«Girl with a Pearl Earring (1)»

Vermeer painted the Girl with a Pearl Earring around 1665, and it hangs today in the Mauritshuis in The Hague. It is a tronie, a Dutch type of picture that shows a face, an expression or a costume instead of a particular person. Nobody ordered it, and nobody knows who the sitter was. That story is the starting point of this Girl with a Pearl Earring pop art painting.

She turns her head toward you, still in the blue and yellow turban, but the picture has been damaged on purpose. Her face is cut into horizontal strips that slide out of line, with black bars running through the cheek and the neck. A small white shape sits at the edge of one bar, about where the earring should hang. Pale paint drips down her forehead and nose, and pink spray-paint drips from her lips. Blue, green and pink pixel squares drift across the black background, which is textured and cracked like old plaster.

Her clothes are gone. In their place is a luxury-brand monogram in gold, pink, green, blue and red, with LV letters and flower shapes repeated across her shoulders. Takashi Murakami did something close in 2003 when he gave the Louis Vuitton monogram a multicolour makeover. Warhol had already shown in the Marilyn Diptych, in 1962, that a famous face can be repeated, coloured and sold like a product.

I like that the monogram is painted carefully while her face falls apart. I see this Girl with a Pearl Earring pop art painting as one of my contemporary portrait paintings where the old masterpiece survives only as a ghost. As an original pop art painting and as statement wall art it needs a quiet room and a large dark wall.

Most of my original paintings are already in private collections, but I paint originals to order in any size. To ask about this one, message me on Instagram or by email. A hand-finished lithograph of this work also exists, and you can order it through Instagram or email.