Sunday, January 17, 2010

The Hockney-Falco Thesis


Any discussion of theories of perspective is not complete without discussing the Hockney-Falco thesis. The thesis was developed by the painter David Hockney and the physicist Charles M. Falco.

from wikipedia:


As described in Secret Knowledge, in January 1999 during a visit to the National Gallery, London Hockney conceived of the idea that optical aids were the key factor in the development of artistic realism. He was struck by the accuracy of portraits by Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, and became convinced that Ingres had used a camera lucida or similar device. From there, Hockney began looking for signs of the use of optical aids in earlier paintings, creating what he called the Great Wall in his studio by organizing images of great realistic art by time period. What he saw as a sudden rise of realism around 1420, combined with Charles Falco's suggestion that concave mirrors could have been used in that period to project images, was the germ of the Hockney–Falco thesis.

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