Secret knowledge...

[Araich]

http://www.ihc.ucsb.edu/events/past/fall2002/hockney/

I saw most of this the other night on TV and was blown away! I'd read something about it a year or two ago, but promptly forgot it.

Anyone else seen it?

Makes me wonder if there is a similar thing in sculpture... like mathmatically reduced/enlarged actual human casts.

[fritchie]

Araich - Thanks for posting something new. The forum has been quiet for the last couple of days. I have known for many years that Renaissance artists used the camera obscura (a pinhole in a thin opaque object such as a piece of paper) as a way to form and perhaps trace images onto a second piece of paper. That is well-known to art educators as the way they got accurate and complex perspectives for architectural scenes. (Trees and other natural objects don’t produce nearly as dramatic an effect.)

I was shown the camera obscura in freshman physics lab by an instructor who pushed a pin through a windowshade, creating a dramatic view of the sunlit outside scene on the opposite wall (upside-down, of course!)

A quick look at the internet shows that even the ancient Greeks and Romans knew how to use naturally shaped pieces of crystal for magnifying or viewing objects, and that individual lenses or even pairs of lenses used as eyeglasses were in use in Italy by the late 1200's.

It looks as if Hockney simply has used name recognition to publicize something historians have known all along. I guess a moral is that entertainment is popular today.

As to your actual question, a 3D object clearly requires a 3D or sequentially moving recorder, such as a laser scanner or movie camera. Yes, commercial labs do exist which will scan objects and produce computer-generate copies in any reasonable scale. Clearly it will be some time before these become commonplace. Sorry to be so prosaic in reply.

[redrajah]

Marble carvers have long used the pointing machine, which is a three dimensional pantograph designed to make proportional calibrations by means of fixed points, to make reproductions and enlargements. gorgeous simple machines.

[Araich]

I think Hockney's radical point is that it was 'secret knowledge' and hidden from the public and historians... along with the fact that these guy's just traced an outline by way of composing a masterpiece of perspective.

With the 'pointing machine' - would real people have been ever been used, as in 'a copy of an actual figure'?

[fritchie]

This wasn't "hidden" from anybody, except people too lazy to look around them. It's just a publisher's way of grabbing public attention.

Maybe I'm getting too cynical these days, but in the last half-dozen or so years, U. S. media (and it looks like other English-language media as well) have been treating the public as idiots.

Supposedly this is the result of business-school graduates controlling companies instead of people rising through the ranks, as earlier. Aiming at a lower intelligence or awareness level increases the media market and therefore profits.

Oops, I may be off-topic in making a political statement here. At least this is the Art Lounge.

[Aurora]

I never knew anything about it until now:rolleyes:

[redrajah]

Originally posted by Araich

With the 'pointing machine' - would real people have been ever been used, as in 'a copy of an actual figure'?

maybe in a clay, though i doubt it. diving into non-experiential knowledge here.

true in this case they are very different tools still it's interesting to think of sculpture as drawing in 3d.

[Araich]

I suppose casting off (hi fritchie :D ) of the human figure is copying. I don't know if that actually devalues a work, although I personally think less of that than that born of the hand.

[rickb]

About using live models to 3-d scan, it is becoming more common.

The owner of the foundry I use, scanned a woman and "printed" her with stereo-lithography a ~1/4 life copy.

I believe as this gets more common, 3-d scanning/printing will do to sculpture what photography did to painting -- push the boundries of realism.

Here is the link to Flint's "synthetic model" which describes the process.

http://www.syntheticmodels.com/

Rick

[jfmenna]

It's no secret that different viewing devices have be used throughout the history of Western Art...even Van Gogh documents in his letters how he used a Durer inspired grid to draw out his landscapes during his formative years. I didn't read the book, but did however see Hockney interviewed on Charlie Rose discussing the subject. Mr. Hockney has had a remarkable commercial career but his skills as a draughtsman in the European tradition stretching from the Italian Rennaisance to the French Academy straight out stink. I get the feeling that his personal shortcomings as a draughtman(or draughtsperson if you prefer) are fueling this attempt to savage the acheivements of the masters. The 20th century saw the demise of traditional techniques in continental Europe and America. The teachings of the masters became mysterious and opaque to generations of artists no longer schooled in their ways. For better or for worse, the Soviet Union in its promotion of a state sanctioned aesthetic continued to support its art academies where the techniques of the masters are still taught to this day. There's in fact a new school teaching these methods in Long Island City, NY called the Bridgeview School of Fine Arts staffed by Russian expat artists(masters every one!) Mr. Hockney should give them a call...maybe he could get a discount on some drawing lessons.

http://hometown.aol.com/jfmenna/drawing.html

[jfmenna]

PS. There are a ton of places offering 3D scanning and enlarging services to artists including where I work: the Johnson Atelier Techinical Institute of Sculpture and Fine Art Foundry in Hamilton, NJ.

[jwebb]

I wish I needed drawing lessons like David Hockney needs drawing lessons. I think he is making a "point" about this stuff, though I'm not sure what. With technology today it is quite easy to computer model from life, also to mold actual figures and faces with absolute duplication. However, I agree with an old professor of mine who said, "...that is not Sculpture; that's Taxidermy".

[RustyBlade1964]

I just did a search on www.netflix.com and found a DVD featuring some of his own work. Alas not the subject of this thread but still quick fun. ;)

[RustyBlade1964]

Sorry here is the title of the doc available through Netflix;

Behind the Scenes: Vol. 1: Painting and Drawing
(2002)

[sculptor]

I suppose casting off (hi fritchie :D ) of the human figure is copying. I don't know if that actually devalues a work, although I personally think less of that than that born of the hand.

I humbly(perhaps not nearly enough so) submit that casting from the body AIN'T ART.
Maybe it shows craft(kind of depends on how well it's done) but it ain't art.

I was once accused of body casting by a rather lovely sculptress as/re ISIS---then I showed her what was proportionally wrong with the piece as/re photorealism-though right with the piece as/per my conceptual intent(eg:in order to get the arms to mimic the slope of an egyptian shrine, they had to be proportionally shorter). The fact that she had first thought it was a body casting seemed to impress her with my abilities more than if she had not originally conceived of the piece as a body casting.

[Stephen Casey]

It hurts when accused of copying where we had used our skills and vision, in place of such techniques. The big M. Chiseled accross the sash of his "Pieta"; "Michaelangelo Buonarroti Florentine made this." In that case there were rumors that more experienced artist had done the sculpture.

How terribly it must of hurt him to carve such crude words accross such a spiritual masterpiece. If he didn't cry while doing it, I am sure he wept terribly later.

It is shocking to be accused of such a thing, and not always can we convince our audience that we used our art and not inferior means. But as we mature we sometimes reconsile ourselves to the fact that our work is the real source of our pleasure from our art, not the remarks of other individuals or partys.

The casting of body parts and faces say nothing to me. Its the illumination of the subjects intellegence, motivations and passions that draw me near and make it a part of the rest of my life.

[lowpoly]

ARC's article on Hockney: http://www.artrenewal.org/articles/2003/Hockney_Refuted/hockney1.asp

[Araich]

http://www.artrenewal.org/articles/2003/Hockney_Refuted/hockney1.asp#Thomas Hauge, 31 Aug 2003 03:41 a very interesting read, thanks lowpoly.

[sculptorsam]

I seem to recall Rodin being accused of casting from life on his great, early sculpture The Age of Bronze. He invited the model back in to take photographs so that he could dispute the charges. The photographs placed next to the work are a master's lesson in modeling. But I think I remember the charge itself as odd since it was known others commonly used life casts in their work, even in the same show. The charge against Rodin may have been more political than aesthetic.

Sam

[Stephen Casey]

www.artrenewal.org is new to me. I am most grateful Lowpoly.

[fritchie]

Let me add my thanks for this reference, Lowpoly. The discussions add many new facets to our own earlier conversation on the topic.

I would only add that several if not all of the contemporary drawings posted by ARC with this issue are highly idealized. I doubt a camera would see the subjects in the same way at all. Possibly in some cases a camera image enhanced in contrast by computer might. But anyone who has done photography knows that contrast is highly manipulable in photography. It is the limitations of the photosensitized paper that often control the final product. In brief, that’s why slides are so much closer to phototruth than prints.