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Books : Art, Architecture & Photography : History of Art & Architecture : Countries & Regions : Europe : Baroque to Neo-Classical: 1600-1800
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Philip Steadman's remarkable book, Vermeer's Camera, cracks an artistic enigma that has haunted art history for centuries. Over the years artists and art historians have marvelled at the extraordinary visual realism of the paintings of the 17th-century Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer. The painter's spectacular View of Delft, painted around 1661, and the beautiful domestic interior The Music Lesson seem almost photographic in their incredible detail and precise perspective. Since the 19th century, experts have speculated that Vermeer used a camera obscura, an early precursor of the modern camera. However, conclusive proof was never discovered, until now. In Vermeer's Camera, Philip Steadman conclusively proves that Vermeer did indeed use a camera obscura to complete his greatest canvases. Part art historical study, part scientific argument, but mainly a fascinating detective story, Vermeer's Camera argues that Vermeer had a camera obscura with a lens at the painting's viewpoint. He used this arrangement to project the scene onto the back wall of the room, which thus served as the camera's screen. He put paper on the wall and traced, perhaps even painted from the projected image. It is because Vermeer traced these images that they are the same size as the paintings themselves. Steadman painstakingly develops his argument through careful study of the history of the camera obscura, an exploration of 17th-century optics, and a detailed study of the light, optics, perspective and measurement of a series of Vermeer's paintings. He goes to remarkable lengths to reconstruct Vermeer's studio and its furnishings, down to the angle of the light from its windows.The science is complex, but always clearly explained. Nor is this an attempt to reveal Vermeer as an artistic "cheat". Steadman convincingly argues that "Vermeer's obsessions with light, tonal values, shadow, and colour, for the treatment of which his work is so admired, are very closely bound up with his study of the special qualities of optical images". Vermeer's Camera is a wonderful book, that shows the ways in which, during the 17th century, art and science went hand in hand. It offers an enlarged, rather than reduced perspective on Vermeer. --Jerry Brotton
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Matthew Collings' Old Masters book is bold, quietly scholarly, copiously filled with full colour reproductions and characteristically opinionated. In his early books (This is Modern Art and It Hurts) Collings promoted, with his penetrating and wry critical intelligence, what to many seemed like the indulgences--not to say the inanities--of the brand of popular modern art characterised by Charles Saatchi's patronage and Cool Britannia's posturing. His last book, Art Crazy Nationwas, however, more cautious: Collings wasn't retreating but not all the work of the Young British Artists was good and he knew it.In this book, his wonderful study of Titian, Rubens, Velazquez and Hogarth, Collings returns us to "proper" painters who did "proper" painting. Addressing an audience who are now at ease decoding the gestural puzzles of conceptual art, he seeks to re-engage with work usually written about in as dour and stuffy a manner as the old galleries in which they often hang. This art is all about the painting: the verve and the style and the practice of how colourful goo can make powerful, challenging pictures. Appreciating it takes a little patience and some art historical context and Collings does a fine job aiding the would-be aesthete's eye and brain.
Collings is never dull and this is a hugely entertaining and amusing read. It is a further pleasure still to see the author turning his attention to painters who looked like they were going to miss out on his earnestly ironic readings. --Mark Thwaite
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