TIM'S VERMEER is an exceptionally strange documentary. Inventor Tim Jenison, with a proved track record of scientific and other discoveries, sets himself the task of recreating Vermeer's "The Music Lesson" using optical techniques with mirrors. The task is long and laborious - from inception to conception takes five years - but in the end Jenison manages to produce a copy of the Vermeer work that is thoroughly creditable. Teller's film includes several clichés of the tele-documentary genre; the highs and the lows, the periods of difficulty when Jenison wonders whether his task has any real values; the intense emotion when he finishes; and the triumphant vindication of his thesis that painters were often more scientific than was first assumed.
To prove his point, Jenison enlists the help of a long list of experts, led by David Hockney and including Martin Mull, and Professors Philip Steadman and Colin Blakemore. All of them support his theory that the division between 'art' and 'science' is not quite as great as art critics might have first assumed; like Jenison himself, Vermeer probably made use of scientific or optical techniques while creating his work.
This point is good as far as it goes, but it leaves the viewer confused. If, as Jenison proves, a painter uses optical techniques, and a self-confessed non-painter such as Jenison can successfully reproduce the painting, then it follows that the artist is not quite the genius that critics might have first assumed. As Andy Warhol proved nearly fifty years ago, art is infinitely reproducible, which therefore confounds the Romantic veneration of the author/ artist as genius. On the other hand, Teller's documentary celebrates Jenison, not necessarily as a painter, but as a successful inventor with a unique capacity for computer recreation. In his way he is just as skillful as Vermeer was nearly four centuries ago. TIM'S VERMEER actually ends up by celebrating the genius of the individual, even while trying to show that their works can be reproduced by self- confessed amateurs in the painting arts.
Jenison is an engaging presence on screen, but we do wish that the documentary had been a little bit better thought out.
To prove his point, Jenison enlists the help of a long list of experts, led by David Hockney and including Martin Mull, and Professors Philip Steadman and Colin Blakemore. All of them support his theory that the division between 'art' and 'science' is not quite as great as art critics might have first assumed; like Jenison himself, Vermeer probably made use of scientific or optical techniques while creating his work.
This point is good as far as it goes, but it leaves the viewer confused. If, as Jenison proves, a painter uses optical techniques, and a self-confessed non-painter such as Jenison can successfully reproduce the painting, then it follows that the artist is not quite the genius that critics might have first assumed. As Andy Warhol proved nearly fifty years ago, art is infinitely reproducible, which therefore confounds the Romantic veneration of the author/ artist as genius. On the other hand, Teller's documentary celebrates Jenison, not necessarily as a painter, but as a successful inventor with a unique capacity for computer recreation. In his way he is just as skillful as Vermeer was nearly four centuries ago. TIM'S VERMEER actually ends up by celebrating the genius of the individual, even while trying to show that their works can be reproduced by self- confessed amateurs in the painting arts.
Jenison is an engaging presence on screen, but we do wish that the documentary had been a little bit better thought out.