David Stork wrote:
Fred and all,
[...] Hockney seems to be retreating to the unverifiable claim that those artists SAW and were INFLUENCED by projected images. This is indeed a very hard claim to test, given that the technical analyses I and Falco perform are moot, and that there is no documentary evidence anyone at the time even saw an image of an illuminated object projected onto a screen.
Regardless, I wanted to draw your attention to today's Harper's magazine, which has an article by Hockney's long-time friend Lawrence Weschler, touting the "influence" claim.
As I've written many times, I'm agnostic on this claim, though I think there is precious little evidence to support it, when we would otherwise would expect it.
Perhaps ARC and its friends could write rebuttal letters to Harper's pointing out the problems with this alternate claim. I - as the only skeptic cited - plan to submit a letter tomorrow.
Anyway, good luck in your work.
Fred and all,
[...] Hockney seems to be retreating to the unverifiable claim that those artists SAW and were INFLUENCED by projected images. This is indeed a very hard claim to test, given that the technical analyses I and Falco perform are moot, and that there is no documentary evidence anyone at the time even saw an image of an illuminated object projected onto a screen.
Regardless, I wanted to draw your attention to today's Harper's magazine, which has an article by Hockney's long-time friend Lawrence Weschler, touting the "influence" claim.
As I've written many times, I'm agnostic on this claim, though I think there is precious little evidence to support it, when we would otherwise would expect it.
Perhaps ARC and its friends could write rebuttal letters to Harper's pointing out the problems with this alternate claim. I - as the only skeptic cited - plan to submit a letter tomorrow.
Anyway, good luck in your work.
Thanks for the heads up, David!
The "influence" claim is even more ludicrous than his first claim. You could perhaps more likely claim that the invention of glasses for nearsighted people, I think in the 13th century (David?), lead to more talented people seeing far more clearly, thus enabling them to create sharper more realistic images, than the rare camera obscura.
In fact, if nobody has ever said that before, let me be the first the claim some possible influence of all sorts of glasses on aiding the development of painting. After all, far sighted people, although seeing people and scenes sharply, would have been unable to see close up well enough to paint what they saw, any better than the reverse.
Monocles or glasses were soon known to everyone after their invention, and would have been considered a necessity for all kinds of work for which they made more efficient practitioners.
However, the existence of glasses in no way belittles the value of newly developed skills to create ever better and well crafted works of fine art.
If this was postulated before, which I feel is highly probable, then I'm surprised it wasn't pointed out in further debunking of Hockney long before now.
Fred
