Well There‘s Your Problem - Bonus Episode 37 PREVIEW: Art Nouveau Architecture

Episode Date: January 17, 2024

It's the Peacock Room Full episode on our PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/posts/art-but-its-new-96686653

Art and architecture being moral starts to break down at the end of the century through like a lot of movements, one of which was called aestheticism, which this is complicated. I don't want to get into it, but I think we could get into a fun moment in art, which is the peacock room. Yeah, you mentioned this in passing the last recording we did, which may come up after this, which is the the go ship episode about how we don't really have rooms anymore. And that's one of the things that like sound insane, but it's a hundred percent. Have you ever been in a restaurant? Like we just don't have, we just, no, there's just no dividers. There's just nothing. I can just hear people scream in a restaurant. I, yeah, but

not only the sense of like we don't have divided spaces, but you don't have divided spaces with a sense of like, intentionality or like, holistic, like design anymore. Sure. When was the last time someone built a room that would be worth transplanting in its entirety into an art museum? Have you seen that?

I have a group. It's a copy of the masterpiece. Probably like 1880 something. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, we're going, for instance, have the ex room anymore unless it's like the name of a conference room, you know? Yeah, oh, there's a hair salon near my house called And it makes you want to just immediately dock yourself. Yeah. Oh shit. Yeah. Thank you. Bleep that Devon. Please. Thank you This may be one of the last rooms to be built when I think about it now.

The peacock room. You know, there's a lot of social and cultural change that changes the attitudes around art to be less of a moral thing. But we've got to talk about the peacock room. So there's this guy, Frederick Richards Layland. He owned a bunch of big ships for the transatlantic trade. Is this like the Hormuz you need. This is like it was the the Layland line, I believe it was called. Notably later went on to build an own a ship called the SS California. The one that the one that didn't help the Titanic. I was flashing back to a nine hour Titanic episode.

Yeah, but this is well before that. This is the 1880s. So 1870s, excuse me. Frederick Richards, Leyland, had a big house. He liked art, especially it to be a communist. In the 1870s, when people were building the peacockroom. He didn't want the peacockroom. OK.

This is taking a turn already. Yeah. So he liked art. He liked contemporary art in the 1870s. What was all the rage was Japanese art or Anglo-Japanese art? Is the Japanese were finally talking to people and everyone's like, oh, let's get this exotic Japanese crap, you know? Make the country be open. Stop having it be closed. Yeah, of course. Yeah, exactly. You know this weeb stuff started really early. Oh, be closed. Yeah, of course. Exactly. You know, this weeb stuff started really early. Oh, Jesus. So he hires Richard Norman Shaw to redo his entire house. Well, he was on vacation.

Richard Charmin, Norman Shaw was an architect. I didn't put anything in notes about him. I don't know anything. I, someone, maybe there's something important. He doesn't fucking like changing rooms game show thing. Well, he's just like, I'm going to come back and see it for the first time when it's done. Yeah, he does extreme home makeover to himself. Yeah. When you're rich, you can just do this. Yeah, so he interests the architect, Richard Norman Shaw. In trust, Thomas Jekyll is a guy who does a lot of Anglo-Japanese art.

He's cool. I'm not sure about his partner though. He's some kind of doctor. Yeah. To do the interiors, right? And then he goes on to his doctor. Jackal's a doctor, Mr. No, you should be.

You have to believe that also. I cannot express enough how much I need to make rent. So Thomas Jackal, great expense, furnishes one of Layland's dining rooms with this 16th century leather wall paper that had been painted with tutor roses, which had originally been part of the dowry of Catherine of Erragant. I let the wallpapers feel like viscerally wrong to me. That's some yellow king share as far as I'm concerned. Very, very, very, very expensive. He paid 1,000 pounds for it. A lot of money back then.

Yeah, no kidding. Actually, I can do that in the background for you. We died in the lunatic asylum. That's good. Oh, we'll get to that. Yeah, that will happen. This room destroys so many people. I, I, one of the things I like about you since we're, since this is a bonus, I can do it in the

hell I want is that it's the sort of gleeful madman thing you occasionally have going on. I love it very dearly. Yeah, I love you very dearly. I hate this room so much. This room is so good. Liam, this is a best run 150,000 pounds today. That's not a man. That's that's deposit for a small house outside of you. You've got to also consider it was a placeless historical artifact. So Jack will also had a bunch of cabinetry constructed to display Layland's China collection. Oh my god. Sort of blue and white China that was very expensive today, but you know, also you can

get reproductions for nothing now. The focal point of the room was originally a large painting entitled The Princess from the Land of Porcelain by none other than James McNeil Whistler, the center of the room, which is shit. That painting is behind the camera in this shot because it is the least important thing that's about to happen. Okay. This is another, it's in the next slide, but it's another Anglo-Japanese, you know, painting,

it's the wee-Japanese, you know, painting, uh, it's the weab stuff. Yeah. Jackal almost finishes the whole composition. Then he falls ill and he has to stop working on the room. So he entrusts his friend, James McNeil Whistler, with finishing the room. James McNeil Whistler takes a look at the priceless 16th century wallpaper and thinks it contrasts poorly with his painting. Oh, no. So he suggests that Jackal, we could touch up these roses with a bit of yellow, a bit of gold leaf. You know, it's going to, it's going to look a little bit better.

And people didn't have the same ideas about historic preservation back then that we do. Now, so Jackal's like, yeah, that's a good idea. And Whistler gets to work. And he starts painting. He starts painting, he starts painting. He has no idea of like the real plan or idea of the final product. And in the end, the room was now no longer covered in roses. It was now entirely blue and gold and covered in peacocks. All right. What a way to be lent to mad, that's bad. So Layland,

the owner of the mansion, returns her medication and sees the room is completely livid. He hates it. It's the worst thing he's seen in this. And so, and so he, you know, I keep in mind, Whistler is painted over the expensive wallpaper. He's painted over all of the cabinetry, all this blue and gold is his. There's one weird guy has just arted all over your shit. Yeah, he arted everywhere. He arted off the walls. He arted on the floor on the ceiling.

You know, so he he was livid. He was a gas. He hated it. He cut off the contract with Whistler and what Whistler did because the room wasn't finished. Is he broken and finished it? Yet anyone on the show just be normal. I really respect this actually. This is fantastic. You don't tell me when I'm done

with the art. I tell me when I'm done with the art. So in that process, he finishes this large mural back there of two peacocks fighting, which is art and money or the story of the room. That's what it's entitled. Imagine the next morning you come down, you find more peacocks have been added. And just the guys like half, because it's whatever, 18, who gives you 17. 1870, yeah, yeah. And you just guys struggle on cookie enough, okay, to kill Freud. Like two paper. Just like you don't understand my vision.

Yeah. All right. So Thomas Jackle finds out about this. He's also shocked and appalled at what's happened. And you know, he looks at the room. He's like, what the hell has happened? He goes back to his own studio and he's found on the floor covered in gold leaf. Like, yeah, I'll add her.

I'm just going to see the royals. This guy's psyche. I've seen gold figure. Yeah, he goes, he goes mad. He just goes completely mad afterwards. Yeah. Jesus. Whistler loses the contract and declared bankruptcy, but he had a sense of humor about it because when the, when the creditors came to his house

to seize his assets to pay back Leyland, he has painted and displayed in the main hall of his house a large picture of Leyland depicted as a horrible peacock man. Yeah. Yeah. This is just, I'm pretty sure this is just the first 25 minutes of bio shock actually this kind of like this this For a long campaign of psychological torture This is this is and they and they say art can only have a like serve capital. No, no, no

It can also drive them in sir beef. It's just a Rick hot fresh. Layland's wife divorced him for Whistler. All right. So you see I'm making a chord for that. Interesting argument. However, I have to pick said myself as the chat and you as the horrible peacock back. I just spat all over myself, dude. And this is, we hope this is one of the original one of one of the the early, you know, manifestations of the modern concept of art for art's sake. Right? And for psychological warfare, beef's sake. Yeah. Yeah.

But the art worked really good. Yeah. It caused a lot of visceral reactions, which is what, which is what you want to do. Yeah. I'll ask you to device this pretty funny. What do you want to do? Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'll ask the torture device. It's pretty funny. Laylin still like he didn't alter the room. Eventually like he passed away, divorced and miserable. Well, we show this room isn't like a cost.

Oh, it's cursed. So it was purged. The room was purchased. Lockstock and barrel from Layland's airs in 1904 by Charles Lang Freer. He installed it in his own mansion in Detroit, later donated it and the rest of his collection to the Smithsonian Institute. Today, you can visit the room in the basement of the Freer gallery. So what's the situation like? Well, I've been there and I am the person who I am Not not concluding anything from this yet need to know happened to friar first Maybe once they removed it from from the situation then it was normal, you know

I want to think it's not a cognito hazard. I'm pretty sure it's only a cognito hazard if you don't like it. I quite like it. Just to say that to like insulate myself a bit. I don't like it, but I find it's used as psychological warfare. Pretty funny. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I do like the sort of I am going to go broke and divorced because I'm just gonna keep painting. Nobody can stop me.

I'm going to lose my wife to the painter who I call. Yeah, that's what I'm about to ask. Just, maybe if it's it. Again, he calls Soijak. Yeah. What a terrible phrase. This is the painting that was supposed to be the focal point of the room.

The painting was me shambling towards the microphone to record this podcast. Yes. James McNeil Whistler painted the painting and then redid the entire room around it. This is sort of, you know, it's that and the China collection, of course. But yeah, so this is the state of art in the 1870s, which is it will drive you mad. You seldom see this now. You seldom get like all the drives you insane, you know? Yeah, I, you know, there's, there, there's a certain extent to which people have been insulated to this stuff, probably on a count of live leak.

Anyway, you know, I used to be, you could just have a room in your house that would just ruin you. True. I mean, like, again, though, you don't really have rooms anymore. Like I was, I was saying this before we started recording, but I remember as when I was a kid,

I was, I was saying this before we started recording, but I remember as when I was a kid, I was in St. Petersburg, and I saw the amber room, which is a like a Zara Stera sort of like a room made entirely of Baltic amber, all the furniture is inlaid and stuff. And it's a reproduction, and there's a sign outside that's like, this is sort of a reproduction done at the expense of the German government. We're sorry. And you go, well, why? And the answer is because the Nazis stole a room. Because again, this was just like our room was a sort of dismantleable, portable thing. And they put it in like boxes as part of the art looting. And then they just lost it. It's probably just been destroyed forever. But maybe some billionaire just has an amber room like the real one now.

I don't know. Yeah, just somewhere. We'll actually talk about a building that that happened to later in this podcast. Building theft. Building theft. And it was, but anyway, so this is sort of the breakdown of the connection between art and morality, exemplified in one room, which occurred in the late 1800s. of the connection between art and morality exemplified in one room, which occurred in the late 1800s.