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I've been waiting for this to come out on DVD. Time to add it to the Queue. Is it wrong for me to think that Tim's Vermeer is better than Vermeer's Vermeer? V

I've been waiting for this to come out on DVD. Time to add it to the Queue. Is it wrong for me to think that Tim's Vermeer is better than Vermeer's Vermeer? Vermeer: http://media.boingboing.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/xl_music.jpg http://media.boingboing.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/xl_mu... Tim: http://media.boingboing.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/ML2s.jpg http://media.boingboing.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/ML2s....

voidlogic 12y ago
Consider that Tim's painting doesn't have centuries of aging to contend with- in regards to vibrancy and cracking.
lisper 12y ago
Side by side: http://www.flownet.com/ron/vermeer.html http://www.flownet.com/ron/vermeer.html
- voidlogic 12y ago
  I like how Vermeer directs our focus by making things like the roof slightly out of focus, kind of an emulation of the effect of having peripheral vision. Tim's lacks this. Also, the woman is facing the wrong way in Tim's.
  - pbhjpbhj 12y ago
    Is that "Tim's" feet in the reflection in the mirror? I first saw a piece about this painting a long time ago, possible an Open University / BBC collaboration - it was concerned with the room being the wrong length to allow for the optical method people thought was used, or some such, I don't recall too well. Other (?) speculation has been on here not too long ago.
    - anigbrowl 12y ago
      It's the corner of the carpet on the floor tile - the one farthest from us, not the one in the foreground of the painting. I work in film and one thing cinematographers love doing is shooting into mirrors, so I've gotten used to checking them for continuity purposes :) As for the dimensions of the room, being 'wrong', that may be deliberate. Again in film props and furniture are adjusted out of their natural position surprisingly often, in pursuit of aesthetic harmony. If you analyzed an interior scene that had been shot from multiple angles in hopes of mapping the room's contents accurately, you'd be disappointed to discover that many things had changed position by ~10% of their own size from shot to shot. Part of the craft is the ability to look at the image on a tiny monitor and be able to identify whatever it is that is distracting your eye from where you're supposed to be looking, like a table which looks fine in one shot but feels too small following a change in the focal length of the camera lens for a different shot. Solution - move the table towards the lens a bit. Don't even get me started on lighting and related tricks, which can further mess up your spatial intuition. For example, a very common and cheap effect is to make a room feel bigger by painting adjacent walls slightly different shades of the same color. Lots of these techniques are stolen from painting, where the deliberate falsification of perspective has long been used for both aesthetic and semantic effect. Check out this especially famous example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ambassadors_(Holbein) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ambassadors_(Holbein)
    - Ono-Sendai 12y ago
      Yup, looks like his feet to me, as well as the feet of his desk. He seems to facing sideways (to the left)
    - vxNsr 12y ago
      The better question is what is the mirror reflecting in the Vermeer?
  - jsqr 12y ago
    The woman is facing the wrong way in Vermeer's, isn't she?
    - lazyant 12y ago
      It looks to me that their heads are pointing in about the same direction (looking at the man) but in Vermeer's she is turning her head (her body is facing another direction)
    - smsm42 12y ago
      No, she's facing the right way - it's a music lesson, so she's facing the instrument which she's playing. But she's looking slightly towards the (I assume) teacher, as if asking "Am I doing this right?". On Tim's version, she has abandoned the instrument completely and is just talking to the gentleman, who is also much more engaged with her judging by the body postrue - I'd say even there's something else than music lesson going on in that version :) So these paintings, while being similar, actually depict two quite different situations.
      - tesseract 12y ago
        She is facing the right way but her reflection in the mirror isn't.
  - fallinghawks 12y ago
    Agreed. The sense of focus is lost in Tim's. While it's probably more accurate, a key part of art is selective distortion, guiding the viewer to focus on certain things. I also disagree with his assertion that Vermeer is photorealistic. Very realistic, true, but not more than other Dutch masters, and there are many contemporary artists whose paintings and drawings truly are indistinguishable from photographs.
kencausey 12y ago
Do we have any idea how long Vermeer spent painting the original? I speculate that Tim may have been willing and able to spend a lot more time on it. Also, the idea of spending more time than many would consider reasonable to accomplish something that others consider impossible is a recurring meme among magicians and stated often by Tim's friend Penn Jillette.
Brakenshire 12y ago
FWIW, I saw this painting (The Music Lesson) when it was on exhibition at the National Gallery in London last year, and that photograph doesn't do it justice. There's an issue about the quality of the photo, and its colour reproduction, for instance compare these three photos: http://historicartgallery.com/store/media/catalog/product/cache/1/image/9df78eab33525d08d6e5fb8d27136e95/V/e/Vermeer-Pic0012.jpg_4.jpg http://historicartgallery.com/store/media/catalog/product/ca... http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/vermeer/i/music-lesson.jpg http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/vermeer/i/music-lesson.... http://media.boingboing.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/xl_music.jpg http://media.boingboing.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/xl_mu... Also, part of the exhibition was about various painting and materials techniques he used to achieve effects like opalescence, and I suspect things like that (which work by reflection of light as you move past the photograph) are difficult to capture using photography. Having said that, the reproduction is extremely impressive. I wonder if the process could be automated. I wouldn't mind a fake, almost-as-good-as-Vermeer hanging in my room.
- anigbrowl 12y ago
  There's a village in China where they've made an industry out of producing good quality hand-painted reproductions of famous works. The cheap ones probably don't look that great up close, but I'm sure if you were willing to pay more (like $500) you could get something very nice. http://www.dafenvillageonline.com/ http://www.dafenvillageonline.com/
sp332 12y ago
It definitely has problems, with color balance and JPEG artifacts at least. It's not even straight! Anyway I played with it for a minute and here's what I got: https://imgur.com/o2yaTUf https://imgur.com/o2yaTUf
dfc 12y ago
I think part of the quality differential has to do with 100s of years of aging versus brand new paint. Here is a better scan of vermeer: (4000x5000) https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bc/Johannes_Vermeer_-_Lady_at_the_Virginal_with_a_Gentleman%2C_%27The_Music_Lesson%27_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bc/Johannes...
- freshyill 12y ago
  Definitely more to love in this scan. I still kind of like Tim's instructor better though.
cinskiy 12y ago
No, it's not better, Tim got it wrong with the shadow under the cello—it looks like it's floating, and tilt of the mirror looks way more natural on Vermeer's painting. Otherwise both paintings are great.

voidlogic 12y ago

Consider that Tim's painting doesn't have centuries of aging to contend with- in regards to vibrancy and cracking.

lisper 12y ago

Side by side: http://www.flownet.com/ron/vermeer.html http://www.flownet.com/ron/vermeer.html

voidlogic 12y ago
I like how Vermeer directs our focus by making things like the roof slightly out of focus, kind of an emulation of the effect of having peripheral vision. Tim's lacks this. Also, the woman is facing the wrong way in Tim's.
- pbhjpbhj 12y ago
  Is that "Tim's" feet in the reflection in the mirror? I first saw a piece about this painting a long time ago, possible an Open University / BBC collaboration - it was concerned with the room being the wrong length to allow for the optical method people thought was used, or some such, I don't recall too well. Other (?) speculation has been on here not too long ago.
  - anigbrowl 12y ago
    It's the corner of the carpet on the floor tile - the one farthest from us, not the one in the foreground of the painting. I work in film and one thing cinematographers love doing is shooting into mirrors, so I've gotten used to checking them for continuity purposes :) As for the dimensions of the room, being 'wrong', that may be deliberate. Again in film props and furniture are adjusted out of their natural position surprisingly often, in pursuit of aesthetic harmony. If you analyzed an interior scene that had been shot from multiple angles in hopes of mapping the room's contents accurately, you'd be disappointed to discover that many things had changed position by ~10% of their own size from shot to shot. Part of the craft is the ability to look at the image on a tiny monitor and be able to identify whatever it is that is distracting your eye from where you're supposed to be looking, like a table which looks fine in one shot but feels too small following a change in the focal length of the camera lens for a different shot. Solution - move the table towards the lens a bit. Don't even get me started on lighting and related tricks, which can further mess up your spatial intuition. For example, a very common and cheap effect is to make a room feel bigger by painting adjacent walls slightly different shades of the same color. Lots of these techniques are stolen from painting, where the deliberate falsification of perspective has long been used for both aesthetic and semantic effect. Check out this especially famous example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ambassadors_(Holbein) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ambassadors_(Holbein)
  - Ono-Sendai 12y ago
    Yup, looks like his feet to me, as well as the feet of his desk. He seems to facing sideways (to the left)
  - vxNsr 12y ago
    The better question is what is the mirror reflecting in the Vermeer?
- jsqr 12y ago
  The woman is facing the wrong way in Vermeer's, isn't she?
  - lazyant 12y ago
    It looks to me that their heads are pointing in about the same direction (looking at the man) but in Vermeer's she is turning her head (her body is facing another direction)
  - smsm42 12y ago
    No, she's facing the right way - it's a music lesson, so she's facing the instrument which she's playing. But she's looking slightly towards the (I assume) teacher, as if asking "Am I doing this right?". On Tim's version, she has abandoned the instrument completely and is just talking to the gentleman, who is also much more engaged with her judging by the body postrue - I'd say even there's something else than music lesson going on in that version :) So these paintings, while being similar, actually depict two quite different situations.
    - tesseract 12y ago
      She is facing the right way but her reflection in the mirror isn't.
- fallinghawks 12y ago
  Agreed. The sense of focus is lost in Tim's. While it's probably more accurate, a key part of art is selective distortion, guiding the viewer to focus on certain things. I also disagree with his assertion that Vermeer is photorealistic. Very realistic, true, but not more than other Dutch masters, and there are many contemporary artists whose paintings and drawings truly are indistinguishable from photographs.

kencausey 12y ago

Do we have any idea how long Vermeer spent painting the original? I speculate that Tim may have been willing and able to spend a lot more time on it. Also, the idea of spending more time than many would consider reasonable to accomplish something that others consider impossible is a recurring meme among magicians and stated often by Tim's friend Penn Jillette.

Brakenshire 12y ago

FWIW, I saw this painting (The Music Lesson) when it was on exhibition at the National Gallery in London last year, and that photograph doesn't do it justice. There's an issue about the quality of the photo, and its colour reproduction, for instance compare these three photos: http://historicartgallery.com/store/media/catalog/product/cache/1/image/9df78eab33525d08d6e5fb8d27136e95/V/e/Vermeer-Pic0012.jpg_4.jpg http://historicartgallery.com/store/media/catalog/product/ca... http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/vermeer/i/music-lesson.jpg http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/vermeer/i/music-lesson.... http://media.boingboing.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/xl_music.jpg http://media.boingboing.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/xl_mu... Also, part of the exhibition was about various painting and materials techniques he used to achieve effects like opalescence, and I suspect things like that (which work by reflection of light as you move past the photograph) are difficult to capture using photography. Having said that, the reproduction is extremely impressive. I wonder if the process could be automated. I wouldn't mind a fake, almost-as-good-as-Vermeer hanging in my room.

anigbrowl 12y ago
There's a village in China where they've made an industry out of producing good quality hand-painted reproductions of famous works. The cheap ones probably don't look that great up close, but I'm sure if you were willing to pay more (like $500) you could get something very nice. http://www.dafenvillageonline.com/ http://www.dafenvillageonline.com/

sp332 12y ago

It definitely has problems, with color balance and JPEG artifacts at least. It's not even straight! Anyway I played with it for a minute and here's what I got: https://imgur.com/o2yaTUf https://imgur.com/o2yaTUf

dfc 12y ago

I think part of the quality differential has to do with 100s of years of aging versus brand new paint. Here is a better scan of vermeer: (4000x5000) https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bc/Johannes_Vermeer_-_Lady_at_the_Virginal_with_a_Gentleman%2C_%27The_Music_Lesson%27_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bc/Johannes...

freshyill 12y ago
Definitely more to love in this scan. I still kind of like Tim's instructor better though.

cinskiy 12y ago

No, it's not better, Tim got it wrong with the shadow under the cello—it looks like it's floating, and tilt of the mirror looks way more natural on Vermeer's painting. Otherwise both paintings are great.