David Hockney was permitted on CBS 60 minutes (and we can see why its reputation has been in freefall in recent years).
To repeat his preposterous self justifying allegations that the masters of the past, like Leonardo. Rembrandt, Vermeer and Bouguereau, used a mechanical device to reproduce the underlying objects in their paintings. And - get this - because nobody could possibly draw that well. This is ludicrous in the extreme and defamatory not only of the greats of the past, but of the living masters who quite capably can draw without the help of any such apparatus.
To see the evidence of this, please direct your attention to the accompanying drawings by contemporary realist Tony Ryder, one of the leading artists in ARC's gallery of Living Masters.
And folks: if ARC's living masters can draw free hand, can there be any doubt that Dürer, Rembrandt, Bouguereau, and Alma-Tadema could too?
His next book I suppose we ll hear will speak about Mozart having access to a rare jade Chinese abacus, that when carefully used to calculate the population increase of silk worms, produces numbers in a rhythm that can be transposed onto the treble and base clefs of sheet music. These apparently were found to be the true underpinnings of Mozart sonatas, symphonies and concertos.
Further research has shown now that such a device was auctioned off in the estate sales of Beethoven, Chopin and Tchaikovsky and was even listed among the personal effects of Johann Sebastian Bach.
Please read the article here by Kirk Richards, and the letters posted below, and we are confident that the evidence displayed will more than completely put to rest the absurdity of Hockney’s claims. It would be very easy to amass ten times the evidence shown below to completely rebut Hockney’s recent book. But folks, how much evidence would be necessary to demonstrate that the stars are not hanging by little strings in the sky, that the earth is not flat, that ice is not as strong as steel, that there were no electric lights in the Roman Empire, or that Genghis Kahn did not win his battles with attack helicopters? It is just that ridiculous to claim that the advances in realism during the Renaissance came about because of the use of optical devices.
But Genghis Kahn had in his personal effects well-structured fans in the shape of helicopter wings, and it can be shown that if you tie together four such fans it would be possible to engineer a mechanism that could stay aloft. Therefore Genghis Kahn used attack helicopters to win all of his battles.
Give me a break.
We urge everyone who agrees with us that this is a travesty, to write a letter of complaint to CBS and 60 minutes at 60II@cbsnews.com.
