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S3 Episode 10: In conversation with Matthew Olivier
8 Plays1 month ago
Today, John and Dejan are joined by Matthew Olivier, also known as the Fine Art Collective. Tune in to hear us talk about everything from Rembrandt and Velazquez to Picasso. Please also follow the podcast where ever you listen, follow it on social media @debatablediscussions, and give us a 5 star review.
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Transcript
Introduction and Guest Welcome
00:00:00
Speaker
Hello and welcome back to another episode of the debatable discussions podcast.
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Speaker
Today, we've got a very special guest in Matthew.
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Speaker
Thank you for coming here.
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And we're going to be talking about the history of art.
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Pleasure gentlemen.
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Thank you so much for having me.
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So yes, today we are joined by Matthew Olivier.
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Matthew, in mine and Dan's opinion, is perhaps one of the most famous art historians in the world.
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And that is because he boasts several hundred thousand followers across social media platforms in which he makes some very, very interesting and sort of entertaining videos within the perspective of actually a British voice.
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So that was the first thing we're expecting today.
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But it's great to have you on today, Matthew.
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It's so good.
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I, you know, everything sounds better in a British accent.
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I always felt so.
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I thought it was, I thought it was appropriate for, uh, my writing style and storytelling.
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And I'm so honored to be here with you guys today.
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It's such a nice thing.
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Thank you so much.
Matthew Olivier's Journey into Art and History
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Yeah.
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So the first question would be sort of a bit more general.
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What made you be interested in art and the history of art?
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What, what first of sparked that inside of you?
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So, so, uh,
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It's a pretty interesting story.
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I work primarily as an artist.
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That's my job.
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I work as a painter.
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And initially, when I had gotten into painting, I got into painting pretty late in my life.
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You start doing something and you start off and you're not very good, which was the case for me.
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I was just throwing paint on the canvas, didn't really know what I was doing, didn't understand the greater picture.
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And I had this incredible experience.
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One of my first collectors who has become one of my best friends,
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is a builder and he built a large private gallery for one of the largest art collectors in color field in Canada.
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Maybe he might be the largest color field collector in the world.
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One of them for sure.
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So I had the pleasure of getting to go to this private gallery and see all of the work
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up close on my own.
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Helen Frankenthaler, Jack Bush, Jules Olitski, all these incredible artists between the 50s and the 70s.
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And while I was walking through the gallery, a gentleman that works, that kind of manages the inventory of the gallery, what they're shipping out and what they're keeping in stock,
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He gave me a brilliant insight.
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He told me as we were looking at Helen Frankenthaler that all of the artists that we had seen throughout the day, even though they were abstract artists, that they were the most technically gifted and knowledgeable artists in the world.
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And in order for them to be so good at breaking the rules,
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they had to learn all of the rules.
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They had to understand the history of art.
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They had to understand every little detail.
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And for someone starting out in art myself,
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I was like, oh, well, this is the ingredient for me to get better.
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This is the only way that I could pursue my dreams
Building a Social Media Presence through Storytelling
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at a higher level.
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I have to start learning.
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So I started studying art history.
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And every day I would sit down at a computer or my computer and I'd look up a painter and I'd learn something cool about him.
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And the next day I'd look at a painting and learn something cool about it.
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And over time, just being consistent,
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I started to build a bit of a knowledge base, started to put things together and kind of develop a voice.
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And up until this point, I didn't really have a social media presence, pretty much unknown to the world.
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But I started trying different things.
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And one of those things was storytelling.
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I thought it would be, I'm learning all of this cool stuff.
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Storytelling was a good outlet to remember what it was that I had studied.
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And just by luck, it started to pick up.
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And here we are today, a year and a half later from when I started and have built an audience and a voice and how we've connected.
Caravaggio's Style and Influence
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And here we are, yeah.
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Oh wow.
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And one of the artists which you've done several sort of reels about across social media is Caravaggio.
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And Caravaggio is a big artist, both me and Dayan and you are, I imagine, are very much interested in.
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So the first question we were sort of wondering, sort of explore art history is what differentiates Caravaggio?
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What makes his artwork so valuable in your opinion?
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I think, I think,
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An overarching theme that I've noticed across all periods of art and all forms of art is I've come to the realization that art is an expression of your cumulative experiences.
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a lot of the times the way that we consume the world around us has a direct relationship to the things that we project onto the world.
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Caravaggio is kind of in this unique situation where he comes to Rome, the church at the time is dealing with the Reformation.
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So Martin Luther, I think it was 1517 or 1520 around there,
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kind of reforms the church, the church as an institution starts to lose credibility.
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And you have this guy that comes into Rome and he's an incredible painter and the church seizes an opportunity for their own propaganda of sorts because they need to start winning people back.
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And prior to an era of Caravaggio, a lot of the artwork, our artwork has always been a good way of
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talking to people and sharing stories and convincing people about whatever your narrative is.
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So Caravaggio comes into the scene at this perfect time and the church seizes an opportunity for storytelling through his work and they want to create artwork that is maybe a little bit more relatable for the common person in Rome.
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And it just so happens Caravaggio...
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spent a lot of time amongst common people.
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He was a common person.
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So what I find unique about Caravaggio is, you know, he would go, he would model a prostitute.
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He would take a prostitute from the street and then he would use that person as a model for the Virgin Mary.
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And
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That's, if you think about it on the surface, it's unheard of.
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It's crazy.
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Like a prostitute, and you're using that as Virgin Mary, but it was true of his experiences.
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This is something that he did, right?
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He enjoyed that stuff.
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He would go drinking.
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He would gamble.
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He would do all these things.
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He was a real human being, so he took these elements that were real, and then he put them into religious art that would be
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put in the church that was commissioned by a cardinal, commissioned by the Vatican.
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And I think that element in itself that is what sets him apart from everyone else.
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And when you look at other artists of the period, like if we look at someone within a close range, like Artemisia Gentileschi, which is another famous Baroque painter who covered a lot of the same subject matter.
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There's, she's another incredible artist, but there's a clear distinction between the two.
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On one side, you're looking at a very personal story.
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Obviously her work can be defined by her personal experiences, trouble with her father, trouble with being a woman navigating Rome at that time.
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And then you look at Caravaggio and his style of work.
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And he's, like I said, taking a prostitute from the street.
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and painting them and taking a very, very human, real, raw element and bring it into the narrative of the church.
Impact of Caravaggio's Personal Life on His Art
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And it's a sight to see.
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Caravaggio is a spectacular, spectacular painter for that, I think.
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Especially.
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So talking about Caravaggio, how much do you think there can be a difference made in Caravaggio the person, Caravaggio the artist?
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Because there's all these stories about questionable things that he did during his lifetime.
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Totally.
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How much do you think that affected his art?
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Or do you think you can separate the two?
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I don't, I don't think you can separate the two.
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I think they're perfectly relatable.
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I think they're, they're, they're, I think he, his work really is.
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And a perfect representation of who he was.
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I'll give you a beautiful example.
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I had only learned this, uh,
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a year, less than a year ago.
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And I thought about this for weeks after learning this story.
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It was so cool.
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There's a famous painting that he has called Bacchus.
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And it's the, well, it's Bacchus.
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I don't remember what the other name for the god is, but he paints a painting of Bacchus.
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And Bacchus is the
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the god of wine and the god of seduction and the god of... but he's also the god of madness.
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So he paints this portrait of Marcus.
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He's drinking some wine and he's very seductive and in the bottom left of the painting is a jug, like a decanter of sorts.
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And in the reflection of the decanter, if you really have to look to see it, there seems to be the reflection of a person.
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It looks like Caravaggio.
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And it looks like he's drowning in the wine.
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And what does it all mean?
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It could just be a little detail.
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There's so many ways to interpret that.
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But the way that I had interpreted it was he knew the subject matter what he was painting.
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So he knows that this is the God of wine.
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He also knows this is a God of seduction.
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He also knows that this is a God of insanity and madness.
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And he is a person who's probably, at the time that he painted it, spiraling out of control himself.
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He comes to Rome.
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He's got all of these commissions.
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He's starting to make money.
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Things are going really good for him, but he's an alcoholic, and he likes to drink, and he likes to party.
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He likes all of this trouble.
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So he paints this beautiful picture of Bacchus seducing him, and it's almost, for me, a metaphor for him understanding his own downfall.
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It's like he's being seduced into...
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into madness.
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He can't break himself away from this vice that's going to ultimately become his downfall.
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And all of his work in some way resembles an aspect of himself.
00:11:42
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Whether it's something like that, whether it's something like...
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David and Goliath, he's literally holding his own head.
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And you could interpret that painting as a young version of himself and an older version of himself.
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Everything is directly connected to his experiences.
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Yeah, I don't think there's a way to...
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to break the two apart.
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Speaker
So yeah, that is such a really good argument now you say it, because art is almost a reflection of the artist, as you're saying.
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Speaker
So how can you separate the two if they almost paint themselves in it?
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They, you know, it's like if you have a person who builds homes or they frame homes,
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Speaker
And they're not, they have no, nothing about them on the surface seems artistic.
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Okay.
00:12:37
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They've never tried an artist, artistic form, but they've been hammering nails for 50 years.
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In some way, shape or form, the action of hammering nails is an expression of 50 years worth of experiences in order for them to get to this thing.
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This thing in some way, as primitive as it is, is some form of expression and a reflection of their experiences.
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Katavaggio and other artists are no different.
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They're maybe doing something that's a little bit more detailed, quite a bit more detailed than
00:13:12
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when we talk about that comparison.
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Speaker
But everything he's doing is an expression of him in some way.
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It's all tied to a series of experiences that he's had.
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So it's impossible not to... It's impossible to drive a wedge down the middle and say that
Picasso's Career and Artistic Evolution
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these things are different.
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Speaker
They have to be one and the same.
00:13:35
Speaker
So do you think that applies to all artists, for example, Picasso's another person that we'll get onto, but he was sort of very much a womanizer.
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Totally.
00:13:48
Speaker
very much sort of led that kind of life, but his paintings are what they are now, incredibly famous.
00:13:56
Speaker
So do you think that part of Picasso can be separated?
00:14:00
Speaker
Or do you think him being a womanizer influenced his art?
00:14:04
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I don't think that necessarily, I think that there's, there are aspects of his work or certain pieces that you could definitely see some of that come through.
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I think
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on a broader sense, what we see come through with Picasso is a need to play at the highest level.
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So if you look at Picasso through his career, Picasso would always look to studying great artists to elevate his own work.
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And that's consistent from before his blue period all the way to the end of his life.
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He was a student of art.
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I think
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that thing is bigger than some of the personal characteristics of Caravaggio and that is a major driver for the direction that his work went and also something that you can see across his work.
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Caravaggio
00:15:09
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His blue period, a lot of it is inspired by the mannerism qualities of El Greco.
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And if you look at a lot of his blue period, you can see a lot of the similar forms and the ways that he uses contrast and values.
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You could take any El Greco painting and look at a blue period painting and start to see similarities.
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And for me, what that says is it's a person who
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was desperate to be really great.
00:15:39
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So he studied someone extensively who he thought was really great.
00:15:43
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And then that study became a foundation for him to elevate his own art.
00:15:49
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And then if you look a little bit further, so Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, which was painted in 1907, it is the first, it's a proto-cubist painting.
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It's the first real painting that
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start to show characteristics of cubism and the way in a and all of the styles of which you would recognize Picasso today.
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That painting
00:16:17
Speaker
you can tie a lot of that to African tribal art.
00:16:19
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There's one aspect.
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You could also tie elements to El Greco again, the forms, the way that the forms are in that painting.
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And if you look at a painting called The Opening of the Fifth Seal by El Greco, you'll see a lot of similarities in the way the forms are set.
00:16:36
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And then obviously, if you look at any African tribal art, you can see the similarities in the forms as well.
00:16:43
Speaker
Picasso was constantly trying to improve.
00:16:48
Speaker
He was constantly using great art as a reference for his own art.
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And in that way, there's no separation between him and his work.
00:16:59
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He is, in every respect, his art.
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And his art is in every respect him.
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If that makes sense.
00:17:07
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Yeah.
00:17:07
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Yeah.
00:17:08
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I think that definitely makes sense.
00:17:09
Speaker
And also if for me, one of the most striking paints out Picasso is, um, Guernica.
00:17:16
Speaker
Yes.
Analysis of Picasso's Guernica
00:17:17
Speaker
I think, could you, could you talk more about, about, about that painting?
00:17:21
Speaker
What, what do you think made him do?
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I'm so happy that you're asking me this because I'm I was hired to write for a Picasso exhibit in Hong Kong and I've been writing all week about Guernica because that's the video that we're talking about.
00:17:38
Speaker
So this is part this this wasn't planned.
00:17:41
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This is perfect.
00:17:41
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This is so good.
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So Guernica again.
00:17:47
Speaker
is an example of Picasso's referencing other things in order to elevate his own narrative.
00:17:57
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Okay.
00:17:59
Speaker
1937 Spanish pavilion or Spanish Republican government wants to hire Picasso to do a painting for the World Fair.
00:18:08
Speaker
And the Spanish Republican government was an anti-nationalist movement in Spain.
00:18:14
Speaker
So in Spain, you had a dictator Franco, I believe it was Franco.
00:18:19
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Yeah.
00:18:20
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Right.
00:18:21
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And Spanish Republican government were, they were, they were the opposing side to that.
00:18:27
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So they wanted to have a pavilion and they wanted to commission Picasso to do something that was
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anti-nationalist.
00:18:39
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Initially, he really didn't want to do it.
00:18:42
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He didn't want to do something so political.
00:18:44
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But the bombing of Gennica happened.
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And newspapers all around Europe are showing these images of the bombing.
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And it broke his heart from what I could see.
00:18:58
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It was shocking.
00:19:00
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It was shocking to everyone.
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So he finally agrees to do Gennica.
00:19:05
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And he does this massive painting.
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And he styles it.
00:19:10
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So initially, the composition is styled after a painting by Francisco Goya called The Second of May.
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And it was a revolution painting that Goya had done.
00:19:26
Speaker
And now Picasso styles the composition in the same way.
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But instead of using color,
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He colors the painting in the way that he had seen the event, which was through newspapers, so black and white photography.
00:19:41
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And when I had learned that, I thought it was fascinating that he had taken the way he had experienced the event and put it into the work because the way he experienced it was enough to convince him to do it.
00:19:55
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It broke him.
00:19:56
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It was just –
00:19:58
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destruction and chaos and he'd witness it in this lifeless black and white photo so he paints in black and white to show you how he felt and it's incredible and just on those two things alone I thought it was amazing and then I learned this this week and this was the coolest thing and I need to get these guys names right so on the left and right of the painting are two figures I'm gonna pull this up right now Robert Capa
00:20:30
Speaker
So Picasso wasn't just, he wasn't just, he wasn't just a fan of painting.
00:20:38
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He was a student of all art forms, which is evident in him studying tribal masks for Les Demoiselles d'Avignon.
00:20:45
Speaker
And he was also a student of photography.
00:20:49
Speaker
And there were two photographers that had covered
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some of the atrocities under Franco.
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One of them was named Robert Capa and the other was named David Chim Seymour.
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So Robert Capa takes a photo.
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I believe it was 1935.
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And it was called The Falling Soldier.
00:21:09
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And if you Google it for any of the audience that's listening to this, Google the image of the falling soldier.
00:21:16
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And then if you pull up a picture of Gernica, on the right side of the painting is a gentleman who is modeled after the character in the person in the photo by Robert Capa.
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Speaker
And on the left side of the painting,
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He modeled the woman feeding her baby.
00:21:36
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He modeled that after a photo by Chim Seymour, which was shot in 1936 called The Nursing Mother.
00:21:45
Speaker
And he took
00:21:46
Speaker
These photography references of the Spanish Civil War.
00:21:50
Speaker
He took that newspaper photography that gave him the feeling.
00:21:55
Speaker
He used tragedy in Goya's painting to convey tragedy.
00:22:02
Speaker
And he uses all that to, in three weeks, complete Guernica.
00:22:07
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and Guernica now becomes what it is today, which is this anti-war movement.
00:22:13
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It's bigger than just a painting.
00:22:14
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It's a symbol of anti-war.
00:22:18
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It's a symbol of reminding us of the pitfall of humanity, which is that we're chaotic.
00:22:26
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We're irrational sometimes.
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We do things...
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that are disgusting and horrible.
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And he does this painting in the hopes that we never make these mistakes again.
00:22:38
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And of course, if you know your history, two years later, the Second World War started, so it didn't really work in the sense that it didn't end war, but it does stand for something really good.
00:22:51
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And yeah, Guernica is a phenomenal, what a piece.
Symbolism in Salvador Dali's Surrealism
00:22:56
Speaker
I say it's so interesting because when I think of Gernicke and as you speak about it, you realize that it really is this almost historical and almost philosophical expression of the time.
00:23:08
Speaker
And especially that about it being like the newspaper.
00:23:10
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That's really interesting just because that is obviously how they were getting their news.
00:23:14
Speaker
So, because it's all in black and white, I'm correct in saying.
00:23:18
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It's all black and white.
00:23:19
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All of it.
00:23:20
Speaker
And, you know, you also come from a period of time that is...
00:23:26
Speaker
Photography is the medium that starts to break the chain of academic art.
00:23:34
Speaker
So the introduction of photography and those principles combined with the Impressionist movement
00:23:43
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start to break the chains of representative art because photography is a great placeholder for representation, shooting something that's really there.
00:23:54
Speaker
And you see this break, this fork in the road with artwork pre and post the introduction of photography.
00:24:04
Speaker
So photography comes in and it's all done in black and white at that time.
00:24:09
Speaker
And everything is done in black and white.
00:24:13
Speaker
There's a, that art painting gets into this really, really, you know, abstract expressionism as an example, is a super colorful thing, a very interpretive thing.
00:24:26
Speaker
And Picasso, it has, you know, he has all of the choices.
00:24:32
Speaker
He's every choice.
00:24:33
Speaker
He can make any choice on this painting.
00:24:35
Speaker
He decides to go black and white because he wants to suck the soul out of the painting.
00:24:40
Speaker
He wants to really,
00:24:42
Speaker
share the burden of what his experience and it it is it's one of the the coolest details I've ever found studying art it's one of the reasons why I love Picasso because despite all of his flaws and there are so many of them you have to appreciate genius when you see it you know every I think every person this thought it's the same as Caravaggio
00:25:09
Speaker
He was a murderer at the end of the day, right?
00:25:12
Speaker
He murdered someone.
00:25:15
Speaker
He was on the run for the last few years of his life.
00:25:19
Speaker
But his genius is undeniable.
00:25:21
Speaker
You know, I probably wouldn't want to be his friend, but you can't take away the fact that he did something incredible.
00:25:32
Speaker
And same with Picasso.
00:25:35
Speaker
Same with Dali.
00:25:36
Speaker
Same with a bunch of people, right?
00:25:38
Speaker
Right?
00:25:39
Speaker
Well, mentioning Dali, so that leads on perfectly really into the next big artist that would be really interesting to talk about.
00:25:50
Speaker
I went to the Dali Museum in Spain, in his native town, and after a couple of hours, I went out with one of the biggest headaches I've had in years.
00:26:04
Speaker
What do you think is so sort of striking about his art?
00:26:09
Speaker
Because you kind of look at it.
00:26:10
Speaker
And even though it looks crazy at first, when you actually read the sort of explanation or sort of his thoughts, then it gets a whole new layer of sort of meaning.
00:26:26
Speaker
I Dolly Dolly is an interesting, an interesting figure.
00:26:32
Speaker
I I spent
00:26:35
Speaker
a good portion of my time in the arts not liking Dali.
00:26:39
Speaker
A good portion of it.
00:26:41
Speaker
I thought, you know, his technique is undeniable, but I just didn't understand him.
00:26:47
Speaker
I didn't get it.
00:26:48
Speaker
And every time I would look at his work, I'd say, ah, it's too chaotic.
00:26:51
Speaker
It doesn't make any sense to me.
00:26:54
Speaker
It doesn't resonate with me.
00:26:56
Speaker
And I recently saw a painting that he'd done called Adolescence.
00:27:03
Speaker
And I just had nothing to do in the day.
00:27:05
Speaker
It was about 3 p.m.
00:27:07
Speaker
So you know what?
00:27:09
Speaker
Let's just look at the painting.
00:27:10
Speaker
Let's research a little bit.
00:27:12
Speaker
Let me try and convince myself on Salvador Dali.
00:27:16
Speaker
So I look at this painting called Adolescence.
00:27:19
Speaker
And again, if you have a computer by you, pop up the painting and look at it.
00:27:23
Speaker
It's going to be worth it.
00:27:26
Speaker
So on the surface, the painting is quite interesting.
00:27:29
Speaker
It looks like two things.
00:27:32
Speaker
You can look at it and see a face, the face of someone, and you could also look at it and see a woman in child sitting on a beach.
00:27:41
Speaker
Surrealism has this ability to make us see a bunch of different things.
00:27:46
Speaker
And that's cool on its own, but it's not spectacular.
00:27:49
Speaker
The thing with Dali is, as you uncover clues about the painting,
00:27:56
Speaker
meanings start to take shape, things start to take shape and where you think it would end it just keeps getting deeper and deeper and deeper and deeper never really ends so again you look at this painting you see a face doesn't mean much then you start to ask the question okay well
00:28:15
Speaker
Who are those two figures that are making up the face?
00:28:18
Speaker
Well, one of the figures, it turns out, was his nurse, a nurse maid that he had, his family had hired when he was a child.
00:28:29
Speaker
It turns out that the child was him.
00:28:31
Speaker
Now that's pretty interesting as it is, but we continue to dig a little bit deeper.
00:28:36
Speaker
And what we then come to realize is the setting of the painting, it was a beach.
00:28:44
Speaker
that his family used to visit when he was a child.
00:28:46
Speaker
So now you're starting to look at something that you uncover that this painting might actually be like a memory.
00:28:52
Speaker
He's a child, he's with the nursemaid, he's at this beach that his family used to go to.
00:28:58
Speaker
A little bit more interesting, right?
00:29:00
Speaker
We're getting a little bit deeper into his experiences.
00:29:03
Speaker
And then
00:29:05
Speaker
You notice in the top left corner detail, if you didn't see it off the front, you probably wouldn't have noticed it.
00:29:12
Speaker
In the top left corner of the painting, it says Paul Vue, which in French means for you.
00:29:17
Speaker
And it was a, Paul Vue was a magazine that was a film magazine that was very popular in France up until the German invasion of France.
00:29:31
Speaker
And once the Germans had invaded France,
00:29:34
Speaker
the magazine that ceased to exist.
00:29:36
Speaker
So he took the magazine Por Vous, he paints over the magazine and he uses the face of the actress on the front of the magazine to create the eyes.
00:29:53
Speaker
and the nurse and the child, right?
00:29:55
Speaker
So what does the war have to do with anything?
00:29:58
Speaker
Well, what does the magazine and the war effectively ending the magazine have to do with anything?
00:30:04
Speaker
It kind of sounds like a random out of place detail.
00:30:08
Speaker
Again, that is until you dig deeper, which it turns out
00:30:14
Speaker
That evokes a memory for him.
00:30:16
Speaker
When Dali was a young boy, he visited a war parade.
00:30:24
Speaker
And at this war parade, he saw a girl who he had interest in.
00:30:32
Speaker
He was pretty young, but he's a young guy.
00:30:36
Speaker
He sees this beautiful girl.
00:30:38
Speaker
Her name was...
00:30:40
Speaker
I really hope I don't pronounce this thing correctly.
00:30:41
Speaker
I think it's, uh, Galuchka.
00:30:44
Speaker
I think that's right.
00:30:45
Speaker
I hope that's right.
00:30:47
Speaker
Um, he sees Galuchka and he can't contain himself.
00:30:51
Speaker
He's like, holy crap.
00:30:53
Speaker
Galuchka is looking at me.
00:30:54
Speaker
Uh, what do I do?
00:30:55
Speaker
I'm freaking out.
00:30:56
Speaker
This is the girl that I, I love.
00:30:59
Speaker
I, all of my, you know, all of my desires are for this person and she's staring at me.
00:31:05
Speaker
I'm freaking out right now.
00:31:06
Speaker
So the only thing he knows,
00:31:09
Speaker
He doesn't know what to do so he finds his nursemaid and he hides behind her.
00:31:14
Speaker
And his nursemaid is the only thing that can shield him from her gaze.
00:31:20
Speaker
And this is a true story.
00:31:21
Speaker
He tells the story.
00:31:23
Speaker
So we know that it's true.
00:31:25
Speaker
We know that all of this is true because it's from the source's mouth.
00:31:32
Speaker
So he hides behind the nursemaid and that's what's able to break the gaze from Geluchka.
00:31:39
Speaker
And it takes place at this war, this military parade.
00:31:44
Speaker
And we, now we understand this and we step back again and we look at the painting and then what we see is in the painting, the face,
00:31:54
Speaker
that we initially saw at the beginning of the painting is actually a symbol of the memory that he has.
00:31:59
Speaker
He's the giant gaze of this thing and he's hiding behind the nursemaid and it's tied together perfectly and it's taking place at a war parade, which is where the memory's from and the war had ended this magazine's life.
00:32:14
Speaker
And so there are all of these spectacular little details that when you uncover them, they all mix together.
00:32:20
Speaker
And there's probably things in the painting that I don't even understand.
00:32:24
Speaker
there may be another detail that something else and another detail that something else.
00:32:28
Speaker
But even in my limited knowledge of the painting, that was incredible for me.
00:32:37
Speaker
And that was enough for me to convince me on Salvador Dali.
00:32:41
Speaker
And I think that is a good characteristic across his entire body of work.
00:32:47
Speaker
As you uncover one thing at a time,
00:32:51
Speaker
and get deeper and deeper, his paintings take on bigger and bigger meanings.
00:32:55
Speaker
And that, it's unlike anyone else.
00:32:57
Speaker
That is quite interesting, because almost behind all that chaos, there clearly are these sort of wormholes of symbolism, which is so rich.
00:33:06
Speaker
It's so rich.
00:33:07
Speaker
It's so cool.
00:33:10
Speaker
See, I wasn't expecting those feelings.
00:33:13
Speaker
I wasn't expecting that I had completely written him off.
00:33:19
Speaker
And I wasn't interested in him in any way, shape or form.
00:33:22
Speaker
And every time somebody would talk about him, I would just, doesn't do it for me.
00:33:27
Speaker
I don't get it.
00:33:28
Speaker
Now, I have a bit of a man crush, an art crush.
00:33:32
Speaker
I'm like, this guy's so cool.
00:33:34
Speaker
I need to know everything about him.
00:33:36
Speaker
And again, he's another controversial figure.
00:33:38
Speaker
He's a person that, depending on where, how you want to view him,
00:33:44
Speaker
There are many reasons to not like the person.
00:33:47
Speaker
There are many reasons to like the person.
00:33:49
Speaker
It all depends on where you come from.
00:33:51
Speaker
But he's undeniable in his talent and he's undeniable in his ability to express something.
00:33:59
Speaker
And...
00:34:02
Speaker
that it's really important to draw that distinction.
00:34:07
Speaker
We live in a time, yeah, it's normal to have feelings about someone, but we have to recognize what they've done.
00:34:16
Speaker
He did something spectacular over the course of his career.
00:34:20
Speaker
And yeah, he's an artist worth looking into for sure and studying deeper.
Rembrandt's Mastery of Light and Emotion
00:34:28
Speaker
So another question about...
00:34:33
Speaker
Another artist who's, I think, John's favorite, if I'm not wrong, is Rembrandt.
00:34:38
Speaker
So what do you think makes Rembrandt unique?
00:34:42
Speaker
Why is he considered to be one of the greatest painters in Western culture?
00:34:47
Speaker
I think that Rembrandt,
00:34:53
Speaker
I don't know a ton about Rembrandt from the personal perspective, like who the man was, what his experiences were like, but I can speak to Rembrandt from a technical perspective.
00:35:07
Speaker
I think Rembrandt comes at a time where you have a...
00:35:19
Speaker
You don't have an academic art in the sense, in the way that academic art was prevalent in France leading up to Prussianism, but you have a period of artwork that is heavily based on religious narratives and religious stories, and then you have Rembrandt come in, and Rembrandt, he captures...
00:35:47
Speaker
light and emotion through his brush strokes in a way that maybe no one else ever really had.
00:35:55
Speaker
And I look to painting like Nightwatch.
00:36:00
Speaker
Do you like that painting, Nightwatch?
00:36:02
Speaker
Yeah, that's one of my favorites, I've got to say.
00:36:04
Speaker
One of my favorites too.
00:36:05
Speaker
When I first started studying art, that was one of the first paintings I looked at because it's so famous.
00:36:11
Speaker
And you look at what he does from a technical perspective.
00:36:16
Speaker
And it's fascinating.
00:36:18
Speaker
I mean, the way that he foreshortens the spear is unlike anything you've seen before.
00:36:24
Speaker
And the way that he lights the figures is incredible, right?
00:36:28
Speaker
It's so rich.
00:36:29
Speaker
He's clearly highlighting this company of people who would walk around the streets at night.
00:36:35
Speaker
And I believe it would be in Amsterdam, walk around Amsterdam at night and kind of patrol the streets and guard everything.
00:36:41
Speaker
And what's cool about that painting is
00:36:46
Speaker
is initially the groups that would patrol the streets were held in such high regard they were revered for their... I guess they were... They were just held to a certain standard.
00:37:11
Speaker
They're held high.
00:37:14
Speaker
when Rembrandt paints the Night Watch, it's at a period of time where their will becomes a little bit less necessary.
00:37:23
Speaker
But they're still held in some regard, but they're not as necessary.
00:37:26
Speaker
They're not what they were 100 years prior.
00:37:29
Speaker
So when he paints Night Watch, what you're looking at is, yes, it's like something to admire, the people are something to admire, but he kind of paints them in a light that also shows
00:37:43
Speaker
that they're not as serious as before.
00:37:45
Speaker
They're not like a dignified group of soldiers.
00:37:48
Speaker
He paints them as people who are a little bit, there's a bit of chaos to Nightwatch.
00:37:53
Speaker
And I think Rembrandt does a good job of capturing the time that he lived in really well.
00:38:01
Speaker
I hope that made sense.
00:38:03
Speaker
Yeah, from a technical perspective as well, are there any other artists who really sort of stand out to you?
00:38:11
Speaker
Lots.
00:38:12
Speaker
Tons.
00:38:14
Speaker
Yeah, like Diego Velazquez is a great example of an artist who was probably, many could argue in the way that many could argue Caravaggio as being the technical best.
00:38:27
Speaker
You could argue that Caravaggio was as well.
00:38:30
Speaker
Or sorry, Velazquez was as well.
00:38:32
Speaker
Velazquez was
00:38:36
Speaker
a brilliant, brilliant painter, um, who had a unique career.
00:38:41
Speaker
Uh, he, he's one of the first artists.
00:38:43
Speaker
He's not the first artist, but one of them surely to, uh, be regarded.
00:38:49
Speaker
Um, you know, he, he was in the Royal circles.
00:38:52
Speaker
He was in, he was in the part of this Royal court.
00:38:56
Speaker
He was a real like celebrity artist.
00:38:58
Speaker
He was really, he made art, um,
00:39:03
Speaker
spectacular and being an artist spectacular and he knew it too so his paintings were a good representation of understanding that he was above you know he treated art above royalty in a sense you can see it in Las Meninas there's lots of ways to interpret Las Meninas but
00:39:23
Speaker
One of the ways you could interpret that painting is by looking at it through the lens of it's a statement from Velázquez to say that art supersedes everything, even royalty, even the gods.
00:39:36
Speaker
It's the gods, art, and then royalty.
00:39:39
Speaker
Velázquez is a good example.
00:39:42
Speaker
I look from a technical perspective, even though you may look at someone like Edouard Manet,
00:39:50
Speaker
and any of the Impressionist people is less technically gifted than Caravaggio.
00:39:55
Speaker
They're technically gifted in completely different sets of skills, but equally gifted.
00:40:04
Speaker
Paul Cezanne, another great example of technical prowess, probably regarded by most, he's like the master's master.
00:40:13
Speaker
Any great painter would look to Paul Cezanne and say that he was the best.
00:40:19
Speaker
You know, especially only Matisse and Pablo Picasso.
00:40:22
Speaker
They would always look to him and say he was the greatest painter to ever live.
00:40:27
Speaker
So many artists that had great technical foundations and were great contributors to the art world.
Dream Dinner with Three Iconic Artists
00:40:32
Speaker
I think the last question is probably one that's a bit different, but if you could have dinner with three artists of all time, living or dead, who would they be and why?
00:40:46
Speaker
That's tough.
00:40:49
Speaker
That's a good question.
00:40:57
Speaker
Probably Michelangelo.
00:40:59
Speaker
Yeah.
00:41:00
Speaker
I think Michelangelo.
00:41:03
Speaker
I enjoy... There's a very human aspect to him.
00:41:10
Speaker
There's a very relatable aspect to him that...
00:41:15
Speaker
You know, you're talking about an artist that painted in 1500s, so it's hard to feel like you could connect with them.
00:41:23
Speaker
But what Michelangelo did on the last judgment, the painting on the altar wall of the Sistine Chapel, he basically...
00:41:35
Speaker
All of his enemies and all of the people that had something to say about him, he used the opportunity to basically say, screw you to all of them.
00:41:45
Speaker
And he painted people in and he was very catty in that way.
00:41:48
Speaker
And I find that to be hilarious and interesting and relatable.
00:41:54
Speaker
So him, for sure, I think that would be a fun person to have dinner with.
00:41:59
Speaker
Someone like Edouard Manet.
00:42:02
Speaker
Because
00:42:04
Speaker
Edouard Manet, he did something at a time that on its own may not be spectacular.
00:42:18
Speaker
It may not be a difficult thing to do.
00:42:22
Speaker
You know, Edouard Manet introduces a painting, Les Désionés sous l'Albe, to the salons in Paris.
00:42:34
Speaker
He does so, he creates a painting of four people sitting in a park and there's a nude woman and a woman in the bath and two gentlemen sitting with the woman.
00:42:45
Speaker
They're kind of having a picnic.
00:42:48
Speaker
And it's, there's nothing about it maybe on the surface that seems that radical, but...
00:42:56
Speaker
doing a painting like that in the face of scrutiny.
00:42:59
Speaker
So when you have an academy, the Académie des Beaux-Arts, which it's an institution that's essentially dictating what is good art and what's not good art, and their opinion really matters.
00:43:11
Speaker
And you have an institution like that and a bunch of critics and a bunch of people saying that this isn't what you're supposed to do and this is really, really bad.
00:43:21
Speaker
And you have someone like Edouard Manet do a painting like...
00:43:24
Speaker
like Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe and continues to paint in a style that is realistic and a better portrayal of who he is as a person opposed to doing something that's by an academic standard.
00:43:39
Speaker
I think it takes a lot of bravery.
00:43:41
Speaker
I think it takes a lot of courage to stand up to do what you really felt like.
00:43:46
Speaker
And he was, he revolutionized the art world.
00:43:49
Speaker
So I would want to have dinner with him as well.
00:43:52
Speaker
And, uh,
00:43:54
Speaker
I'll give you one more maybe.
00:44:02
Speaker
I think I would have dinner with Picasso because I'd want to understand what... I'd want to just feel what having dinner with someone that motivated is like.
00:44:13
Speaker
Someone that driven.
00:44:14
Speaker
He clearly was.
00:44:16
Speaker
Despite all of his flaws, the man was motivated to be the best.
00:44:21
Speaker
And for a long part of his career, he really was.
00:44:24
Speaker
Otherwise we wouldn't be talking about him today.
00:44:27
Speaker
Yeah.
00:44:28
Speaker
Fair?
00:44:28
Speaker
Yeah.
00:44:29
Speaker
Fair enough.
00:44:29
Speaker
Yeah.
00:44:31
Speaker
I think we'd probably quite like to join you at that dinner party.
00:44:35
Speaker
No more than one.
00:44:36
Speaker
Please, please.
00:44:37
Speaker
It would be great.
00:44:39
Speaker
I would love that.
00:44:41
Speaker
Would love that.
00:44:42
Speaker
Perfect.
00:44:42
Speaker
Thank you very much.
00:44:43
Speaker
Thank you guys.
00:44:44
Speaker
It was a fantastic episode.
00:44:45
Speaker
Really, really interesting.
00:44:46
Speaker
I think we learned a lot and everyone listening is also learning a huge, huge amount about these people.
00:44:54
Speaker
who've done really something so extraordinary.
00:44:57
Speaker
I mean, living in the 1500 and getting talked about 500 years later, it's not easy.
00:45:05
Speaker
It's spectacular.
00:45:06
Speaker
You know, something that only, something that everyone would dream of for sure.
00:45:12
Speaker
Yeah.
00:45:12
Speaker
To leave a legacy like that.
00:45:14
Speaker
And guys, thank you so much for having me.
00:45:16
Speaker
It's such a pleasure to talk with you.
00:45:19
Speaker
And I hope that I was able to pass on some value for you and for your audience.
00:45:24
Speaker
and yes definitely this was a lot of fun i'd be happy to do it again this is really really cool oh yes a big thank you to matthew and a big thank you to everyone who's listened uh do please check out matthew at the fine at the fine arts collective on instagram tiktok and youtube all right saying yeah perfect okay thank you very much cheers guys thank you thank you