BBC David Hockneys Secret Knowledge 1of2 DivX MP3 MVGForum

[Music] I kept looking for lenses and people would say well where's all the equipment I want to demonstrate that actually the only piece of equipment it is is a piece of glass david hockney our most celebrated living artist reveals that 400 years before the invention of the photograph artists were using simple cameras to capture stunningly realistic images on canvas in a Hollywood studio Hopley recreates masterpieces by Vermeer Caravaggio and Van Eyck and demonstrates the secret techniques they use to create such vivid pictures his extraordinary new evidence rewrites the story of some of the most famous paintings in the world [Music] and the threats looks good all engines all sources show the second stage is burning perfectly we thought we saw the twentieth century on the news film and elsewhere better than any previous century although we could say we did not see it at all a camera did up to a hundred and sixty years ago all images were made by artists chemicals replace them [Music] today photographs monopolize reality and truth as painting did in the past [Music] no electricity involved in this picture it's done purely optically and very clear very beautiful [Music] if we think what is in front of a camera is truth verisimilitude then those who command control over optical imagery have great power look at film this the press and advertising including this one you see in front of you is coming to an end exciting times that I had [Music] here we are in the Hollywood Hills below are the lights of Studio City we're all hard at work here making pictures in studios I've been designing my own kind of Hollywood set here it's representing Renaissance Florence Bruges and Ghent they look brand-new as they did 600 years ago because this is a set in Hollywood this is Hollywood to Florence Bruges Ghent and Hollywood for cities deeply involved in picture making they were secretive then and they're secretive today on this set and in other real places I'm going to make experiments that I hope will begin to reveal secrets of how these pictures were made over the last 600 years think of these words real natural photographic true-to-life what do we mean when we use these words why does this Byzantine Christ look like this van Gogh this all started with a hunch Angra the great 19th century french portrait painter I had to show the National Gallery in London with drawings made of English tourists on the ground tour going to Rome they are beautiful drawings of rather wonderful looking characters rather ground or putting on their best clothes I saw these drawings and I was struck by how small they really were very very small indeed the scale I would draw a head he kind of draw what you call sight size which is bigger than these drawings so I noticed this incredible accuracy about them almost a photographic quality I blew some of them up on a Xerox machine just to look at them a bit better and I started to notice that the lines reminded me of Andy Warhol he would project a photograph and trace the line the line has a traced log and to my surprise some of these had a line similar to that so I well 18:12 how how could have been done and on a hunch I how I wonder if he used a camera lucida it's not that easy to use a little tricky and in effect you get a what looks like a projection onto the piece of paper and you can also see your own hand nobody else sees this projection it's actually an illusion what you do first is look at the face very carefully then decide what characteristics to measure do you see what I mean once then you look so long as you've made some relationships especially between the eyes the nose a mouth that's what you would set up in my studio we pinned up hundreds of color photocopies of paintings paintings which seem to have an optical look and paintings that did not slowly we got a kind of order I put Northern Europe at the top and southern Europe at the bottom the wall was necessary because I could then sit back and scan centuries of Western painting we worked back further and further and finally we got to a date where beyond that it is very different and that date is approximately 14 20 dates is when a big change occurs that's been observed by every art historian the explanations for it ah everybody could submit draw better really not that could an explanation not that rationale really so we are focusing on this sudden change that happened so what is an explanation [Music] [Laughter] [Music] these faces are highly individualistic they seem like very very real people these were unprecedented at the time I mean people came in to see these all admired them they seemed vividly real we can't appreciate really what that meant today I mean it would be what would an equivalent be I mean some kind of 3d effects in Disney World or something you know [Music] there's very strong lighting on the faces generally there is a very strong contrast strong contrast like that is really made with the Sun you're not getting a strong contrast on my face in here because the Sun actually isn't beaming in Sun on the face was the big clue it is even more obvious in Northern Europe Bruges and Ghent individuals true to life and again brightly lit look at the deep shadows small irises they were sitting in very strong light the Sun these paintings are all quite small roughly the same size about 30 centimeters across it is strange of these artists are still referred to as Flemish primitives but history places the dawn of the Renaissance in Florence not here Bruges and Ghent were very sophisticated new cities the royal court in the church was almost as rich and powerful as in Florence both the church and the court commissioned paintings Jan van Eyck was the court painter he was not a humble craftsman he ran a large workshop with many apprentices he was an intellectual a theologian and a scientist he's described by Vasari as an alchemist and credited with the invention of oil painting primitive [Music] you are totally knocked out when looking at this picture it's unbelievably rich in detail in every single part of it the textures of cloth the cannon is holding a book where a kind of chamois leather that wraps the book amazing the little figures behind a made of wood you're I can tell out you can tell everything about the textures of the clots the incredible detail in the Bishop's stuff anything that shiny they seemed particularly of the armor is polished all the gold thread in the Bishop's Coast the shines look amazing they look correct as we'd say you could almost say at times that are almost like photographs you could almost say that it was that photographic look that I was beginning to see I began to look at patterned fabrics this is masolino masaccio's teacher 1425 he's made no attempt to describe the form under the fabric the pattern is painted flat van Eyck's fabric done 10 years later is very different see how beautifully the pattern follows the form absolutely believable on the surface this is Bronzino 15:45 by now a bold elaborate fabric is following all of folds done very elaborately [Music] now armor the problem with shiny surfaces is when your eye moves the shine moves personnel are in 1450 did not even attempt the shine he doing by hands so it as a handmade look and then something happened in this 1501 giorgio knee the shine here looks correct [Music] by 1625 Van Dyke's armor with a delicate edged patent could almost be a photograph [Music] fabrics and armor are very difficult to draw but look at this chandelier in van Eyck's Arnolfini wedding painted in 1434 have one of most of my life how he painted this chandelier in 1435 Alberti in his book on painting described a method for drawing complex objects a net a grid of threads held in front of the subject it's not that accurate and is difficult to use and of course you have to look through a fixed point to see it how would you do it by eye by two eyes [Music] [Music] anybody who knows the slightest thing about technical drawing tracing architectural drawing engineering drawing anything well know that what I was trying to do on this piece of paper was conceptualized into two dimensions this fantastic complicated marvelous chandelier that appeared in a painting in 1430 I know that it is impossible for my two eyes here to make a drawing of that the way it appears in the painting [Music] with a computer being turned the chandelier around the very [ __ ] do this tells us that he's drawn in perfect perspective from a single point and here the methods for drawing something this complicated did not exist for at least another century so how did artists in 15th century Bruges do it well today they would have used a camera to take a photograph a slide projected onto the canvas then trace it there are descriptions a hundred years after Van Eyck of dark rooms with a lens called a camera obscura which simply means darkroom I kept looking for lenses and people would say well where's all the equipment what do you mean a camera obscura one of the problems with a camera obscura is it sounds like a piece of equipment I want to demonstrate that actually the only piece of equipment it is is a piece of glass [Music] [Applause] [Music] in the 1700s we know Canaletto used a camera obscura many artists did this is by Reynolds Reynolds certainly owned one it's in the Science Museum in London he obviously didn't tell everyone it falls up to look like a book but in the paintings of Vermeer done in the 1600s we see the most vivid use of optics they have a photographic look this basket is out of focus the eye does not go out of focus how did he paint this fabric and the map and the chandelier by eye these paintings look strange to people at the time they were painted the foreground objects seemed too big that not to us we are used to looking at photographs professor Philip Steadman built this model not only from the painting but from 17th century chairs tiles etc that he went to great trouble to find and discovered that viewed from one single point the view of Vermeer's camera a photograph of the set matched the painting exactly if you computerized Philips model and project the seen through the lens the image focused on the back wall is exactly the same size as the original canvas in this model room you can do the same with several other Vermeer's only the people and the furniture change the chance of this happening without optics is millions to one you need quite a big lens because of the lip you're indoors and you need to see detail and also you need to project an image the size of the painting which is you know this kind of size so you need something of a project over that area don't it all in focus at once because of course yeah Murray fakers a bit but I think that his lens was that kind of size and that's the sort of lens you begin to get late 16th century 17th century early 17th century for telescopes and big magnifying glasses people making them in Delft say well I think artists had them first you do because images were more important you know I [Music] when we were constructing the wall one picture we found was a picture by Lorenzo lotto I think it's 15 45 and there is an elaborate tablecloth and we could notice at one point this tablecloth goes out of focus we put it up on the wall because we felt this was quite a clue to something our eyes don't go out of focus doing it domestically would see everything in focus if you're working ran out in many a perspective everything is in focus so I happened to show this to a new friend Charles Falco and he's a scientists not in the arts at all and next day he fax me saying even thinking about that painting and he realized there was some real clues in it that particular painting probably had enough information in it for me to calculate the lens that had been used well over the next couple of days I made measurements on the painting and there are several features in that Lotto that are independent confirmation that a lens had been used in fact there's so much information I was able to calculate the the focal length and diameter of the lens to reasonable accuracy what we seem to have found was lots of solution was using a lens causing a depth of field problem when the focus moves from foreground to background the scale changes place together the two halves will not match Lazo had to paint the problem area out of focus to the right hand side of that lot oh there's a very small but measurable change in the vanishing point at the same depth into the painting as the central feature where it goes out of focus the laws of geometrical optics prove that law tow used a lens and so that's the thing that's different about this if you understand the science you realize that this isn't just a nice story it's a scientific fact this proof established an artist using a lens in the 1540s the change we had seen on the wall Oh happened in van Eyck's time more than a century before we were stuck there was a huge weight of opinion that artists could not have used optics as early as this because glass was such poor quality that you could not make a good lens during the course of conversations and in discussions I happen to mention that well of course a curved mirror also is a lens and this was a sort of statement that a scientist regard this as obvious a physical scientist knows this that a curved mirror like a simple shaving mirror or a makeup mirror in the bathroom forms an image or can be used to form an image and David didn't know this [Music] there's no doubt they had mirrors I mean they had convex mirrors if they had convex mirrors it's absurd to say they didn't have concave mirrors it's actually just a piece of glass the other side remember the grave image makers Van Eyck and so on again are going to have whatever latest equipment is available like Hollywood will or anywhere well concave mirrors have been known since antiquity they were called burning mirrors our committees was thought to have used Bernie mirrors to burn the Roman fleet that was trying to sack siracusa around 0 BC well at the same time you're focusing the sun's rays you're also forming an image now under normal circumstances you don't notice the image because the bright glare from the bright sunlight that's focused washes out the image so it's inconceivable to me that somebody in the right circumstances didn't see an image and it's obvious to me that van Eyck saw those images and the difference between them and others over the thousand years before is they were smart enough to know how to make use of it well here we have a marvelous color projection of the tower you can see the IV's blowing in the wind it's moving very beautiful color this is done with a very simple mirror and in 600 years ago in Bruges they were making mirrors and in the guild of San Luke which was for the painters they also had the mirror makers they were part of the same guild if you want a good image you could take some trouble when we think of where the Sun is and think of all that kind of thing just like a photographer carefully thinking about where the bite is and so on and so on anybody can do it for themselves and see this happen and it was a surprise to me a great surprise to everybody else who showed it to we realize no art historian knew this nobody we knew knew it and it was a pivotal moment for us finding it then finding the size the size of the sweet spot is 30 centimeter square that's about the size of the Doge by Bellini that's the size of the Robert Campion head this is the size of enormous numbers of early netherlands portraits is that a coincidence no he found a very very useful tool which they kept to themselves as they would but I never wrote down any formulas whatsoever for the marvelous glazes he was using they were not written down probably in case somebody else got them who he didn't want to have them there was a rival meaning they were in business and he needed other things so he's not going to tell them exactly how he does things when we made the first image with the mirror it was deeply exciting I knew we'd discovered something rather big we were setting up a still life based on the curtain painting of the cabbage on the string and unfortunately the cabbage started spinning round it didn't stay still but I went into the dark room to see it there there on the projection was the cabbage spinning and I realized this is a colour movie it moves I mean there it is it's spinning it's quite beautiful it because it's upside down the strings coming from the bottom and I then realized oh my god this is uh this is a movie in colour they must have seen it 600 years ago and actually there's a straight line from this to the television picture off today and it goes all the way through European painting that dawned on me I think nobody's observed that before but it has to be too actually [Music] you could have a string red-haired and so on all that's possible but so is the mirror now if you've got one or the other which you going to use one is simpler clearer cleaner at the drawing that's it I mean this is a question if we can see the possible techniques you pick the simplest one the one that will produce the best results and frankly that's what we're just finding just knock that off we're getting near wait a minute yeah we're getting near we're getting near River a bit bigger good can you go back further and as you go back further I think we get more in focus you see yes this projection is now about this exactly the size of the chandelier in the painting this is approximately 8 inches across it is precisely the size the mirror making this projection is a about five inches across it is small and it is very sharp it is very clear the Sun would be giving this light but you could see how this incredibly difficult perspective if it had to be drawn mathematically how difficult it is I'm just doing this very crude but you can see the highlights very similar to in the painting you see I'm just measuring little things it will be extremely difficult to get these shapes negative shapes positive shapes but here you can see it the curve at the top is precisely how it is in the painting these curves if you you can't see what I've done but if you take a candle and then I cover up the mirror you can see I'm beginning I could plan the curves there rather crude I'm doing them quickly but you can see it opens the process it opens the method of doing it they take the candle awaiting the hand from Marie comes back this is very very very strong evidence and I'll repeat now I think to look for evidence of lenses and mirrors you look at pictures pictures give you evidence because lenses and mirrors make pictures all the questions about where is the equipment seemed to fall away but something else was happening at this time in Florence the defining moments of Western image making Brunelleschi's invention of perspective perspective is an abstraction a device for putting what we see in three dimensions onto a two-dimensional surface it gives us an illusion of space things are scaled as they appear to the eye from a single point larger the front and smaller at the back Brunelleschi famously made a painting of the baptistry that astonished florence made some time before 1412 it was suspiciously 30 centimetres square I was taught he was based on abstract geometry but how was it conceived did he see something first we went to Florence to do an experiment in the precise position where we know Brunelleschi painted his picture three Braccio that is about two meters inside the doorway of Florence Cathedral early in the morning the Sun is on the baptistry but inside it is very dark it is a camera [Music] molesky stood in this doorway supposedly about six seven feet in the door and made a panel of the Baptistery we think he did it he made a perspective picture we know that the mirror makes perspective picture Brunelleschi was the man in charge of every tool there was in Florence he's building a dome on the cathedral every bit of latest technology was there the descriptions of the pulley system they described for him to pull things up it's therefore it seems to me not possible that he didn't know the mirror would do what we did in Florence Brunelleschi had to have known it's not possible we were the first people to do that using the mirror he can only produce a small picture about 30 centimetres square but by extending these lines of perspective he could create would all artists wanted a bigger space and a bigger picture that way of course makes you one fixed point out here Vasily would do and a mathematical point about somehow they never did that in Bruges in Bruges it would seem to me if their picture is this size the costs of optical projections and he wanted to make them bigger they somehow add like this because it has an effect of making you close to everything this is the Last Supper by dirk boots it has a kind of perspective things are bigger at the front and smaller at the back but not precisely scaled as in Italian paintings parallel lines do not all meet at one point it's a collage of separate mirror lens views each one precise accurate and optical the reason perhaps I was able to see this is that I had done something very similar myself I made my polaroid pictures because I was dissatisfied with the limitations of the single photograph I want you to make a bigger picture each individual Polaroid is precise accurate optical you get a different kind of space and yet to me is closer to how we rarely see with two eyes and the eye being part of the mind you could call it a wonky perspective like us where wonky for myself I prefer actually the space is made here because I feel you are a person who's in them like I am in the world I'm not outside the world looking in through a window or I'm in it we should all feel we're in it everybody flocks to Florence for inspiration when you go to Cali you drive off quick and often bypass Bruges and Ghent but perhaps we should stop here because there's a marvelous example of a picture that makes us feel a part of the world van Eyck's masterpiece the altarpiece in Ghent this is the very very sophisticated picture amazing power when you come in this room the central panel of this is a quite remarkable space where you seem even in the middle distance the crowds in the middle distance you can see every detail in the hats the jewels in the Archbishop's hats and so on wonderful foliage novelist green the green and red together give it this incredible depth more than possibly any other painting I know in a way I just put together a reproduction of a desert highroad I've done 16 years ago and I put it next to the center panel here I immediately saw there must be similar principles at work here in the Paris of highway it looks as though you're stood outside the picture first though you don't remain outside very long because actually I was never stood outside any area you were close to everything a stop sign I was up a ladder doing it you were close to it somehow van I was close to everything here until you get to the way the far distance but the groups in the front you feel close to them you see wonderful detail meaning you have to be close to see that detail you see it in the middle distance as well and I remember walking about this thing I was not studying or yet I made a still picture this is a still picture but it's a moving picture in your head actually [Music] and David Hockney's mission continues when imagination returns at the same time next week on BBC world [Music] [Music]

Channel: taylordiabennett

Views: 593,272

Rating: 4.8649645 out of 5

Keywords: BBC, David, Hockneys, Secret, Knowledge, 1of2, DivX, MP3, MVGForum

Id: JKbFZIpNK10

Length: 43min 57sec (2637 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 23 2011

Reddit Comments

[u/SpecsaversGaza]

Seeing the interest in "Tim's Vermeer" I thought this might be of interest. Part 2 here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MDIiVkoTik8

[u/JenThePhoto]

Personally, I'd watch this first before watching "Tim's Vermeer" as Hockney was the inspiration behind Tim's idea.

[u/dunfartin]

His book is wonderful. Also, whatever London says, Salt Mills in Saltaire, West Yorkshire is the place to see his stuff.

Also also, his thoughts on how art is valued are well worth reading. Is it the difficulty in creating it? Or the difficulty in delivering it? His East Yorkshire series, created on iPads, are a perfect example. The iPad lets him bang out dozens of paintings covering the seasons in 3 or 4 locations. You can buy them as fucking expensive prints or as postcards. It's the same amount of original work.They are masterpieces, however you buy and mount them. A selection is also on display in Salt Mills, AND photography is ENCOURAGED, so you can be part of one print of, say, a 9-print set.

Also, blue (from his LA days).

Just an outstanding person, and artist, and historian. You couldn't go wrong by looking at all his art, reading his books, and watching videos about him.

Also, if you can schlep your arses up to Saltaire, there's a magical little shop with the world's largest collection of medieval instruments on sale.

(Also also, the HQ of Prism, maybe the world's largest unknown seller of settop boxes. My first internet connection was through one of their modems: 1200/75 bps.)

[u/chrysocyon_19]

can somebody link the Tims Vermeer again, i failed to bookmark it before going out.

[u/HelenEk7]

Loved it. Thanks for sharing.

[u/munkijunk]

The Tate Britain had a Hockney exhibition last year. It was extraordinary. He has had such an interesting career with such a variety of methods, constantly changing and evolving his art.

[u/tdlsutigers]

Pro tip - open the video in YouTube and play at 1.5X speed. Interesting video.

[u/PingTiao]

One thing that bothers me as an artist is how art historians have mythologized the skills and talents of old masters, implying they had some "gifts" that most people do not possess. This has left an impression in the minds of many budding artists' minds that they need to reach some superhuman level of artistic ability, or else they are going to fail in an art career. This can frustrate many people needlessly, even to the point of thinking they will never be good enough, and many give up, or settle into less demanding styles of art.

This book/film by David Hockney is a great service to the arts community in dispelling such false notions, much of which were generated by art historians, critics, dealers, etc. who may not be able to paint themselves, and have a dearth of understanding when it comes to how paintings are created. They create wonderful stories and mysteries about artists and art making, but not so much as an attempt to educate artists, so much as to create brands out of the old masters.

I recommend this video to all my painting and drawing students! I feel that by killing the myth of god given talent, my students can then think about art making in practical terms, rather than the pseudo-mystical terms that plague much of the older arts literature and history. This speeds up the learning process enormously since it seems to boost confidence in one's potential, while also helping them avoid countless hours of frustration and many of the pitfalls of seeking "perfection."

[u/vtalii]

The scientist who gave the breakthrough clue had a little hubris, but I'm wondering if it's just that stereotypical scientist behavior where the phrasing is not meant to be condescending, but can appear so (like Bones)

https://youtu.be/JKbFZIpNK10?t=1541