artist or how he received his training.

Vermeer began his career painting large-scale biblical and mythological scenes, but became known for his paintings of ordinary life in quiet, interior settings.

As his SAM show inspired by the Vermeer exhibition demonstrates, Fig has a fine appreciation for art patrons. “As an artist, you need these people,” he says. “You also need dealers, galleries and writers. It’s a whole art ecosystem.”

A native of Long Island, New York, Fig received his BFA and MFA from the School of Visual Arts in New York. He got his start painting reproductions of Jackson Pollock, Jasper Johns and Willem de Kooning.

Fig’s work was recently featured in the triennial Skyway exhibition of contemporary Florida artists, which ran from July 2024 to Jan. 25. The show was a collaboration among five Tampa Bay museums, including The John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art and SAM in Sarasota.

Fig’s “Self Portrait: Studio” (Norwalk, Connecticut), a mixed media work of 29-by-26-by-21 inches that was created from 2007-21, was on display at the Tampa Museum of Art.

The museum’s description of the piece noted that Fig pays close attention to the “materials, tools and equipment the artist uses” and sees a studio as a portrait of the artist himself.

Despite his mild-mannered, professorial appearance, Fig has a healthy ego, a necessity in the art world. Don’t make the mistake of calling him a “local” artist. While he was pleased to be included in the Skyway exhibition, he wants to be clear that he has a New York City gallery and an international following.

Duly noted and no hard feelings. We’re glad Fig has chosen Sarasota as his home and that he’s teaching the next generation of artists at Ringling College and exhibiting his exquisite paintings at SAM.

Those who missed the Vermeer exhibition at the Rijksmuseum may not be able to pass up a mug with Fig’s “Vermeer: Girl with a Pearl Earring” in the SAM gift shop.

In a world filled with calendars, tote bags and umbrellas celebrating the recent Van Gogh show in London and the Impressionists exhibit at The Smithsonian, why shouldn’t Joe Fig have his own merch?