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Secret Knowledge: Rediscovering the Lost Techniques of the Old Masters
 
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Secret Knowledge: Rediscovering the Lost Techniques of the Old Masters (Hardcover)

by David Hockney (Author)
4.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (11 customer reviews)

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Product details

  • Hardcover: 296 pages
  • Publisher: Thames & Hudson Ltd; First Edition, First Impression edition (12 Oct 2001)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0500237859
  • ISBN-13: 978-0500237854
  • Product Dimensions: 31 x 25 x 3 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 87,366 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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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

Review
`The publishing house has rarely put a foot wrong in its 60-year history' --GQ --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

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Secret Knowledge: Rediscovering the Lost Techniques of the Old Masters
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Secret Knowledge: Rediscovering the Lost Techniques of the Old Masters 4.4 out of 5 stars (11)
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Customer Reviews

11 Reviews
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Average Customer Review
4.4 out of 5 stars (11 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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111 of 114 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars A revolutionary view of European Art History., 14 Oct 2001
By mrevans.holywell@virgin.net (Holywell, North Wales, UK) - See all my reviews
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.

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24 of 27 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars The authority of a practitioner, not a critic - for a change, 28 April 2002
By A Customer
A lavish book of quality reproductions, that alone makes it worth owning. For me Hockney presents enough convincing argument that intrinsic genius is a myth - a myth that all artists and illustrators working today who are capable of painting like the 'masters' know it is. It's always good to see the deification of artists challenged. Hockney presents plenty of examples of all the reasons he believes optical devices were used while still appreciating these paintings for the fantastic examples of the artist's skill that they are. A well balanced viewpoint is presented and the reader is invited to make up his or her own mind. One point he missed that I noticed was how many of the pets (dogs, cats etc) are of a lessr 'quality' of realism than the people in the paintings - not so good at sitting still but then the artists always had access to stuffed animals.
However, to see David Hockney's viewpoint on the matter I think it helps greatly if you have spent years and years of hard work developing your observational skills as a painter and draughtsman and you are not afraid to use the technology at your fingertips in your work, then I think you can completely understand your peers of centuries past.
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31 of 36 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars an excellent book outlining an amazing discovery, 14 Oct 2001
By London film watcher (London United Kingdom) - See all my reviews
This book outlines the discovery by David Hockney of how the 'overnight' invention of perspective was not that, but the clever use of a concave mirror to project a perfect image onto a canvas and to trace and/paint that image. At first a mirror was used as the quality of glass needed for a lens was not available, and this led to the pictures being about 30cm square. With the development of glass, lenses became available and pictures could be larger.

It is a remarkable discovery of the use of a technique which can be traced by looking at the development of art.

Excellent book.

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Most Recent Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars secret knowlege:rediscovering the lost techniques of the old masters
An informative and well structured book with some interesting theories about the secret methods used historically to ease the process of drawing complex scenes or objects... Read more
Published 5 months ago by D. J. Warren

4.0 out of 5 stars A new perspective
A friend of my father's loaned this book to him, recommending it very highly. I picked it up when I was visiting my parents and became glued to it. Read more
Published 16 months ago by A. Byrnes

2.0 out of 5 stars A long way from a complete answer.
As someone struggling to "unlock the secrets of the old masters" myself, I bought and read this book eagerly but was ultimately disappointed. Read more
Published 20 months ago by Lee W.

5.0 out of 5 stars The Light Bulb Goes On As You Read This
This is a fascinating book. David Hockney will point out an odd proportion in a painting (all paintings etc are nicely illustrated)and explain how this, in his opinion, resulted... Read more
Published on 18 April 2007 by Happy Reader

5.0 out of 5 stars This book is GORGEOUS
It's a lavishly photographed and produced work of art - My copy is the hardback and I assume the paperback is the same but it has wonderful gatefolds and details of works of art... Read more
Published on 13 Dec 2006 by A. Black

5.0 out of 5 stars Utterly convincing!
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... Read more
Published on 20 Nov 2006 by I. Carstairs

5.0 out of 5 stars So that's how they did it!
For me, Hockney's theories answer a lot of my wonder about works of art and artists, and it's a thoroughly good read, whether you paint/draw or simply admire art. Read more
Published on 29 Aug 2002

2.0 out of 5 stars seismic this is not
An interesting if not exactly mind bending investigation of the use of optical tools by painters over the last couple of centuries. Read more
Published on 2 April 2002

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