Before Activism Was Art
In Neil Thomas Proto’s new book, the author argues that Johannes Vermeer paved the way for socially engaged art centuries before its time
The “Dutch Golden Age” is a period with which many art-educated individuals are familiar. The period, designated as beginning in the early 1620s and ending in 1672, is hallmarked by artists like Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijnand and Johannes Vermeer. This movement’s impresa is an overarching commitment to a study of light and genre scenes in painted compositions, an emphasis which produced canonical artworks like The Night Watch (1642) by Rembrandt. This period, romanticized as it is, becomes the grain against which to go against within Neil Thomas Proto’s new book Johannes Vermeer Provacateur: Risk and Courage in Dissent (2025).
Proto begins by identifying central tenets of the Dutch Golden Age, tenets which he reveals to be nefarious. Firstly, he identifies the stricture of Calvinism that pervaded the Netherlands during this time, a religion which banned the painting and adoration of religious iconography, thus ostracizing the existing Catholic population in the Netherlands. Second, he identifies slavery, a subject which hopefully needs no explanation as to its villainous nature, and importantly, the Netherlands was the primary agent in the triangular trade during the mid-1600s. Lastly, he identifies women’s increased education and participation in household management. Although in some ways a boon, this development in women’s position allowed for them to become implicated in the sale and trade of Black people. So, it seems that this development turned on itself.
It is against this ground that Vermeer was working, a deliberate defiance of cultural norms at the time that the author posits makes the artist become a provocateur. By painting the likes of Allegory of the Catholic Faith (1670-1672), a painting which depicts not only a woman before a crucifix but a painting of the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, Vermeer was in dissent with the reigning religious sect at the time, a rebellious move that makes Vermeer a contrarian.
It is precisely this quality that makes Proto’s book so powerful. The integration of art and advocacy is something typically attributed to social engaged art, a 20th century art movement that uses social interaction as the material for an artwork. But Proto’s book shows that this is not so. Using a bed of deep research, the author argues that activism is central to Vermeer’s practice. Through the painting of banned images, through the refusal to paint slaves, through the harrowing interaction of soldiers and housewives, Vermeer becomes a staunch advocate, one standing in the face of life-threatening peril. Vermeer, Proto seems to say, is a predecessor for the “activism as art” that so frequently populates our world today and yet he does so without corroding our existing understanding of the artist. Vermeer is still a master of light, color and composition, but he is also a contrarian. In this book we find not a redrawing of Vermeer, but an expansion. The artist is so much more than we imagined.
Leia Genis is an artist and writer currently based in Atlanta. Her writing has been published in Hyperallergic, Frieze, Burnaway, Art Papers and Number: Inc. Magazine. Genis is a graduate of the Savannah College of Art and Design.
Review by Leia Genis