I found it remarkable how Weschler was able to interweave the history and creation of Vermeer’s paintings with something as dark as the Yugoslav War Crimes Tribunal. The reading brings up this idea of Vermeer creating seemingly peaceful works of art as a response to the tumultuous times that surrounded him. It is not an idea that is at all new, but it also made me think more about the lives that artists such as Vermeer lived and reasons that art is made.  In the history of art, especially during Vermeer’s time, art was primarily commissioned by patrons, be it wealthy merchants, nobles, or the Church.  Thus it starts to lead to the questioning of was it necessarily Vermeer simply painting to escape the troubled times around him, or him receiving the commission to do so?  It brings up a lot more questions to consider the very purpose of what art should be and do. Art is not necessarily always a definite way of being able to tell about the experiences occurring at the time of its creation.

One line in particular that grabbed my attention was Weschler’s use of the phrase “inventing peace”.  The very image that is created by an artist in a painting, or taken in a photo, has the possibility of achieving just that. When one looks at a picture, there is an automatic assumption that we have about what is it that we are seeing, and the very reason of why it may have been made. The image is itself an invention by the artist to make the viewer think something, that may or may not actually be true. This very notion of the truth of an image ties back to my project from over the summer. While I focused primarily on the use of an image to retain a memory, and the ultimate decline of the memories validity, it similarly brought up this point of the viewer’s interpretation and understanding of an image versus the actual truth behind the creation of the image.