Tim's Vermeer Page #6

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It goes like this.

You can't really tell until you look at it

right down those lines, but...

There is a curvature in there.

And there's really no logical explanation

for that

unless he was using something like this.

Tim calls that bend in the seahorse pattern

the "seahorse smile."

It's a flaw in Vermeer's painting.

A mistake that nobody noticed for 350 years,

and then Tim almost made the same mistake.

Tim is not looking for something

that will duplicate Vermeer's mistake.

You know,

he doesn't know Vermeer's mistake is there.

That's either a remarkable coincidence

or Vermeer was using Tim's machine,

or something very much like Tim's machine

to do his painting.

As Hockney said, paintings are documents,

and here's a little bit of evidence.

Today I painted the seahorse motif.

It was a lot of work. I couldn't really sit

here for more than 15, 20 minutes at a time.

Your back just gets extremely tense.

I tried to sit in the most relaxed position

I could find, which is like this.

It's just really nerve-wracking,

meticulous, demanding work.

I'm not looking forward

to doing the rest of the instrument,

but at least I know it's doable.

What I painted today is maybe, I expect

will turn out to be the hardest part

of the painting, physically, to do.

Man.

Well, yeah this is going to be short

because it's about 40 degrees in here.

So Karl and I came in here this morning,

and looked at each other, like,

"No." You know, it's really cold in here.

So I go, "Wait, I've got this heater

in the garage that I never assembled.

"I got it for Christmas a few years ago,

it's one of those patio heaters."

So, Karl said, "Hey, I'll put

it together, let's go get it."

So we went and got it, and put it together,

it's over there.

And fired it up and it worked great.

It's nice and toasty, you know?

Karl was sittin' over

there with his computer,

and I said, "Hey, look up on there

to see if it's safe to use these indoors."

And Karl looks up and says,

"Yeah, you know it says here

it's absolutely not safe to use indoors."

And I said, "Okay. Well, let's just run it

"and we'll be careful, okay?

"So if we notice any symptoms

of carbon monoxide poisoning, you know,

"we'll shut it off."

So I start painting, and I actually painted

an elephant on The Music Lesson.

I don't know why I put it there,

but it seemed like a good idea at the time.

Karl actually, he put his head down,

and he said, "I need a nap."

I said, "What did you say?"

He said, "I need a nap."

I said, "Okay, let's leave right now."

"Let's shut this thing

off and go get lunch."

And on the way to lunch, driving to lunch,

everything sort of cleared up again,

you know, we were in a fog.

So anyway, that was a bad idea.

It was kind of a weird day.

I came in and started painting

this lower cushion,

and sort of a wave of revulsion

swept over me.

I just wanted to do anything in the world

but sit here and paint for some reason.

I don't know, just one of those things.

But I am pretty much ready

for this painting to be finished.

If we weren't making a film, would I quit?

Yeah, I definitely would. Yeah.

I'd find something else to do right now.

Well, yesterday when I was

painting this chair, I was almost

repulsed by it.

I think maybe subconsciously

I knew that it was wrong.

And it just didn't look like

it belonged in the painting to me,

and I couldn't

put my finger on the reason why.

And as I was trying to

get to sleep last night,

I was just sort of laying there

and I was visualizing that chair

and I could see it in my mind.

And I go,

"You know, that's just the wrong blue.

"I should darken the legs."

The top of the chair

can't possibly be tilted to the left.

It's like I'm seeing it

and that can't possibly be right.

I realised that

I had bumped the lens out of position

and that's why

the chair's perspective was wrong.

It was totally a subconscious thing.

Maybe I do have an inner artist

that knew that was wrong.

I thought that the rug would be

a little more free-form painting.

But this rug is close enough

to the optical equipment here

that I can clearly see all

those little stitches.

And since I can see that, and since my rule

is "paint what you see in the mirror,"

if I want to get that kind of detail,

I'm gonna have to

sort of make like the harpsichord here

and just go for the detail.

So, another day, more dots.

Ditto yesterday.

Just painting more dots.

You know, it gets old painting this carpet.

Oh, my God.

We're on.

Okay, so I've been

frantically running around here,

setting up lights.

And it shows.

Today is the denouement, of sorts.

The varnish job.

For the last several months

I've been promising myself

that all would be better

when the varnish went on.

Because as the paint dries, it gets

light, it gets chalky, it desaturates.

I've been very anxious to do this.

I went along slowly with a small brush

and finally I just grabbed a giant brush,

sloshed it in the varnish

and just started going to town.

And everywhere I touched was magic.

It's pretty astounding.

Well, you know, today...

Today's the day I've been waiting for.

I'm sorry.

I can't believe it's finished.

We took Tim's painting back to England

to show Hockney and Steadman.

Well, that's it.

So, you know, it's my first

ambitious attempt at oil painting,

and that's kind of part of the experiment,

that I'm not a painter,

but I was trying to show

the power of the concept.

Yeah.

This is terrific, I must say.

We noticed this

when we were doing our lens experiments.

We noticed

that especially on these kind of cloths,

on the projection you saw every weave

that you couldn't in the real one,

and you get that in Vermeer.

Now that's very, very effective.

Anybody looking at this...

- I think this is better than Vermeer.

- Better than Vermeer?

You do feel the weave of the carpet.

Yeah, you really do.

It looks actually woolly, doesn't it?

Amazing, actually.

It had to be something

similar, it had to be.

I mean, there's no doubt

that you've proved one thing, Tim,

that you can paint a painting of this

degree of detail and precision in...

Well, it's not exactly a camera obscura,

but it's an optical machine.

And that's really what I set out to prove,

is that it could have been done that way.

Sure. I mean there's no doubt about that.

There's no way

that it proves that Vermeer did.

That's the second question obviously, yes.

Did Vermeer work that way?

Yeah, but it makes you rather convinced

that's what he did.

I'm getting a little more convinced

all the time.

I would say I'm about 90% there.

But, you know,

if there was some historical record...

I mean, the idea

that a painting isn't a historical record

is from literary people who seem to just

not look at pictures and just read texts.

This is a document in itself.

I know people are going on

about documents.

Paintings and drawings are documents,

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