Art Students Attract Attention by Marching at the Met, Seeking Support to Overturn Old-Masters-use-Mirrors Hockney Hypothesis

Artists and students who paint highly realistic pictures by eyeball will march in front of the Met this weekend with a petition protesting uncritical publicity of David Hockney's theory that great artists of the past traced their drawings using optical aids. The students, who come from schools approved by the non-profit Art Renewal Center, will collect signatures supporting their request for a televised rebuttal of the Hockney hypothesis, which is disputed by contemporary master artists and art historians.

NEW YORK, NY October 9, 2004 -- Artists and art students who paint freehand with convincing realism will march in front of the Met Saturday and Sunday, wearing sandwich boards describing a petition sponsored by the non-profit Art Renewal Center, protesting the uncritical publicity given David Hockney's theory (http://painting.about.com/cs/paintinghistory/gr/Pr-hockney.htm) that great artists of the past traced their drawings using early camera-type lenses. The students, who come from ARC-approved schools, will ask Met visitors and passersby to join in their request for a televised rebuttal of the CBS "60 Minutes" segment which covered the Hockney hypothesis without input from contemporary master artists and art historians who vehemently disagree with it and have collected a substantial body of evidence to the contrary. (http://www-psych.stanford.edu/~stork/FAQs.html)

The not-for-profit 501(c)3 educational foundation known as ARC, the Art Renewal Center, which champions a return to representational fine art, has posted a sign-online version of the petition at http://www.ipetitions.com/campaigns/debunking_david_hockney_theory/. ARC Chairman Fred Ross says Hockneys hypothesis is defamatory not only of the great artists of the past, but of the living masters who can quite capably draw without the help of any such apparatus.

The Art Renewal Center is the most popular art museum on the Internet, with a growing database of 30,000 images and more than five million annual visitors. ARC promotes a return to high standards of training and discipline in the fine arts of painting and sculpture, and supports qualified fine-art schools and yearly scholarship competitions, as well as juried art contests such as the Second ARC Salon (http://www.artrenewal.org/articles/2003/Annual_Competition/competition1.asp). ARC Articles about the Hockney debate can read at http://www.artrenewal.org/articles/2003/Hockney_Refuted/hockney1.asp.

Fred Ross has been a featured speaker at the Met, Sotheby's, the Dahesh Museum, and the Wadsworth Atheneum, among others. He holds a Master's in Art Education from Columbia University, and along with his wife Sherry owns one of the foremost collections of 19th Century European paintings. He is currently Executive Administrator of the Committee to write the Catalog Raisonnf William Bouguereau.

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