NY Times: Paintings Too Perfect? The Great Optics Debate
 

This article appeared in the New Times on December 4, 2001 (my birthday :)). I thought members here might find this interesting. Please note that I am not taking any position on this, but simply presenting information:

December 4, 2001

Paintings Too Perfect? The Great Optics Debate
By SARAH BOXER

It started personal and it stayed personal. Three years ago the artist David Hockney realized that he could not draw like Ingres. Worse yet, he thought that Andy Warhol could. Warhol's drawings were confident, quick and correct. They had the cool assurance of a photograph. The reason was clear: Warhol made his drawings by tracing photographs.

Starting with that jangling observation, Mr. Hockney derived a new theory of art and optics: around 1430, centuries before anyone suspected it, artists began secretly using cameralike devices, including the lens, the concave mirror and the camera obscura, to help them make realistic-looking paintings. Mr. Hockney's list of suspects includes van Eyck, Caravaggio, Lotto, Vermeer and of course the maddeningly competent draftsman Ingres. All of them, Mr. Hockney suggests, knew the magic of photographic projection. They saw how good these devices were at projecting a three-dimensional world onto a two-dimensional surface. And they just could not resist.

That was the case that Mr. Hockney and his scientific sidekick, Charles Falco, a professor of optical sciences at the University of Arizona, presented before a jury of art historians, artists and scientists on Saturday and Sunday at a symposium arranged by the New York Institute for the Humanities called "Art and Optics: Toward an Evaluation of David Hockney's New Theories Regarding Opticality in Western Painting of the Past 600 Years." The auditorium at New York University was packed. A line of people waited outside to come in. Lawrence Weschler, the writer who first publicized Mr. Hockey's theory in The New Yorker, presided. He used his crutch not for his pulled leg muscle, but to gavel the audience to order.

Mr. Hockney and Mr. Falco first presented their case in a 75-minute documentary film. In it they gave no documentary evidence of optical instruments. Instead they showed how the paintings gave themselves away.

The suspect paintings, they showed, are too correct and too natural to have been "eyeballed" or drawn freehand. The armor, eyes, lutes and clothes in them look too real; the expressions appear too fleeting.

But these paintings are also too incorrect. They have parts that are out of focus, like photographs. Or they have multiple vanishing points and parts that do not quite fit together, telltale signs that the artist focused and refocused his lens to capture different parts of his picture. Or they have a preponderance of left-handed drinkers, suggesting that a reversing lens was used. Some actually contain depictions of optical devices. Van Eyck's "Arnolfini Wedding," for example, shows a convex mirror whose concave side might have acted as a lens that projected an image onto a flat surface.

Mr. Hockney is not accusing any artist of cheating. "I am not even saying that people traced," he added. "Optics don't make art." The lens, the mirror and the camera obscura are all just tools. The point is that artists encountered them much earlier than anyone thought.

"To see them is to use them," Mr. Hockney said. He suggested that a direct line led from van Eyck's obsession with projected images to television's conquest of the world.

If art historians had bothered to learn optics, Mr. Falco added, they would have known it all decades ago.

Art historians did not take this lying down. Keith Christiansen, a curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, read an open letter to Mr. Hockney testifying that he had gone out and bought a concave mirror at Duane Reade. His verdict? The projection the mirror threw onto his paper wasn't clear enough for him to make a decent drawing. Besides, he added, there is plenty of evidence that artists like Michelangelo, Raphael and Caravaggio had "no need for fuzzy, upside-down images." They made freehand preparatory sketches instead.

Susan Sontag went after Mr. Hockney's ideology of picture making. To say that there were no great painters before optical devices, she said, is like saying there were no great lovers before Viagra. It is a "very American" kind of argument. Although Mr. Hockney was born British, she said, in his thinking "he is one of us." To argue that there is a "direct line from van Eyck to television," she said, is to use present-day mass visual culture as the lens through which the past is examined. It represents the "Warholization of art."

Linda Nochlin, the Lila Acheson Wallace Professor of Modern Art at the Institute of Fine Arts, was as dramatic as Mr. Hockney. At her signal an audience member brought Ms. Nochlin's wedding dress onstage, a white shift with blue doughnut shapes on it. As evidence that artists can draw patterned cloth without the aid of optics, she compared the dress to a wedding portrait that Philip Pearlstein, "an eyeballer par excellence," had made of her sitting in that dress while her husband slouched next to her in white pants. "This is what I call scientific evidence," she said.

Then the gloves really came off. David Stork, an associate professor of computer science at Stanford University, considered the little convex mirror in van Eyck's Arnolfini wedding picture, the mirror that, Mr. Hockney suggests, van Eyck could have flipped over and used as an optical device. First off, Mr. Stork said, a mirror of that size would never have worked. To get a lens that would "hold Arnolfini, his wife and dog," he would have needed a huge mirror, sliced from a sphere seven feet in diameter.

And that is just the beginning of the trouble. If van Eyck had used the lens in a camera obscura, he would have had to paint upside-down, Mr. Stork said. Then there is the lighting problem: the projected image in a camera obscura would have been too dim. "To mimic the conditions indoors on a gray day in Bruges," he said, would require hundreds of candles, and then, even if the artist were to survive the fire hazard, "the color looks wrong."

Ellen Winner, a professor of psychology at Boston College, kept Mr. Hockney on the ropes by showing some excellent, optically exact drawings of rearing horses. They were made by a 5-year-old autistic child named Nadia, who had seen only pictures of horses standing still. If an autistic 5-year- old can do this, Ms. Winner said, then "I would argue that a Renaissance artist could do it, too."


Eventually things started looking up for Mr. Hockney's theory. Gary Tinterow, a curator at the Metropolitan Museum, suggested that Ingres might have done some tracing. John Spike, a Caravaggio scholar, noted that in 1672 a critic described something in Caravaggio's studio that sounded a lot like a camera obscura. And, Mr. Spike said, an additional bit of confirmation came when he was looking at a Caravaggio in London with Mr. Hockney. An old Frenchman came by cursing at the work. He shook his cane at the painting and denounced it for being too much like a photograph. It turned out that nut was Henri Cartier-Bresson.

Next came the battle of the Vermeer scholars. Philip Steadman, an architect and the author of "Vermeer's Camera," which argues that Vermeer had photographic aims, said that Vermeer's paintings contain perfect renditions of things found in Dutch houses: chairs with lion backs, globes, paintings, Delft tiles, virginals, even the ceiling beams. What's more, six Vermeer paintings are different viewpoints of the same room, and all have been done on the same size canvas. Why? "Because he has traced them" from "images created in a camera obscura," Mr. Steadman said.

Walter Liedtke, a curator at the Metropolitan Museum who was one of the organizers of "Vermeer and the Delft School," fought back. Although he did not oppose the idea that Vermeer was interested in the effects of the camera obscura, he said, he had evidence that Vermeer's rooms were "pure invention." Vermeer's attitude, he said, was, "To **** with physics."

Mr. Steadman accused Mr. Liedtke of "mimesophobia, the morbid fear of slavish imitation."

But what is to fear? Plenty, said Nica Gutman, a conservator of paintings who worked on the current Eakins show at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Many artists find it shameful to be caught using photographs. Take Eakins and his painting "Mending the Net." All the figures and the tree, she said, are "precisely the same as those in the photographs." That is, Eakins projected them from a photograph onto the canvas and traced them. Eakins did his best to hide the evidence. And after he died his widow lied about it, too, Ms. Gutman said.

Do artists still conceal their optical tricks? Some do, but others simply cannot. Chuck Close is one. He makes paintings that are undeniably based on photographs. When a class of third graders came to visit him recently, one of them asked, "Can you really draw or do you just copy photographs?" He said he finally drew a freehand Mickey Mouse, "and the kids were, like, Ooh!"

Mr. Pearlstein, the painter who made Ms. Nochlin's wedding portrait, said, "I paint people and landscapes from direct observation," but added that he had sometimes been mistaken for a photo-realist. It does not sting. "There is no moral issue" with
using optical tools, he said, "only stylistic issues."

Moral issue or not, Svetlana Alpers, a professor emerita at the University of
California at Berkeley, suggested that Mr. Hockney, who has often used
photographs in his work, secretly wanted to "kick free of the lens habit."

"Why not just go for it, David?" she said. "The old masters did."

Rosalind Krauss, the Meyer Shapiro Professor of Modern Art and Theory at
Columbia University, questioned the epiphany that started it all for Mr. Hockney. To
say there is no difference between the lines of Ingres and Warhol, she suggested, is
wrong. Ingres's drawn line "swells and narrows." Warhol's traced line is "flaccid,
inert and everywhere equally broad," the essence of technology.

In the end Mr. Close, who joked that the symposium should have been called
"Look Back in Ingres," said he had learned that "some scientists are just as annoying
as some art historians."

Mr. Weschler tossed away his crutch, crying, "I'm cured!"

And Mr. Hockney said: "I enjoyed it. I learned some things." Then he added, "I will
now go back to my studio."

Re: NY Times: Paintings Too Perfect? The Great Optics Debate
 

Perhaps the best twelve words yet strung together on this contentious topic!

Thanks for sharing, Cynthia.

(And a belated HAPPY BIRTHDAY!)

Thanks for the birthday wish! Do you know who the quote is by?

I scooped the quote from the above article.

The worthy apparently was "Mr. Pearlstein, the painter".

(How many of us can sublimate our egos and call ourselves "painters"? Or must we be "artists"? The distinction shouldn't matter if the work does (matter that is).)

Ya know, there is nothing wrong with the use of optics, but I prefer to think that 99% of those Old Bastards could probably draw and paint all of us under the table.

The classical apprentice spent 4-5 years of very intense work sculpting, drawing in charcoal, painting in monochrome, and finally in color. Along the way they learned how to grind paint, make mediums, make charcoal, prepare surfaces, and probably swept, dusted and cleaned and cooked a lot!

The standard of the day was the live model, or drawing from your imagination. Some may have used optics, but I believe that is not because they actually needed them - it was a concession to time, or a new fangled thing that they wanted to experiment with. Vermeer may be the only exception to that, although it is still controversal as to whether he used optics as well.

No, I prefer to think that they were simply as good at making art as we credit them with. That means that if humans in antiquity made art that incredible - then there is hope for us too. :)

Ahhhhh, I think that more has been written about the Old Masters and their methods than is really known.....if you get my drift.

Also Mr. Hockney's comparison of Ingres to Warhol indicates that he is quite "young at art" and we need to take his observations with a large grain of salt.

And even if he is correct (and I think he is not)....so what?

My very first day long study in art was with a group of 15 students. We basically used a photocopy from a magazine that had been enlarged, then traced it onto the canvas. The Artist then painted the subject and showed us how she used her palette and we tried to follow with our own paintings.

At first the whole thing felt cheap to me. This isn't art!

At the end of the day as I walked around the room I was amazed. There, in front of me were 15 stylized impressions of the same subject that were wonderful. Some looked older, some elegant and one whorish. They were all wonderfully different. I learned a big lesson that day.

Since then I have used photo's to paint but not copy. I often move things around for better effect. As far as portaits go, I find that the photo is quite a handicap. I will do most of the photo from the photograph then I will finish with what I know about the subject and what seems intuitively correct.

Dean

Interesting comment that even though you all used the same reference, each painting turned out different.

I nearly always paint from photographs, but I never use a photo that I have not personally taken. Besides the ethics of using another person's photographic work, it is illegal unless you have written permission.

There is a post that is entirely about painting from photographs at: http://forum.portraitartist.com/show...=&threadid=237

While the magazine's models face was used, the clothes, body position and backgroung were changed. I agree that this teacher was at some risk for using this model for a class. I do not know if she had permission or not.

As to us students, it is not unethical or illegal to copy anothers work for study. To represent it as your own is unethical and to try to gain financialy from the work is illegal. As a study or personal exercise it is fine.

I too use only my photographs for personal work but I have been a photographer (B&W) since my teens (nationally competitive level) so I do not need the work of others. Most of my work is from my imagination though.

My biggest problem with artists using photos is my own personal bias in that I do not like portraits that look like photographs. I want to see emotion, and some degree of casualness that suggests the personality of the model. I like the works of Bourguereau, Richard schmid, John De la Vega, Gary Holland, "Pino". I admire the Corporate type portraits but don't like them artistically.

Hot and emotional topic Cynthia. I think everyone should read Susan Sontag's "On photography" to see how deep and emotional this topic can get.

And Karin, I think the difference in the outcome of all the paintings is common unless you are trying to replicate a masterpiece. This difference is the beauty of art. By the way, I have seen your web page an I love your work. You have the expression and feeling that I love to see that is often difficult achieve without significant feeling for your subject.

Dean

I agree that it is not unethical or illegal to copy anothers work for study purposes....as long as you have the permission the living artist and/or never intend to show it or profit financially from it.

It is OK to copy a Masterwork when the artist is long dead and there are no copyright issues.

I have seen many artists copy from the same work and the differences that I can see in the finished products have more to do with the talent, skill and the degree to which the student has mastered his/her craft.

I'm not sure how to say this but I think that when most artists (me included) paint from photos our work seldom looks like the photograph - even if we wanted it to - because we, quite frankly, don't have the mastery of our craft to do that.

;) In a nutshell: Those of us who work from photographs, couldn't "paint like a photograph" if we tried.:) ....but who's trying?

Dean,

I know it's a hot topic! Good reason for it to be in the Cafe! :)

I'm posting a painting by Gary Holland for those not familiar with his work. He was on SOG a few years ago, so hopefully he won't mind me posting this.

Even if you could why?

What would be the point of a painting that looked exactly like the photo it was copied from? Why not just frame the photo. It is not as if a photo can not be art in and of itself.

My opinion on this is, yes you can use a photo for reference but you should strive to create something beyond what a photo can deliver. I find that I can look at the best photo and it will always look like a flat image of what it was taken from.

On the other hand a great painting can fool the eye it has depth. Sure that depth is created and not real but I have never seen a photo that had that kind of depth to it.

Also as you paint from life your point of reference changes as you look at different areas of your subject. And that is reflected in your painting, hence if you compared the perspective to that in a photo it would be off from the photo which has a fixed reference of the position and focal length of the lens used.

But it is these slight differences (as well as the play of warm and cool colors) that help give the painting more depth for as your eye travels around the painting it seems as if your view changes slightly as it would if you to where looking at 3 dimensional objects. These differences are not even planed it just happens it is the very imperfections that make a painting look more real then a photo.

Also on tracing well I have never seen someone who can not draw who could trace and create a drawing from it with any style.

I have used photos and still do. How many people can you get to give you 2-4 hours during good painting light. Well Not many people I know in this busy world, so you get 1 maybe 2, 1 hour sessions. Well I do not know about rest of you but that is not enough time for me to finish a painting and my memory is not that great that I can finish with out the help of reference photos. In the end you can use all the photos you want but unless you can also draw and paint they will not help you create a good painting.

The truth is we do not use photos because it is easier in fact they can hurt the final result. Many times l liked the first rough likeness I get during the first 15min of a session then after hours of refining from a photo. (as those of you that commented on my post in the critique section have seen) I would prefer to paint only from life but it is impractical in this day and age to do so. For those lucky enough or who's style of painting (alla prima) allows them to finish a painting in 1-2 hours or can get the rich and famous to sit for hours then great.

Vermeer on the other hand took months to finish a painting so it is no wonder he looked for ways to help. But I hardly see how looking at a image projected on a piece of frosted glass could be considered the same as tracing a photo.

Vermeer's talent was not in the drawing but the finish (not that he could not draw) his paintings are more real then any photo and anyone that holds up photos as a representation of real life needs to stop and look around them more and see that photos do not capture what the human eye sees. Painters like Vermeer did they made images so life-like that they could not have been done from a photo (at least not photos alone).

The ongoing debates regarding the use photo's or other mechanical devices will continue long after we have all gone to Portrait Artist's heaven. The beginner and the pro alike have good reason to use photography but the old advice remains true that the artist does not have command of his medium until he learns to transform what he sees through his eyes or recorded information into a convincing portrait. On the occasions when I have taught portraiture I have stressed the ongoing need to draw and like to show that drawing and likeness does not mean being a slave to proportions, values and colors but finding those elements that give form, personality, and composition to the finished work. I recently sent the enclosed images to several young students as a demonstration of kind of results that can be acheived by use of photography by an accomplished artist. The artist is one of my favorite, Nicolai Fechin. I have no reason to believe he used photography often but found this drawing with his photo reference and thought it a good example of drawing skill overcoming the shortcomings of the camera. He is among the very best draughtsmen ever and his impressionistic painting style does not hide the evidence that beneath the paint is flesh and bone as convincing as anyone might ever hope to achieve. Notice how he recreates the form, light and gesture (the arm/hand).

Jim

Jim, I was scrolling down and scanning along and my heart rate increased when I saw the Fechins--one of my favorites too. I heard someone say he was the only artist that I know of that both really loose and really tight painters all like. He's drawings are awesome. His paintings are powerful swirls of rich pigment.

For myself I started using lots of photograghy and was slowly convinced by (living) artists that I admired that I should work from life. I studied Sargent and he too said the same. So I began my devotion to life. It rather became a habit.

One day I was just finshing a painting of a complex still life painted side by side the subject...painted life size (sight-size) I basically painted from 14 feet away the opt. viewing distance. This friend came over (a famous landscape painter) and said SLIDE! you used a SLIDE! and I thought hey why bother. So as I shot the painting and before I tore down the set-up I photo'd the set-up. I then projected (this slide) of the set-up onto the finished canvas about 40x30" piece, and the drawing was within 1/8". So again why bother. If you draw really well even artists accuse you of using slides.

I am now seeing such nice results from artists working from photos (this group included) I'm getting interested again in the camera and to tell the truth I'm having trouble going back. I will have to learn much to be satisfied but I'm intriqued. Maybe a hybrid method, I like reading edges, color and values from life.

As a photographer, prior to entering the oil painting world, I see the photograph as useful but quite a handicap. I do not consider it to be "cheating" to paint from a photograph. Futher, I think it is very difficult to paint only from a photograph because of the loss of middle tones, detail, light, color.

Once you know how to paint from life and paint inventively from your mind then you are able to extrapolate additional information from a photograph to make it useful.

I still love my B&W photography but many of the photos that I create and love are not suitable for a canvas rendering. Those that are, I make significant modifications to make the painting more appealing.

Hi Everyone,

Agree with you regarding the pros and cons of photography. I was trained working from life and like to think I'm able to bring that experience to my commissions that are purely from photos. That said, I WOULD LOVE to say "yes, I paint from life.." My question to you Tim, is HOW do you do it without feeling pressured to 'perform'?

For example, when I do have a model, I set them up, make them comfortable, chit-chat, etc. THEN, silence..I'm in the 'zone'...next thing you know, the sitter starts fidgeting, and I feel like I either have to hurry and be done with it or start entertaining them. In other words, I can't get comfortable, I don't feel the sitter is, and I wonder how successful the portrait really is! Yes, seeing how things work from life is absolutely invaluable, but the flip side (for me) is something of the moment is lost. Michelle Mitchell blows me away with her paintings..an extended arm, an old man with an incredible expression on his face!! Gosh. Sometimes I wish I had lived 100 years ago just so I can DO that.

Here's my last best hope. I'd like to be able to use photos AND benefit from live sittings. I personally think it can be the best of both worlds. I use color sketches with photos to make large landscapes. My stills are all from life.I think portrait and figure work can be made using both. I'm told Boug. used both-good enough for me!

If I'm painting sunshine on white at 20 minutes before sundown I cannot quess the right color (value, temp. hue, intensity etc). I know most pro shooters are better than me and I need to get better. The digital stuff is of interest to me too. Honestly it's only because I'm seeing some very strong work done with the camera nowadays that I'm even thinking along these lines. I saw one of Karin's stills of watermelon and was sure it was done from life. That it was NOT turned my world upside-down...which is good for my world sometime.

"Does a Painter With a Camera Cheat?" An article by Micheal Kimmelman in the New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2002/06/16/ar...f77330d4a6080f

Administrator's Note: I don't know how long the New York Times keeps articles online, so below is a copy of the article in case it goes away. Article copyright the New York Times.

Does a Painter With a Camera Cheat?
By MICHAEL KIMMELMAN

LATELY, one thing after another

Celebrity hype
 

Only a few artist celebrities could ever have even got this book published (maybe the guy with the backlit candy dishes done by his Italian employees), and then have such discussions happen by virtue of such silly statements.

It was a writer in the Washinton Post, I think that said, "Saying these artists before me were too good - they must have had a trick!, is like a 5' 1" white boy saying Michael Jordan must have tricks to be able to play basketball like he does."

A wimpy and boring basis for a book.

The following is a feature article from Robert Maniscalco's monthly "Pointe of

Just wondering, didn't Caravaggio paint directly from life ?

The Da Vinci effect is essentially creating shadows the same height as the object and using a room painted linen/canvas in colour will do the rest. That is how we were trained.

If Hockney had been trained traditionally and used that training imaginatively, he would have figured out the rest of the techniques.

Steadman explains I believe some of Vermeer, but many of those paintings have normal sight. Once aware of an effect a trained artist can recreate it at will.