January 17, 2005
EXCUSES, EXCUSES:
Expert rebuffs Hockney claim that Old Masters traced their paintings (TIM CORNWELL, 13th January 2005, The Scotsman)
A SCIENTIST has launched a broadside attack on David Hockney’s controversial claim that great Renaissance artists traced their paintings.Hockney rocked the art world with his claim that Renaissance painters used early optical instruments to project images for their works.
But a Californian physicist is to showcase new evidence that skill, not gadgetry, delivered the meticulous detail of portraits by Old Masters.
David Stork, a Stanford University physicist and art historian, is a fierce critic of Hockney’s idea and will make his case at the Electronic Imaging Conference in San Jose, California, the magazine New Scientist reported.
Mr Stork used computer imaging of a 1645 painting, Christ in the Carpenter’s Studio, by Georges de la Tour, to show that the only source of light in the work was a candle shown in Christ’s hand. It means the image could not have been projected, he said.
In 2001 Hockney, one of the best-known modern artists, argued that the striking realism of many Renaissance paintings meant they were too perfect to have been drawn by hand.
Wasn't it really just an attempt to excuse the lack of skill displayed by modern artists? Posted by Orrin Judd at January 17, 2005 10:26 AM
The Art Resource Center on the Internet thought so.
Posted by: Chris Durnell at January 17, 2005 10:30 AMThis utterly pathetic. Even if his claims were true, and they're not, who cares. The result has stood the test of time. Modern 'art' is an absolute joke in comparison. The celebrity artists are lazy and unschooled. Tom Wolfe was utterly prescient when he wrote the "Painted Word."
Fortunately, I sense we're getting past this phase. Don't be surprised if some great artists emerge in the former eastern bloc during the next 20 yrs. There are young artists there who study and respect Western tradition.
Posted by: JAB at January 17, 2005 11:58 AM
"Wasn't it really just an attempt to excuse the lack of skill displayed by modern artists?"
In a word, yes.
Recommend "The Painted Word" by Tom Wolfe ... fun book.
Also, The Rape of the Masters by Roger Kimball. Well done.
Posted by: Joe at January 17, 2005 12:15 PMThey don't work in the circles Hockney travels in, but there are plenty of present-day painters who can work as realistically as the early modern masters, without optical help.
You can see a sample of their work in the David Smith catalogues.
Thanks for the tip on Kimball, joe. I enjoyed Wolfe's book.
Posted by: Harry Eagar at January 17, 2005 3:00 PMYes, and Wolfe is as good a novelist as Dickens, just as some modern painters may be as good as the Masters, but precisely because not Modern.
Posted by: oj at January 17, 2005 3:15 PMOdd that Stork did not choose to explore the considerable scholarship concerning J. Vermeer's knowledge of optics. It is very hard to dismiss the iea that Jan used cameras obscura in his work.
Vermeer, who counted Leeuwenhoek of microscopy fame as a friend, could well have thought he was a cutting-edge artist, not a phony.
It is not controversial that Vermeer used optics (specifically a Camera Obscura). What Hockney claims is that artists who's work does not show obvious signs of using optics did so, that he is the first person to notice this, and most controversially (or absurdly, in my opinon) claims artists were secretly (almost conspiratorially) using optical devices years before it is commonly believed such devices were even invented.
Posted by: carter at January 17, 2005 5:56 PMOrrin, I'm surprised you seem not to know that Hockney's a realist painter, quite skilled in traditional representation.
Posted by: at January 18, 2005 1:48 AMYeah, but he cheats--he has to use optics...
Posted by: oj at January 18, 2005 7:52 AMSo the guilds were able to keep a trade secret a secret for a while, and by Vermeer's time the secret was out. So what?
Posted by: joe shropshire at January 18, 2005 2:58 PMPretty much every piece of art produced after WWII is utter crap.
Posted by: Bart at January 21, 2005 8:46 AM