Some of you will be aware of the Hockney-Falco thesis written by the artist David Hockney and the physicist Charles M. Falco, which states that the great advances made in western art in the late middle ages and renaissance were mainly made because of the supposedly secret use of lens-based devices such as the camera-lucida and the camera-obscura. I have been asked about this many times, and I thought Id take this opportunity to state my views again. I think that what they claim is over-stated that the widespread use of lens technology is exaggerated, but that there definitely were some artists who used these methods. I agree with them that the manufacture and use of sophisticated lenses must go back much further than most historians acknowledge, and I know this partly from when I used to work at the British Museum because, for example, I remember looking at carved Roman cameo stones under a X 50 microscope and seeing incredibly fine detail that was almost impossible to see with the naked eye. They must have used reasonably good quality lenses to do such work. Going forward in time, here are two images, firstly the camera-obscura and secondly the camera-lucida. For me it seems obvious that the work of at least ten or twenty great artists must have been done with the use of lens technology, and so here I give you just three examples of work that I think must have been done with lens-based devices, by Hans Holbein the younger (c.1497-1543), Johannes Vermeer (1632-1675) and Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (1780-1867). Is this cheating? I dont think so, its just a way of doing work more accurately. Remember that no matter how good and useful a device is, it cant make someone into a good artist because it is just a tool, a way of getting the work done. Its what the artist does with that tool that matters!
Posted on: Sun, 02 Nov 2014 15:49:21 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015