{"id":26335,"date":"2014-02-03T08:51:02","date_gmt":"2014-02-03T14:51:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/?p=26335"},"modified":"2015-01-03T11:31:47","modified_gmt":"2015-01-03T17:31:47","slug":"i-am-a-camera-sometimes-tims-vermeer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/2014\/02\/03\/i-am-a-camera-sometimes-tims-vermeer\/","title":{"rendered":"I am a camera, sometimes: TIM’S VERMEER"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

DB here:<\/p>\n

Sometimes you sense that a film is made especially for you, and you expect to enjoy and admire it well before you see it. This happened, I guess, with millions of people and films like\u00a0Star Wars, Twilight, <\/em>and The Hunger Games<\/em>. I didn\u2019t share those viewers’ hopes, but I knew from advance publicity that I would be keenly interested in the new documentary,\u00a0Tim\u2019s Vermeer<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n

Why? It involves Penn & Teller, two demigods of mine; it’s about art and technology; and it investigates the possibility that a painter used optical devices to create glowing, mysterious images. In the process, it reawakens the controversy around David Hockney\u2019s thesis in Secret Knowledge<\/em><\/a> that many old masters were employing lenses and mirrors to render nature with unprecedented richness.<\/p>\n

I wasn\u2019t disappointed. It was the most intellectual fun I\u2019ve had at the movies in the last year.<\/p>\n

It’s hard to explain technical stuff clearly, and even harder to dramatize it so that audiences are engaged. Tim’s Vermeer<\/em> teaches you a lot about art, technology, and human will and skill. The personality of the central figure makes the tale engrossing and funny, often suspenseful, and at moments a little wistful. At the same time you get to study one of the greatest paintings in the western world in a thoroughly unpretentious way.<\/p>\n

There, I’ve made my recommendation. Stop now if you want your experience completely unsullied. But you’ve perhaps read other reviews, and nearly everything I mention in what follows is mentioned in at least one of those. Sony Pictures Classics has kindly put\u00a0the screenplay<\/a>\u00a0online, so there really are no secrets if you’re determined to know it all. I want merely to convey some of the excitement the film gave me. It explores a fascinating problem in art history through one man’s patience, ingenuity, and determination.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The Darkened Chamber<\/strong>
\n\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Tim Jenison, a wealthy software innovator, is a polymath\u2014musician, tinkerer, and fan of art. He is not a painter, but he works with images constantly; part of his fortune derives from Video Toaster and other postproduction software. He comes across as articulate, avuncular, and gifted with a self-deprecating sense of humor.<\/p>\n

In 2001 Tim learned of two recently published books, Hockney\u2019s Secret Knowledge: Rediscovering the Lost Techniques of the Old Masters <\/em><\/a>and Vermeer\u2019s Camera<\/em><\/a>, a more academic investigation by Philip Steadman. Steadman made a strong case for Vermeer\u2019s use of a camera obscura in painting his pictures.<\/p>\n

The camera obscura is a box that uses a small hole and lens to project an image of the scene outside the box. The image appears, inverted and flopped side to side, on the wall opposite the lens.\u00a0Project the image onto a drawing surface, and you can trace it, although it\u2019s difficult and requires a lot of practice.<\/p>\n

The photographic camera is such a device, using film stock or a chip to fix the image. Amateurs used portable camera obscuras for some centuries before photography, and there\u2019s evidence that Canaletto and other major artists employed them. A camera obscura (or \u201cdark room\u201d) can be any size, and it\u2019s possible to set one up as a booth in a parlor. This is what Steadman suggested Vermeer did. Features of the paintings, such as perspective convergence and certain visual distortions, were characteristic of camera obscura images.<\/p>\n

Hockney made bigger claims. He proposed that use of the camera obscura, along with convex mirrors and other optical gear, went far beyond Vermeer and a few other image makers. Caravaggio, for instance, seemed to him a master of staging tableaux vivants<\/em> in his cellar and then copying what his array of gadgets yielded\u2014in effect, creating a photographer\u2019s studio.<\/p>\n

Hockney\u2019s proposals created a storm of controversy, with art historians, optical scientists, and cultural critics driven to fury. A common ad hominem<\/em> complaint was that Hockney didn\u2019t draw well himself and used photography to help him, so he would naturally denigrate a draftsman of genius. You can see some links to the debate in this entry\u2019s codicil.<\/p>\n

Steadman, a historian of architecture, used the perspective presented in the paintings to calculate the dimensions of the room and the placement of the camera obscura, and as a result he could measure the size of the projected images, which uncannily matched the size of the finished paintings.\u00a0Tim took another direction.<\/p>\n

By reflecting the camera obscura image into a hand mirror that he could position just above the picture in progress, Tim found that without training or talent he could copy a scene with astonishing accuracy. He started without a camera obscura, just using the hand mirror to paint an image from a photo of his father-in-law. The result encouraged him to go farther\u2014much farther.<\/p>\n

Tim\u2019s Vermeer<\/em>\u00a0documents Tim\u2019s painstaking process.\u00a0He used 3D mapping to plot the space shown in The Music Lesson<\/em>. He then built the room and furnished it with life-size replicas of the furniture and fittings.\u00a0He ground authentic versions of the pigments and lenses used in Vermeer’s era.\u00a0He even found models to stand, fixed in place by clamps, while he painted, with infinitesimal slowness, the image caught by his lens and hand mirror. By trial and error he found that adding another mirror helped even more. He was painting\u00a0from a three-dimensional scene, as captured on a camera obscura.<\/p>\n

The entire project consumed 1825 days. Documentaries always document more than they intend to, and part of the film\u2019s attraction is its portrait of a man driven to the limit to test his hunches. His presence adds a human narrative to what could have been considered a dry academic debate. You have to wonder what Herzog would have made of this multimillionaire spending years trying to replicate a masterpiece.<\/p>\n

Tim\u2019s obsession yielded a remarkably exact version of the scene done entirely by hand, eye, and optical devices. The film shows Hockney and Steadman approving Tim\u2019s picture as a valid “proof of concept,” as he calls it.<\/p>\n

The film is carefully clear about what Tim\u2019s demo didn’t prove. He hasn\u2019t shown that Vermeer did it this way. We have in fact no written documents concerning how Vermeer produced his pictures, so our inferences are based wholly on the paintings and the historical circumstances. For example, Antony Van Leeuwenhoek, celebrated microscopist, lived in Delft at the same time and served as executor of Vermeer\u2019s estate. But no documents indicate that they discussed lenses, or even knew one another.<\/p>\n

Nor has Tim proved that he\u2019s as good as Vermeer. Hockney insists that paintings are marks and \u201cmachines don\u2019t make marks.\u201d Vermeer\u2019s touch may be inimitable and owe nothing to optics.<\/p>\n

And Tim hasn\u2019t supported Hockney\u2019s suggestion that there\u2019s no other <\/em>way Vermeer could have gotten his distinctive look. Admittedly, thanks to perceptual psychologist Colin Blakemore, Tim found that Vermeer\u2019s pictures include visual phenomena that aren\u2019t available to our unaided eye, such as fine gradations of light on a pebbly surface. Still, perhaps Vermeer was familiar with optically generated images and imitated them, freehand, in his pictures. Perhaps he used a camera obscura simply as inspiration and a guide to visual discovery.<\/p>\n

What Tim has<\/em> shown is that a simple knowledge of how light behaves in mirrors and lenses\u2013knowledge that was available in Vermeer\u2019s milieu\u2014could enable someone to produce images of extraordinary accuracy and detail, if he or she were willing to expend a hell of a lot of time and trouble.<\/p>\n

Lawrence Gowing suggests that to Vermeer the drudgery that Tim underwent was exhilarating.<\/p>\n

It was in the camera cabinet perhaps, behind the thick curtains, that he entered the world of ideal, undemanding relationships. There he could spend the hours watching the silent women move to and fro.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Maybe Vermeer was, as Tim suggests, an ancestor of today\u2019s CGI geeks, toiling over his picture for days and weeks, though without the benefit of pizza and Mountain Dew. There are thousands of such people today. Were they around then too? Was Vermeer the first keyboard monkey?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The outsider\u2019s risk<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Here are some objections to the Hockney-Steadman-Jenison line of argument. I don\u2019t think they\u2019re insurmountable.<\/p>\n

There are always crank theories around.<\/strong> But although the public discussions of Hockney\u2019s thesis came close to calling him nuts, it\u2019s worth listening to an artist\u2019s conception of how another artist might work\u2014especially when the skeptics aren\u2019t practicing artists themselves. Hockney isn\u2019t proposing the sort of numerological theories we get, say, in the film Room 237<\/em><\/a>, or the \u201csecret geometries\u201d line of argument that maintains that every line and mass proves the artist was a Rosicrucian or a Freemason. Hockney\u2019s theory may be wrong, but it\u2019s not wacko.<\/p>\n

Jenison is a na\u00efve dabbler from outside the art world and lacks certified expertise.<\/strong> Again, it\u2019s not a matter of who floats an idea but how valid the idea is. Why couldn\u2019t a computer-graphics expert come up with enlightening ideas about pictures? Craftsmen in any domain often spot fine points that lay people can\u2019t.<\/p>\n

Besides, insiders can be mistaken. Forgers have long fooled connoisseurs. The Smiling Girl<\/em> picture above was shown as a Vermeer at London’s Royal Academy in 1929, but now it’s regarded as a fake.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s too easy.<\/strong> If this were all there were to painting lifelike pictures, you might say, any kid could do it. Well, not many would have the patience. Tim spent 130 days painting the picture and he nearly gave up. It was stressful, hard on his back, and strewn with unexpected obstacles. He had to take frequent breaks. Freehand drawing is a lot easier, not to mention faster. Although Tim is no painter by training, he clearly has a careful eye and extreme fine motor control in his fingers. I, who can scarcely draw a straight line with a ruler, couldn\u2019t do what he did.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s too hard.<\/strong> Tim\u2019s painstaking dabbing is laborious, others might grant, but it\u2019s donkey work. His conception of art is \u201cdifficulty of doing,\u201d but there are lots of things that are hard to do, like building ships in a bottle, and they aren\u2019t art. But all art requires discipline, and in those times experts labored for days over bits of the canvas that hardly anybody would notice. As a craft, painting is inherently hard, but we can scarcely imagine the amount of energy invested in the voluptuous images of Vermeer\u2019s period. Damien Hirst can whip up high-priced paintings fast for today’s market, but conditions at that time would slow him down. He\u2019d probably have to catch his own shark.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s too reliant on technology.<\/strong> But art has used mechanical devices for centuries. The best examples, very relevant to Vermeer, are all the drawing aids associated with perspective, including not just straightedges and protractors but complex gadgets like Durer\u2019s famous converging-string setup that allowed him to draw curved volumes.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Such devices are shortcuts to deploying the geometry of the system. As Steadman says in the film, \u201cPerspective is an algorithm.\u201d<\/p>\n

Later eras have given us much art dependent on technology, from tubes of oil paint to Hockney\u2019s own Polaroid- and iPad-assisted imagery. And of course film and video art wouldn\u2019t exist without machines. Hockney puts it well from the standpoint of the practicing painter:<\/p>\n

[Raphael] would have wanted to make as vivid a portrait as he could. As a professional painter, he had a job to do and would have used all the tools at his disposal, including, if he thought they would help, lenses. He would not think, \u201cI\u2019m a great artist at the height of the Renaissance who should disdain such methods.\u201d <\/strong><\/p>\n

Hockney and Steadman report that practicing artists they\u2019ve encountered have been far less hostile to their ideas than art historians have been.<\/p>\n

It insults greatness.<\/strong> I suppose this is what Susan Sontag meant by saying, “If David Hockney’s thesis is correct, it would be a bit like finding out that all the great lovers of history have been using Viagra.”<\/p>\n

Actually, the copying of a camera obscura image isn\u2019t as mechanical as one might think, but even if it were, would it be devastating? We allow photographers, with their mechanisms for intercepting light rays, the status of great artists.<\/p>\n

The objection rests on a valid point. We do need to know something of how an artwork was made in order to understand and judge it. But in this case I don\u2019t think that discovering that Vermeer used mechanical aids would minimize our appreciation of the pictures. It might, however, change our sense of how he relates to the traditions that followed. This change in our understanding is something Hockney and Jenison hope to bring about.<\/p>\n

It dispells the mystery.<\/strong> This is the toughest argument to counter because it assumes that we want mystery in our art. It seems to me ultimately a religious way of thinking about art. I\u2019m enough of a rationalist to hope that in any area, research can turn some mysteries into puzzles, then turn puzzles into problems, and maybe solve some of the problems.<\/p>\n

There\u2019ll always be a residue of questions we can\u2019t answer. Given the feeble progress we\u2019ve made in understanding art, no one should worry. We researchers nibble at the edges, and the Big Mysteries aren\u2019t going away any time soon. In the meantime, we can ask whether Tim, along with Hockney, Steadman, and others, has answered some worthwhile questions about how Vermeer made his pictures.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

My wish list<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Here are some matters that a longer film would probably have been able to tackle. I’d love to see a version that did.<\/p>\n

How does Vermeer fit into the broader history of art?<\/strong> The painting traditions in which Vermeer worked\u2014genre scenes, portraiture, perspective–aren\u2019t articulated in the film. In addition, the use of the camera obscura by other painters could be brought out. Perhaps the assumption is that Hockney covered that territory.<\/p>\n

Still, to avoid certain accusations, it might have been better to grant that artists blend talent, training, and hard work with selective knowledge of what earlier artists have done, and what rivals are up to. E. H. Gombrich emphasizes the various factors involved: the tasks that artists undertake, their tools, their techniques (including inherited visual patterns, or schemas<\/a>), the problems inherent in a project, and the artist’s circumstances, such as competition with other artists and the fluctuating tastes of their audience.<\/p>\n

The exactitude of Vermeer\u2019s interiors, for instance, is in tune with contemporary Dutch paintings of household routines (so-called genre painting) and of still-life paintings of foods glistening on a tabletop. There was a taste for meticulous presentation of everyday life at the time, and this probably impelled Vermeer toward his unique brand of realism. Was he trying to top his rivals? The film suggests that his delicacy and precision surpass what’s on display in contemporaries like Pieter de Hooch.<\/p>\n

What counts as realism?<\/strong> Vermeer\u2019s pictures look fantastically accurate, and have for some time. But he selects only certain dimensions of reality to capture. Other painters focus on movement, which is all but absent from Vermeer\u2019s images. There\u2019s a snapshot quality to Baroque representations of figures in action, which look scarily realistic. And many other painters render details that impress from a distance or even close up; Jan Van Eyck is probably the most famous.<\/p>\n

What about the lenses and mirrors?\u00a0<\/strong>Tim goes to great lengths to mimic the features of Vermeer\u2019s room and to mix paints as he might have. The film is mostly silent, though, about his optical devices. What focal lengths were the lenses in camera obscuras? We know that different focal lengths render perspective in differing ways. Some of the distortions commentators have found in Vermeer\u2019s picture seem to proceed from wide-angle coverage. Moreover, Tim\u2019s hand mirror and convex mirror seem to be modern ones. Are these enough like what Vermeer would have had available?<\/p>\n

Did Vermeer alter the perspective projection he obtained?<\/strong> Many painters who calculated perspective felt free to adjust it or confound it for the sake of expressive effect. Famous pictures are full of inconsistent vanishing points, often masked by figures or items of setting. Tim’s painting obeyed what his camera gave him, but perhaps Vermeer adjusted his image. Consider, below, some details from Vermeer’s picture (left) with Tim’s (right). (Ignore color differentials, since the reproductions of the original vary so much.)<\/p>\n

\"\"\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\"\"<\/p>\n

Did Vermeer fiddle with what the camera showed? I’m not thinking so much of the disparities in the placement of the figures above, which are probably to be expected; we’d be shocked if Tim’s setup worked exactly the same as Vermeer’s. I’m more concerned with the way in which Vermeer seems to have cheated perspective with respect to the reflection.<\/p>\n

It looks as if Tim tried to match the reflection, but to do that he had to have his daughter turn slightly to the right. Yet Vermeer’s young woman faces the mirror head-on, while the reflection shows her in high-angle three-quarter view. Was the mirror slightly tipped on the left edge? And did it hang out from the wall slightly more than in Tim’s chamber? I wonder if Vermeer simply wanted to have it both ways–a head turned squarely away from us, a reflected face that wouldn’t be gazing straight out but rather pensively downward. Classic pictures often contain such expressive compromises with geometrical exactness.<\/p>\n

Do we overrate the clean image?<\/strong> Tim, coming from the computer-graphics world, seems to have accepted the current assumption that the most faithful and attractive image is razor-sharp.\u00a0He\u2019s fascinated by the undeniably exact textures on the fabric and the wood and plaster surfaces.\u00a0He thinks that Vermeer \u2018s images resemble \u201ca video signal\u201d and that they glow like the images on a movie screen (that is, nowadays, a digital image).<\/p>\n

But Tim\u2019s High-Def aesthetic plays down some of painting\u2019s traditional resources, notably sfumato<\/em>. And art historian E. H. Gombrich notes that Vermeer\u2019s precision retains \u201cmellowed outlines\u201d and doesn\u2019t seem harshly photographic. Going back to the details above, to my eye, Vermeer\u2019s image isn\u2019t as sharp as Tim\u2019s. The faces \u00a0are sketchier, and the shadows have softer contours.<\/p>\n

Gombrich and others have made much of the crucial role of suggestion and incompleteness in painting, especially paintings that are seen at a distance. Our perceptual systems fill in dashes and blobs with specific features, but Tim\u2019s algorithm may chop too fine. The difference should give comfort to the people who emphasize Vermeer\u2019s idiosyncratic paint handling. It would be worth seeing if Tim thinks he could recalibrate his pictorial mesh to soften the image somewhat.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Problems and solutions<\/strong><\/p>\n

Tim\u2019s Vermeer<\/em> is an entertaining lesson in how rational inquiry<\/a> into the arts proceeds\u2014posing a problem and then using inference and evidence to frame possible solutions. The film also shows how a problem usually has many facets, which sometimes have to be dealt with piecemeal.<\/p>\n

A piecemeal approach is particularly pertinent to reconstructing Vermeer\u2019s methods. Many art historians would grant that he, like others, might have used a camera obscura to imagine or sketch out the basic composition of the piece. But the crucial later phases of painting would have been carried out by eye and hand unaided. What is characteristic of the Hockney\u2014Steadman\u2014Jenison \u00a0line is they try to indicate\u00a0how much<\/em> of Vermeer\u2019s practice can be accounted for by optical aids.<\/p>\n

Assume that Vermeer used a booth-type camera obscura. That device could yield general contours. Steadman charted other features of the camera obscura that show up in the master\u2019s paintings, such as variable focus, light scattering, and perspectival distortion characteristic of lenses. He went on to build a scale model of the room depicted in The Music Lesson<\/em> and other pictures, and showed that Vermeer might have used a booth-type camera obscura. With the cooperation of the BBC, Steadman built a life-size model of the system he discovered.<\/p>\n

Reading Steadman\u2019s brilliant book when it appeared, and then visiting his website<\/a> where things are spelled out a little more, pretty much convinced me of his argument. But I didn\u2019t think much about lighting or color.<\/p>\n

Vermeer\u2019s \u201cmellowed outlines\u201d are often given by minute shadings of tonality rather than firm outlines. Yet when you\u2019re in the booth, it\u2019s so dark that you can\u2019t determine color accurately. This is where Tim Jenison comes in. What sort of optical device could yield such gradations of color?<\/p>\n

Tim discovered that a small mirror mounted on a rod over the drawing surface would allow an artist to build color patches, as well as masses and contours, by slightly shifting her gaze from the mirror\u2019s reflection of the camera\u2019s image to the picture being made. You\u2019ve achieved the right tonality, Tim points out, when the edge of the mirror seems to disappear.\u00a0In this image, the disc you see isn’t clear glass but rather a mirror reflecting the camera obscura’s image, which is outside the frame.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Dim light in the booth doesn\u2019t matter because both the image and the color you match are illuminated uniformly. The result, in the film, shows a remarkable degree of similarity.<\/p>\n

But the optical projection remains a bit pale and lacking in detail; more concentrated and focused light is needed. Teller\u2019s film shows how Tim hit upon the idea of focusing and brightening the camera \u00a0image by projecting it onto a concave mirror rather than a flat plane. A mirror is also a projecting surface, and its reflection can amplify the camera lens\u2019s image.\u00a0With this array of lenses and mirrors, you don\u2019t need to work in darkness and you don\u2019t need a barrier between you and the scene.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

At this point, Tim\u2019s demo has demolished the darkened chamber itself.\u00a0Maybe this is what Vermeer actually used, although if he wanted to hide his methods, the booth with its wall or curtain would have been preferable.<\/p>\n

Another lesson in rational inquiry: Controlling for variables can encourage anomalies to pop out.\u00a0In drawing the harpsichord in the picture, Tim had assumed straight edges, which he outlines with a ruler. But in painting the undulating seahorse motif on the surface, he discovered that his lens rendered the motif as very slightly curved. When you check the painting, you find that Vermeer\u2019s motif does the same thing.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0The curve, which Tim dubbed \u201cThe Vermeer Smile,\u201d is characteristic of the distortion yielded by a lens. Your eye and brain don’t see it that way, however, and painters working freehand would automatically make the seahorses prance in a straight line.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In short, just as Vermeer\u2019s lens may have allowed him to make discoveries about the behavior of light, Tim\u2019s lens gave him a new insight into Vermeer\u2019s art.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Photography without film<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Suppose we buy the whole package. Assume that Vermeer used Tim Jenison\u2019s hardware. What then does his art consist of?<\/p>\n

In Film Art: An Introduction<\/em><\/a> we distinguish four areas of cinema technique: mise-en-scene, cinematography, editing, and sound. Editing and sound aren\u2019t relevant to Vermeer (though Eisenstein might make an argument for \u201cmontage\u201d operating within the master\u2019s \u201cshots\u201d). But the other techniques are, if we imagine him making unmoving movies\u2014that is, photographs.<\/p>\n

Mise-en-scene involves what is photographed. Vermeer controls the setting, picks the props, and costumes, and arranges the lighting. He determines the color within the scene. He also stages the action, although there isn\u2019t much movement. Gombrich calls his paintings \u201cstill lifes with human beings.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cinematography has an equivalent in Vermeer\u2019s art too. He must select a lens for the camera obscura, and he has to focus it. Most commentators agree that painters who used the device focused on different areas of the scene as they needed to paint them. Vermeer doesn\u2019t use film, of course, but he does have paint, and the properties of that medium have to be taken into account. In Tim\u2019s words, as he sits brushing in tiny strokes, \u201cI\u2019m a piece of human photographic film.\u201d<\/p>\n

Vermeer also has to frame the scene, which is a bit tricky because the camera obscura doesn\u2019t yield a rectangular image but rather a circular <\/em>one. Here is Steadman\u2019s reconstruction of the camera\u2019s visual output, flipped to match the painting and reproduced in black and white.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Vermeer has to crop the projected image in advance, much as a cinematographer today has to visualize the image’s final shape as seen on the viewfinder or monitor.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Staging and framing in The Music Lesson<\/em>\u00a0yield an unusual composition. What\u2019s the subject of the painting? The woman playing? She\u2019s turned from us, seen from afar, and quite decentered. True, she\u2019s reflected in the mirror. But Steadman shows that this mirror is ambiguously drawn. It also seems to be angled so as to conceal the opposite end of the room\u2014a ploy familiar to scholars of early cinema, when such tipped mirrors hide the movie camera.<\/p>\n

Thanks to the oddly empty space in the left half of the picture, our attention drifts often to the empty space separating window, furniture, and people. Vermeer is in effect painting the journey of light hitting various surfaces. The streaming sunlight endows a patch of the rug, the bottom of the viola, and the upholstery tacks with a glow and brightens the woman\u2019s sleeve. Then it thins into a more diffuse illumination before hitting the jug as a brilliant pictorial climax.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Perhaps he\u2019s painting how air looks.<\/p>\n

Vermeer\u2019s zones of choice and control overlap with those of a photographer or a filmmaker. Or those of an illusionist. As stage magicians, Penn and Teller know the classic putdown: \u201cAw, they do it with mirrors.\u201d The film might be their answer: \u201cYeah, and it works<\/em>.\u201d\u00a0They and Tim Jenison have created a landmark film that ponders the interplay of science, tools, and artistic creativity.<\/p>\n

\n

Special thanks to Michael Barker of Sony Pictures Classics and Merijoy Endrizzi-Ray of Sundance Madison.\u00a0Thanks as well to Kristin Thompson, Diane Verma, and Darlene Bordwell for conversations about the film.<\/p>\n

The controversy over Hockney\u2019s theses can be traced in the Wikipedia entry The Hockney-Falco Thesis<\/em><\/a>.\u00a0My quotation from Susan Sontag comes from Wyatt Mason on ArtKrush<\/a>. The camera obscura image of The Music Lesson<\/em> comes from Philip Steadman, Vermeer’s Camera<\/em><\/a>, p. 123, as does my Lawrence Gowing quotation (p. 165). I’m grateful to Steadman on many levels, not least because his website encouraged me, in 2002, to set up the one you’re visiting now.<\/p>\n

For further information on the general research area, see Martin Kemp, The Science of Art: Optical Themes in Western Art from Brunelleschi to Seurat<\/em><\/a>. Kemp corresponded at length with Hockney, and portions of their exchanges are included in Secret Knowledge<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n

Gombrich’s comments on Vermeer come from Chapter 20 of The Story of Art<\/em><\/a>. His classic Art and Illusion<\/em><\/a> elaborates his account of inherited pictorial schemas and their revision across history.<\/p>\n

Hockney has defended the film<\/a> and explained further. Kurt Anderson has offered a valuable overview of the making of Tim’s Vermeer<\/em>\u00a0in\u00a0Vanity Fair<\/em><\/a>. Several video interviews cast light on the process as well. Here\u00a0<\/a>Teller, Penn, and Jenison discuss the film with Kent Jones at Lincoln Center. David Poland sits down for a 30-minute interview<\/a> with Penn and Jenison. Philip Steadman discusses how Tim’s ideas build on his book in this University College London video<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Jonathan Janson\u2019s site offers good coverage of the film\u2019s reception, here<\/a> and here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

One reviewer<\/a> considers Tim\u2019s theory \u201cwackadoodle\u201d but misunderstands it, saying that \u201cVermeer might have created his masterpieces by putting his models in a camera obscura.\u201d Then he told them scary stories in the dark, I guess. More attentive reviews of the movie include one by Peter DeBruge in\u00a0Variety<\/em><\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0another by Todd McCarthy in\u00a0The Hollywood Reporter<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n

You know Penn and Teller as conjurors and hosts of the show Bullshit!<\/em><\/a> (My favorite episode: the animal mind-reader.) Be sure to read their books<\/a> too.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Team Vermeer: Standing: Philip Steadman, Teller, Tim Jenison. Seated: David Hockney, Penn Gillette.<\/em><\/p>\n

PS 12 March 2014:<\/strong>\u00a0Painter\u00a0Jane Jelley<\/strong> has proposed a way that Vermeer could have made his pictures using a camera obscura but without mirrors. She reports success replicating that method herself. Her article and some background to her experiment are available here<\/a>. I thank Ms. Jelley for writing me with this information. The controversy continues, which makes me happy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

DB here: Sometimes you sense that a film is made especially for you, and you expect to enjoy and admire it well before you see it. This happened, I guess, with millions of people and films like\u00a0Star Wars, Twilight, and The Hunger Games. I didn\u2019t share those viewers’ hopes, but I knew from advance publicity […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26335","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-documentary-film","category-film-and-other-media"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26335","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26335"}],"version-history":[{"count":34,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26335\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26375,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26335\/revisions\/26375"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26335"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26335"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26335"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}