Right is Wrong

Self-portrait in a convex mirror

David Hockney has this thing, explored at length in his book Secret Knowledge, about the use of optics by the Old Masters. When you look at his evidence, it's obvious that he's onto something, but – when you think about the practicalities of painting in oils in the centuries before electric light – it equally clearly can't explain everything that looks a bit "lensy", such as objects that appear to be out of focus. A painting isn't a passive reproduction of what can be seen via some lens-based viewing device. But lenses and projected images have been around for a long time, and it would be an odd artist who wasn't intrigued by them or who refused to take advantage of them.

When it comes to optically-assisted art, most people probably think of something like the camera obscura, a distinctly immobile set-up really only suitable for (very) still lifes, landscapes and the like. [1] There is one permanently installed in a small room at the top of a tower near to the Clifton suspension bridge in Bristol, which – unless it is an uncharacteristically sunny day – projects a dim, rather uncanny live image of whatever is going on outside – traffic on the bridge and visitors admiring the Avon Gorge, mainly – onto a large white concave disc, around which a dozen or so people can stand in the darkened room, like a sort of optical seance. It's a little underwhelming, to be honest, and impossible to photograph (don't think I haven't tried).

But there is also a cunning and portable optical device known as the camera lucida which, in ordinary daylight, will display a virtual image of the subject, viewed through a prism, so that it appears to be projected onto a paper surface below, where it can be traced. I once had the opportunity to try one of these and, although it does take a bit of getting used to, it really can help to get a sketch onto paper quickly and accurately, so long as the subject doesn't move. The end result, obviously, is still entirely dependent on the user's drawing skills. There's a nice explanatory video on YouTube, made by a guy who 3D-printed his own version of a very portable camera lucida. It would be unfair to make any comment on his actual drawing skill.

I have no idea how much something like a camera lucida would actually have been used by artists – after all, the ability to draw from life was once a basic art-school discipline – but the convenience, sophistication, and simplicity of photography has clearly replaced any such optical devices, as well as, regrettably, diminishing the importance of life-drawing skill in much contemporary practice. Which has had consequences. I have to say it amuses me when I see amateurish photographic distortions – converging verticals, say – transcribed into their paintings by artists who have simply reproduced their own lens-based source material. You do have to wonder whether a certain feeling of shame about this semi-secret dependence on photographs – what, you can't draw from life? – may partly explain the ongoing prejudice in the art world against photography as an art medium (see my two-part rant Original Print).

Of course, the low angle of the rising or setting sun will cast images of a shadowy sort onto any suitable surface, most noticeably at this time of year in northern latitudes. It makes you very aware of how photography was prefigured, in principle, before anyone worked out how to preserve such evanescent projections as these, that solidify, shift, and fade with the changing mood of the sunlight. Plato's allegory of the cave might well be seen as an early imagining of the camera obscura; we might even say that our modern-day obsession with the images and dubious information laid before us on our various screens makes Plato's actual philosophical point more acutely. That is, that we mistake those pretty shadows for the Real Thing, and are deludedly happy to go on doing so.

Now, I've had the following rant before but, seeing as we're talking about optics and old masters, I think it's worth indulging in again. You may know the highly-regarded poem "Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror" by John Ashbery, and the painting by Parmigianino on which it is based. Well, whether you do or not, I invite you to consider that poem's opening lines:

As Parmigianino did it, the right hand
Bigger than the head, thrust at the viewer
And swerving easily away, as though to protect
What it advertises. A few leaded panes, old beams,
Fur, pleated muslin, a coral ring run together
In a movement supporting the face, which swims
Toward and away like the hand
Except that it is in repose.

Now consider Parmigianino's painting:


Um, the right hand?? It strikes me that someone should have had a quiet word with Mr. Ashbery before the poem was published. Too late now. As a proudly left-handed man, this peculiar error has brought me to a spluttering halt every time I have attempted to read this lengthy and difficult poem. I mean, honestly! If you're going to be making clever play with mirror tropes, this would be a good one to get right, right from the start.

I know... I'm aware that this does make me sound like one of those pedants who couldn't watch the film Zulu because Lieutenant Bromhead (Michael Caine) uses a Webley Mk. VI rather than the Adams Mk. III actually used by officers at Rorke's Drift, or because so many extras are using anachronistic Lee-Enfield rifles in place of Martini-Henrys (no, not that sort of martini or that sort of Henry, idiot). Although TBH there are much better reasons for not watching that film. But these things matter... Don't they?

OK, maybe not so much in a film, where anachronisms and improbabilities abound – why is everyone always so effin' good-looking, and with such perfect teeth, for a start? – but it surely casts doubt on a major poet's powers of observation if he doesn't get something quite so elementary right (especially when it's indisputably left...). It's very strange. But the even stranger thing, though, is that I seem to be the only person ever to have noticed this, or at least thought it worthy of comment (although I'd be happy to be corrected in that regard, if you happen to know better). I have even checked by practical experiment whether, by some optical wizardry, a convex mirror reflects differently to a regular one (it doesn't, although a concave mirror is another matter altogether). [2]

Perhaps all poetry commentators and critics are right-handed, or try never to look at themselves in a mirror? It wouldn't surprise me. Or perhaps they just think, Hmm, that's odd, must be deliberate, Ashbery's no fool... I wonder what he can have meant by that?

Experimental proof: this leftie's self-portrait in a convex mirror

1. Photographer Abelardo Morell has invented a travelling camera obscura tent, with which he photographs the scene outside the tent as projected onto the ground inside. The resulting images can be very intriguing indeed.

2. One possible explanation: The poem was published in August 1974. Is it possible Ashbery saw the painting reproduced in a book in which the image had been flipped horizontally, either accidentally or on purpose? It does happen. AFAIK Parmigianino's painting was not reproduced in the early editions of Ashbery's book of the same name, whereas – tauntingly – it is now routinely put on the cover.