Vermeer's Camera

Author: Philip Steadman
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780192803023
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 238

Book Description
Art historians have long speculated on how Vermeer achieved the uncanny mixture of detached precision, compositional repose, and perspective accuracy that have drawn many to describe his work as "photographic." Indeed, many wonder if Vermeer employed a camera obscura, a primitive form of camera, to enhance his realistic effects? In Vermeer's Camera, Philip Steadman traces the development of the camera obscura--first described by Leonaro da Vinci--weighs the arguments that scholars have made for and against Vermeer's use of the camera, and offers a fascinating examination of the paintings themselves and what they alone can tell us of Vermeer's technique. Vermeer left no record of his method and indeed we know almost nothing of the man nor of how he worked. But by a close and illuminating study of the paintings Steadman concludes that Vermeer did use the camera obscura and shows how the inherent defects in this primitive device enabled Vermeer to achieve some remarkable effects--the slight blurring of image, the absence of sharp lines, the peculiar illusion not of closeness but of distance in the domestic scenes. Steadman argues that the use of the camera also explains some previously unexplainable qualities of Vermeer's art, such as the absence of conventional drawing, the pattern of underpainting in areas of pure tone, the pervasive feeling of reticence that suffuses his canvases, and the almost magical sense that Vermeer is painting not objects but light itself. Drawing on a wealth of Vermeer research and displaying an extraordinary sensitivity to the subtleties of the work itself, Philip Steadman offers in Vermeer's Camera a fresh perspective on some of the most enchanting paintings ever created.

Traces of Vermeer

Author: Jane Jelley
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192506900
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 369

Book Description
Johannes Vermeer's luminous paintings are loved and admired around the world, yet we do not understand how they were made. We see sunlit spaces; the glimmer of satin, silver, and linen; we see the softness of a hand on a lute string or letter. We recognise the distilled impression of a moment of time; and we feel it to be real. We might hope for some answers from the experts, but they are confounded too. Even with the modern technology available, they do not know why there is no evidence of any preliminary drawing; why there are shifts in focus; and why his pictures are unusually blurred. Some wonder if he might possibly have used a camera obscura to capture what he saw before him. The few traces Vermeer has left behind tell us little: there are no letters or diaries; and no reports of him at work. Jane Jelley has taken a new path in this detective story. A painter herself, she has worked with the materials of his time: the cochineal insect and lapis lazuli; the sheep bones, soot, earth, and rust. She shows us how painters made their pictures layer by layer; she investigates old secrets; and hears travellers' tales. She explores how Vermeer could have used a lens in the creation of his masterpieces. The clues were there all along. After all this time, now we can unlock the studio door, and catch a glimpse of Vermeer inside, painting light.

Vermeer

Author: Johannes Vermeer
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 52

Book Description

Secret Knowledge (New and Expanded Edition)

Author: David Hockney
Publisher: Avery
ISBN:
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 328

Book Description
"Secret Knowledge created an international sensation when it was first published. David Hockney's theory of how the great works of Western art were created with mirrors and lenses attracted major media attention around the world and generated intense debate in the fields of science and art history. Now, in this expanded edition, Hockney takes his thesis even further, revealing for the first time new findings." "In Secret Knowledge, Hockney explains how he uncovered piece after piece of scientific and visual evidence, each one yielding further revelations about the past. With the benefit of his painter's eye, he examines the major works of art history and reveals the truth of how artists such as Caravaggio, Velazquez, van Eyck, Holbein, da Vinci, and Ingres used mirrors and lenses to help them create their famous masterpieces. For this new edition, Hockney delves still deeper into art history, disclosing the evidence that Renaissance artists also used these methods to develop perspective and chiaroscuro - radically challenging our view of how these two foundations of Western art were established." "Hundreds of paintings and drawings are reproduced and accompanied by Hockney's descriptions. His own photographs and drawings illustrate the various methods used by past artists to capture accurate likenesses and present the results they would have achieved. In addition, extracts from the many historical and modern documents he uncovered offer further intriguing evidence, while correspondence between him and an array of international experts provides an account of the remarkable story as it happened." "Secret Knowledge is not just about the lost techniques of the Old Masters. It is also about now and the future. It is about how we see, treat, and make images today, in an age of computer manipulation."--BOOK JACKET.

ArtCurious

Author: Jennifer Dasal
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0143134590
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 289

Book Description
A wildly entertaining and surprisingly educational dive into art history as you've never seen it before, from the host of the beloved ArtCurious podcast We're all familiar with the works of Claude Monet, thanks in no small part to the ubiquitous reproductions of his water lilies on umbrellas, handbags, scarves, and dorm-room posters. But did you also know that Monet and his cohort were trailblazing rebels whose works were originally deemed unbelievably ugly and vulgar? And while you probably know the tale of Vincent van Gogh's suicide, you may not be aware that there's pretty compelling evidence that the artist didn't die by his own hand but was accidentally killed--or even murdered. Or how about the fact that one of Andy Warhol's most enduring legacies involves Caroline Kennedy's moldy birthday cake and a collection of toenail clippings? ArtCurious is a colorful look at the world of art history, revealing some of the strangest, funniest, and most fascinating stories behind the world's great artists and masterpieces. Through these and other incredible, weird, and wonderful tales, ArtCurious presents an engaging look at why art history is, and continues to be, a riveting and relevant world to explore.

Vermeer's Hat

Author: Timothy Brook
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 159691727X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 289

Book Description
In this critical darling Vermeer's captivating and enigmatic paintings become windows that reveal how daily life and thought-from Delft to Beijing--were transformed in the 17th century, when the world first became global. A Vermeer painting shows a military officer in a Dutch sitting room, talking to a laughing girl. In another canvas, fruit spills from a blue-and-white porcelain bowl. Familiar images that captivate us with their beauty--but as Timothy Brook shows us, these intimate pictures actually give us a remarkable view of an expanding world. The officer's dashing hat is made of beaver fur from North America, and it was beaver pelts from America that financed the voyages of explorers seeking routes to China-prized for the porcelains so often shown in Dutch paintings of this time, including Vermeer's. In this dazzling history, Timothy Brook uses Vermeer's works, and other contemporary images from Europe, Asia, and the Americas to trace the rapidly growing web of global trade, and the explosive, transforming, and sometimes destructive changes it wrought in the age when globalization really began.

Johannes Vermeer

Author: Mariët Westermann
Publisher: Waanders Publishers
ISBN:
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 76

Book Description
Mariet Westermann analyses Vermeer's work and his place in the history of art on the basis of Amsterdam's Rijksmuseum's four paintings, which span the range of his production from early to late, from cityscape to genre, from domestic chores to refined liv

Vermeer in Bosnia

Author: Lawrence Weschler
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0679777407
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 430

Book Description
There are writers who specialize in the strange and others whose genius is to find the strangeness in the familiar, the unexpected meanings in stories we thought we knew. Of that second category, Lawrence Weschler is the master. Witness the pieces in this splendidly disorienting collection, spanning twenty years of his career and the full range of his concerns–which is to say, practically everything. Only Lawrence Weschler could reveal the connections between the twentieth century’s Yugoslav wars and the equally violent Holland in which Vermeer created his luminously serene paintings. In his profile of Roman Polanski, Weschler traces the filmmaker’s symbolic negotiations with his nightmarish childhood during the Holocaust. Here, too, are meditations on artists Ed Kienholz and David Hockney, on the author’s grandfather and daughter, and on the light and earthquakes of his native Los Angeles. Haunting, elegant, and intoxicating, Vermeer in Bosnia awakens awe and wonder at the world around us.

Miniature Rooms

Author: Robert Off
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781367214361
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

Book Description
Well known artist, Robert Off, displays his miniature creations in this book. It contains over 100 pages of jaw dropping photographs with text describing his inspirations for creating them. There is also a section illustrating the step-by-step process he uses to create a box as well as photographs detailing several other construction techniques that he uses.

The Man Who Made Vermeers

Author: Jonathan Lopez
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN: 0547247842
Category : Antiques & Collectibles
Languages : en
Pages : 355

Book Description
It's a story that made Dutch painter Han van Meegeren famous worldwide when it broke at the end of World War II: A lifetime of disappointment drove him to forge Vermeers, one of which he sold to Hermann Goering in mockery of the Nazis. And it's a story that's been believed ever since. Too bad it isn't true. Jonathan Lopez has drawn on never-before-seen documents from dozens of archives to write a revelatory new biography of the world's most famous forger. Neither unappreciated artist nor antifascist hero, Van Meegeren emerges as an ingenious, dyed-in-the-wool crook--a talented Mr. Ripley armed with a paintbrush. Lopez explores a network of illicit commerce that operated across Europe: Not only was Van Meegeren a key player in that high-stakes game in the 1920s and '30s, landing fakes with famous collectors such as Andrew Mellon, but he and his associates later cashed in on the Nazi occupation. The Man Who Made Vermeers is a long-overdue unvarnishing of Van Meegeren's legend and a deliciously detailed story of deceit in the art world.