The Times - UK (2020-08-01)

the times | Saturday August 1 2020 2GM 45

Wo r l d

His theory is that the smaller paint-

ing was made first using a camera

obscura, but initially only featured the

outlines of the room, which he claims

were done by Velázquez. “After some

modification and reversing the opera-

tion of the camera by illuminating its

interior and darkening the room, Veláz-

quez projected the small painting on a

larger blank canvas and drew the

general lines of the famous painting,”

he said.

When the larger painting was

completed, Velázquez, Professor Usan-

O

n the third floor of an

old brick tenement

building in Chinatown

there’s a flat to let. “It’s a

nice big studio,” the

broker says in a video that gives

prospective buyers a view of the

place. He looks into a small

bathroom with no shower or bath,

only a sink and a lavatory. Where

will you wash, you wonder.

The broker moves into the

Have a bath in the kitchen, it’ll save you a fortune on the rent

kitchen. “Brand new stove,” he says.

The camera pauses on it, lovingly,

and then pans past a tall refrigerator

and you see something else. “There’s

a bathtub in the kitchen,” the broker

says, without breaking his stride.

It’s a large white bath between the

fridge and the kitchen sink, fed by a

pipe that snakes out from behind the

worktop. There’s a shower above it

and a circular rail for a shower

curtain, which you would want to

draw lest you sprayed the person

chopping onions next to you.

It’s an unusual arrangement,

though not entirely unique in

Manhattan. In a block of flats a mile

to the north, Alan Steinfeld has a

bath in his kitchen too. “What’s so

great about a bathtub in your

kitchen is you get a big open space

around you,” he said.

Some of the newer apartment

buildings in the city have large

free-standing baths set against the

glass wall of the building, allowing

you to sit among the suds, gazing

out over midtown. “Those are great,

you should compare mine to those,”

Mr Steinfeld said. “Most bathrooms

confine their tub to a small corner.

This is bathing in luxury.”

New York’s kitchen baths date to a

housing reform that took effect in

1905, to improve the conditions of

the city’s tenement buildings.

“Hygiene was a big concern for the

reformers,” said Jason Eisner, who

manages exhibitions at the

Tenement Museum on the Lower

East Side, where the layout and

furnishings of the houses that held

generations of immigrants were

restored inside a long-abandoned

building. The 1905 reform forced

landlords to install gas lights, one

shared lavatory per floor and a bath.

“Where are you going to put the

tub?” Mr Eisner said. “There was no

space.” So “you put the tub where

the rest of the plumbing is”.

Mr Steinfeld, a documentary

film-maker who hosts a YouTube

show, moved into his flat straight

from university, in 1980. For a while

he had a flatmate. “He actually

moved in with his wife when they

first got married,” he said. “We all

lived there together.” They tried to

give each other some privacy by not

cooking while another was

marinating. But he got used to

bathing in an open room. “It’s not

like I’m exhibitionist, but it’s not like

I’m not exhibitionist,” he said. “We

were old hippies.” The East Village

was a bohemian enclave. “Allen

Ginsberg was there. I used to run

into him. Debbie Harry was around,

and the Ramones. It was a scene.”

The East Village has changed

since then. It’s a coveted

neighbourhood now, but his flat is

subject to legislation that limits

annual rent rises. He pays only $800

a month. “Since I moved in nearly

all the flats have been renovated,”

he said.

He thinks that he and a woman on

the first floor are the last tenants in

the building with kitchen bathing

facilities. But if the landlords

renovate a flat they “can raise the

rent to fair market value”, he said. A

small flat in the area now costs

about $3,000 a month. It’s a great

incentive to keep the bath in the

kitchen.

Will

Pavia

new york

A study has backed David Hockney’s

theory that Velázquez used a camera

obscura to help him paint what is con-

sidered to be his greatest masterpiece.

The idea that an optical aid was used

to create Las Meninas, a portrait painted

in 1656 of Margaret Theresa, daughter

of the king of Spain, surrounded by court

servants and the artist himself working

on a large canvas, is almost heretical

among art purists.

Miguel Usandizaga, a professor of art

at Catalonia Polytechnic University,

claims the painter could not have

created it without one. He says that he

did so with the help of a smaller replica,

also called Las meninas, which he used

“like a negative or slide”, which is now

held by the National Trust at Kingston

Lacy in Dorset. “Without a camera

obscura, Velázquez could not have

achieved with such perfection the du-

plication of space in the painting and its

effect: the confusion between reality

and its representation,” Professor

Usandizaga said.

Hockney has said advances in real-

ism and accuracy in the history of art

were the result of advances in the devel-

opment of camera obscura, a darkened

box with a convex lens or aperture for

projecting the image of an object on to

a screen inside, a forerunner of the

modern camera, and that Vermeer,

Holbein and Velázquez used them.

Professor Usandizaga’s

study used computer

graphics to analyse the

smaller painting and

the original, which

hangs in the Prado

museum in Ma-

drid. The former is

believed to be a

copy by Juan Bau-

tista Martínez del

Mazo, the son-in-

law and pupil of

Velázquez.

His conclusion was

that “the perspective and

the general lines” of the two

paintings were too

precisely identical to

have been done

without an aid.

He said that the

larger painting

lacked a detail of

the bottom of a

wall included in

the smaller one.

“You cannot copy

something that is not

there. The smaller one is

not a copy,” he said.

Velázquez is said to have projected the smaller painting on to a larger blank canvas using a pinhole camera

DeGeneres

show hit by

claims of

harassment

United States

Will Pavia New York

For months the reputation of the chat

show host Ellen DeGeneres has been

battered by a series of claims casting

her as a cold and demanding diva, pre-

siding over a workplace where junior

staff were bullied and intimidated.

Now more serious accusations have

emerged of sexual harassment and

misconduct by senior executives at The

Ellen DeGeneres Show.

Kevin Leman, the programme’s head

writer and executive producer, groped

an assistant and asked another worker

for oral sex in a lavatory during a

company party in 2013, according to

Buzzfeed News, which quoted several

former employees.

“It’s masked in sarcasm but it’s not

sarcasm,” one told the site. Another

said: “He’d probably do it in front of ten

people and they’d laugh. But if you’re in

a position of power at a company, you

don’t just get to touch me like that.”

Mr Leman denied the claims, saying:

“I’m horrified that some of my attempts

at humour may have caused offence.”

He added that he knew of no com-

plaints made against him in 17 years

working for the show.

Others claimed that an executive

named Ed Glavin had inappropriately

touched female employees. Mr Glavin

could not immediately be reached for

comment.

Warner Bros said in a statement that

it and DeGeneres, 62, “take the recent

allegations around the show’s work-

place culture very seriously”.

An investigation had found “some

deficiencies related to the show’s day-

to-day management”, the company

said, adding that it would make “several

staffing changes, along with appropri-

ate measures to address the issues”.

In an email to staff DeGeneres said

that she had wanted her show to “be a

place of happiness” and that “obviously

something has changed”. She added:

“I’m also learning that people who

work with me and for me are speaking

on my behalf and misrepresenting who

I am and that has to stop.”

Steven Van Patten, a writer and

veteran stage manager for chat shows,

said he had known plenty of “producers

and directors reduce people to tears”.

But he added: “You can’t get away with

that now. Millennials are actually very

good at standing up for themselves.”

Hockney was right, Velázquez used

camera obscura for his masterpiece

dizaga said, did not want to waste the

smaller prototype and so commis-

sioned his pupil to copy in the remain-

ing detail. “He was sure no one would

ever find out that it was exactly the

same painting so he commissioned his

pupil to copy the figures of the large

painting to the small so that it could be

sold,” he added.

In 2013 it was claimed that the paint-

ing in Kingston Lacy was a study

painted by Velázquez and not a copy by

his pupil. However, the Prado insists

that it was painted by Mazo.

Spain

Isambard Wilkinson Madrid

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ALAMY