IN MOVIE-MAKING, IT has long been called "special effects," that manipulation of film, actors, or scenery to do something usually not normal under human conditions. We might say that the history of painting has also taken up this manipulation, well before film, of course.
The term typically connotes something dramatic or extraordinary. During film's infancy, it was a marvel to overlap two photo negatives and get a weird double effect. Wow! That's our condescending thought now when, by digital technology, a superhero (or James Bond), can fly over Alpine cliffs, or organic creatures can morph their shapes before our eyes.
In the quiver of special effect arrows—23 effects often are listed, from prosthetic makeup to dolly zooms—it is probably "optical effects" that we're talking about with painting. We can probably trace its first famous application to the Italian baroque painter Caravaggio, who gave us high-contrast, dramatic lighting by use of dark and light paint (chiaroscuro).
Of course, a generation before him, the Italian painters "invented" the illusion of depth perspective by the use of geometry. And Leonardo da Vinci has been credited with a technique now called misfume (“like smoke”), the application of dark glazes (also a kind of chiaroscuro).
As with movies, this was all done to enhance reality, and so we are not talking about Abstract art or optical illusion imagery. We are talking about making something that imitates "the real" by exaggerated drama or atmosphere.
Rembrandt may be our next special effects master. In that time, with limited pigments, painters had to make darks darker to make lights brighter. Of this, Rembrandt was a master—a painter who was unappreciated for a few centuries until influential art critics began to declare him the "best painter in the world." It was, arguably, because of special effects.
The lesson was passed down. While dark and light create a dramatic atmosphere, so does the context, and for this the German painter Caspar David Friedrich (d. 1840) opened a new tool box. He placed lone figures in outsized settings—by cliffs, giant icescapes, and dramatically-lit rooms. The special effect was to contrast the small (human scale) with the large or dangerous. Later, a British philosopher would call this human experience "the sublime," a kind of beautiful terror.
Japanese artists, meanwhile, adopted a special effect called “wabi-sabi” (侘寂)," an effect that makes reality look dark, organic, and aged by time. Just as Impressionist painters picked up on Japanese prints, with their flat color, we might suggest that nineteenth century painters called the "tonalists" picked up on wabi-sabi.
Tonalism is indeed a special effect, in our use here. Such paintings obtain their mood by using only middle to dark values, suggesting both dusk and muted emotion, such as melancholy. Often a bright spot is added in the midst of these dark tones.
Given these three or four major inventions, and their wide influence, what could be improved upon in special effects for realistic painting? That takes us to the time when artists began to dabble in the modern, scientific study of optical illusion. Such optical tricks were always at work in human vision, but, say, around the time of the Bauhaus art movement in Germany, it was analyzed and often used intentionally.
For example, when solid red and solid blue are put next to each other, they not only visually "vibrate," but they stimulate the eye to see other colors when you look away. The Bauhaus don Joseph Albers specialized in this study by making hundreds of paintings that juxtaposed colors to see what special effect arose. This was not realistic painting, but observant painters caught on.
More modern forms of realism aligned stark colors with these vibrating effects in mind. Objects with linear patterns—table cloths, clothing, and rugs—were painted with bold stripes to create this kind of special visual stimulation.
In today’s realist painting, however, it is surely the early forebears of special effects who prevail: Caravaggio, Rembrandt, and Friedrich. The award-winning paintings among today’s realist art groups usually feature sunsets, sunrises, bright doorways and train stations in a dark night, and gigantic natural wonders that dwarf human scale. We might even say that, if you want to produce what is often called a "killer painting," pick one of these special effects.
On the other hand, sometimes the high-contrast, predominantly dark paintings don't work very well at a distance (i.e. from across the room). Moreover, anything with such overused special effects becomes a cliché. They become hard to tell one from another, one sunset or alpine peak, or one more flower arrangement emerging from utter darkness.
This is where we might welcome back another kind of special effect: full blaring light. This would not seem "special" because it is what we see every day in full sunlight. Every single thing is clear. This has been called "luminism" by art historians, and in the bright photorealism of contemporary realist painting we see its progeny.
The strong point of this kind of special effect is that, ironically, the viewer is not remembering the effect itself—that dark dramatic setting—but rather all the objects that make up the painting's subject matter. Surprisingly, such a painting might be more memorable. That is because the particular objects, limned with clarity, defy the “same old” chiaroscuro effect of a Caravaggio painting.
Special effects, invented by painters of old, then seized upon by Hollywood, remain a balancing act for painting. Their overuse can show. They can make a painter’s brand a bit cliché—“same old same old." Or they be, as they say, "too clever by half."