- Paperback: 328 pages
- Publisher: Thames & Hudson; 60th Anniversary Ed edition (5 May 2009)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0500600201
- ISBN-13: 978-0500600207
- Product Dimensions: 29.8 x 23.8 x 2.6 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (23 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 501,860 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- See Complete Table of Contents
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Product Description
Amazon.co.uk Review
David Hockney's brilliant Secret Knowledge is the fruit of his practical and historical investigation into how artists from the 15th century onward produced such vividly realistic drawings and paintings. Hockney's conclusions are simple but devastating. He argues that, "from the early 15th century many Western artists used optics--by which I mean mirrors and lenses (or a combination of the two)--to create living projections". The results are extraordinary. Secret Knowledge carefully explains how Masaccio, Van Eyck, Holbein, Caravaggio, Vermeer and Ingres all used optical aids, as it carefully takes apart the paintings and recreates the instruments and techniques used by artists from as early as the 1430s.
Hockney concedes that his opinions have been attacked by the mainstream art world that has complained that "for an artist to use optical aids would be 'cheating'; that somehow I was attacking the idea of innate genius". As a practising artist himself, his response is persuasive: "optics would have given artists a new tool with which to make images that were more immediate, and more powerful". Hockney concludes that this does not "diminish their achievements. For me, it makes them all the more astounding". Hockney's evidence is compelling and convincing, and brilliantly conveyed in this beautiful book, complete with details, foldouts and over 400 illustrations in sumptuous colour. Secret Knowledge also contains a collection of primary evidence detailing artist's use of optical devices, and Hockney's correspondence on the subject over the last two years. This book will revolutionise how we look at the art of the past. As Hockney himself suggests, "exciting times are ahead". --Jerry Brotton --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Review
`The publishing house has rarely put a foot wrong in its 60-year history' --GQ
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
145 of 150 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
This is a seismic publication. It will rock the art world right down to its foundations. Hockney blows the lid clean off the secret practices of the Old Masters. He shows, with stunning clarity, that conventional European art historians have simply never understood the central and defining importance of optics - the cameras (obscura and lucida), mirrors and lenses that were all used to project images only flat surfaces. These made for very accurate painting. Artists liked it - so much easier and quicker. Clients liked it - so life-like, so real and so desirable. It was optics that made possible the uncanny, almost superhuman precision of Caravaggio, Canaletto, Vermeer, Holbein, Velazquez and many, many others. Not all the old masters used it, but most did and the rest were certainly influenced by it. Optics created realism in European visual art.
Why has all this come out now? Partly because the Old Masters were guild members and, for purely commercial reasons never revealed the tricks of their trade. They were too valuable. And partly because Hockney, ever the persistent and gleeful iconoclast, smelled a rat. Why were Ingres' exquisite pencil portraits so small, all the same size, so accurate and so quickly executed? How come Vermeer's paintings were so mathematically precise that a computer can exactly recreate his studio from the measurements taken from them? Why did so many Old Masters make very obvious errors in human anatomical proportion? Why did it all start in 1430 AD? In a riveting account Hockney describes his two-year journey to the certain realisation that it was all down to optics. He also shows that optics, in a tyranny of cold one-eyed precision, dominated European art for 500 years. Impressionism and, later, Modern art liberated it. So now visual art can once again be human, eccentric, two-eyed and wonky.
Secret Knowledge is a big book and it's not cheap. But it's worth it. Fully half of it is devoted to beautiful, full colour reproductions of the great art works that Hockey uses to demonstrate his argument. His writing is not at all academic. It is crystal clear, cheerful, blunt, engaging, honest and totally persuasive.
16 of 17 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
Great book! I read it in one sitting! Hockney may well be derided as "popular artist" by the serious art world, but all fields of endeavour have their jealous guardians who stake their existence on consistency; a new viewpoint is rarely made welcome by them, and an outsider contradicts them at his own peril.
Nevertheless, the arguments about moving vanishing points, inconsistent perspective, left handed prevalences, optical distortions completely accurately rendered and so on are not going to just go away. They are well thought out, tightly argued and well illustrated (and were completely new to me!). It seems obvious with this in mind that any artist making a living from his skill would be very stupid not to use a tool to enhance the realism of his work and cut the time needed to churn these portraits out. Hockney entertainingly shows how this process had to include the use of lenses and mirrors.
More to the point, the use of such aids does not diminish the painters' skill. Their style is always recognisable and painters today would be hard pressed to create anything comparable. But it helps to know how human beings managed, in some cases, to achieve impossible levels of observational accuracy. So after a lifetime of interest in drawing, I immediately ordered a camera lucida to try it for myself!
A great read! Buy it!
Nevertheless, the arguments about moving vanishing points, inconsistent perspective, left handed prevalences, optical distortions completely accurately rendered and so on are not going to just go away. They are well thought out, tightly argued and well illustrated (and were completely new to me!). It seems obvious with this in mind that any artist making a living from his skill would be very stupid not to use a tool to enhance the realism of his work and cut the time needed to churn these portraits out. Hockney entertainingly shows how this process had to include the use of lenses and mirrors.
More to the point, the use of such aids does not diminish the painters' skill. Their style is always recognisable and painters today would be hard pressed to create anything comparable. But it helps to know how human beings managed, in some cases, to achieve impossible levels of observational accuracy. So after a lifetime of interest in drawing, I immediately ordered a camera lucida to try it for myself!
A great read! Buy it!
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I am very impressed by this book. Not only does it offer a masterly and thorough account of how artists might have worked over the ages but
also advances an imaginative idea that the make up of our current society and culture has been influenced by a lens oriented view. This is held to have conditioned and even restricted our notion of reality. I am currently in the middle of a PhD study on drawing machines and this book has been helpful
in extending the context within which my study sits. David Hockney can justifiable claim to be one of our most original thinkers on art history as he does not only write about it but can practice it to the highest standard. Jack Tait
also advances an imaginative idea that the make up of our current society and culture has been influenced by a lens oriented view. This is held to have conditioned and even restricted our notion of reality. I am currently in the middle of a PhD study on drawing machines and this book has been helpful
in extending the context within which my study sits. David Hockney can justifiable claim to be one of our most original thinkers on art history as he does not only write about it but can practice it to the highest standard. Jack Tait
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
ENVY AND JEALOUSY
The art world is well known for the prevalence of jealousy and envy among artists for the more successful among them. Read more
Published 1 month ago by pfvll
amazing stuff
This book has changed my view of paintings I have known for many years. It is a genuine reading (and viewing) experience. Thank you David Hockney!
Published 3 months ago by Jens Olesen
Behind the lens
Hockney is on top form in this book; he presents his argument very convincingly. I remember the backlash he suffered when the TV programme was aired a few years ago but I think... Read more
Published 10 months ago by Henry's Cat
Fabulous book
What a glorious read A fantastic insight into the mind of a current master as well as 'old' masters. Stunning, quality images throughout a hefty book.
Published 10 months ago by G. Findlay
Has been thoroughly debunked.
I don't know why David Hockney came up with this theory, but it's been debunked quite well, I believe. (Most notably Scientific American December 2004. Read more
Published 15 months ago by Felicity
Books on Art
I was so intrigued reading this book that it only took a couple of days to read and this was fast for me! Read more
Published 16 months ago by K. C.
An artist's study of other artists
This is a book which only a working artist could have written; Hockney's insight comes not from a mad conspiracy theory but from his own expert knowledge of the process of drawing. Read more
Published 19 months ago by Peasant
secret knowlegerediscovering the lost techniques of the old masters
this book is delightfull. the colured photographs are inspiring. David hockney writes with agreat fluidity, insimple terms niether highbrow or lowbrow. Read more
Published 21 months ago by A. M. dishman
Great Book
This is a great book, with loads of fantastic colour plates , straight forward reading and gets the point accross. Read more
Published on 12 May 2010 by Mr. J. Bloomfield
Brilliant!
I've long been an admirer of Hockney's work and, as a photographer myserlf, I was keen to see his take on the use of the camera lucida and camera obscura in painting. Read more
Published on 20 Oct 2009 by Derek Watkins
Listmania!
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