David Hockney's Secret Knowledge

This episode of the BBC Omnibus program is an offshoot of the controversial book Secret Knowledge: Rediscovering the Lost Techniques of the Old Masters that respected British artist David Hockney published in 2001. Hockney contends that the turn in European art toward a remarkable, almost photographic, realism beginning around 1420 can be explained by the use of optics--first mirrors, then lenses, and finally a combination of both--to provide flat projections of the objects being painted that allowed for greater precision and complexity than working by eye alone (the change, in other words, involved technology as well as technique). Hockney offers elaborate recreations of (or, his critics would say, imaginative speculations about) how the process operated, visiting Bruges, Ghent, and Florence and examining masterpieces by such figures as Van Eyck and Caravaggio to support his thesis (which is fascinating but also provocative, eliciting complaints that the notion of the masters employing optically-created images to “trace” their paintings denigrates their talent). In fairness, it must be admitted that Hockney's presentation, while compelling, is not deeply probative (direct evidence is lacking); also, one would think that at least a single artist would have revealed the use of such devices between the 15th century and the 19th, when the invention of chemical photography pushed painting in a different direction. But David Hockney's Secret Knowledge works wonderfully as a scholarly detective story--the periodic use of snippets from Bernard Herrmann's tense Vertigo score in the background seems apt--and as an educational tool it should spur lively debate. Highly recommended. Aud: C, P. (F. Swietek)