Vermeer Reconstructed

In Vermeer Reconstructed , the artist and poet Paul takes eight works by Johannes Vermeer ( A Girl Asleep, Girl with a Pearl Earring, Portrait of a Young Woman, The Art of Painting, The Little Street, The Milkmaid, View of Delft, and Woman in Blue Reading a Letter ) and abstracts them through pixelation to reveal average color distributions over given areas of the image, from the entirety of the painting as one solid color to a “full resolution” image of the painting. Through these eleven stages of resolution, attention is called to the question of “what constitutes adequate reproduction?” In its manifold aspects, Vermeer Reconstructed can be viewed variously as a color study, as an examination of graphic reproduction, and as a work of visual poetry. Vermeer Reconstructed is part of the Reconstructed series of art books ( Bosch , Da Vinci , Rembrandt , Monet , Renoir , Cézanne , Van Gogh , and Rousseau ).