Transcript
Speaker: Hello, welcome to Curious Objects, brought to you by the magazine Antiques.
Speaker: I'm Ben Miller.
Speaker: There's a group of five paintings at the New York Historical Society that I have loved for a long time.
Speaker: Partly I like them because they're beautiful and large and impressive, but they also carry a message that personally I find somehow both ominous and comforting at the same time.
Speaker: It's one of the remarkable things about art that it can hold contradictions like that.
Speaker: And there are other contradictions in these paintings too.
Speaker: I think it's the kind of contradiction that makes you pause and question your assumptions, your beliefs, even your experience.
Speaker: The paintings are by the artist Thomas Cole.
Speaker: They're called The Course of Empire, and they are today's curious object.
Speaker: But this is not going to be an academic art history talk because my guest is someone who approaches art in a way that honestly I want to get better at doing myself.
Speaker: And I think you might feel the same way.
Speaker: Rachel Gould is the face and the voice of The Art Tourist, a YouTube channel about art and artists, which I actually had the great pleasure of joining earlier this year for a special video they did about antique silver.
Speaker: And there are, you know, a lot of YouTube channels about art.
Speaker: But what I love about Rachel and the Art Tourist is that she communicates more than just the facts and the academic and intellectual interpretations, etc., etc.
Speaker: Rachel helps us, I think, in a deeper way to connect with art and to really get it.
Speaker: And, you know, the history and the context and the intellectual study, that's all important.
Speaker: And you'll find plenty of that in the Art Tourist videos.
Speaker: But Rachel helps us to understand that all of that is really a means to an end.
Speaker: And the ultimate goal of looking at art is to feel something and maybe discover something about yourself and about the world.
Speaker: She did a terrific video all about Thomas Cole, which includes a section about these paintings in particular.
Speaker: And watching that actually gives me goosebumps.
Speaker: So Rachel, I am so happy that you could join me.
Speaker: Thank you so much.
Speaker: You made me sound so fabulous.
Speaker: Oh, you simply are.
Speaker: That was difficult to do.
Speaker: I'm excited to be here.
Speaker: Thank you.
Speaker: Let's start with some rapid fire questions.
Speaker: Are you ready?
Speaker: All right, let's do it.
Speaker: Okay, I'm giving you an unlimited budget.
Speaker: Well, maybe not me.
Speaker: Some fantastically wealthy person is giving you an unlimited budget to buy artwork for your home.
Speaker: But there's a catch.
Speaker: It all has to be from the same period in the same region.
Speaker: What period and region are you going to choose?
Speaker: Hmm.
Speaker: Victorian England.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: Interesting.
Speaker: I think that's an unusual choice.
Speaker: Do you think?
Speaker: Well, people think of Victorian England as being so fussy and frou-frou, but obviously there's a lot of great art that came out of it.
Speaker: I'm a big fan of the pre-Raphaelites and a big fan of the arts and crafts movement, as in William Morris, for example.
Speaker: So there's an abundance of gorgeous art from that period.
Speaker: Terrific.
Speaker: What's your favorite museum that listeners might not know about?
Speaker: Perhaps a lesser known museum would be the National Gallery of Scotland.
Speaker: I was there last Christmas and it was just the time of my life.
Speaker: I spent three days in that museum.
Speaker: I was very envious.
Speaker: I graduated from the University of Edinburgh, so the Scottish capital has a real special place in my heart.
Speaker: What's the most interesting location that you've gone to for art tourist filming?
Speaker: I would say the Nicholas Roerick Museum on the Upper West Side.
Speaker: It's obviously not the most exotic location that you can visit to see art, but the story behind this man's life is absolutely wild.
Speaker: And it was really fascinating to see his work in person.
Speaker: I grew up on the Upper West Side and I had no idea that this place was there.
Speaker: It's kind of tucked away on 105th Street near Riverside Park.
Speaker: And it was a special experience to not only see the art, but to have the context of who this artist and mystic was.
Speaker: Of course, we would love to one day go further afield, but for now, we've stayed relatively local just for practical purposes.
Speaker: So I would say that museum.
Speaker: I loved your video about that museum.
Speaker: I thought that was fantastic.
Speaker: I hope listeners will check that out.
Speaker: What movie has the most interesting depiction of art or artworks?
Speaker: It's funny that you mentioned that because one of our viewers recently reminded me of the scene in Ferris Bueller's Day Off where I think they go to the Art Institute of Chicago.
Speaker: And I hadn't seen the movie in a while.
Speaker: And so I pulled it up on YouTube and just watched that one particular scene.
Speaker: And there's some really incredible cameos in there.
Speaker: Not cameos, jewelry cameos, but really wonderful works of art.
Speaker: And it's a long sequence of masterworks.
Speaker: Yeah, that's funny.
Speaker: I hadn't thought about that in a long time.
Speaker: But yeah, I mean, Surratt, of course, makes a very prominent appearance in that movie.
Speaker: Yeah, there's a Chagall and it's very dreamy.
Speaker: It's a dreamy sequence.
Speaker: What artist living her dad would you invite to dinner?
Speaker: Oh, you know who would be fun?
Speaker: Gertrude Abercrombie.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: She was a party gal.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: What a personality.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: And she loves cats.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So we could probably strike up a conversation.
Speaker: I bet.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Maybe she could actually shed some light on what those paintings, what the hell they actually mean.
Speaker: What I could use help with that anyway.
Speaker: What's the first painting that you remember falling in love with?
Speaker: Believe it or not, it was actually Thomas Cole's Desolation.
Speaker: I saw it when I was probably in middle school.
Speaker: I don't entirely remember the context of why I was at the New York Historical Society, but I do vividly remember that The Course of Empire was the first series of works that had a lasting impact on me, and particularly Desolation, I was just magnetically attracted to it.
Speaker: What's one book about art or art history that you would recommend to listeners?
Speaker: I actually just made a little video on Instagram about this.
Speaker: I would recommend On Ugliness by the Italian scholar Umberto Eco.
Speaker: Can't go wrong with Eco.
Speaker: What was the last artwork you saw that gave you a feeling of the sublime?
Speaker: I would say Two Men Contemplating the Moon by Caspar David Friedrich.
Speaker: It's at the Met and it's a painting that I can revisit time and time again and it never feels less impactful to me.
Speaker: Give us a sneak peek.
Speaker: What does it look like?
Speaker: So it pictures two men, one of whom is the artist, and they're contemplating the moon.
Speaker: They're on a stroll in the evening in the woods, and there's this beautiful crescent moon in a Friedrich-style purple sky.
Speaker: And I just think it's the most timeless concept, just two people awing at nature.
Speaker: I'm going to have to go take a look at that.
Speaker: It's really beautiful.
Speaker: We'll be right back with Rachel Gould to talk about Thomas Cole.
Speaker: If you want to have a mental image of these paintings while you listen, you can find photos at themagazineantiques.com slash podcast, or you can see them in person at the New York Historical Society.
Speaker: If you'd like to check out The Art Tourist on YouTube, which you should very much do, you can find them at youtube.com slash at symbol The Art Tourist.
Speaker: And they're also on Instagram at The Art Tourist.
Speaker: Also, if you enjoy this episode and you want more curious objects about paintings, we've got that for you.
Speaker: You can look up our episodes Corot's Impressionist Lunchbox.
Speaker: And also, Is It Real?
Speaker: A Caravaggio Rediscovered.
Speaker: And of course, our three-part series on the painting of Belisere and the Frey Children.
Speaker: And by the way, I can't say anything about that yet, but we're going to have more news about that painting soon.
Speaker: Thank you so much to everyone who has left us a rating or a review on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
Speaker: That is really terrific.
Speaker: This is a totally free podcast and we don't do Patreon or anything like that.
Speaker: But another thing you could do if you want to support our work is to tell a friend about Curious Objects who you think might enjoy listening.
Speaker: Everything you do to help the show grow really means a lot to me.
Speaker: And at the end of the day, that is what allows us to keep bringing you these episodes.
Speaker: So thank you.
Speaker: If you want to get in touch with me personally, you can do that by email at CuriousObjectsPodcast at gmail.com or on Instagram at Objective Interest.
Speaker: I really love hearing from you.
Speaker: Okay, with all that said, I think it's time to talk about Thomas Cole.
Speaker: Rachel, I want to ask just right off the bat, why did you want to make a video about Thomas Cole?
Speaker: So I have this vivid memory in the peak COVID era.
Speaker: My husband, Jason, who was also my collaborator on The Art Tourist, we lost our jobs.
Speaker: We gave up our apartment in the city.
Speaker: And we were staying kind of indefinitely with family in Connecticut.
Speaker: It was the most chaotic and confusing and anxiety-inducing time for us.
Speaker: And so late one night, we were talking about making a documentary.
Speaker: And I think it's interesting when you're so untethered.
Speaker: you all of the parameters of normal society kind of like fall away and it gives you the space to dream bigger and maybe even impractically.
Speaker: So I don't want to go too far into detail about what this initial idea was, because I do hope that it eventually comes to fruition.
Speaker: But needless to say, it would require a budget that we didn't have, a super nice camera that we also didn't have and an extended stay actually in Scotland.
Speaker: So
Speaker: Even though we knew that perhaps we should cut our teeth on something a little bit more practical than that, it really lit me up from the inside out just thinking about doing something ambitious.
Speaker: And so eventually we started to think about more local figures who have had an impact on
Speaker: not only on the trajectory of art history, but on us personally.
Speaker: And so going back to what I was talking about before, I first encountered Cole's work when I was young and his work was really the first series of paintings that moved me.
Speaker: I was
Speaker: fortunate to grow up in New York City.
Speaker: And I luckily had a mother who forced me to do many different cultural things.
Speaker: But I was kind of like a free range kid.
Speaker: And I just wanted to roll around in the dirt.
Speaker: And I wanted to run a mile.
Speaker: I wanted to be outside.
Speaker: And the idea of a refined afternoon at the museum just did not appeal to me.
Speaker: Until that day.
Speaker: and something that transcended the materials that he used the genre that he was painting in and even the time period it just resonated with me and so it made perfect sense that we should make a film about thomas cole and then fast forward two years ago um around christmas time actually
Speaker: There was a resurgence with COVID and everything just felt really awful.
Speaker: I felt kind of despondent.
Speaker: And I went to the New York Historical Society because I had this intense craving to commune with Cole through the course of empire.
Speaker: And the paintings weren't there.
Speaker: I wandered the galleries.
Speaker: I asked every security guard I could find where they were.
Speaker: And I'm not entirely sure why they weren't on view, but it turned out that they were in storage and I couldn't see them that day.
Speaker: And I just felt absolutely shattered.
Speaker: I went home and I cried, honestly.
Speaker: And it made me realize that other people could benefit from connecting with Cole and his story.
Speaker: Maybe they're not as emotional about it as I am, but it started to come into focus that
Speaker: making this film that follows in his footsteps to the extent that we could follow in his footsteps might just have an impact on somebody.
Speaker: It might, it's an interesting story.
Speaker: He was such an intrepid spirit and his work is really beautiful.
Speaker: So we wanted to, we wanted to share our,
Speaker: appreciation for his work.
Speaker: But we also wanted to include voices of art historical authority.
Speaker: So along the way, we visit curator Elizabeth Kornhauser in the American Wing at the Met, curator Wendy Ikamoto at the New York Historical Society, and Betsy Jacks, who is the executive director at the Thomas Cole National Historic Site, which was Cole's home and studio in Catskill, New York.
Speaker: He would have known it as Cedar Grove.
Speaker: So this film marked a really significant turning point for us as creators and as people.
Speaker: When Jason first showed me the final edit, we both like projectile cried.
Speaker: It was the most profound sense of accomplishment I have ever experienced.
Speaker: It was like, and I hope I don't offend any mothers who might be listening.
Speaker: It was like a birth for me.
Speaker: It was this just so much pride.
Speaker: And the process of realizing this thing was fantastic.
Speaker: frustrating and it was laborsome and it was also absolutely amazing.
Speaker: And even though I can now take a step back and I can see the imperfections, it was our first film.
Speaker: It's an honest love letter to Cole and the Hudson Valley, which we got to see through his eyes while we were making it.
Speaker: And as he did, we totally fell in love with this place so much so that we actually moved up here last year and we just celebrated our first year in November.
Speaker: You know, I wonder if the Course of Empire was not on view at New York Historical Society when you went because it had gone over to the Met for their Thomas Cole show.
Speaker: I think that was a couple of years earlier.
Speaker: Honestly, I have I don't know if maybe they had them down for conservation or perhaps they were on loan elsewhere, but they weren't there and I needed to see them.
Speaker: Yeah, it's funny.
Speaker: That show was actually the first time that I saw them in person.
Speaker: Yes, I remember that show is beautiful.
Speaker: Since then, I've gone over to, you know, made the pilgrimage to New York Historical Society because, you know, they, I was aware of them before, but seeing them in person, of course, made such a huge difference.
Speaker: And now they've etched their way into my soul.
Speaker: As they do.
Speaker: And it's interesting that this came about, as you put it, during that sort of untethering experience of COVID, when civilization felt like it had come loose at the seams in a lot of ways, which is very appropriate for the subject matter of the paintings, because the course of empire is the depiction of the rise and decadence and ultimately the collapse of this grand classical city.
Speaker: And I wonder if you would like to talk to us about the allegorical significance of that, which might be obvious, but it might also be subtle in some way.
Speaker: Yeah, I mean, I was actually about to make a joke, but it's not exactly subtle.
Speaker: But just to give a little bit of background, Cole began the course of empire in the late 1820s.
Speaker: And as you mentioned, it traces the tragic arc of a civilization.
Speaker: And clearly, Cole is pulling from classical aesthetics in these paintings, seemingly ancient Rome.
Speaker: But the subject transcends time and place because, as we know, the rise and fall of empire is just the natural order of things wherever or whenever that civilization may be.
Speaker: He painted this five-part series for a man named Lumen Reed, who was a wealthy merchant in New York.
Speaker: And Reed actually died in 1836, just before it was completed.
Speaker: But luckily, Reed's family encouraged Cole to finish the project regardless, and it would become...
Speaker: in my opinion, and I think in many other people's opinions, his greatest contribution.
Speaker: So it is a deeply allegorical series of paintings.
Speaker: It's a five part cycle of paintings.
Speaker: And the first painting in the series is The Savage State.
Speaker: And in it, we see the dawn of a new civilization.
Speaker: We see this society emerging.
Speaker: And it actually looks like dawn is the time of day.
Speaker: One figure is hunting a deer, we see a small village around a fire, but there's this sense of struggle or tension between nature and culture as this nascent civilization emerges in the wilderness.
Speaker: In the next painting, which is the Arcadian state, we see this harmony between nature and culture.
Speaker: The civilization is now established, but it's contained.
Speaker: As the people nurture the land, it nurtures them back.
Speaker: And so there's kind of this perfect balance that's been struck.
Speaker: In the third painting, The Consummate State, culture has far surpassed nature.
Speaker: Nature has been tamed and relegated to vases and man-made arrangements.
Speaker: And it's clear in this painting that the people of this civilization no longer worship the land the way that they do in the first and second paintings, but rather their own leaders and their own gods.
Speaker: And that seemingly inevitably leads to destruction and destruction.
Speaker: It's a scene of utter chaos.
Speaker: Those fabulous feats of architecture that we see in consummation are burning.
Speaker: There's an intense amount of bloodshed.
Speaker: And interestingly, that turbulent sky that appears in the first painting returns and it kind of foreshadows the balance between nature and culture that it's shifting back.
Speaker: And then finally, we end with desolation.
Speaker: This moonlit sky is illuminating the ruins of civilization, and nature is essentially reclaiming her domain.
Speaker: This painting is devastating.
Speaker: And yet, in my opinion, there's a strange optimism to it.
Speaker: The series is fascinating because when we typically think of the life cycle, it's with regard to nature.
Speaker: We think about the life cycle of a tree or an animal.
Speaker: And what Cole is describing here is the life cycle of culture, which reminds us that we are nature.
Speaker: And the nature of any cycle is that ends signal beginnings.
Speaker: And so the plant life that is growing all over the ruins and desolation is not the end of the story.
Speaker: It's the end of that civilization story, which is tragic in its own way.
Speaker: But it means that another one is on its way and a new cycle will begin.
Speaker: And so for that reason, I sense comfort when I look at that painting in particular.
Speaker: Yeah, it's interesting.
Speaker: I think you just really put your finger on something that I was trying to think about on my own about my experience of this painting, which I described as
Speaker: both as paradoxically as sort of both ominous, but also comforting.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: And that fresh beginning is certainly part of that comfort, I think, but maybe there's also a, a sense of a little bit of relief that the complexity and intricacy of society and culture is not, you don't have to worry about that anymore, that it's sort of, um,
Speaker: things are just simpler, they're a little bit easier to follow, a little bit easier to understand.
Speaker: And so it's less intellectually taxing, maybe.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: And the idea that this is part of nature just kind of means that that's the way that things are.
Speaker: Not that we shouldn't take measures to avoid our destruction and to avoid desolation, but I think there's just a comfort in, as you said, that you don't have to intellectualize it necessarily.
Speaker: It just, it is what happens.
Speaker: Yeah, well, and so, I mean, Cole is, he is sort of the paradigmatic landscape, American landscape painter.
Speaker: And as you mentioned, you have the setting for all five paintings is it's the same location, the same sort of mythical imaginary valley.
Speaker: And so it's not a real place, but it does.
Speaker: Certainly, it is reminiscent of other paintings that Cole did of real places in some cases, particularly in the Hudson Valley.
Speaker: Is there a connection there?
Speaker: Eventually, yes.
Speaker: Cole lived during a period of rapid expansion and settlement in America.
Speaker: And there's actually a letter that he wrote to Lumen Reed, his patron, which documents his rage at what he calls the copper-hearted barbarians who were just tearing through the Catskills to build a railroad.
Speaker: And he was essentially living in the Arcadian state of the course of empire at that point.
Speaker: He was at Cedar Grove and...
Speaker: He found such profound peace and inspiration in the wilderness up in the Catskills.
Speaker: So he knew what was to come if this territorial expansion continued at the expense of the environment.
Speaker: So I'm just curious about Thomas Cole's personal politics and how those might connect with the narrative that he is trying to convey through these paintings.
Speaker: Yeah, so Cole was, I believe, a conservative.
Speaker: That probably meant something different in the 19th century than it does today.
Speaker: I'm not a political historian, so I don't know the intricacies, but he was also one of the first environmentalists and
Speaker: the preservation of the environment was of the utmost importance to him.
Speaker: The 19th century was largely characterized by this concept of manifest destiny, the idea that it was America's divinely appointed destiny to expand westward.
Speaker: And of course, expansion comes at a cost, particularly to the environment.
Speaker: And Cole was especially sensitive to this because he saw firsthand growing up during the Industrial Revolution in England,
Speaker: What modern industry looks like and what the quality of life is in a modern society, it's a nightmare.
Speaker: But Cole was also a religious man, and he believed that the wilderness was God's creation.
Speaker: So the course of empire is a warning against the destruction of beauty and resources in the name of empire.
Speaker: To Cole, that was an act of desecration.
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Speaker: So let's get a little more specific about some of the symbolic imagery because these paintings are so rich.
Speaker: They're, again, they're, they're quite large.
Speaker: They're very complex.
Speaker: They depict all kinds of different activities.
Speaker: Can you talk to us about some of the encoded messages that we might find in these, in these pictures?
Speaker: Yeah, so I actually got this from our interview with Wendy Ikamoto at the New York Historical Society.
Speaker: And she pointed out that the placement of Cole's signature is an interesting detail in each of the paintings.
Speaker: In the savage state, it's carved rather crudely into a rock.
Speaker: In the Arcadian state, it's beneath a boy who's drawing, a symbol of the emergence of the visual arts.
Speaker: In the third painting, it appears on the architecture of this great city.
Speaker: And then it's slashed onto a pedestal of a decapitated statue in the fourth painting.
Speaker: And in the fifth, it appears upside down on a fallen ruin.
Speaker: And I think that's just the most fascinating story.
Speaker: little tidbit that I had never noticed when I looked at the paintings, because if you haven't seen them in person, they're quite monumental.
Speaker: And particularly the third and fourth paintings are just they're pure chaos.
Speaker: They have hundreds of figures in them, and you wouldn't think to look for his signature.
Speaker: It's kind of hidden.
Speaker: But it gives you interesting insight into what Cole's opinion was on each state of the course of empire.
Speaker: Yeah, I mean, the consummation of Empire, in particular, the third painting, it really could be the setting for Where's Waldo?
Speaker: But there's so many people, so many activities.
Speaker: And it feels to me looking at it like it's opening windows into hundreds of stories that you can only imagine.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: No, I was going to say, in addition to his signature, consummation, because it's so jam-packed with detail, has two interesting symbols that I think are worth noting.
Speaker: We see an emperor of sorts, perhaps some sort of a leader, being carried across a bridge in this large procession.
Speaker: He's surrounded by a crowd.
Speaker: And this might be a reference to
Speaker: the then president Andrew Jackson, who was spearheading the rapid settlement of the US, obviously much to Cole's chagrin.
Speaker: So you see a little bit of his opinion, you know, sliding back in there too.
Speaker: And I think on top of that, there's a connection to a statue of Minerva, who was the Roman goddess of wisdom, who essentially presides over the empire as this pillar of virtue.
Speaker: But she's positioned on a really tall pedestal at a notable height.
Speaker: Perhaps so high that she's been forgotten.
Speaker: And so, of course, in the following painting, Destruction, we see what happens when we lose sight of wisdom, which may in turn be a reference to President Jackson's hubris at that time.
Speaker: Interesting.
Speaker: Yeah, that it's, it's always fascinating to look at these old pictures with political messages and think about how the impact the emotional impact and then the electoral impact of that painting on a viewer today is no, in no way lessened by the fact that, you know, Andrew Jackson is no longer president of the United States, thank God.
Speaker: But, you know, these images which had one context at the time they were painted take on new meanings, new contexts.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: So one concept that comes up in your video about Thomas Cole is the notion of the sublime.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: And at the risk of delving back into my undergraduate philosophy lectures, I wonder if we could talk about the role that the sublime plays in Thomas Cole's work more generally, but it's certainly present in the course of empire.
Speaker: It was important to me with this film that we framed Cole's work within the context of the sublime because, at least in my opinion, the presence of the sublime is what makes his paintings more extraordinary than a typical landscape.
Speaker: So the film actually opens with a definition of the sublime that was written in a treatise from 1757 by the Irish statesman and philosopher Edmund Burke.
Speaker: And it's interesting to think about Burke
Speaker: writing this treatise at the time because this was the Enlightenment era.
Speaker: So his peers and his contemporaries were thinking about rationality and reason and restraint.
Speaker: And he's trying to articulate this intensely emotional and psychological and spiritual phenomenon that
Speaker: That just overtakes us.
Speaker: And I know that I personally have experienced what that feels like when I see particular works of art, when I listen to certain music, and like whole when I'm out in nature.
Speaker: And so it was important that we try to convey
Speaker: how powerful the sublime is and how powerful a sublime experience is and the extent to which it does overtake your reason.
Speaker: Cole was not necessarily painting with reference to the sublime, but because he believed that he was essentially communing with the divine in nature, you really do sense that extra spark of something in his landscapes.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: How would you say the sublime fits into your impression or your interpretation or experience of the course of empire?
Speaker: It's sublime in that he's tackling one of the loftiest subjects I can imagine, the rise and decline of an entire empire.
Speaker: To me, the sublime...
Speaker: relates to these really big subjects that kind of dwarf us.
Speaker: They make us feel really insignificant and small.
Speaker: Space and time, death and nature, as I say in the film.
Speaker: And so Cole's representation of the rise and decline of an entire civilization over the course of who knows how many years
Speaker: centuries, who knows how many millennia.
Speaker: Clearly, it's a long span of time.
Speaker: But the fact that it ends in desolation and death is sublime to me.
Speaker: I'm curious.
Speaker: We talked a little bit about the political environment that Cole was operating in.
Speaker: The patron you mentioned, Lumen Reed, presumably had his own reasons for wanting to support Cole's work on this.
Speaker: But beyond that, Cole clearly understood at some stage, at least, that these works were going to be seen by many people.
Speaker: And I wonder if you have a sense of who that intended audience was and what Cole might have wanted to say to them through these works.
Speaker: I think everyone, I think humankind, but particularly the American people, because he was living through this period of manifest destiny.
Speaker: And it was a warning.
Speaker: It was just a cautionary tale of what happens when we become too big for our boots and our hubris takes over.
Speaker: And, you know, as I had mentioned before, he...
Speaker: lived pre-Darwin and he was very religious.
Speaker: And he thought that when he came across this wilderness in the United States, that it had remained unchanged since God created it.
Speaker: And so what could be a more offensive act of desecration than to destroy God's creation in the name of expansion?
Speaker: Hmm.
Speaker: So we're talking about a British-born man who immigrated as a teenager to America.
Speaker: His painting style was developed entirely in America.
Speaker: But of course, the aesthetic connections between America and Britain in the early 19th century were still very, very close.
Speaker: You just mentioned the Hudson River School as being the sort of the first distinctively American school of art.
Speaker: And I wonder if you could say a few more words about that.
Speaker: How did this style start to diverge from British traditions and norms?
Speaker: Well, it's interesting learning about Cole's life because it doesn't seem like he lived that long ago, and yet he was there during the formative years of the United States.
Speaker: So when he came to the U.S., there were artists, but they were working very much in the style of other European artists.
Speaker: So it wasn't until Cole comes to the Hudson Valley that he imbues these landscapes with that sense of the sublime.
Speaker: He creates this new flavor of landscape that goes beyond just the typical landscape painting.
Speaker: He's not documenting the environment.
Speaker: He's recording how it feels to be in it.
Speaker: There is this emotional and spiritual element to his landscapes.
Speaker: And, you know, interestingly, in being British and pursuing a better life in the U.S., he was quintessentially American.
Speaker: Would he have painted another landscape with as much reverence if he lived in Canada or the Caribbean?
Speaker: Probably.
Speaker: But his story is indelibly linked to New York.
Speaker: And he's remembered as the father or founder of the Hudson River School, which, even though it seems outdated today and it's easy to pass by a Hudson River School landscape and just...
Speaker: Pay it no mind.
Speaker: It was a radical and pioneering American movement at the time.
Speaker: And the concept of an American art movement in itself was that was radical.
Speaker: So if listeners are going to remember just one thing about Thomas Cole, what would you like that to be?
Speaker: Give his work a chance.
Speaker: He, and I'm actually going to quote Jason on this one, he was in communication with a higher power and you can sense it.
Speaker: Landscape painting is an easy genre to disregard.
Speaker: It's not always very exciting.
Speaker: It can seem stuffy and old fashioned.
Speaker: But his landscapes are different.
Speaker: He just connected so profoundly with his surroundings.
Speaker: And it's funny because if you compare Cole's work to that of his protege, Frederick Church, for example, you can see that Church was far more technically skilled than Cole.
Speaker: And frankly, his paintings are more impressive.
Speaker: But Cole's paintings just have this undeniable passion that make them really inspiring to look at and almost more timeless because of it.
Speaker: So I wonder now that we've talked a little bit about the aesthetic context in which Cole was working, the influences that affected the style and composition of his paintings, with all of that intellectual work done and with the emotional context of the sublime that we've mentioned earlier,
Speaker: Taking all that into consideration, when you go to New York Historical Society and when the paintings are in fact on view and so you can stand in front of them and look up at them, how does that feel for you?
Speaker: It feels humbling in a word.
Speaker: I think it's important to find things in life, music, books, artworks, that bring you peace and give you hope.
Speaker: Cole is long gone, but his fears and his worries are pretty much always relevant, particularly to us today, which makes me feel less alone in my own anxieties about the future.
Speaker: So that connection is really incredible.
Speaker: But beyond that, how amazing is it to even momentarily connect with another person through the centuries?
Speaker: Cole has had such an impact on my life.
Speaker: And I can only hope that he would think that we've done him justice with our film.
Speaker: Well, Rachel Gould, thanks so much for talking with me today.
Speaker: Thank you.
Speaker: Today's episode was edited and produced by Sammy Delati with social media and web support from Sarah Bellotta.
Speaker: Sierra Holt is our digital media and editorial associate.
Speaker: Our music is by Trap Rabbit and I'm Ben Miller.
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