Tim's Vermeer

This is a 30 minute Discovery channel show stretched over an interminably long time. It's not a movie in any real sense. the notion they explore about Vermeer's use of optics is interesting and makes me want to buy Jenison's gizmo myself. However, some issues seem to be ignored--I don't see how Jenison's technique lets anyone paint the Girl with the Pearl Earring. Did she pose with that amazing expression for months without moving (they use stereotaxic apparatus on the models in the movie). It's also a self-aggrandizing look at Tim with Vermeer a sidelight. We learn Tim is a genius, can make furniture, speak multiple languages, invents lots of things, has a Leer jet, can swear, and is friends with Penn & Teller. (Why does a rich guy make own furniture for the Vermeer room?) Overall, this has all the excitement of, well, watching paint dry.

source: Tim's Vermeer

TIM'S VERMEER is an exceptionally strange documentary. Inventor Tim Jenison, with a proved track record of scientific and other discoveries, sets himself the task of recreating Vermeer's "The Music Lesson" using optical techniques with mirrors. The task is long and laborious - from inception to conception takes five years - but in the end Jenison manages to produce a copy of the Vermeer work that is thoroughly creditable. Teller's film includes several clichés of the tele-documentary genre; the highs and the lows, the periods of difficulty when Jenison wonders whether his task has any real values; the intense emotion when he finishes; and the triumphant vindication of his thesis that painters were often more scientific than was first assumed. To prove his point, Jenison enlists the help of a long list of experts, led by David Hockney and including Martin Mull, and Professors Philip Steadman and Colin Blakemore. All of them support his theory that the division between 'art' and 'science' is not quite as great as art critics might have first assumed; like Jenison himself, Vermeer probably made use of scientific or optical techniques while creating his work. This point is good as far as it goes, but it leaves the viewer confused. If, as Jenison proves, a painter uses optical techniques, and a self-confessed non-painter such as Jenison can successfully reproduce the painting, then it follows that the artist is not quite the genius that critics might have first assumed. As Andy Warhol proved nearly fifty years ago, art is infinitely reproducible, which therefore confounds the Romantic veneration of the author/ artist as genius. On the other hand, Teller's documentary celebrates Jenison, not necessarily as a painter, but as a successful inventor with a unique capacity for computer recreation. In his way he is just as skillful as Vermeer was nearly four centuries ago. TIM'S VERMEER actually ends up by celebrating the genius of the individual, even while trying to show that their works can be reproduced by self- confessed amateurs in the painting arts. Jenison is an engaging presence on screen, but we do wish that the documentary had been a little bit better thought out.

The Penn and Teller imprint makes sense, as this is in part a magic trick. It's also one hell of a documentary, a detective story, an art history lesson, a science project and I don't know, a baby's arm holding an apple? Watched it with my 11 year old twin boys, who've come across Penn & Teller before, but like me they were captivated by Tim. His matter-of-fact approach, and a wizened kindness that is there along with his obsessive engineering mind made him a great character on the screen. And probably a pretty decent person in real-life. It's nice that he has had enough commercial success in life that he can spend time rather than money, but even he questions the depths of his obsession. (Good thing they had decided to film this early on, as he admits to the camera.) He's certainly a do-er, and to us lazy mere thinkers, that's always impressive to see in action.

a seemingly flatly told, casual little story that is anything but. The scientific method is at play here, full stop. Tim Denison had a theory about how Vermeer painted and wanted to assess whether this theory was true, he controlled all the conditions he possibly could and by doing so, ruled out possible alternative explanations, well, as much as is probably do-able. The main premise is that Vermeer used optical methods to produce his vibrating, amazingly photographic/life like images. Tim, with absolutely no training or experience with almost anything to do with painting went about reproducing a Vermeer, he learned wood working, traditional paint mixing, lens grinding etc so he could recreate the tableau that Vermeer used as exactly as possible. As we know almost nothing about Vermeer's method, Tim had to figure out what was possible given the technology of the day, and he essentially did, you need to see the movie to see what actually happened. Suffice it to say, this untrained but incredibly dogged and creative/inventive man managed to reproduce a master work from one of the greatest of the European painters. The details, figures, shading are simply miraculous! The implications are enormous and in no way detracts from Vermeer's genius. Even today Tim could have just kept this method to himself and produced a bunch of new paintings of whatever he wanted and these would be hailed as extraordinary works of art because NO ONE besides Vermeer ever got close to this level of painting, obviously Tim is not inspired by such notoriety or need for money. Thus, a new way of seeing the world is made manifest.

Ah, to have the wherewithal to fly your Lear to England to consult with Hockney and have a half hour viewing of the Queen's Vermeer. And the skill to turn a furniture leg on a lathe you modified without any training either in lathe modification or working wood as well as learning lense grinding, stained glass window making, and mixing paints in the Vermeerian manner, and on and on. Staggering, actually. Tim shows the comfort and confidence of the very rich but none of the noblesse oblige. Rare. The film nicely tells the story of the task fulfilled, details of which you know from the descriptions above as well as from the trailer. More on learning to actually mix and apply the paint, as well as the technical aspects involved in manufacturing the paints would gave made this a more valuable document. Still fun and full of charm.

This film has to get at least three stars because it does show some of Vermeer's lovely paintings, if only momentarily and in close-up. Apart from that it seems to be a film about a guy who thinks that Vermeer used mirrors/machines to get his paintings so lifelike. Really? What about all those other lifelike painters. Durer, Holbein, Ingres, Velasquez .... the list could go for ages. He seems to know absolutely nothing about art. The fact that Vermeer did not use pencil or other sketches on the canvas, before putting on the paint, means nothing at all. Plenty of painters use oil paint heavily diluted. Anyway, perhaps it is all saved in the last half. Perhaps there is new evidence, wonderful arguments, wit and brilliance. I wouldn't know. By then I was fast asleep.

The Penn and Teller film (Penn talks, Teller directs) Tim's Vermeer is a rapturous demonstration of one man's magnificent obsession. It's also very, very funny. The plot has the San Antonio inventor but non-artist Tim Jenison prove that the unprecedented detail of a Vermeer painting could perhaps only be done with a mechanical device. He builds one, makes his own lenses, grinds his own period paints and then laboriously but precisely paints his own Vermeer. QED. But the theme of the film might be the contemporary dissociation of sensibility. T.S. Eliot coined that term to describe the split between reason and the emotional life that happened between the Metaphysical Poets and the Victorians. But the phrase could equally apply to the contemporary split between art and technology. Vermeer is no less an artist — indeed arguably an even more impressive intelligence and craftsman — for having devised some mechanical supplement for his painting, perhaps along the lines of Jenison's. And Jenison's technical brilliance and craft should surely not disqualify him from the title "artist." His sharp eye and scrupulously detailed mark-making deserve no lesser title. Perhaps it was that confluence of art and science that attracted the brilliant team of magicians to the project. For more see www.yacowar.blogspot.com.

What exactly is the relationship between science and art? Are they entirely separate domains or is there, Venn-diagram-like, some overlap between them? The 17th Century Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer has long been considered the world's master of the "photographic" painting. So lifelike, in fact, are Vermeer's works that it has long been speculated that he may have used some kind of scientific device available at the time to help him achieve the effect. Well, filmmaker Penn Jillette, with the help of Tim Jenson - an inventor, NOT a painter - has decided to get to the bottom of the controversy. The result is "Tim's Vermeer," a brief (76 minutes), fast-paced and utterly absorbing documentary that provides an aesthetic and intellectual feast for art and science lovers alike. Since this IS Penn Jillette we're talking about here - an illusionist who is also a tireless advocate for rationalism and empiricism - it's fitting that the movie would apply scientific precepts to its analysis of art. Tim hypothesizes that Vermeer may have used a device called a camera obscura combined with a small portable mirror to achieve an unprecedented verisimilitude in his paintings. It's pure speculation, since Vermeer left no notes behind documenting his creative and technical process. So Tim has decided to paint his own "Vermeer" using the technique he postulates the artist himself used, and to document that process on film. To that end, Tim has chosen Vermeer's "The Music Lesson" as his subject to copy, going so far as to recreate the room, along with the people and objects contained therein, of the original painting down to the smallest detail, only utilizing (and even crafting, if necessary) lenses, mirrors, lighting and paints that were in existence in the 1600s. It is a project that would take five full years to complete. If Vermeer did indeed use these optic "tricks" to achieve his effect, does that somehow diminish him as an artist? Does it make his skill as a painter less astonishing, even if it heightens his ingenuity as an inventor and problem-solver? Probably no more so than a second-rate painter being able to replicate (i.e., "forge") any art masterpiece diminishes the talent of the original artist. And why would it be considered "cheating" for an artist to incorporate all the technological devices available to him at the time to help him in his painting? Why must there exist an arbitrary and artificial dividing line between science and art? These are the questions that Teller's fascinating little movie brings to the fore. But isn't it better just to keep it all as a mystery, to declare Vermeer an artistic genius of the first rank and leave it at that? Perhaps, but then we wouldn't have "Tim's Vermeer" to inspire and engage us.

This is a fascinating, laid-back look at one man's obsession in figuring out how Vermeer painted so realistically. Whether his conclusion is accurate or not is irrelevant: the film is worth watching to trace his obsessive journey to find "the truth". There is humour in this film and a wonderful cameo from English painter David Hockney. The film has a bit of a home movie feel to it: producer and director Penn & Teller obviously knew Tim Jenison, the movie's subject, and decided his quirky story was worth telling. The film is enhanced by a charming yet unobtrusive musical score, primarily flute and piano. You know when people tell you to 'follow your dream'? This guy did and entertained us along the way.