i've been taking lots of pictures lately, but sorry, none for this post. david hockney has my imagination lately, priming me with ideas about photography, painting, art in general. i read a book by lawrence weschler over the holidays titled "True to Life: 25 Years of Conversations with David Hockney". i feel as if i've been through art history all over again, and this time am excited about it. a while back, hockney began to think that old masters had used optical techniques to achieve their works, a controversial view even today. his investigations are fascinating. his point isn't that the works are any less compelling because the old masters may not have created everything on the canvas with their own eye, but that artists of that time used all the tools available to them to explore, almost like scientists. i love that idea.
1 comment:
thanks for this tidbit. when I thought about this, I realized that optical effects are everywhere in nature: how light and shadow have everything to do with how anything looks; as well as eco-optical phenomena such as the magnifying property of water and bubbles; simple reflections in water are optical illusions. Why wouldn't artists do whatever they want to enhance view?
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