''Tim's Vermeer'' is a 2013
documentary film
A documentary film (often described simply as a documentary) is a nonfiction Film, motion picture intended to "document reality, primarily for instruction, education or maintaining a Recorded history, historical record". The American author and ...
, directed by
Teller, produced by his stage partner
Penn Jillette
Penn Fraser Jillette (born March 5, 1955) is an American Magic (illusion), magician, actor, comedian, musician, inventor, television presenter, and author, best known for his work with fellow magician Teller (magician), Teller as half of the t ...
and Farley Ziegler, about inventor
Tim Jenison
NewTek, Inc., is a San Antonio, Texasbased hardware and software company that produced live and post-production video tools and visual imaging software for personal computers. The company was founded in 1985 in Topeka, Kansas, United States, ...
's efforts to duplicate the painting techniques of
Johannes Vermeer
Johannes Vermeer ( , ; see below; also known as Jan Vermeer; October 1632 – 15 December 1675) was a Dutch painter who specialized in domestic interior scenes of middle-class life. He is considered one of the greatest painters of the Dutch ...
, in order to test his hypothesis that Vermeer painted with the help of optical devices.
The film premiered at the 2013
Toronto International Film Festival
The Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF, often stylized as tiff) is one of the most prestigious and largest publicly attended film festivals in the world. Founded in 1976, the festival takes place every year in early September. The organi ...
and was released in limited theatrical release in the United States by
Sony Pictures Classics
Sony Pictures Classics Inc. is an American arthouse film production and distribution company that is a division of Sony Pictures Entertainment. It was founded in 1992 by former Orion Classics heads Michael Barker, Tom Bernard and Marcie Bloo ...
on January 31, 2014.
Synopsis
Tim Jenison is an inventor and successful founder of
NewTek
NewTek, Inc., is a San Antonio, Texasbased hardware and software company that produced live and post-production video tools and visual imaging software for personal computers. The company was founded in 1985 in Topeka, Kansas, United States, by ...
, a company working in various fields of computer graphics, most notably the 3D modeling software "
LightWave 3D
LightWave 3D is a 3D computer graphics program developed by LightWave Digital. It has been used in films, television, motion graphics, digital matte painting, visual effects, video game development, product design, architectural visualization ...
." Jenison, himself both an engineer and art enthusiast, becomes fascinated with the paintings of
Johannes Vermeer
Johannes Vermeer ( , ; see below; also known as Jan Vermeer; October 1632 – 15 December 1675) was a Dutch painter who specialized in domestic interior scenes of middle-class life. He is considered one of the greatest painters of the Dutch ...
, a 17th-century Dutch painter whose paintings have often been said to exhibit a photographic quality. Jenison, spurred by the 2001 book ''Secret Knowledge'' by British artist
David Hockney
David Hockney (born 9 July 1937) is an English Painting, painter, Drawing, draughtsman, Printmaking, printmaker, Scenic design, stage designer, and photographer. As an important contributor to the pop art movement of the 1960s, he is considere ...
and ''Vermeer's Camera'' by British architecture professor Philip Steadman, theorizes that Vermeer potentially used a
camera obscura
A camera obscura (; ) is the natural phenomenon in which the rays of light passing through a aperture, small hole into a dark space form an image where they strike a surface, resulting in an inverted (upside down) and reversed (left to right) ...
to guide his painting technique, though this knowledge had been around for some time, it's even included in the Ladybird Book "Great Artists: Book 1" from 1970.
His initial idea, that Vermeer used a simple light projection to paint, is quickly discarded after concluding that painting over a projection makes it nearly impossible to match the colors correctly. Jenison then has an epiphany of using a mirror to monitor parts of the picture: by placing a small, fixed mirror above the canvas at a 45-degree angle, he is able to view parts of the original image and the canvas simultaneously, and obtain a precise color match by continuously comparing the reflection of the original image with what he has put on the canvas, moving from area to area by simply moving his own point-of-view slightly. When the edge of the mirror "disappears," he has it right.
Building a quick, crude prototype and using a photographic portrait of his father-in-law, Jenison produces an oil painting that looks nearly identical to the photograph. After building a prototype with a lens that is able to capture a real-life object, Steadman and Jenison, neither of whom has classic artistic education, take turns painting and produce an impressive oil painting of a vase. Both Hockney and Steadman note that their respective books have caused controversies in the art historian circles, who viewed the hypothesis as an "intrusion of crass rationalists" and "the misunderstanding of the nature of art."
Jenison believes he may be able to reproduce ''
The Music Lesson
''The Music Lesson'', ''Woman Seated at a Virginal'' or ''A Lady at the Virginals with a Gentleman'' by Johannes Vermeer is a painting of a young female pupil playing a virginal during a music lesson with a male teacher. The man's mouth is sligh ...
'' as a painting with this technique, and plans to physically recreate the original scene; first he models the entire painting in LightWave, then proceeds with a painstaking process of re-creating the objects and setting within the original scene which includes him doing woodworking, carpentry, sawing a lathe in half, and almost seven months of handiwork. Jenison also insists on using only techniques and tools available to Vermeer in the 17th century, mixing his own paint and polishing his own lens. Once the scene is set and is visually identical to the original painting, Jenison sits down and meticulously begins to paint.
During his process, he observes a variety of oddities of Vermeer's work that he attributes to the hypothesis of Vermeer having mechanical help: He notes Vermeer's hyper-accurate recreation of diffuse lighting would be impossible to recreate by simple eyesight because of
color constancy
Color constancy is an example of subjective constancy and a feature of the human color perception system which ensures that the perceived color of objects remains relatively constant under varying illumination conditions. A green apple ...
. He also observes that some of Vermeer's work features
chromatic aberration
In optics, chromatic aberration (CA), also called chromatic distortion, color aberration, color fringing, or purple fringing, is a failure of a lens to focus all colors to the same point. It is caused by dispersion: the refractive index of the ...
and
bokeh
In photography, bokeh ( or ; ) is the aesthetic quality of the blur produced in out-of-focus parts of an image, whether foreground or background or both. It is created by using a wide aperture lens.
Some photographers incorrectly restr ...
depth of field
The depth of field (DOF) is the distance between the nearest and the farthest objects that are in acceptably sharp focus (optics), focus in an image captured with a camera. See also the closely related depth of focus.
Factors affecting depth ...
, two distinct features of a photographic lens but not of the human eye. While painting the
virginal
The virginals is a keyboard instrument of the harpsichord family. It was popular in Europe during the late Renaissance and early Baroque periods.
Description
A virginals is a smaller and simpler, rectangular or polygonal, form of harpsichord. ...
, he accidentally notices that while he used a
straightedge
A straightedge or straight edge is a tool used for drawing straight lines, or checking their straightness. If it has equally spaced markings along its length, it is usually called a ruler.
Straightedges are used in the automotive service and ma ...
to roughly sketch out the outline of the instrument, the curvature of the lens almost caused him to add a slight curvature to the virginal's seahorse-pattern itself. Curious, he looks at a print of the original painting and notices that the original painting has the same curvature in the pattern.
After four months, Jenison finally finishes painting the picture, and after adding a layer of varnish, he has an emotional moment taking a final look at his work. Observing the results of his work, Steadman and Hockney both feel confident in their hypothesis that Vermeer had been using the same (or similar) tools to create his paintings, noting that "the painting itself is a document." The final shot of the film is Jenison with his copy of ''The Music Lesson'' above his fireplace.
Reception
''Tim's Vermeer'' has been met with positive reviews from film reviewers and technology enthusiasts. On
Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is an American review aggregator, review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee ...
, the film holds a rating of 89% based on 107 reviews with the consensus reading: "Entertaining and profound in equal measure, ''Tim's Vermeer'' uses its seemingly esoteric subject to pose fascinating questions about art and obsession." On
Metacritic
Metacritic is an American website that aggregates reviews of films, television shows, music albums, video games, and formerly books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted average). Metacritic was created ...
, the film has a score of 76 out of 100, based on 32 critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews.
The film was nominated for the
BAFTA Award for Best Documentary
The BAFTA Award for Best Documentary is a film award presented annually by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) at the British Academy Film Awards. It was formerly known as the Robert Flaherty Documentary Award.
In the followi ...
and shortlisted for the
Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature
The Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature Film is an award for documentary films. In 1941, the first awards for feature-length documentaries were bestowed as Academy Honorary Award, Special Awards to ''Kukan'' and ''Target for Tonight''. The ...
in 2014.
Art critics
Jonathan Jones and
Bendor Grosvenor
Bendor Gerard Robert Grosvenor (born 27 November 1977) is a British art historian, writer and former art dealer. He is known for discovering a number of important lost artworks by Old Master artists, including Sir Peter Paul Rubens, Claude Lorr ...
have criticized the film and disagreed with its conclusions. Jones wrote in the Guardian: "The technology Jenison relies on can replicate art, but it does so synthetically, with no understanding of art's inner life. The 'Vermeer' it spits out is a
stillborn
Stillbirth is typically defined as fetal death at or after 20 or 28 weeks of pregnancy, depending on the source. It results in a baby born without signs of life. A stillbirth can often result in the feeling of guilt or grief in the mother. T ...
simulacrum
A simulacrum (: simulacra or simulacrums, from Latin ''wikt:simulacrum#Latin, simulacrum'', meaning "likeness, semblance") is a representation or imitation of a person or thing. The word was first recorded in the English language in the late 16 ...
."
Tim's not Vermeer
/ref>
See also
* Hockney–Falco thesis
The Hockney–Falco thesis is a controversial theory of art history, proposed by artist David Hockney in 1999 and further advanced with physicist Charles M. Falco since 2000 (together as well as individually). They argued that advances in realism ...
* Camera lucida
A ''camera lucida'' is an optical device used as a drawing aid by artists and microscopy, microscopists. It projects an optics, optical superimposition of the subject being viewed onto the surface upon which the artist is drawing. The artist se ...
References
External links
*
*
*
*
{{Johannes Vermeer
2013 films
American documentary films
Documentary films about the visual arts
Works about Johannes Vermeer
Sony Pictures Classics films
2010s English-language films
2010s American films
English-language documentary films