The Vermeer Team is a documentary film, directed by Teller, produced by fellow performances Penn Jillette and Farley Ziegler, about the efforts of Tim Typeson's inventor to duplicate the painting technique of Johannes Vermeer, to test his theory that Vermeer paints with the help of optical devices.
The film premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival 2013 and was released in a limited theatrical release in the United States by Sony Pictures Classics on January 31, 2014.
Video Tim's Vermeer
Sinopsis
Tim Jenison is an inventor who has been a successful founder of NewTek, a company working in various areas of computer graphics, especially 3D LightWave modeling software. Jenison, himself an engineer and art enthusiast, became fascinated by the paintings of Johannes Vermeer, a 17th-century Dutch painter whose paintings are often cited as having photographic qualities for them; Jenison, driven by the book Secret Knowledge by British artist David Hockney and Vermeer's Camera by British architectural professor Philip Steadman, theorized that Vermeer could potentially use an obscura camera to guide his painting techniques..
The initial idea, that Vermeer used a simple light projection for painting, was quickly discarded after concluding that painting above projection made it almost impossible to match colors properly. Typeon then has an epiphany using a mirror to monitor the parts of the image: by placing a small mirror fixed on the canvas at a 45-degree angle, it can see parts of the original image and the canvas simultaneously, and obtain the right color match by continuously comparing reflection of the original image with what he has placed on the canvas, moving from one area to another by simply moving his own viewing angle slightly. When the mirror tip "disappears," he is right.
Building a fast raw prototype and using photographic portraits from his father-in-law, Jenison produces an oil painting that looks almost identical to the photo. After building prototypes with lenses capable of capturing real-life objects, Steadman and Jenison, both lacking classical art education, took turns painting and producing impressive vase oil paintings. Both Hockney and Steadman note that their respective books have caused controversy among art historians, who view this theory as "rough rationalist intrusions" and "misconceptions about the nature of art".
Jenison became convinced that he was able to reproduce The Music Lesson as a painting with this technique, and planned to physically create original scenes; he first modeled all of the paintings in LightWave, then proceeded with a genuine process of recreating objects and arrangements in the original scene, which included him doing wooden knitting, lit turning machines, and almost a year of working hands. Jenison also insisted on using only the techniques available to Vermeer in the 17th century, mixing his own paint and polishing his own lens. After the scene is set and visually identical to the original painting, Jenison sits down and begins to paint carefully.
During the process, he observed the vagaries of Vermeer's work which he associated with Vermeer's theory of mechanical assistance: He notes that the highly accurate Vipereer recreation of diffuse lighting is impossible to recreate with simple vision because of the firmness of color. He also observed that some of Vermeer's works have chromatic aberration and depth of field, two distinct features of photographic lens but not of the human eye. While painting a virgin, he accidentally noticed that when he used a straightedge to roughly describe the instrument's outline, the curvature of the lens almost made it add a bit of curvature to the pattern of the virgin marine horse itself. Surprisingly, he saw the original paintings and notices that the original paintings had the same curvature in the pattern.
After seven months, Jenison finally finished painting the image, and after adding a varnish lining, he had an emotional moment that took his last view on his work. Observing the results of his work, Steadman and Hockney felt confident in their theory that Vermeer had used the same (or similar) tool to create his paintings, noting that "the painting itself is a document". The final image of the film is Jenison, with a copy of The Music Lesson above the fireplace.
Maps Tim's Vermeer
Reception
The Vermeer Team has received positive reviews from film reviewers and tech fans. At Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an 89% rating based on 107 reviews, with a consensus reading: "Entertaining and deep in equal measure, Tim's Vermeer uses an esoteric-seeming subject to ask interesting questions about art and obsession". At Metacritic, the film has a score of 76 out of 100, based on 32 criticisms, showing "generally favorable" reviews.
Art critic Jonathan Jones and Bendor Grosvenor criticized the film and disagreed with his conclusions.
See also
- Hockney-Falco Thesis
- Camera lucida
References
External links
- Jenison, Team. "Vermeer's paintings may be 350-year-old color photographs". Boing Boing . Retrieved June 17 2014 . Ã,
- Official website
- Vermeer Team on IMDb
- The Vermeer Team at Rotten Tomatoes
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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