Ersbel Oraph This is the story of a magic trick. By the half time I was rooting for Tim. I knew he would finally get the good product. Or else there was no movie. So the happy end is obvious once you get past the introduction. But there were nice twists. And the building of the background, than of the painting were made interesting, when they were quite boring. So probably the showbiz skills of Penn and Teller are weighting in quite a lot. But it is a cheat. The description, including the extra mirror were already described by David Hockney some 7 years before this documentary project even started in the book called Secret Knowledge: Rediscovering the Lost Techniques of the Old Masters. Me, I was left with the impression that Tim did it all, when in fact his merit might be limited to a 3D description of the original painting (improbable) and for coming up with a simple device known from the late Middle Ages called Camera Lucida. No, in fact, he was the director of the whole construction site and he did the very impressive 130 (?) days of paint including an attempted suicide involving carbon monoxide. He did prove that David Hockney is right and the books comparing Vermeer's so called style are pure bull.Which reminds me of the Bullet Catch trick done by Penn and Teller. It is only a trick. Like Tim who did not discover the device, Penn does not catch a bullet shot from a gun. But it is a good show. And it is still there to prove something: that science could win over the ignorance of art critics.Contact me with Questions, Comments or Suggestions ryitfork @ bitmail.ch

lasttimeisaw This USA comedy/magic duo Penn & Teller's passion project is an intriguing documentary attempts to reappraisal the fine line between an artist and an artisan, through Tim Jenison, a successful American inventor, engineer, but an amateur of painting, who pulls his back into precisely duplicating Dutch Golden Age luminary Johannes Vermeer's masterpiece THE MUSIC ROOM with the help of a simple optic gizmo which he believes Vermeer also secretly utilized, or at least in a similar way in his creation. Vermeer was perversely cagey about his painting technique, there is no extant documents where one can sieve through to find any evidence, the only stratagem is from his oeuvres, mostly depicting domestic interior scenes, as the watchword of the film is "every paint is a document of its own". So Tom's hypothesis, which also bolstered by books such as British artist David Hockney's SECRET KNOWLEDGE and VERMEER'S CAMERA written by British architecture professor Philip Steadman, is bold and contentious, if he successes in producing a Vermeer-calibre painting through his experiment, does it debase Vermeer from a masterful artist who is celebrated for his divine treatment of light and capturing a beguiling verisimilitude of reality, to a mere inventor who laboriously but accurately duplicating real-life image onto the canvas thanks to an ingenious gadget borne out of a scientific discovery? Maybe, the art firmament itself has been longly misjudged as this venerable, superior godsend reflecting human's uttermost self-importance has been proverbially and obstinately holds a dismissive slant towards the progress of modern science, where subjectivity always trumps objectivity. The film is conventionally arranged in a simple and linear narrative centers on Tim's painstaking process, spanning over 5 years, from the exhaustive preparation of the paraphernalia which should be exclusively limited within 17th century's knowledgeability, to the reproduce of the entire tableaux exactly like that in THE MUSIC ROOM, until his four-month-long endeavor to create his own Vermeer, certain longueur is inevitable, since his technique is plainly a one-trick-pony and extremely time-consuming (plus, none too many galvanizing vignettes are included), but Conrad Pope's soothing score always comes timely to diffuse the lurking fatigue. When Tim finally finishes his work, circumscribed by film's inherent attribute, audience doesn't have the access to make the judgement by one's own eyes through the screen, so it is somewhat a bit disappointing, the film doesn't include the appraisal from a more canonical collective of voices apart from Steadman and Hockney, nevertheless, it surely tallies with the fact that Vermeer's output is not as prolific as others, by this method, he could maximally produce 3 pieces a year. Due to the fact that any concrete proof is simply not available, this documentary cannot make Tim's viewpoint indisputable, although, in the eye of an art layman, it is remarkably persuasive, or maybe that is not the whole point at all, after all, it is Tim's strenuous perseverance, questioning inclination, scrutinising method and can-do attitude feels more affecting and encouraging in the end of the story.

Bryan Kluger I would imagine that only art students or avid art collectors would know the name Vermeer if it was spoken out loud, where the rest of us would have to Google his name and learn about this name. Vermeer is actually a name, well a last name in Johannes Vermeer, who was a great painter in the 1600s. His work is known all over the world and is sought after by royalty, celebrities, and very wealthy business people. What makes Vermeer standout than any other painter from the 1600s? Well that's an interesting topic and question. It's such a fascinating subject, that Penn and Teller (the magicians and entertainers) decided to make one of their famous documentaries about it.This matter is is of great interest because Vermeer's paintings are photo-realistic. That is odd, because, it would be very difficult or impossible to capture the lighting, shades, and intricate details that Vermeer captured in his paintings if he did it free hand from memory, which he and people claimed he did. Since Penn and Teller are in the business of calling 'Bullshit', they seemed to have a great beginning to an incredible story, which was how did Vermeer really get the images so detailed in his paintings.Luckily for Penn and Teller, they knew a guy named Tim Jenison, who is a very wealthy technologist, meaning he has invented and sketched the way for new technology over the past few decades. It also means that he might be a bored billionaire with some interesting hobbies, one of those being Vermeer. Tim had a theory that Vermeer in fact did NOT paint these free hand, but rather used new technology at the time to basically trace his paintings, thus he set out to prove his theory, which took seven years to prove from start to finish. Tim's theory stated that Vermeer used a camera obscura, which was fairly new back in the 1600s, to project an image onto a canvas or wall.The projected image is portrayed upside down, but what Tim figured out is if you place a mirror that reflects that image under your eye and on top of your canvas, you have the image that you can sketch perfectly as if you were tracing it. First off, Tim has never painted in his life. Hell, he didn't even know how to hold a paintbrush correctly, but when he attempted to paint a portrait of someone as a trial run, it turned out spectacular, as if he has painted his entire life.After a few more test runs, Tim decided to try this theory on an actual Vermeer painting, specifically the 'The Music Lesson', because of it's intricate and vivid details on the rug and the lighting from the windows. But Tim didn't want to use modern day technology. Instead, he wanted to recreate what it was like for Vermeer in the 1600s. So, being a billionaire, he constructed the room, according to the painting and used the old equipment that Vermeer would have used to get his photo-realistic paintings. And thus the real story is set in motion as Tim spent eight months painting a Vermeer.We get to see the highs and lows of Tim's psyche as he struggles to finish the painting, even saying to the camera "If this wasn't for a movie, I would have quit already." Tim, Penn and Teller, travel to England to meet with some famous artists who reflect on Vermeer and Tim's theory as well as stop by Buckingham Palace to see the actual Vermeer painting, 'The Music Lesson', which is a comical bit in true Penn and Teller form. Throughout the documentary, seeing Tim paint different sections and how the small details are captured, we start to really believe that Vermeer indeed must have used this technique, even if it took many months to complete.And maybe Vermeer wasn't an artist, but one of the first technologists, just like Tim several hundred years later. In the end, Tim painted a Vermeer, and when he showed other art scholars and collectors his piece, they couldn't believe it and said it might just be better than the original. 'Tim's Vermeer' is a short, fun, and interesting documentary about one man's adventure to prove that a celebrated artist might have used technology to help him paint.

Roland E. Zwick What exactly is the relationship between science and art? Are they entirely separate domains or is there, Venn-diagram-like, some overlap between them?The 17th Century Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer has long been considered the world's master of the "photographic" painting. So lifelike, in fact, are Vermeer's works that it has long been speculated that he may have used some kind of scientific device available at the time to help him achieve the effect. Well, filmmaker Penn Jillette, with the help of Tim Jenson - an inventor, NOT a painter - has decided to get to the bottom of the controversy. The result is "Tim's Vermeer," a brief (76 minutes), fast-paced and utterly absorbing documentary that provides an aesthetic and intellectual feast for art and science lovers alike.Since this IS Penn Jillette we're talking about here - an illusionist who is also a tireless advocate for rationalism and empiricism - it's fitting that the movie would apply scientific precepts to its analysis of art. Tim hypothesizes that Vermeer may have used a device called a camera obscura combined with a small portable mirror to achieve an unprecedented verisimilitude in his paintings. It's pure speculation, since Vermeer left no notes behind documenting his creative and technical process. So Tim has decided to paint his own "Vermeer" using the technique he postulates the artist himself used, and to document that process on film. To that end, Tim has chosen Vermeer's "The Music Lesson" as his subject to copy, going so far as to recreate the room, along with the people and objects contained therein, of the original painting down to the smallest detail, only utilizing (and even crafting, if necessary) lenses, mirrors, lighting and paints that were in existence in the 1600s. It is a project that would take five full years to complete.If Vermeer did indeed use these optic "tricks" to achieve his effect, does that somehow diminish him as an artist? Does it make his skill as a painter less astonishing, even if it heightens his ingenuity as an inventor and problem-solver? Probably no more so than a second-rate painter being able to replicate (i.e., "forge") any art masterpiece diminishes the talent of the original artist. And why would it be considered "cheating" for an artist to incorporate all the technological devices available to him at the time to help him in his painting? Why must there exist an arbitrary and artificial dividing line between science and art? These are the questions that Teller's fascinating little movie brings to the fore.But isn't it better just to keep it all as a mystery, to declare Vermeer an artistic genius of the first rank and leave it at that? Perhaps, but then we wouldn't have "Tim's Vermeer" to inspire and engage us.