I think “now” is between a few seconds and a minute. This defines a compact psychological moment.

Related to photos and the blur question, the issue I have with blur, as in Steve’s photos, is that it prevents me from seeing things clearly that I might want to look at. In painting we can reduce the salience of a region — background, say — while still making it clear. With the examples that Steve provided, I find that I want to see everything, not just the in focus region. That is, if I look at the images for more than a moment, but still in the “now”

Depending on who you ask, it could be around 10,000 years.

The blur issue gets to the question, how long is “now”?

Blur is something that we tend to ignore perceptually. When we want to see something clearly, we focus on it, if we can.

If we think of an image as representing, not a photographic instant of a fraction of a second, but a psychological moment, “now”, long enough to make a few eye movements to take in the scene, then the lack of out of focus in painting would not be unnatural.

I’m sure you’re right about the focus/blur distinction, at least in older painting. An early scientific model of the eye, the camera obscura, shows everything in relatively good focus.

An artist whose work I just saw, Michael Haykin, uses camera-like out-of-focus effects, very similar to some of my Sourdough Trail series. A good example is obtained by clicking on the lower left image in this gallery. Haykin works from photographs, so this effect comes “naturally” in some sense.

Interesting that even in your quick illustration you capture the essential Durbin reference to abstraction.

The out of focus mountains are almost like clouds — they would be easy to overlook. The in focus mountains — if I were painting this scene, I’d have these combined with the in focus grass/fence, but then reduce the contrast to send them back in depth.

In painting, the concept that the view is an instantaneous one is only superficially maintained. Painting a landscape can take days, the artist looks at this part of the scene and then that. The idea that one part or another should be out of focus would be quite awkward for the painter unless he or she were intentionally adapting ideas from photography. The painter Ingres was said to use subtle blur in contours of faces, though.

In or out of focus is different from more or less developed detail, which is how I would interpret the effects that David refers to in Velasquez — but then again, I’d like to take a better look at the paintings.