Debunking Hockney

There are some legitimate and convincing arguments that could lead to the conclusion that "optical devices" were used by some masters that lived hundreds of years ago. There is the example of Lorenzo Lotto's "Husband and Wife" which in my opinion is very convincing. I have also seen the screen behind Joseph's back on Robert Campin's "The Mérode Altarpiece" points to a possible use of a lens or mirror. However, there are some basic fallacies that exist in the book that I couldn't help but notice. Most of things I noticed in the book are blatantly misleading or just outright inaccurate.

Fallacy 1: This "eyeballing" business.
One is he starts off by talking about pure "eyeballing'. "By this, I mean the way an artist sits down in front of a sitter and draws or paints a protrait by using his hand and eye alone and nothing else, looking at the figure and then trying to re-create the likeness on the paper or canvas"(1). According to this definition camera obscura, camera lucida, lenses, or mirrors are not the only things that would fall under the category of technical aids he uses so frequently in the book. But, known art tools like a proportions divider or a grid would not covered under the definition"eyeballing" as it excludes these devices. Of course, on page 12 he says the definition of optics is "mirrors and lenses (or a combination of the two)". One convolution starts early on, on Page 54 when Hockney talks about "some artists used technical aids to help them" and then shows an image of an Albert Durer print in which an artist is utilizing a divice that works on the same principle as a grid. Also, the technical aid in the print can also be emulated by the use of a proportion divider as well, connecting the dots later on. In contrast, he uses a oil painting by Caravaggio and mentioning the difficulty with a drawing machine, the time "time consuming" nature, and asks the reader "Was it just divine skill, or could he have used optics?". Paintings were time consuming and technical aids were in use. Even Leonardo da Vinci made use of sometimes large grids in order to get the proportions correct on a canvas, they were not uncommon tools at the time. That according to Hockney, that wouldn't be "eyeballing". Even then, so far as we know, Caravaggio didn't use a dot matrix or a sketched underdrawing in his works, ever. Leaving out these details can easily mislead a reader to believing that an artist used either eyeballing or optics, and not other technical aids.

Fallacy 2: An excellent draftsman automatically makes you a bettter painter.
There is a technical difference between painting and sketching. Hockney gives examples of his ability to make realistic sketches by use of optical assistance. However, there is not a single painting done by the author in any example in the book. The entire book is comparing examples of paintings to other paintings. The fatal flaw was when Hockney compared an oil painting and a sketch, both by Geerit Van Honthorst. Sketching and painting are both similar in the way you build up details as you complete the work. However, mixing colors and drawing using charcoal are skills that are not congruent. You can be wonderful sketch artist and not be as an oil painter and visa versa. The other point is, as far as I know, there arn't any painters that actually use optics to aid them in painting on a canvas. For artists like Leonardo da Vinci, elaborate underdrawings were common. He was excellent at sketching and painting. For artists like Caravaggio, who left no sketches or underdrawings, use the paint itself, or in his case incisions, to line up an image from a live model(2). It's common to also hear that Vermeer also didn't have any "preparatory drawing" so it must have been the use of camera obscura that gave him this advantage correct?(3). Whats hard to ignore, however, is how many contemporary realists that produce more realistic appearing paintings that da Vinci made that don't use camera obscura to assiste them in creating their works(4).

Fallacy 3: Two masters with equally exceptional skills should produce similar results with 2 different types of media.
The most common comparison that I saw in the book was a fresco and an oil painting. A fresco is a wall painting done by embedding paint directly into the wall while it is still wet. If there are mistakes, there are ways to overlay the paint on the wall but they tend to not last as long, especially in humid areas. An the example in the book contains a comparison of two masters from the same period. The first one is a Michelangelo fresco detail from the Sistine Chapel and the other is a Raphael oil painting portrait. A fresco, no matter how masterful the artist was, had to be done quickly. The small details don't appear on many fresco's, if any, to the same level a oil painting protrait does. Also the fresco has a different visual texture compared to the oils. A fresco appears faint and chalky compared to the bold oil colors. Also, a portrait is supposed to be representational of the subject as accurately as possble. You can make and oil painting look like a fresco but you can't make a fresco look like an oil painting. Comparing tempuras and oils also contain innately different visual texture when made side by side. This is seen on "Leonardo Da Vinci" (2004) Episode 1"The Man Who Wanted to Know Everything"(5).

Fallacy 4: All master artists were equally proficient at the same technical level, all the time.
There was one comparison between da Vinci paintings done about 30 years apart. It was a comparison between not so naturalistic Ginevra de' Benci and the more naturalistic Mona Lisa. In 30 years time, an artist can make a shift in technique and improve on their own skills. This comparison is a good example of that but lack credibility. He emphasizes the existand of the shadows underneath the mouth and nose and again asks the reader "Did Leonardo use optics for the Mona Lisa?"(6). What about the highlights of the hair? There is much more detail on the Ginevra de' Benci than the Mona Lisa. This is nothing more than cherry picking comparisons. The worst comparisons in the book was a comparison of watercolor paintings (7). The text reads "Now compare Durer's watercolour Large Turf from 1513 on this earlier drawing of a field of weat". First, I would like to note that the page he mentions, the image is not a "drawing". The texts makes a suggetion that both were done by the same artist because it leaves no specific information. Perhaps the author knew that not many people would bother to look up the actual source of the image on the opposite page. I found out that the wheat field image came from a book called Tacuinum sanitatis, a middle ages health guide according to wikipedia. The book says the image was done around 1300's, wikipedia say around 1450's, I'll go with wikipedia. Books up until the advent of the printing press were all done by hand. Manuscripts that contained illustrations, instead of just containing just text, are fairly rare. The Limbourg Brothers were very skilled at painting and did the illustrations in Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry. However, one thing needs to be remembered, exceptional artists working on a manuscript was uncommon. It's interesting that such a popular example of a noted manuscript was not once mention in the text as "Was it just divine skill, or could [they] have used optics?". At any rate, the Tacuinum sanitatis example of a wheat field shouldn't surprise anyone as to why the skill didn't quite measure up to Albert Durer's Large Turf. I don't know of any naturalistic still lifes that existed at that time or earlier, to the degree that Albert Durer accomplished, in a manuscript.

In conclusion, the most significant contribution to this entire field that needs the greatest undivided attention to academic inquiry needs to be credited to David Hockney. David Hockney is masterful in articulating limitations of 2 dimensional art and has a vast understanding of composition, structure, and effects in art. The academic question of weather or not old masters used optics is important to art historians. To make more conclusive evidence available, the studies which Charles Falco has conducted, and continue to conduct, are important. I don't think anyone will have an answer as to why people at the time of the Renaissance wanted to start with more realism. However, a la mode deviances were fairly slow during those times according to taste. Just like evolution of species, there are many things throughout art history that slowly evolved by adding more complexity with different media and techniques. The advent of lens and concave mirrors should not be assumed as a default position of trying to explain away naturalistic human figures in painting. The book is bent on convincing the common reader that optics were why changes in the art world existed. There wasn't a single piece of evidence in the book that can convice someone that a figure, and not an object, was conceived by using an optical divice. We cannot assume we know what caused a sudden explosion of realistic proportions and dipictions of people during the Renaissance. At best we can tell that masters may very well have dabbled in use of optics but there is much more research that needs to be done.

(1) David Hockney, Secret Knowledge Pg. 23
(2) "Caravaggio's Incisions" by Ramon van de Werken and "Caravaggio and L'esempio davanti del naturale" by Keith Christansen (www.caravaggio.com)
(3) http://www.essentialvermeer.com/technique/technique_drawing.html
(4) http://www.thecardermethod.com/clips/overview.html (also see: www.florenceacademyofart.com, www.jacobcollinspaintings.com, www.tonyryder.com, www.thecardermethod.com)
(5) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WcCHmXhhA0s&feature=related
(6) David Hockney, Secret Knowledge Pg. 136
(7) David Hockney, Secret Knowledge Pg. 142-143