'The Next Rembrandt'?
April 6 2016
Video: nextrembrandt.com
There's been widespread news coverage for a Dutch project to create a 'new Rembrandt' painting. The picture, below, was made by scanning in over 50 Rembrandt portraits, and a computer programme made up a 'new' Rembrandt-like face. The result was then printed on a 3D printer.
The finished result was hailed by its creators thus:
347 years after his death the next Rembrandt is unveiled.
But actually it looks like someone who's been to a fancy dress photography shop.
The main pitch of the project, according to sponsors ING, was to 'see where innovation can take us'. What it really shows is that even with the might of modern technology we cannot make portraits as beautiful as those made by an eccentric Dutchman four hundred years ago using nothing more than paint and genius. What we have gained in technology, we have long lost in artistry.
Update - a reader writes:
How absurd? Contrary to the claims in the film, the algorithm hasn't succeeded in making a 'typical' Rembrandt eye (or nose, or mouth) because their eye doesn't belong to anyone. So they've only succeeded in making a pastiche of a Rembrandt eye and a pastiche of a Rembrandt face. The man doesn't exist. He has more in common with a modern photofit than anyone Rembrandt might have known.
The technology would be more impressive if it could transform the image of a real sitter into a convincing Rembrandt portrait. But we have no photos of Rembrandt's sitters, so nobody could devise an algorithm to account for the deviations from photoreality which make a painting recognisably by Rembrandt.
Even if it were possible, what would be the point? The great thing, the magical thing about portraits is that, at some point, some human beings realised that they could stoop down to the ground, take a handful of earth and rock, mix it with the oil from the pressed seeds of a common plant, and somehow transform those base ingredients into what, for who knows how many millennia, had only existed as a reflection on the surface of still water.
We don't need machines that can squirt out pastiches of Rembrandt. We need painters like Rembrandt, who can show us how to make magic from dust and seeds.
