Tim's Vermeer - 3 smiles

“Tim’s Vermeer” is a fascinating documentary that poses an interesting question: did 17^th-century Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer use optical devices to achieve his gorgeous, photo-realistic, light-filled artwork? This is a question inventor Tim Jenison wants to answer. It’s part mystery, part academic odyssey, part tinkerer’s obsession. Directed by Teller (the silent half of the magic team of Penn & Teller) and co-produced by Penn Jillette, the movie follows Jenison, a man with a voracious curiosity and the resources to follow it wherever it leads him. Jenison is a digital-video pioneer; he invented tools to convert film into digital form. It earned him two Emmys and a fortune.

In 2002, Jenison read British artist David Hockney’s book Secret Knowledge, which detailed how the Old Masters used technology to make their works realistic. He also read Philip Steadman’s Vermeer’s Camera, a book that upset art historians by suggesting that the painter had used optical tools to create his works. Jenison became obsessed with figuring out what tools were available to a painter in Holland in the 1660s and how they contributed to Vermeer’s growing body of work. Jillette convinced Jenison, his longtime friend, to pursue his interest figuring out how Vermeer captured that pure light. Teller’s cameras were rolling as Jenison took 213 working days to re-create the room depicted in the Music Lesson, the 1625 Vermeer he set out to replicate and 130 days to replicate the painting. “Tim’s Vermeer” is an impressive proof of a concept. And when it’s over, even knowing that Vermeer probably used optics to create his masterpieces, you have to admire an artist who used every tool at his command in the service of beauty. 3/20/14