Alumni Magazine - Spring 2008 - (Page 44) > > > PA C E S E T T E R S Rick Johnson and Van Gogh Museum head of conservation Ella Hendricks study a false color infrared digital image of the painting “Tree Trunks in the Grass.” Uncovering Surprises Engineering professor applies technology to authenticate works of art By Robert Emro Growing up in small-town Georgia, C. Richard Johnson Jr. never visited an art museum, heard a classical music concert or attended serious theater. A second-grader when the Soviets launched Sputnik 1 and the ensuing space race, Johnson was channeled into engineering when he exhibited an early aptitude for math and science. Not until he was a student at Georgia Tech did he get his first taste of fine art. Johnson, EE 73, was in Germany with a study abroad program. His travels took him to the Gemaldegalerie (picture gallery) in Berlin. When Johnson visited in the early 1970s, it held an impressive collection, including “The Man With the Golden Helmet,” one of Rembrandt’s most famous paint- ings. Seeing it for the first time was a revelation. “I spent hours in the Rembrandt rooms,” says Johnson. “I didn’t know why. I just had some kind of response to it.” As an electrical engineering grad student at Stanford University, Johnson took a course on Rembrandt knowing that if he bombed, the F would not appear in his record. Far from flunking, he was one of the star pupils. During one test, he was the only person to realize that a slide of a Frans Hals painting had been loaded backward. He could tell because Hals always painted the light falling from the left. Johnson graduated in 1977 with Stanford’s first PhD minor in art history. The topic of his final project, appropriately enough, was Vermeer’s use of the camera obscura. Careful measurement of the angles in his paintings and reconstructions of the rooms in which he painted them have led some to argue that Vermeer used this rudimentary optical device in creating his almost photographic paintings. “It was a survival technique to get myself through engineering, to some extent,” says Johnson. “Art history is something I found a passion for that I see in my students for technical things that I sometimes don’t have.” Johnson joined the Cornell faculty as an associate professor in 1981. He continued a successful academic engineering career in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, first work- 44 Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine • Spring 2008
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