Science and art, fascination and controversy, all meet in this exploration by physicist Robert Greenler of optical devices and techniques possibly used in the painting of many of the masterpieces of Western Art. Did artists, beginning in the early 1400s, use lenses and mirrors in the creation of their pictures, as painter David Hockney and Charles Falco assert? Also intrigued by this question, Professor Greenler brings his expertise in optics to an examination of the optical tools available over time to the artist.
The Pointillist Painter, the Sunday Comics, and Color TV: Color Mixing in Art and Technology
The science of color — some of its rules, its mysteries and surprises, its collusion with the human eye — comes under scrutiny in “The Pointillist Painter, the Sunday Comics, and Color TV: Color Mixing in Art Technology.” In this wide-ranging and engaging program physicist Robert Greenler looks at “a dozen ways of mixing color,” using both the basics we learn in kindergarten for the mixing of pigments and those which govern the mixing of light.