ADVICE: do not bring David Hockney's theories about art history up in conversation with art historians.
Even to mention them, even if it seems relevant.
tbh, I don't really see how it mounts much of a prima facie case; "here's a way you could do this" (specifically engineered to do this, given the paintings already in existence) isn't much of an argument, IMO, that that's the way it actually was done. Some problems admit of multiple solutions!
nebjamin, tell me you didn't just criticize the movie (or my gloss on it) despite not having seen it, right after I criticized someone for criticizing the movie, despite sounding like she hadn't seen it.
First, everyone involved only claims "it could have been done this way," not "he did it this way." Problems admit of multiple solutions. But some outcomes can result only from a limited set of circumstances. There's a scene in which Jenison (Tim) discovers something very subtle in the Vermeer, which he hadn't previously noticed, and which he notices only because it appears (as what he thinks is a flaw) in his own reproduction.
And if Bridgeplate were here (and maybe s/he is), s/he would never let you get away with "tbh" and "IMO" here, in these hallowed comment boxes.
1 & 2 do not accord with my experience.
I don't really care if Vermeer used a camera obscura or not. I doubt it, because it seems like the kind of thing we'd know about if he did, but even if he did, meh, what does he become? A sport in the field of the Dutch Baroque? Not super interesting, really. If you can establish some bigger narrative about technical aides and Dutch painting, that's kind of interesting, but I don't think you really can.
It's interesting to think why we're obsessed with the idea of the hermeneutic reading of paintings, the notion that there are secrets within paintings that need to be decoded or reverse engineered or whatever.
The interior decoration of the room in the parting shot is pretty damning, ogged. Admit it, you know I'm right.
I only hope they used the video toaster "lady pulling down a shade" animation at least once in the movie.
interior decoration of the room in the parting shot is pretty damning
We laughed out loud at that shot. God bless Tim Jenison.
First, everyone involved only claims "it could have been done this way," not "he did it this way."
Thus trading a weak argument for a boring thesis.
One wouldn't want to insult David Hockney, but the party of the camera obscura theory comprises a lot of obnoxious libertarian twerps.
I think Snarkout was snarkie-as-all-get-outtie on this topic, elsewhere.
But we're off for Amarillo! One thing that's not my favorite is that I probably won't get much of a cell phone signal when I'm not in a city until Denver.
Douchenozzle Philosophers of Unfogged, this not being the great and glorious Soviet Republic, no one is going to make you watch this movie, but you can't logic-chop away the empirical case made therein.
The link in the OP says it's available as a physical DVD. Rentable from lots of other streaming services for about five bucks, which is how we watched it.
It'll be the end of blah blah blah old masters!
In Soviet Russia, Vermeer paints you.
Both my father and my MIL saw the film. Both are fairly sophisticated consumers/appreciators of both art and film, and one found it fascinating, the other terminally dull; I don't recall which was which. Either way, I'll be passing.
I had to go look at art last weekend, because children need exposed to culture or something. Anyway, it was free.
So, I have not yet seen the movie, meaning I am well qualified to opine, but I just read this and, yo, that premise is very silly! It is true that the brain naturally compensates for light and shadow in images (and isn't very good at accurately representing shadow shape, and isn't good at accurately parsing mirror images, etc.) but there is a really excellent method for overcoming this called "paying very close attention." Artists are extremely, famously good at grasping the paramaters of human vision and using them to make more realistic-seeming images. Notably, the brain also compensates for perspective, and is generally able to solve the small cow vs. distant cow problem seamlessly even without binocular vision, but nobody thinks artists had to use a camera lucida to figure out perspective. (Although some people do think that painters who are particularly good at perspective tend to be wall-eyed and thus lack binocular vision.) Tim Jenison still rules, of course.
I haven't seen Tim's Vermeer, but I think my general stance is that a) art historians have been speculating about Vermeer's use of a camera obscura for sixty years, although nobody has posited this exact mechanism; b) David Hockney is an ass and the Hockney-Falco thesis, which asserts that artists dating back to van Eyck used optical devices, is a load of hooey; c) Penn Jillette can suck it and so, presumptively, can his friends.
19: fight the power, Moby. Just google "Tim's Vermeer" + "torrent" + "Halford" + "cries" + "cries" + "cries"
In light of 22, I should mention that some people do think that artists used mechanisms to figure out the workings of perspective, but it is obviously and evidently the case that you don't need a machine to render a scene in perspective accurately.
I just got called irresponsible for leaving my kids in the car for 8 minutes (he timed me) while I got coffee at a gas station. He knocked on my window and harassed me. So fucking riled up now.
I have always depended on the assholeness of strangers.
small cow vs. distant cow
No contest—distant cow will beat the shit out of small cow. (If and when she shows up, that is.)
I had to go look at art last weekend, because children need exposed [sic] to culture or something. Anyway, it was free.
Moby: a Millennial before it was cool.
I didn't have any opinions on this movie until googling it to prove that Ogged is an idiot, but apparently it's a "Texas based inventor" and Penn Jillette and Teller arguing in a totally one sided way for a stupid and clearly wrong to art historians idea because they are supersmart maverick engineers/debunkers, so, no.
need exposed [sic]
It may not be okay in your idiolect but it is in mine.
but you can't logic-chop away the empirical case made therein.
To make an empirical case, one would think you'd need to argue that even skilled artists can't paint like Vermeer without such a device, which would be tricky.
I had no idea rotoscoping was such an old technology.
25: this seems to be happening a lot lately. I initially assumed that nothing had changed except for the rate of reporting surrounding such incidents, but I'm coming around to the idea that civilization really is crumbling and/or this is a way for assholes to act out in an especially sanctimonious and misogynistic way.
25: Under Halfordismo you are entitled to one free punch right in the kisser for this.
Hit cars are this year's shark attacks. I'm at the park, so will return to the movie later.
Here's another example. I think the author (who, before people jump up and down about how much she sucks for using a camera obscura, is a friend of mine) gets it right here:
If you're worried about something going on between a parent and her child, by all means, get involved if you think it necessary. But short of a child being kidnapped or injured in front of your face, you might want to start from a place of openness, empathy and concern.
30: High five!
4: Of course not, oggedeleh. I was criticizing your claim that the film presents a "very strong" case.
People wouldn't be so worried about kids being kidnapped or dying from hit cars if we'd just remove the law that says you can't have a handgun until you are 21.
Halford has managed to swing me back over to the other side of arguing that the whole project is pretty neat. Tim Jenison lives in Texas now, yes, but he has invented some extremely cool and incredibly influential things (the Video Toaster was a consumer-level live video board, character generator and non-linear editor capable enough to be used on the first TV shows to integrate CG (Bablyon Five and SeaQuest DSV) and retailing for under $2500 at a time when Avids cost thousands more and were barely usable for 30 second commercials) and the art historians at the National Gallery link in (the informative and not hilariously embarrassingly curmudgeonly final section of) Halford's link agree that there is anyhow some chance that Vermeer experimented with a camera obscura, while presumably disagreeing that he likely used one to actually produce his paintings. Showing that, if he did or not, he could have is, while neither dispositive or necessarily academically interesting, pretty cool in an eccentric let's-put-on-a-Kon-Tiki kind of way.
Also, Jillette, at least, does seem to think it's a knock-down argument and not just an interesting way for the technically unskilled to paint miniaturistically.
32: I think they do try to make that case; it's addressed during the cloud-yelling in 29.
37: I'd sic the cops on anybody who writes for Salon, but that's just me.
Under Halfordismo all busybodies will be summarily executed, full stop, without trial. I don't know exactly when "mind your own fucking business" stopped being the normal default response in the United States to people telling you to do with your own family in public, but the busybody trend needs to stop now.
I've been reading Salon again lately. It's kind of annoying (sometimes the page loads with an ad running with sound), but Slate is getting to be too much of a pain to read and I can't work all the time when I'm at work.
I said strong prima facie case, neb. Shame! The snarky links aren't nearly as refutatious as they think they are. And the movie is still great for Jenison's dedication. More later!
re: 32
I have a friend who can knock up Old Master style paintings.* She's an art restorer, who specialises in restoring medieval, Renaissance and early Modern art. Her silverpoint stuff looks like Veronese.
* right down to being able to duplicate -- as much as is practically possible -- the chemistry of the pigments and glazes.
The stupid local newspaper's front page loads with sound blaring like it's a Geocities page from 1995. Some of us are reading during conference calls.
47: You know who else was dedicated? That's right. Melville Dewey.
"Strong prime facie case" is pretty much obviously bullshit if you're not going to actually look at what's known about the technique or obtain knowledge thereof. And the link in 29 appears to pretty conclusively show that "Tim's" "mirror" theory is just wrong, even if it's possible that Vermeer (and other artists of the period) were generally "familiar" with a camera obscura.
37.2: The standard for getting involved in other people's parenting decisions ought to be very, very high. Less so if it's family or close friends, but strangers ought to be left alone unless they are really endangering their kids. Obviously the busybody Heebie dealt with thought that 8 minutes in a car alone (under presumably a not very hot conditions, given the timestamp) was risking frying the Geeblets, so I have a tiny bit of sympathy, because I pity idiots.
47: I found this reasonably refutatious, if they do in fact say that he didn't do underpainting.
Regardless of whether or not Vermeer painted this way, it's a pretty cool "painting hack".
You won't get a painting hack if you wear a proper respirator when spraying.
52: Was the busybody's objection that 8 minutes was to long to spend in the Easy-Bake oven that is Heebie's car? Or that 8 minutes was plenty of time for the child abductor who was hiding behind the lamppost to make off with the kids (while the busybody with the stopwatch observed and did nothing)? Or that 8 minutes of uninterrupted solitude would force the poor children to confront the Nietzschean abyss and go mad as a result? Or all of the above?
Maybe heebie forgot to leave the electric shock-delivering machine behind.
What was she supposed to shock herself with while waiting for the cashier?
Sounds to me like an adult man was stalking little children. Call it in.
I had to tell some disgusting old woman to get the hell out of my face the other day because she was criticizing me for letting my six year old kid wear her gymnastics outfit after class to a Target. Fuck you, busybody.
Or that 8 minutes of uninterrupted solitude would force the poor children to confront the Nietzschean abyss and go mad as a result?
This seems to me an entirely reasonable concern.
New bumper sticker: How's My Parenting? Call 1-800-EAT-SHIT.
60: You let her dress how she wants at Walmart, but Target still has standards.
This article is kind of neat. Apparently the counter-argument to "but there is underpainting" is "a Camera Obscura would have been very dim so it would have been very difficult to paint in color, so he did an underpainting in monochrome using the camera". Which is reasonable, and also seems to dovetail with the uncertainty on the national gallery site about what exactly the underpainting was for. Of course, it could be that the underpainting was a way of laying down more a more sophisticated tonal palette (as suggested on the National Gallery site).
The most jaw dropping part of the movie is when they try to rehabilitate Vermeer by back filling with what the poor schmiel *did* contribute to painting them (aside from meticulously copying the little image in the lens thing),and they lamely start going on about you know he had to pick the room and the objects and arrange them and the people and gosh that's not NOTHING you know ... and then you see last shot and your like no shit that's not nothing dudes.
I'm having trouble deciding whether encounters such as those described in 25 and 60 make me more likely or less likely to support concealed carry laws.
I'm kinda leaning towards "more likely".
I haven't seen the movie, but it seems to me that the parts of painting that a camera obscura would help with are largely irrelevant to what makes Vermeer's paintings so fantastic. I'd rather pay to see a brick wall painted by Vermeer (see "The Little Street" and "View of Delft") than to go to most art museums, and I don't see how a camera obscura would help him paint a brick wall.
That is, a camera obscura is neither necessary nor sufficient to explain Vermeer. So even if he used one, I don't see how that solves any mystery.
I don't think the device in the movie was actually a camera obscura though, was it? It was the other thing that didn't actually verifiably exist until 1807.
69: well, if he used one, it solves the mystery of whether he used one.
The whole thing kind of reminds me of the Kon-Tiki, but Thor Heyerdahll was at least man enough to get onto a raft in the middle of the ocean to not-prove his wrong theory.
I don't think the device in the movie was actually a camera obscura though, was it?
No, it wasn't. It started out that way, but he realized he could sit in the daylight if he used a mirror with the lens.
when they try to rehabilitate Vermeer
I think this is misleading. Jenison in particular in totally humble and clearly in awe of Vermeer.
it could be that the underpainting was a way of laying down more a more sophisticated tonal palette
Yeah, this seems like the natural response, and the movie didn't explain, at all, really, how Jenison got the paint to be the color he needed. It also didn't explain, at all, how Vermeer could have used a contraption to paint outside scenes.
But there are still some powerful pieces of evidence that the snark-links don't address. In one scene, they magnify a Vermeer to show what looks for all the world like purple fringing from chromatic aberration. What's up with that? And there's the example I alluded to above, where Jenison discovers that he's painting a subtle curve in something straight, due to the curve of his lens, and then checks the Vermeer, and there's the exact same curve. What's up with that? This is what I mean by a strong prima facie case--there's stuff that without further investigation, or some deep knowledge of paint and painting, suggest the use of a device.
All that said, I'd recommend the movie on the strength of Jenison's awesome obsessiveness alone.
Do people who hold this theory think it applies to his outdoor paintings? A little poking around suggests that one key bit of evidence for the mechanical device theory is that many of his paintings take place in the same room from the same perspective. But for "View of Delft" he'd have to do things quite a bit differently.
"We're going to need a bigger mirror."
think it applies to his outdoor paintings?
No idea. It would be a stretch.
What's up with that?
Confirmation bias?
In one scene, they magnify a Vermeer to show what looks for all the world like purple fringing from chromatic aberration. What's up with that? And there's the example I alluded to above, where Jenison discovers that he's painting a subtle curve in something straight, due to the curve of his lens, and then checks the Vermeer, and there's the exact same curve.
If we're going to claim these things are significant I think we have to worry about what Moby would call multiple comparisons.
A little poking around makes it unclear to me whether Vermeer using some sort of device is a fringe theory on its own, or just that the idea that a device explains Vermeer is obviously nutty. Theories which are fringe but very popular on the internet are tricky to identify sometimes.
See also: loop quantum gravity, Bohmian mechanics, aquatic apes, chemtrails....
For example, this post suggests that the basic theory is sound, but the movie is crazy.
what Moby would call multiple comparisons.
What would someone else call them?
79 -- AFAICT (from similar poking around) the non-fringe theory is that it's reasonably plausible, but not certain, that Vermeer (and other old masters) were influenced by images they'd seen from a camera obscura, but the idea that they used one as the basis for a copying technique in their painting (or a camera lumina (not attested until 1807), or whatever was used in the movie) is definitely a fringe theory for which there is no good evidence, the proponents if which rely on the variety of shifting claims and "it could have happened this way" that generally mark bs theories.
I would like to see the argument made for The Allegory of Faith. "The symbolic snake bleeds the fuck over everything in a manner that could not have been reproduced without actually stepping on a symbolic snake."
The first two sentences of the post in 81 are false. Should I keep reading?
For example, I can't exactly vouch for this summary, but it sure seems like a nearly complete refutation.
it sure seems like a nearly complete refutation of a different theory than the one in the movie
I think the movie's thesis is a subset of the Hockney theory -- it's just an idea of a practical demonstration of a way in which Hockney's theory could be true. If the arguments in 87 are correct, the movie's thesis is almost certainly wrong.
"I think this is misleading. Jenison in particular in totally humble and clearly in awe of Vermeer."
Upetgi(9) is articulating my point with less nastiness and non-elliptically (less obscurely?) (ducks...). Yes, they all go on about how aMAZing Vermeer is, but without ever attempting to articulate any theory of what makes the paintings stupendous as anything other than technical challenges that reproduce tasteful interiors. (and the failure to even nod in the direction of the plein air pieces is notable!) And there have been a certain number of interesting contemplations of the stupendous factor over the years...
Yes, the dude is obsessive, rich and has friends with their mitts firmly on the levers of small film production. Like many obsessives tho he isn't interested in contributing to any discussion that might not go his way. I live with a natural obsessive, so I do have some appreciation for the raw natural spirits in play but I'm still pretty sure my 13 year old will grow out of the most tedious, relentless tendencies.
Having read only the blurb*, I don't quite understand the question. Vision and representation existed before photography. Why should someone not have been able to paint very realistically just because something that automatically makes very realistic representations hadn't been invented? Now possibly ogged will scold me because I haven't seen the movie or indeed read more than five comments of the thread. Maybe I want to be scolded. It's a complicated world.
*BLURB!
Perhaps I am supposed to hope he *doesn't* grow out of tedious relentless obsessiveness so he becomes stinking rich inventing stuff, but I am weak and prefer interesting conversation. Also despite the decent school results in math, physics and "techno" (don't ask, still have no idea what it's about) he seems more passionate about music, dance and ferrin tongues so suspect he's headed towards noble artistic penury.
See also: loop quantum gravity, Bohmian mechanics, aquatic apes, chemtrails....
I SEE WHAT YOU DID THERE.
89: I'd say Jenison is inspired by, rather than following Hockney; his method is quite different. Hockney meets with Jenison a few times, including after Jenison's work is finished. What Jenison and another Vermeer-devicer say is that Vermeer might have done it this way, and we'll probably never know. Hockney seems to want to go further and say that the paintings themselves give us the evidence we need to say at least that he was a devicer.
Why should someone not have been able to paint very realistically just because something that automatically makes very realistic representations hadn't been invented?
Well, this depends on what you mean by "realistic", right? I think the key issue with a lot of this stuff is that perception is not particularly veridical with respect to stuff like absolute perspective, retinal size, shadow shape and color, global contrast, edge contrast and, I dunno, lots of stuff. The general argument is that pictures by the Dutch Masters or Caravaggio or whoever produce a representation that is so accurate that it must have come from an optical reproduction as opposed to the non-veridical perceptual reproduction. This is a little weird, though, because it's perfectly possible to notice these discrepancies once you realize they exist -- knowing that they are there, we can notice them, after all. On the other hand, it is certainly the case that in some cases (like so) things like local contrast differences are literally imperceptible unless you hide portions of the image from yourself. (Here is a big, long interesting chapter on visual artists and visual perception if anybody is super, super procrastinaty today.)
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Let's hear it for German bluntness.
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knowing that they are there, we can notice them, after all
Phenomenologists have been on this beat since forever. Also Ruskin, IIRC, on the colors of grass. Maybe I should look at that big long chapter.
967 cont'd: I assume that the meat of the argument that these artists would have played with Camera Obscuras and lenses and so on is that they would know about things like the variation in real color due to shadows that gets washed out in perception. Otherwise, per the Adelson contrast illusion linked above, they never would have known to really try to pay attention to the actual color of the white wall in shadow (or whatever), since they simply wouldn't have ever seen the difference.
95. Whatever. There are two possible conclusions: either he was one of the greatest painters of the c.17, or he was one of the greatest painters of the c.17 and also a technical genius who was a couple of hundred years ahead of his time. I'm cool with either, as long as we have the paintings.
either he was one of the greatest painters of the c.17, or he was one of the greatest painters of the c.17 and also a technical genius who was a couple of hundred years ahead of his time
The argument that appeals to me is that c.17 artisans wouldn't have particularly seen a distinction between this; painting was per se a technical and aesthetic challenge, and the technical and the aesthetic would not necessarily have been separable concepts. I'm sure I'm parroting somebody's ideas when I say this, but I dunno whose.
In Elements of Drawing Ruskin writes, "Everything that you can see in the world around you, presents itself to your eyes only as an arrangement of patches of different colors variously shaded." Therefore, he argues, artists should seek to recover "the innocence of the eye, " which he defines as "a sort of childish perception of these flat stains of color, merely as such, without consciousness of what they signify,--as a blind man would
― 62 ―
see them if suddenly gifted with sight." To illustrate his argument, Ruskin chose a familiar example--the color of grass:
[W]hen grass is lighted strongly by the sun in certain directions, it is turned from green into a peculiar and somewhat dusty-looking yellow. If we had been born blind, and were suddenly endowed with sight on a piece of grass thus lighted in some parts by the sun, it would appear to us that part of the grass was green, and part a dusty yellow (very nearly of the colour of primroses); and, if there were primroses near, we should think that the sunlighted grass was another mass of plants of the same sulphur-yellow color.
Rushkin then points out that since we have learned that grass is green, we tend to see it only as green (just as Salinger's Teddy feared). "Very few people," Ruskin concludes, "have any idea that sunlighted grass is yellow."[22]
Isn't there an issue that people's visual perception, especially in level of detail but also in other ways, has a tremendous range of variation? I'm reminded of someone (I thought this was from Oliver Sacks talking about his wife, but researching, that can't be right) described as being able to look at, say, an animal skeleton, turn it around 360 degrees, turn away, and sketch it from memory from the eight cardinal and intercardinal directions.
100 and 101 neatly summarize the opinion of Jenison and Jillette.
103: they ask an oxford prof who specializes in vision whether Vermeer just might have been able to see a particular effect that mere mortals can't see without a camera, and the answer is an unequivocal no.
The newly sighted exhibit profound impairments. They are unable to organize the many regions of different colors and brightness into larger assemblies. [...] It is as if the visual scene for a newly sighted person is a collage of many unrelated areas of color and luminance, akin to an abstract painting.
104.2: what effect is that, do you remember?
I don't think the accuracy of Ruskin's claims about the newly sighted should detract from the point of quoting him, which is that he was clearly aware of variations in color that untrained people aren't, and that it is possible to train oneself to see them.
I had an idea last night: Instead of constantly pwning each other, what if we had a thread where people commented in teams? It would give everyone a chance to think their comments through more effectively, and lead to many humorous outcomes. Think of it: There could be Lizard Hick, and Sifu Halford, and Tiafilo, and aposimon, and Miniawl, and Inaccessible Island Light Rail Tycoon and lots of others! It would be fun!
I have heard the Oggèds scolding each to each.
I do not think that they will scold to me.
It's not as if "hide portions of the scene from your view" is a radical technique that would not have occurred to a painter.
Take out the definite article and 110 reads like a sentence from a David Markson novel.
David Markson, upon googling, not appearing wholly as reader would have pictured him.
When I was a kid I had a tracing device a lot like the one in the pix (I haven't seen the movie). I didn't produce any Vermeer-quality output though.
What's galling about both the "pro" and "anti" article(s) is the implication (in spite of "in awe") that using such devices is cheating, or cheapens what Vermeer painted. Is using your thumb on the paint brush to help with size cheating too? Is drawing perspective lines cheating?
Jenison spent a gazillion dollars to make a lousy copy of a great painting. Let's imagine for a moment that Vermeer used exactly the same devices. Somehow he produced a masterpiece and Jenison produced a curiosity.
106: it was about seeing the very subtle difference in shading in a scene, I think. They illustrated it with a graphic that showed it was easy to differentiate subtly different squares if they were next to each other, but impossible as they moved away from each other.
definitely a fringe theory for which there is no good evidence, the proponents if which rely on the variety of shifting claims and "it could have happened this way" that generally mark bs theories.
116 Don't know what happened there.
definitely a fringe theory for which there is no good evidence, the proponents if which rely on the variety of shifting claims and "it could have happened this way" that generally mark bs theories
As the Austrian said to Piketty.
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I really want to eat some celery right now.
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73.penultimate - Which is why there's been an ongoing debate for a while about whether Vermeer used optical devices. I think the bulk of art historians have decided that the answer is "probably not", but he was likely familiar with them -- some of his rough contemporaries were known to own cameras obscura -- and it's not a crank theory the order of "the works of Shakespeare were written by the Duke of Oxford who manufactured an entire career on the stage for an illiterate provincial grain merchant in order to better conceal his work because reasons". (Hockney's broader thesis, which basically holds that the entire tradition of European art in the Renaissance was driven by revolutions in optical technology that curiously didn't make it into the historical record, pretty much is at that level.) That's separate from the question of whether, if Vermeer used an optical device, Jemison has accurately recreated it. I haven't seen the movie, but it's a modified Claude glass, right? My gut instinct is "probably not" for a couple of reasons, but you never know.
I think it's a modified camera lucida, but we've reached the limits of my knowledge.
The National Gallery says that Vermeer may have (but we don't definitively know) used a camera obscura (not a camera lumina) to conceive, not paint, some of his works, which as far as I can tell is the non-crank consensus.
60: the very best part -- among MANY good parts, Josh! -- of moving away from the finger-waggingest place in the universe is that nobody has wagged a finger at me in going on two months. It's remarkable how much good this is doing my blood pressure.
123: Thanks! That clears things up.
If we start to believe the non-crank consensus as expressed by employees of the government, we may as well believe the Warren Commission.
Re: finger-wagging, Lee and I (separately, because our state is stupid) signed our petitions to adopt Selah and Nia respectively today, so it should only be a few more months until I only have to fear regular parent-shaming and won't be a foster parent anymore.
115: so yeah, nosflow's 110 would speak to that. It is definitely the case that color/luminance/contrast perception is inextricable from local context, but the easy way around that is to change the local context, by, say, holding up a piece of wood with a hole cut in it and closing one eye. You could even hold up your palette, if you were so inclined, and peer through the thumb hole, which would make the context of the color out in the world exactly the same as the color you were mixing on your palette.
It is also worth pointing out that looking at something and painting it are very different; think about trying to paint the illusion I linked in 96. It might be the case that you would say "oh, okay, I only need two colors for this checkerboard", but with a little experience you would realize that didn't look right at all and would probably start trying to modify your colors.
When was the piece of wood with a hole in it invented?
Further to 123, I've enjoyed looking this up a bit. Here's what I think I've found. It looks like there's a reasonable consensus that for some of his work Vermeer may have used a camera obscura with a lens to trace some of the underlying drawing, and may have also partly relied on some of the shading provoked by the camera obscura in doing his "underpainting" which affected color shading. Canaletto clearly did the former about 100 years later. It's possible that Vermeer could have done that (the tracing of the underlying drawing) in some of his works, and there are some apparent non-cranks who think that he may have been influenced by the camera obscura in some of his underpainting. But there's absolutely zero evidence (even analysis of painting evidence, there's no documentary evidence for any of this) for a camera lucida or for Vermeer genuinely using the camera obscura to "paint", as opposed to to provide some underlying drawing and being influenced by some of the camera's shading, and thus the "Tim's Vermeer" theory is clearly crankatonious.
I'm pretty sure I remember being taught various 'obscure shit with other shit, in order to perceive some further shit better' techniques in high school art class.
In terms of perception, I'd be looking for very strong claims in order to be convinced that Vermeer was doing something super-humanly impossible without a device.* We are talking about people coming out of a centuries old tradition of life-long deep immersion in colour, proportion, and so on, into which they'd been apprenticed since their youth.
I presume most of us were taught about using a green paint, in painting skin tones at school, for example? That's some counter-intuitive shit, but your average renaissance painter did that sort of thing as a matter of course.
* that's not to say that these painters might not have been familiar, or even using optical devices of various kinds. Holland was a famous centre for optics, after all.
I'm pretty sure I remember being taught various 'obscure shit with other shit, in order to perceive some further shit better' techniques in high school art class.
Yeah, it's pretty standard. As well it might be!
You could even hold up your palette, if you were so inclined, and peer through the thumb hole, which would make the context of the color out in the world exactly the same as the color you were mixing on your palette.
Are there any self-portraits of Vermeer in which his face is covered in smudges of paints?
I presume most of us were taught about using a green paint, in painting skin tones at school, for example?
All we were ever allowed to paint were circles, and we had to use #2 pencils for it.
Because he had little tiny tyrannosaur arms and would be unable to hold the palette away from his body while looking through the hole, you mean?
Only Scottish people are green. And tyrannosaurs.
Leeuwenhoek and Vermeer were both born in 1632, L was executor of V's will.
Vermeer was basically forgotten for hundreds of years. Why pick on him now?
Vermeer is nice, but Van Eyck is nicer. Waning of the Middle Ages is so much better than Hockney's flaky examination of Vermeer. I haven't seen the film in the OP.
re: 135
I did 'O' grade [and part of 'Higher' Art] at school, so may have done slightly more technique-wise than people who didn't study it until 16. But it's common-place stuff.
You didn't paint at school? Or do photography? Ceramics?
138: I'm pretty sure there are non-Scottish tyrannosaurs.
No painting after maybe 6th grade. No photography except on the yearbook. No ceramics except pinch pots in first grade.
The Yellow Rose of Texas is a place to stop for gas and to pee.
Waning of the Middle Ages is so much better than Hockney's flaky examination of Vermeer
Hurray for Huizinga! But does he have anything to do with this at all?
Although I took an art class in high school (required), I don't remember ever being instructed in any kind of technique, for either drawing or painting. They just gave us materials and told us what we were supposed to do, but with no explanation how to do it. We didn't have photography, and also no ceramics after elementary school.
This was in the '80s; it seems like most American schools have cut out art classes entirely since then, but I don't have first-hand knowledge if this is true.
You didn't paint at school? Or do photography? Ceramics?
Those kind of things are electives at American high schools -- if they are taught at all. At least, that's my experience.
re: 142
Ah. Everyone at our school would have done art until about age 14, then you'd need to choose it as one of your 'subjects' that you'd be taking exams in. I'm fairly sure we did photography, and also making paintings via projecting and tracing negatives, funnily enough, in 2nd year. So, about 13. We definitely did pottery. Our school had two ceramics rooms, with potters wheels and kilns.
Yeah the bulk of the art classes I took were outside of school (community art center place). They did have a pretty good selection of art classes at my high school, but it's a ridiculously well-funded suburban school of the new trier stripe so should doesn't really demonstrate anything.
143: Heebie is living the greatest country song:
"Amarillo by morning, up from San Antone.
Everything that I've got is just what I've got on.
When that sun is high in that Texas sky
I'll be bucking at the county fair.
Amarillo by morning, Amarillo I'll be there."
The starting point is an improbably talented Dutch painter, and the reactions span the gamut from insightful appreciation to a hunt for lost trickery.
Imitation is in my mind actually a legitimate form of appreciation. I'd rather learn more about van Meegeren than look further into the Hockney book.
I'd rather learn more about van Meegeren than look further into the Hockney book.
Yeah, it's easy to think that it's impossible until you see someone do it. The UK had a TV series in which Tom Keating -- similar to van Meegeren but not as famous, or on the same scale -- recreated Old Masters.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Keating
And I was shocked when I went to my wife's friend's atelier as she was finishing up her Masters. She had pitch-perfect Veronese style drawings, and oil paintings in the style of various Old Masters scattered about.
152.2: I agree in principle, but I find his "Vermeer" religious paintings so ugly.
Ah, here you go:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Y4GAq_hayY
Keating on Rembrandt. Years since I saw them, though, so it may have dated badly.
Not exactly a reinterpretation of old master styles, but Stuart Pearson Wright paints nicely, often with clear incorporation of older styles. Too bad he doesn't have more shows or work in the US.
John Currin is superficially similar, but his work consistently disgusts me.
Vermeer's not improbably talented though is he? Like I know we're meant to think he's an amazingly talented genius etc, but as far as the Dutch who knew him were concerned he was a good but not obviously exceptional painter who had been trained within a social context & market to produce works which fitted in to what was expected of Dutch painters. He's not an individual genius who appears out of nowhere, he's part of the Dutch Golden Age. So I'm quite wary of theories of painting which only apply to Vermeer, because you also have to explain a bunch of other lesser known Dutch painters, which starts to put strain on the "technology lost to history" argument.
157 - You don't understand -- Oxford and that Tudor hussy conceived Henry Wriothesley, but the knowledge would have destroyed the British crown, so de Vere had to content himself to hints and acrostics!
Henry Wriothesley
My daughter's ninth-grade English teacher taught them, when doing Shakespeare's sonnets, that Wriothesley was either a cross-dresser or trans*, apparently entirely on the basis of a portrait showing him, a sixteenth-century nobleman, wearing lace. And you know, +10 points for trying to open the kids' minds to the possibility of non-gender-binary or whatever you'd call it behavior or identity in pre-modern (early modern?) periods. But -5000 points for apparently having no concept that men's fashion has changed over the centuries.
What's worth pseudonymizing in 159?
Also, unjustly forgotten European paintings: the quickening
I don't want to be badmouthing my kids' teachers in an identifiable way. And they're mostly lovely, this dude just appears to be a moron.
My daughter has been really engaged with the literature they've read this year, out of a need to develop a strong, well supported position from which to disagree with everything he said. She now has strong feelings about Pantheism, and believes Keats deserved to die of tuberculosis.
When I was in the school, that Keats deserved to die of tuberculosis was on the final exam.
I was in a school, not the school where Marie of Roumania has a daughter.
School is a glorious feast for the head,
A buffet of miscellanea,
But Wriothesley's not queer and Keats was a putz
And my mother's Marie of Romania
At the parent-teacher conference with kids English "teacher:"
She: "So we're reading Harrison Bergeron, and he asks 'When was this written?'" She then relates that she responded 'What difference does that make?'
Me: Any grammar? She: Are you kidding? These kids don't know the difference between a verb and an adjective!
I did not say,, but thought immediately: 'If only there were someone who could influence the syllabus.'
That's pretty good. Just don't try writing romantic poetry or you'll catch TB.
135 was just a joke about how American schools have replaced art classes with standardized testing. Don't overthink it, 140.last.
If my school is anything to generalize from, art classes were harder to staff toward the end of the 80s because the teachers got Agent Orange-related cancer.
139, 146: Huizinga has been comfort reading for me since mid- late-teens. Keep on expecting it to lose its charms in times of stress, but hasn't happened yet.
162.2: This perfectly describes so much of my education.
VAN EYCK 4EVAH!1!1!!
ahem, but, although the dude's obsession was charming and my husband and daughter were inclined to be convinced, and we even got a little modified/digital camera lucida to mess around with (just now; haven't tried it yet): no. vermeer was not just tracing shit all the time. that's just...ten kinds of dumb. or if we are to believe per impossible that no one can paint with that extraordinary, calm, shining realism, then van eyck was sure as fuck using a camera lucida for that plate of peaches on the windowsill in the arnolfini wedding. and so was hans memling when he painted portraits. and then the huge camerae were all destroyed because vampires? so that those wretched italians wouldn't find out (oh noes caravaggio made off with one!) what? it's so dumb. so. dumb.
Ogged will be acknowledged as an Old Master of trolling one's own blog until some Texan* reveals that his apparent genius was merely technologically-assisted copying.
I look forward to sequels addressing other uncannily photorealistic artists. First up, Tim's Vermeer II: the Jacques-Louis Davidening, featuring the portrait of Lavoisier.
*bob
veryone at our school would have done art until about age 14, then you'd need to choose it as one of your 'subjects' that you'd be taking exams in. I'm fairly sure we did photography, and also making paintings via projecting and tracing negatives, funnily enough, in 2nd year. So, about 13. We definitely did pottery. Our school had two ceramics rooms, with potters wheels and kilns.
Likewise, though we did woodcut prints instead of photography. If you weren't doing GCSE or higher, you stopped after the second year.
I remember having an art class in school until age 10. It was weekly and I don't think we were supposed to learn anything, just express ourselves.
There was one kid who could draw things accurately. He was seen by everyone else as basically having magic powers, like Rumpelstiltskin. I guess he had taken lessons outside of school.
That would explain how he always had babies with him.
I saw this film. It's about 20 minutes of good material and 60 of meh with terrible production. I understand it as a vanity project but the production value surprises me from a guy who has been involved in graphics for decades.
