So the reason Vermeer was so much better than everyone else was because he was using an opaque projector with a forty five degree angled mirror so that he could not only trace an outline but actually “trace color”. Sure, seems plausible, if he could have gotten the ‘girl with the pearl earring’ to sit like a mannequin with the same dreamy expression for hours while he traced her complexion, the iridescence of the pearl.
There’s a movie due out any day that supports this theory, sponsored and vouched for by a couple of Las Vegas illusionists -- to them grand accomplishment has to be fake. Why they asked does Vermeer seem so much better than everyone else, and then they set out to find his trick. They've invested much money and cinematic persuasion to make it all seem true -- that the art is a lie. To anyone without eyes, it makes a certain kind of sense.
Charlie Parker had a little recording studio with synthesizers in his horn and Van Gogh was using the special effects app on his laptop, and we’ll prove that too if anyone wants to listen. Why can’t Vermeer just be good? Why would anyone want to inflict their own tortured ethical sleight-of-hands on him? The ‘view of Delft’, sunlight and shadow, was not made through a pinhole or from some desktop, modern-day projector. He was a painter with a very good eye and a transcendent sense of color who worked in a faithful medium that still looks fresh and luminous. He was just better.
No comments:
Post a Comment