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Wilfred Niels Arnold Ph.D.
University of Kansas Medical Center
warnold@kumc.edu

David Hockney, one of the most accomplished of contemporary artists, is in a new limelight because of a recent scholarly pronouncement. He is convinced that many of the Old Masters, starting as early as the fifteenth century, employed optical devices such as lenses, mirrors, cameras obscura, and cameras lucida for mechanical assistance in outlining subjects directly onto paper, canvas, or wood panel. The nature of this process anticipates a confident line as well as an accurate perspective, within the range of the instrument. The artist might make several drawings (for example, a separate one for each figure in an ensemble), arrange them into the desired composition, and then complete the painting by applying pigments. The alternative process, cherished by most historians and curators, posits that the successful artist would "eye-ball" the subject and, with wonderful coordination of hand and eye, construct an outline drawing. After long years of apprenticeship in a workshop the emerging master was supposed to render these sketches with increasing dexterity and speed. For architectural settings and highly patterned segments (tiled floors, checkered tablecloths, leaded windows, ceiling joists) the painter might follow the rules of one point perspective formulated by Brunelleschi (1377-1446) and begin by laying down geometric guidelines on the drawing surface with a pencil and ruler. An equally laborious method, the use of viewing grids and proportional graph paper, as illustrated by DÄrer (1471-1528), would also be "acceptable" to their modern admirers. Commentators of this persuasion find no support for optical projection and they assert that "tracing" by an Old Master would be unthinkable. Suggestions of "cheating" have been overheard in museum halls. In contradistinction, David Hockney believes that any artist who had seen the projected image, and possessed the means, would have embraced the optical projection technique because it provided a new and exciting two-dimensional view, and was less arduous to use than mathematical and drafting devices. He also sees a connection from the camera obscura of van Eyck (1370-1426) all the way to the Kodak slide projector of Andy Warhol (1928-1987). This is the substance of Hockney's recent lectures, interviews, and a book "Secret Knowledge: rediscovering the lost techniques of the Old Masters," October 2001, Viking Press. Several colleagues have assisted, most notably a physics professor at the University of Arizona, Dr. Charles Falco, who brought scientific expertise to the project, and also provided the resources for understanding the working hypothesis by a wider audience. In this context I would add the masterful book by Philip Steadman, "Vermeer's Camera: Uncovering the Truth behind the Masterpieces," Oxford University Press, 2001, (see Arnold, June 2001, Leonardo Digital Reviews). By exploiting the great precision of Vermeer (1632-1675), Steadman was able to reconstruct the architecture of the subject room and to measure absolute sizes from extant museum pieces of furniture, maps, and other pictures that the artist incorporated into his domestic scenes. The geometric evaluations indicate that Vermeer worked optically rather than through the painstaking mathematical methods of perspective. Awareness and anticipation about the Hockney and Falco endeavor had been intensifying ever since the long article in the New Yorker (January 2000, pp 64-75), "Onward and upward with the arts: the looking glass," by Lawrence Weschler, which spawned further media attention. With admirable timing and aplomb Mr. Weschler then organized the Art & Optics Conference, sponsored in part by the Sloan and Norton Family Foundations, at the Tischman Auditorium (400 seats) of New York University Law School. It was open to the public and free, first-come first-served basis, starting at 9:00 am Saturday, December 1. I was fortunate to arrive just in time, thanks to Michael Henchman and his colleagues from Brandeis University, and we were all amazed at the long line of attendees that subsequently grew down the hall, out the front door, and even along the sidewalk. Some of the overflow crowds were accommodated in the neighboring Greenberg Lounge with television coverage piped live. Estimates of over 2,000 people were circulating. The enthusiasm was unabated on Sunday morning and those of us who had secured reservations from the previous day trotted in under fierce looks from the long queue.

The conference was organized into seven sessions and was designed to bring Hockney, Falco, and their principal supporters (including Steadman, John Spike, Chuck Close and Martin Kemp) into the same auditorium with oppositional art and science historians (including Keith Christensen, Walter Liedtke, Svetlana Alpers, and David Stork) for a full public airing of their disparate views. There were an additional twenty invited presenters and the majority were both instructive and entertaining. However, they ranged from a delightful contemporary practitioner of camera obscura techniques, Abelardo Morell; through fence-straddlers and egocentrics; to those who addressed subjects quite outside Hockney's working hypothesis. More than one speaker tried to gain notoriety by declaring that we were addressing the wrong subject, but they were felled by silence. Small enclaves within the multitude clapped when they thought that points were made on their side. After each session, several questions were taken from the floor on aisle microphones, but many of these struck me as exercises in building self-confidence by young local artists and historians. A few of the mature artists on the panels were better at responding to questions than offering a prepared speech. The most instructive responses came from Hockney and Falco. It was quite an event. The opening session was introduced by Weschler. He had recently suffered a torn ligament and now used his single aluminum crutch to visual effect in calling us to order. The first item on the agenda was the American premiere screening of a BBC documentary on Hockney's thesis. It was listed as 75 minutes but was so good that it seemed much shorter. Hockney had obviously worked hard on it. The cinematography was exquisite, the sets were beautiful, and a few well chosen "experiments" set the stage. Brief talks by Falco and Hockney followed. The succeeding sessions were entitled: General Perspectives, Scientific Vantages, Experts on Individual Artists, Artists' responses, and Wider Perspectives. The tide of battle went back and forth. It was announced that developments and their aftermath would appear on www.Artkrush. com (the conference's website). I hope that the proceedings will also be available. This is all the more important given the ample but deficient coverage of the conference in the popular media. A case in point is the New York Times story "Paintings too perfect? The great optics debate." December 4. Therein, Sarah Boxer highlights objections from invited participants to Hockney's working hypothesis (although she calls it a theory), but fails to report on clarifications and refutations to the criticisms. Just as too many art historians lack even the introductory elements of physics and the scientific method required to comprehend the evidence, so journalists have a difficult time reporting what happened because they are unable or unwilling to do the work of learning and evaluation.

David Stork noted that the camera obscura demonstration across the hall revealed a nice image but he worried about the intensity of the theatrical lights used to illuminate the bowl of fruit. With sarcasm and derision he projected on the auditorium screen a cartoon slide with hundreds of candles, remarked on the fire hazard, and asked where Vermeer got his light in 17th century Delft. "The sun!" said Hockney, and indeed one of the first things Hockney had brought up at the opening was "Sun in the face" and the wonderful shadows. Stork also tried to rubbish the concave mirror lens hypothesis by postulating that a huge and improbable glass bubble would have been needed in order to manufacture the correct curvature and overall size required for the whole painting. From the aisle microphone Falco gently reminded him that much smaller optical devices could be used to create multiple drawings, which he and others had been at pains to explain earlier. Along these lines, I feel that one of the most compelling pieces of supporting evidence comes from pictures in which the foreground and background are in focus but the middle ground is fuzzy, implying that a lens system was moved in a two stage process.

Walter Liedtke announced that the ceiling joists in Vermeer's paintings were running in the wrong direction, counter to Delft houses of that era. Thereby, he threw himself on the sword of Philip Steadman, who has an architectural colleague in Holland busily assembling data that support the realism of Vermeer, and he actually lives in such a house of that vintage. Sidney Perkowitz, a physics professor at Emory University presented a primer on optics that was very good, but again many in the audience were reluctant to get started. Christopher Tyler, a neuroscientist from San Francisco, gave a reasoned and balanced presentation on perspective but the paintings on which he has worked and now reported were not among the examples of Hockney. Ellen Winner, a developmental psychologist from Boston College, showed us some drawings of horses in motion by an autistic child. Interesting, but any connection with the theme escaped me. Linda Nochlin spent all of her ten minutes showing two slides of herself in a wedding dress, a photograph and then a commissioned painting by Philip Pearlstein. An assistant was instructed to bring the very dress on stage and Nochlin declared that this was "scientific evidence." The next day Pearlstein himself appeared on another panel, supposedly selected as a figurative painter who eyeballs his subjects and hates to be associated with photorealism. This tandem exercise was belabored by the wedding dress picture appearing for yet a third time.

Nica Gutman, a conservator of paintings from Philadelphia Museum of Art made an important contribution. She reminded us that Thomas Eakins (1844-1916) relied heavily on chemically-fixed camera images, and slide projections onto his canvases for tracing. But Eakins did his best not to admit to the technique and his widow lied about it. This speaks against the criticism espoused by some historians about Vermeer's methods, i.e. based solely on the lack of written documentation. In this vein, John Spike referred to a contemporary description of the studio of Caravaggio (1569-1609) in which an item resembling a camera obscura is included but is rarely commented upon in later literature. Closing remarks by Falco and Hockney expressed their appreciation of the event and all the views presented. Last words by Lawrence Weschler echoed the audience's delight with the experience. He declined to follow through on his metaphorical promise to the media of either burning Hockney at the stake or declaring him pope. "Rather," he shouted, "I'm cured," and forthwith threw his crutch off the stage.

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