July 29, 2004

• Look, this is kind of an obscure thing but if you look back I'm sure you will find a lot of discussion here and on mefi about this and on David Hockney's immense volume on the subject (highly recommended). Also, ingres used a thingy for his portraits and I believe Velasquez used something as well. Along with many, many others. Even Durer used a screen. Also, you have to remember that our modern day notion of art is somewhat misapplied in the discussion of what not so much Vermeer but others were doing at that time and before (and after). They were simply trying to represent the wealth and influence of the peoples that employed them in the most photographic manner possible. When full color photographic reproduction came within the reach of everyone, that whole industry finally died. Yes I'm opinionated and you're welcome to argue with me.
• Excellent post! A review of Hockney's book, Vermeer's Camera, can be found here - sample: "He finds 1420s Flemish paintings so markedly different in quality and so improved in realistic effect, that he argues there must have been some change in technique, some intervention of optics that contributed in bringing the new painting about. But traditionally it is held that the type of camera obscura available at the time could not have produced images of sufficient clarity to aid painters, and the lenses that eventually allowed a large enough aperture for the camera had not been developed yet. "At this point Hockney introduces what is a well established optical fact, but one which has gone unreported in art or art-historical circles: known since antiquity as a "burning mirror", a concave mirror such as those used for shaving or make up can act as a projecting lens, given the correct lighting conditions. And curved mirrors of the right sort of size certainly existed at that time, as is evidenced in a number of the paintings that are studied, most impressively in Van Eyck's Arnolfini Wedding of 1434, though in this case the mirror depicted is convex. "Working from inside a dark room with only a roughly head-sized opening onto his subject, the painter could have projected the view through that opening onto a paper or canvas by means of a concave mirror in order to trace over it. Hockney tests out the technique and finds it is a perfectly workable one, but with its own limitations: for example, the size of the projected image would be limited by the size of the mirror to about 30 cm across. Larger paintings would have to be constructed by collaging several of these images together, with the corresponding shifts of point of view and sometimes scale. For example, in the Arnolfini Wedding, the extraordinarily complex chandelier which hovers above the pair, is actually seen straight on, which is evidence of it being painted independently form the rest of the painting." More reviews, along with a work of Hockney's own.
• /me is fascinated.
• I was trying to pick an art fight come on you slags
• Like ActSet says, there seems to be More On Mefi On Hockney. From where, Faigin's rebuttal of Hockney (but it seems Vermeer, at least, must have used lenses, just not all of 'em, so says he).
• Vermeer mostly made shit up, but I suppose that's obvious.
• Thanks for the link. Given a personal interest in Anton van Leeuwenhoek, that was fascinating.
• The fact that Vermeer used a
• Cool, thanks!
• I wasn't really to imply scandal. I just thought it was interesting for those of us who remain uninitiated to Flemish art and/or the use of the Camera Obscura to create art.
• A better reproduction of "The Music Lession" can be found here. Fascinating link.
• it's a pic-ting.
• or a paint-ture.
• o
• I'm fascinated with the possibility that these are photo-like omages from a historical perspective - that they were copied from life and not idealised through the artist's vision. Artistic vision can be wonderful for the personal experience, but as a historical source it introduces all sorts of problems, You don't know what bits of the image are real or not. Of course, these images are staged in any case, but it's fascinating to think that the faces within are really what they looked like, with no fashion or idealising affecting the features.
• Wolof, I clearly have not been monkeying around as much as I should have been. Thanks.
• Vermeer uses a Camera Obscura in The Girl with the Pearl Earring. I thought it was a known fact, because I tend to assume that authors of historical fiction research their subjects thoroughly. This may be a bad assumption, now that I think about it.
• I like the Warhol-esque repetition of this post - is it some kind of online art project? Let me know and I'll post it again next week. Very modernist...(tee hee)
• Cabin-girl: Sometimes I am very impressed by the research and accuracy in historical fiction, and I have to be very wary I don't rely on it (I am a history grad student, and I love historical novels). But the danger is like that of not being careful with paintings - though they often love to do research, a novel is always art first. If narrative and history come to conflict, narrative must take precedent (though some authors will state when they have done this - which is very cool). I wish that were true in history, but it is not, and because of that I find history much more difficult to write.
• We had a post touching on this already. I waffled on in it. Now please send me money.
• The subtle modesty of Vermeer: The charm of Vermeer is at once obvious and elusive, says Craig Raine. The pull of his paintings are apparent to most, but their precise qualities are almost impossible to explain.