I know a classically trained artist who tells me he’s writing a book in which he debunks the whole thing.
Well, I didn’t see the video, so perhaps I shouldn’t say too much, but there seems to me not to be mystery to be solved in the first place. Vermeer’s work is not fundamentally different from that of his contemporaries, and their techniques are well known and in fact still used today by classical realists, who can nowadays paint even more realistically than Vermeer himself, without having to use any optical aids.
I’m not sure if Vermeer used this technique. The time taken seems impractical.
But there seems enough “evidence” to give reasonable doubt that he did use it.
I’m no expert in classical realist paintings so my opinion is not worth much.
In anycase they don’t make the claim he did it this way, only yo say it’s possible to do it this way.
Well, yes, it is also possible that aliens helped him…
The ideas of Hockney that the Wiki article refers to have already been quite thoroughly debunked, though you can kick me if I can find the link. We’ll see what happens with Jenison’s ideas, but I am not very optimistic.
It is true enough that many of the old masters were interested in optics and played around with such equipment, but these things are for the most part not of much use in creating paintings, and anyway, they are simply not necessary. As I said before, the problem here is that people who don’t know much about the issue see some profound mystery in need of a solution, pretty much like non-Egyptologists who will tell you with great conviction that the Ancient Egyptians couldn’t possibly have built the pyramids.
Jenison makes the same kind of error. E.g. this passage from the article I originally linked to:
“There are clues in Vermeer’s paintings that he did this. For example, the white wall in the back of the room seen in The Music Lesson. The way Vermeer painted this wall is consistent with a photograph. It is not consistent with human vision. If you were standing in the room that Vermeer painted, you would see that wall as a pretty even shade of off-white. The retina in your eyeball does some image processing to minimize the effect of light and shadow. To your eye, the wall appears to have far less contrast than it actually has. And if you can’t see it, you can’t paint it. But Vermeer, unlike other painters, painted his walls the way a photographic camera would record it.”
All I can say is “Huh?” Jenison simply has no idea of what he’s talking about; anyone with a first year’s student’s experience in drawing and painting can see a whole rich variety of tones and colours in a seemingly white wall. Jenison assumes that because he cannot see it, no one can.
Nowadays, classically trained artists routinely paint stuff like this:
without any optical aids, and frequently without using reference photos either. They do use the cameras Jesus put in their heads, mind you, plus the processing equipment between their ears…
Hehe, I think to paint like the one I posted requires much talent, and most of us simply don’t have it. However, anyone can learn to draw and paint fairly decently, and in the process you learn how to see things that most people don’t. It’s almost like becoming psychic.
Anyway, I have now veered way off topic. But because I saw one elaborate “solution” to a non-mystery, I reacted by seeing coincidences everywhere. What would that make me? The opposite of paranoid?
If I may (going to anyway), I started art classes a couple months back (trying to get in touch with my lost creative self) and found that if I turn a picture upside down I can actually draw the bloody thing as opposed to the right side up, I am an utterly, completely useless artist.
ps. I can draw a pretty decent cartoon cat after four months though…
Supposedly because when you turn it upside down, you have no preconceived ideas of what the subject is supposed to look like, so you draw what you see instead of what you think is supposed to be there. The trick works for some people, but not all. Never worked for me.
ps. I can draw a pretty decent cartoon cat after four months though.... :P
And just to make you feel better, go take a look at this:
