Within Reason - #89 The Cultural Tutor - The Philosophy and Ethics of Art

Episode Date: November 28, 2024

Sheehan Quirke is the Cultural Tutor, a writer with 1.7 million followers on X. His work on art, history, and architecture is some of the most widely-enjoyed in the world. He writes a newsletter called the Areopagus. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

She and Quirk, welcome back to the show. Thank you, Mr. O'Connor. It's a pleasure to be here. What socks do you have on today? They're not red today. I've gone for something somewhat darker. Yeah, there were some choice comments about your decision in our last podcast. Well, I think they're more like choice comments about the positioning of the camera that you decided to set up where it was. But the less said about that, the better. Sure. On with the show. Do you think there's such a thing as bad art?

Well, that's quite the question to begin with. I hate to say it, but I think to answer that, we have to ask, what is art? And I know that's the kind of question that people of your ilk philosophers like to talk about. And I think that kind of question is actually one reason why a lot of people struggle to get into art, because I try to enjoy painting, and you're here sort of wondering whether if I spilled some wine on my white shirt and was sort of in the shape of a dog, whether that was a work of art or not. But anyway, I don't think we need to get into all that. and so to answer the question of whether there's bad art

what is art in the first place and there's a little sort of thought experiment I like to do which tells us something quite important about the nature of art so imagine if I held before you a blank piece of paper I mean I have one here so I held this before you if I set fire to this what do you think your reaction would be I'd be worried for this fine building but outside of that I wouldn't think very much of it

sure okay and now imagine if this on this piece of paper there was something with a very nice pattern on it. Just something, you know, simple, some triangles and squares, but it made a pretty pattern, and I burnt it. What do you think your reaction? It would probably depend on whether this was one-of-a-kind handmade or if it was just mass-produced, but I think I still wouldn't mind. But it might be a shame to lose something that's kind of pretty bad.

You think I all what a shame. Anyway, third question, what if I had a photograph of your mother, or a drawing of your mother, for that matter, and I burnt it in front of you, what would your reaction be? Well, my reaction would probably be to laugh because I know you're just doing it to make a point, but I think if you went and did that to someone on the street,

they wouldn't be very happy about it. But I wonder, is that to do with the thing itself or with what you're trying to say by doing it? Well, this is my point. So I think there we've discovered essentially two kinds of art. I mean, there are only really two kinds of graphic art. When I say graphic art, I mean sort of visual art. Let's say painting for now, but it could be drawing.

whatever it is. In the first case, if it's a nice pattern, it's essentially abstract. Something that's just pleasing in and of itself. For reasons, you know, to do the natural proportion and colour, you know, how sort of orange and blue go very nicely together, or purple and gold, and then certain shapes and certain patterns, they're very pleasing to us, regardless of what they are, it doesn't matter. Now, the second kind with a photograph of your mother that I was burning, the reason it bothers you is because, well, there's a representation of your mother on there and you attach some significance to that. The point being, art is essentially representational.

Art is always in reference to something else. It's trying to say something. So in that case, what is trying to do is, well, portray your mother and perhaps say something about her. So I think you can essentially define art as a language, right? Especially in the representational sense. It's trying to say something and it's trying to say it in a particular way. And then you can evaluate art, whether it's good or,

bad based on what it is trying to say and how well it says it. And the reason I like this is because one of the biggest sort of questions that always comes up with a good art versus bad art, how can we judge it as well? What about fascist propaganda? What about Nazi art? We say, oh, you know, it could be very well made. It could be technically very impressive and, you know, the beautiful draftsmanship or whatever it is, but it's obviously saying something bad that we think is morally wrong. And it seems quite, it's very difficult to reconcile the fact that something can be technically impressive, but equally morally wrong. So when you think about art

in that way, as a language, it's trying to say something, and the question is, what is it saying, and how does it say it? You can judge it on the first ground, the moral ground and on the second ground, which is, I guess, technical. And I think that's a pretty simple way to answer the question of whether or not art is good or bad. But it just threw up some very interesting questions, I think. I mean, we're in a church right now, and I think religious art is particularly interesting When we think about the most famous religious art in the world, one of your favorite pieces of art, maybe your favorite, David by Michelangelo.

Now, I'm curious if you think that is a good work of art. I mean, it's a bit of a, I suppose, a silly question, but tell me. It's interesting. David is probably the most spectacular man-made item that I've ever seen. I think it's been my favorite sculpture since the first time I saw it in Florence before that it was Rodin's prodigal son but the interesting thing about both of those

is that there are multiple versions with Rodan's prodigal son if you see one in London or you see one in Paris it's kind of the same thing with David because this is I don't really know how Rodan sculptures work but it's some kind of cast

it gets like replicated somehow right and so there's no like original one Yeah, he liked to make them with clay with his hands, often on a smaller scale, and then his assistants actually in his workshop, but then produce them on a larger scale in bronze or even in marble, and then they'd be cast several times. Right, and so when you go and see, like, Rodin's thinker, if you see the big one in the Rodan Museum in Paris,

it kind of feels like you're seeing the real one, but there's also one, like, in the Vatican, and there's probably one in the VNA or somewhere, and you kind of feel like you're seeing the same thing, and it's pretty beautiful. David also has multiple versions because there are copies of David there's a copy of David in the VNA

the Victoria and Albert Museum in London there's a copy of David in Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas which is so recently one of the few life-size replicas of David but they don't have the same effect because there's something about picturing

the block of marble and Michelangelo releasing the sculpture from that from that block of art, from that block of marble, which there's something about the skill, there's something about the technical proficiency that I think is quite marvelous. So probably my favorite sculpture in the world,

yes, David, I like it a lot. But I don't think it's just the representation of David because when I see the copy in Caesar's Palace in Vegas, I always find it more funny than impressive. Sure. Well, this is kind of, to my point, somewhat about what makes a work of our good what it's trying to say and how well it says it clearly whatever michael angelo was trying to say he said very very well i mean i i haven't seen the real

thing i must confess i've seen the replica in the vna and it's simply astounding the scale of it um i really felt like i was standing in front of a of a giant you know you sort of read in in the bible or you know in all of literate and literary history folk tales from around the world you read about giants and i you know i never knew what it means meant to stand before a giant until I was there with David, and it was just a colossal man. He's more than five meters tall, which people don't realize. I mean, one of the reasons people don't realize that we may get into, which is that they usually just see photographs of it cut off from any context. Anyway, before we get to that, when you look at David, though,

when you look at David, my clang goes, David, are you seeing the biblical king David and thinking about his, him preparing to fight Goliath? Or are you seeing the work of a man called Michelangelo, this wonderful Italian artist, and you're admiring his work? And you're not thinking about the biblical king. That's a question. You know what I'm driving at. We were in the V&A together, and we saw this replica of David. And I think I was saying to you, like, it's really cool, but it's got dust on it. And you should really see the real thing because it's just such a masterful sculpture and you were saying look at the sign news you can see the sign news and the veins on his hand isn't so impressive the way he's sounding on the muscles and you had a go at me

because you said I was I was sort of worshipping the wrong thing if you like well I wasn't have a go you weren't wrong to do that it is absolutely astounding technically which is what he said what he wanted to say very very well but what I don't think my my understanding is and certainly the fact that when I asked you what you thought of it you gave me a litany of reasons why loved it, not one of them had anything to do with David and Goliath and the story that was being depicted. In which case, I think, by those metrics, you can say that David, maybe a brilliant work of art in some sense, but I don't think it's good religious art. It's certainly not good Christian art. I don't know how many people who've ever looked at that statue, the most

famous statue in the world, I think, probably alongside the thinker. I don't know how many people have ever looked at that and been drawn to sort of feel a greater, I don't know what the word would be to understand more clearly the nature of David in his story. Surely, I mean, no doubt some people have. But I think that David and certain other works like that from the Renaissance, when you really think about them, even maybe Michelangelo's Sealing of the Sistine Chapel, a lot of Raphael's Madonna's too often we draw on to admire the technical skill of his artist. I can't believe how realistic it is. I can't believe how beautiful this is. But the truth of the story they're trying to represent, what they're trying to tell us, sort of get.

left behind. And I think you can make a pretty convincing case that it's maybe it's good technical art, maybe it's good pagan art. David is probably the greatest ever pagan statue that's been made, right? Because it's essentially it's what do we look at when we see it? We see man at his finest and his greatest, you know, completely naked. It wasn't the first, I don't think, full-sides. Donatello, I think, did the first full-sized nude male statue since antiquity shortly before Michelangelo. Obviously, Michelangelo took that to his six. extreme with his David. What we see is the return of classical culture, the return of the Greco-Roman ideal. The view of man and human kind that you get in Christian writings, I think of Thomas Acempis,

particularly, you know, and what he says about man being essentially worth nothing. You know, we're just, we're going to pass off this earth very soon. I don't get any of that from David. And I don't think anybody does to me. It's a fine pagan work. But not there's nothing wrong with that in particular. I'm not putting my, I'm not selling out my stall on either side of that argument. But I think it's quite important, it's not some people usually think about when they see these famous works of art. And it doesn't how the David is so, we're so over-exposed to it. It's very hard to look at it as if we've never seen it before, which I suppose is true of a lot of other works of art. That's why I like sculpture, because there's something about the size of it that just isn't replicable.

It's the same thing with architecture. It's why people travel to see these buildings. People travel to see paintings as well, but I don't know how other people feel, but I sometimes am a bit underwhelmed going to a gallery and seeing a famous painting. It's cool to be in its presence, but you're not enjoying the painting. You're enjoying staring at the actual bit of canvas that Da Vinci touched, which is a different experience. There's something John Berger pointed out, right?

He's like, when you go to a museum, you're no longer enjoying the art. You're enjoying the experience, the novelty. Exactly. This is something that's I was going to say, actually, with this little thought experiment with a bit of paper. Imagine if I held up a bit of paper and there's some scribbles on it and I burnt it. But if I had this bit of paper in my pocket, I brought it out, it was covered in scribbles and I burnt it. And then I said, oh, Pablo Picasso made that. You'd probably be horrified, right, that I'd burn something by Picasso. So art does also have this, be honest, representational side, I think it also has this, it becomes an artifact, right? Which even regardless of what it is and what it's saying, the fact that it is this historical item that appears. is to have some sort of, I think, you know, famously, Walter Benjamin, you know, in that, in that, the work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction, this like unbelievably famous art essay, even though a lot of it is really about cinema rather than painting. But he talks about the aura you get when you see a work of art in the pigment, as it were, or in the marble. And he read about how that was kind of demolished by photographic reproduction, which you touched

on already. But yes, you were saying when you go to a gallery, you know, when you go to wherever the hell it is, to Paris and you go to Louvre, you're not doing it because you really want to go and admire all the wonderful works I've got in there. You're doing it so you can see, you can say, I've stood in the same room as whichever given painting it is. Yeah, that's why often, I think if you ask somebody after going to a museum what their favourite piece of art was, it almost feels a bit stupid and naive to say, oh, I really liked that Mona Lisa. People tend to say after visiting a gallery, oh, do you remember that one we saw of that thing because they didn't they'd never seen it before because what they're seeing is an

image for the first time and that's what galleries once once were it's difficult to i mean it sounds simple but it's difficult to keep in mind and remember that not very long ago it was impossible to see these paintings unless you went and saw them i i mean like impossible to even see a representation of them because the best you had was somebody else trying to paint it which is like is is obviously going to be totally different. Photographic reproduction totally changed that. I've often thought about the question like, you know the Mona Lisa was stolen? Sure. And then it was recovered. Partly the reason it's so famous, I hear. Suppose that we discovered that this whole time we got the wrong one. And the real Mona Lisa that Da Vinci painted was somewhere else. Or there's

another Mona Lisa in some other gallery in Spain somewhere, right, that was supposedly painted alongside it. But suppose we discovered this other Mona Lisa, which is the real one? And the one in the Louvre is a fake. Which one is the Mona Lisa? Obviously, naively, it's the one that Da Vinci painted, but which one is the iconic one? Which one is the one that's on all of the images you've ever seen? Which is the one that's famous? Which is the one that's like in all of the films, all the television programs, all the history books, every single time you've ever seen that photo, the iconic image you've seen will have been this fake Mona Lisa. And in a way, I'd kind of rather go and see that now than the other one if what I'm going for is the novelty of experiencing

this famous piece of art rather than a bit of art itself. We'll get back to the cultural tutor in just a moment. But first, do you struggle to focus? I do. My mind can be all over the place when I'm supposed to be getting productive work done. That is why today's sponsor, Brain FM, was created. Brain FM is an app created for professionals seeking productivity boosts. They create science-backed music, which will help you focus better, sleep deeper, and relax, and relax easier. Back when I was studying for exams, even in somewhere like a library, I found it really difficult to focus without something in my ears protecting me from distractions. That's where I really could have done with something like Brain FM. Opening the app, I have four options. Focus, relax, sleep and meditate.

So choosing focus, I can then specialize. Do I want deep work, motivation, creativity, learning or light work? Whatever I choose, Brain FM is going to give me some music that's tailored to my state of mind and the kind of work that I'm trying to get done. And I can customize the kind of music that I'll hear, either by choosing the musical genre or by selecting the different kinds of natural sounds that will play alongside it. And I can even customize the level of neural effect of the music. So you might want to pick low if you're sensitive to sound and easily get headaches, or high if you suffer from attention difficulties like ADHD. And Brain FM is the only music company supported by the National Science Foundation to improve focus. So help unlock your brain's full potential free for 30 days by going to brain.fm forward slash within reason. That's brain.fm forward slash within reason for 30 days free. That said, back to the cultural tutor. The funny thing is, I think that's already the case with so many works. I mean, even that the, let's say it is, let's say it is, maybe this has happened, but let's say it hasn't. The Mona Lisa in the Louvre isn't the same painting that that Leonardo painted really back in what 15, 1504, I think he started it when he was back in Florence.

looking for a job and some guy said, oh, you know, I'd like you to paint a picture of my wife for me. It's not the same painting that he made. I mean, first, most obviously, given, you know, the odd yellow. It's green, yellow-y-green glow. That was, I think, I think it's because of some sort of varnish, protective varnish that was applied in the 17th century when it was in France. They were trying to preserve it because Leonardo famously used these very sort of novel methods of painting and his paintings. All his stuff deteriorated really quickly. So whatever he had in front of him, you know, some say he never even finished it, you know, when he died and he was, he gave it to, or he'd already given it to King Francis the first of France.

Whatever he finally finished working on is not the same thing we're looking at now. It's physically deteriorated and also been meddled with to the point that even now it's, it's not what it was in the past. And the best example of that, I think, is probably actually the Last Supper, one of the two or three most famous paintings in the world, again, by Leonardo. It's one of the most iconic, it's one of these iconic images from Marr that have sort of entered the world of popular culture. It gets parried again and again and again. That painting is not, it's almost wrong to say it's by Leonardo himself. You know, he finished it in the 1490s.

Well, where did he paint it? He was painting it in what was going to be the tomb. I think the family tomb of for Ludovico Sforza, who is the Duke of Milan. Anyway, the tomb never got built and ended up getting turned into a refectory, the sort of dining room for monks and it was on the wall. And obviously when it's in a kitchen and gets covered in grime and dirt and a muck and smoke, and then it starts to deteriorate and people try and restore it. And then someone actually, a few decades later, decides to put a door through that wall,

so hence the feet of Christ are missing from that painting. then it gets flooded the building and then I think during the Napoleonic wars that particular church the Santa Maria della Grazia I think it's called and was used as a stables

for cavalry you know then the Second World War it was bombed and the whole thing was destroyed basically but that one wall miraculously survived with the painting on it damaged somewhat of course and then in the 70s

I think 70s and 80s there was a major restoration of the painting so after all these steps after all these years and years of ever being damaged and restored and people, obviously every new generation thinks, okay, now we're going to be the ones to restore Leonardo's original vision, we know what he wanted, we're going to put it back to place, but back into the condition it should have always been in. I think we can't really look at that painting and say this is the less of a by Leonardo himself. So what is it then? Well, it's sort of

a fact simile, not a fact somebody, sorry, it's a, if I may say it's a palimpset, of one generation after another. I mean, I don't think, I'm not trying to devalue the art. I'm just trying to put it in context. I think it's important to bear this in mind that art is and always must be, even in the age of photographic reproduction, still is essentially bounded by physical constraints. Unlike films, well, even that's not necessarily true.

I guess films, you get them on literal physical film or even digital. But let's say the thing about a painting or a statue is that it is a physical object, Even when we photograph it, the photographs change from minute to minute day to day depending. I mean, if you Google now, any famous painting or any painting whatsoever, there'll be thousands of images of it. And it's taken Mona Lisa or something, you know, we might as well since we've mentioned it. It's going to look different in every single photo, the lighting, the color grading. I mean, I'm not a technical guy. I don't really know how cameras work, but obviously all the different settings that you have with a camera added to that where the person is stood with.

and they're taking it, the glare, the lighting, the time of day, the shadows, all of that means every single photo of the Mona Lisa also looks different, and then over time it deteriorates as well. And, you know, it kind of touches on what you were saying about the strangeness and the importance of seeing something in person, but even then when you see a painting in person, it can change as well. I was at this really wonderful, there, there's a really wonderful, an exhibition at the Tate recently for the expressionists. And in one of the rooms, they have this painting by Kandinsky, an abstract painting. It was on its own in a single room, but the lighting was on a timer. And over the course of 10 minutes, it slowly changed. It started

out, I think, pretty intense, cold white, and slowly, slowly descended into a much warmer, slightly dimmer yellow. And the whole point was to show how a painting literally changes before your eyes depending on on how it's on how it's lit um i'm sort of going on a bit here but but my point is that whatever we think of as a stationary physical fixed permanent painting this work of art by so and so by by such and such an artist that really isn't the case it's this ever living ever-changing um thing in the case of the um the the last supper it's it's an obvious case where i mean the thing's been bombed and it's been restored and it's been the feet have gone missing or whatever um i i don't know like i'm i'm trying to think what is it that we're that we're left

with are we left with a bunch of later a bunch of later people's interpretation of leonado are we are we left with sort of a glimpse of leonado like what is it that we're left with I mean, do you think it's accurate to say if you were doing a tour? This is Leonardo's Last Supper. If we were in that building and I said, oh, who painted this? Would you say Leonardo did? I suspect I would say, well, Leonardo painted this and several others have since made their own additions to it. I mean, I don't think this is something that's too troubling.

The same is true of any given building, right, or take a cathedral or a church. If I said to you, when was Westminster Abbey built? What could you possibly say? It's been added to generation after generation after generation. I don't think it takes away. But it's different because, like, a piece of art is supposed to be, you know, an artist painted this piece of art and finished it and said, voila, right? With buildings, things get added on and you might sort of change the architect's original plan,

but it's, I know, it feels different to me to something like a restoration project. there is a body of ethics around art restoration. It seems quite straightforward if you discover this old bit of art that's been a bit neglected, oh, restore it. A lot of people don't really understand the science that goes behind it. I certainly don't. But you think, well, we must have worked it out because we did it all the time. There must be some technique that we've discovered that does it accurately. Do you think that we should restore old pieces of art?

I'm inclined to agree with, as I often do even. even when I'd rather not sometimes I'm inclined to agree with John Ruskin the great Victorian art critic and writer one of the greatest that has ever been he said of buildings as well as paintings all restoration is a lie

we should never as all we can ever do is preserve we should be grateful for what has survived but to be so arrogant to think actually we are the ones who can restore it half the work of restoration is usually undoing previous restorations that's the thing about it because technology is always improving

It's always improving. And, of course, more rudimentary techniques, whatever restoration gets done, ends up leaving things which people in the future, you know, whatever we do now, 100 years from now, who knows what AI will do for art restoration. And no doubt people 50 years from now think, actually the way that was restored, wasn't quite right. I think we should be so lucky to have these things that have miraculously survived down the centuries, despite all the decades of, the amount of paintings that have nearly been lost is wonderful. So keep them as they are and hope to feel.

find in them the ghost of whatever this original artist left there. Thing is. When dilapidation occurs over a long period of time, it does feel a bit weird to undo that. It feels like we might be trespassing on the sacred. For example, the Statue of Liberty, if we were to just, you know, make it bronze again. I mean, it was originally bronze and it's iconic green. Copper, right? Yes, I'm sorry, copper, yeah.

It's iconic green color, in other words, is not how it was intended. I think that if we were to sort of clean the Statue of Lotee, so it wasn't green anymore, it would be seen as a bit of a disgrace. People would be very, very upset about it. And yet, if some vandal, when the Statue of Liberty was first unveiled, went up to it and, like, painted it green, I think people would have thought we should undo that, right? And so when the violence is inflicted by the hand of God, we sort of think it a crime to undo it. When, if it's sort of done intentionally by a human, it's the human that's committed the crime.

Like, the suffragettes slashed paintings. I can't remember which ones, but they went into galleries and they took a, took like a meekly, and slashed open this painting. It recently happened at some college in Cambridge as well, I think. A student protested slashed open a painting. And I don't think you'd look at that and say, well, let's just leave it as it is and be grateful that we still have any of it left because we can just stitch it back together again. And yet, when there's less immediacy, it's like John Ruskin says, don't even, don't even bother, don't go near because you're sort of ruining it. I mean, how long does it have to take before it becomes wrong? Sure.

I mean, I don't think we need to start sort of splitting hairs over this. I mean, obviously, yeah, if someone goes and rip something in half, sewing it back to. I don't think is what exactly he meant by restoration, what he meant is, when something has survived this long, as it is, preservation is the order of the day. And preservation can obviously mean making sure it doesn't get any further damage or no further degradation happens. But no, I don't think that's something that we need to worry about too much. Why is it that people think we should restore art in the first place? When we have like an old bit of art that's got some grime and stuff on it? Like the Sistine Chapel ceiling was restored.

When was it restored in the 20th century? In the 80s. Yeah, and so there are some photographs of the old ceiling, but they're not great photographs. But you can see how it was significantly darker. I think that didn't Picasso go to the Sistine Chapel and just think it was crap? I think that, and there have been like, there have been famous artists who've gone to the Sistine Chapel and been like, somebody famously said something like he's a good sketch artist, but not a very good painter, because it just looked sepia, essentially.

And so there's this massive restoration effort, and part of the grandeur of the 16th chapel ceiling is its vibrancy, it's the color, right? And so it seems pretty straightforward, but we should spell it out. Why is it that people think, faced with this grimy ceiling, that we should restore it?

Well, I think the reason we kind of mentioned it earlier, I think, funny enough, is because people want to see the vision of the original painter, the original artist restored to life. We have this tendency understandably perhaps to sort of worship these great painters, these great artists

and it's their vision that we want to have. We want to see what Michelangelo wanted himself to create nor what he created and has subsequently degraded or being meddled with. I mean, the funny thing is in the Sistine Chapel. On the wall you've got the last judgment which he painted about, you know, I think 30 or 40 years later.

Very, very different work of art compared to the ceiling. But anyway, after michael angelo's death and it was very controversial the painting because you know everyone was naked basically and some of it was pretty lewd as as well um and there's a few sort of in jokes isn't like a like the skin of of well you've got some bartholomew um who who you know in his according to legend was flayed alive yeah and he's always portrayed in art you know holding his flayed flayed skin beside himself michael angelo supposedly um put his own face into the face of Bartholomew's skin

and there's also some other little bits I think Midas who is portrayed in the bottom right hand corner in the underworld Michelangelo for the face of Midas painted I can't remember who it was I think it was the papal secretary

some papal secretary he'd be moaning about how long it was taking so Michelangelo puts his face onto Midas and there's a serpent clutching his his his um a place where you would not wish to be clutched by a certain male member yes indeed and i well this is kind of a separate point now but i love the fact that in this work about

we go in there some sort of creature we go in there and we think wow we're in the presence of this beautifully sacred i know isn't this deeply um a pious christian place and then you've got michaelangelo basically making jokes on the wall um behind you and poking fun at people he didn't like That's kind of a separate story. More to the restoration, because everyone was naked, it was considered incredibly inappropriate. A painter several years later was asked to paint over these nude figures. So he painted loin cloths around them to obscure their nudity. And I think, I'm not sure, but I think they've mainly since been removed.

And it may have even been in that 80s restoration when they actually removed some of these cloths. I'm not sure about that. That may you made a fact-checking there. But they have been removed. And so there's an interesting question there as well because they were added and then they were there for a long time. And anyway. So the point is fairly straightforward.

Well, we know what the artist intended for it to look like. And so we can quite easily scrape away at this stone and do so in such a way that gives us an image of what the artist intended. Arthur C. Dantau, who I think is a historian or scholar of art, asks the question, we have unfinished Michelangelo sculptures. Why don't we just finish them off? That would seem disgraceful. I think if you took these wonderful moments of sculpture, you can see it beginning to emerge from the stone.

and we say, well, we know what the artist's intended for it to look like, so why don't we finish it off for him? That would be seen as a disgrace. And I don't think just because, oh, you wouldn't do it quite as well as Michelangelo. I mean, we could get a robot to do it. We can train an AI on every single Michelangelo sculpture and get it to do it more perfectly than he could have done so himself. It's something to do with the fact that, like, that just is now the piece of art.

Oh, there's something beautiful about seeing it halfway done. There's something artistic in that. There's something that, although it was once intended to be a fully finished sculpture, the piece of art now just is this unfinished sculpture. If we're willing to say it in that direction, why not the other? Why is it that restoring something backward is an obvious thing that we should do, but restoring something forward is defacing a piece of art? Well, I think there's a problem with the question.

I think are different things, basically, is the reason why. I mean, restoring forwards is not restoring, is it? it's completing. You are going the opposite direction. I don't think that's too complicated. There's two different words, but aren't they essentially doing the same thing? No, no, you're not.

At one point, something was once completed and you want to restore it to that state of completion. In the other circumstances, something was never completed. The sculpture was finished in the mind of the artist. No, no, no, no, but not if it was left unfinished, right? But it was finished in the mind of the artist. Like the piece of art, as intended as it was,

is like this thing that exists as a concept. And I don't get me wrong, by the way, I obviously get what you're saying. But like, I'm trying to think about this as, I'm trying to break down this assumption and see if it holds. Because of course, yeah, okay, the painting once existed. I mean, the thing about the future and the past, the thing that they've got in common, unless you're a B theorist of time, is that both of them don't exist. What you have is a piece of art that does not exist, that only exists in either the mind of the artist or the mind of the people who saw it or knew what it was supposed to look like. That's the only place it exists. It's not there. And okay, it feels more natural to, you know, go back in time rather than forward in time. But I'm asking, is there actually a principal distinction? You can say, well, one's called restoration and one's called completion, but why is one of those more legitimate than the other? Why can't I say that the Sistine Chapel ceiling with all of its grime is now just a piece of art in itself? Because look at the beauty of how time, you know, exhibits its will upon even the most beautiful of art and blah, blah, blah, and how beautiful that is. But people will say, sure, but I I want to see what Michelangelo wanted it to look like.

And I could say, but look at this wonderful unfinished sculpture and how magical is. Sure, but I want to know what Michelangelo wanted it to look like. I don't think there is a difference. I mean, I'm inclined to view that even restoration is something we should be so, so, so, so cautious about. As I said, because it's a classic example of every succeeding generation believing. I'm not doubting the skill and the brilliance of the people who do this work, and often the work they do is genuinely worthwhile, the work of cleaning, for example. but we should be so, so, so cautious. For much of us, I mean, perhaps for the very reason

that you're pointing out, meddling with it, I think. Well, for me, it's a question of risk of whatever we do have, the risk of damaging it yet further. Also, it's going backwards thing, like the pyramids of Giza. If we were to just, like, restore them, like part of the beauty is how old it is. Okay, yes, exactly. Time, time works wonders.

Exactly. But I guess what I'm asking is, like, because as people probably know that the pyramids of Giza were once these perfect and covered in polished bubble and there's a small like golden pyramidion on the top as well

if we decided to sort of rebuild that and bear in mind this is architecture like you were saying with Westminster Abbey and everything like it's different from art like it's not like defacing a great artist's work it's architecture it's a building but is the restoration of the Sistine Chapel

or let's say is the is the grime accumulating on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel more akin to the dilapidation of the pyramids of Giza or to dust falling upon a sculpture that every day someone comes and cleans off to try and... I think it's a really good example. The first one, for sure.

The first example of the dilapidation over time of any historical building. Well, the funny thing is, in the past, people were much more comfortable with that idea of restoration. The Victorians themselves, of course, were when rampant around Britain, tearing apart medieval churches and rebuilding them and restoring them as they saw fit. Well, there was less sentimentality about preserving the original. I don't think it's sentimentality, I think, is almost the wrong word.

I think there's been a significant cultural shift. We live in much more of a, we live in the era of museumification, I think. You know, now, obviously, when we have some historical building, we expect ropes around it and plaques and a fence and visiting hours and tour guides. And glass to stop, just up oil for measuring. For most of history, though, is that a super favorite. Exactly. Precisely. For a painting about, I also talk about buildings as well here.

That's how we think a historical site or historical building or any historical object of any value should be preserved. For most of history, the opposite was the case. It was simply there. And it was, if you like, it was just part of the fabric of daily life. You know, the amount of stories of all these sort of famous writers, you know, in the 18th century, traveling around Europe. They would just be able to clamber up these ancient Roman buildings. buildings and hack a piece off and take it home with them. I'm not saying that's a good thing. But you see, my point is that I think in the past we didn't have this compartmentalization

of this is the present and here are all the historical things. I'm going to put them in boxes. There's history. And now we can go and sort of look at it, oh, that's very interesting, and learn about it and then go back to ordinary life. In the past, it was just one continuous spectrum. It all flowed together. And I think this, weirdly enough, it's kind of relevant to what we're saying about art. And I think, this is something I've written about a couple of times and some people liked it, some people found it a little, didn't like it so much, it's about the trouble with galleries and essentially the way, I mean, even if we put aside all this stuff about photographic reproduction and being

able to see sort of a thousand different photos than Mona Lisa, I think there's a bit of a problem with galleries. Now, as you said earlier, they're a pretty novel thing. Most galleries started as the collections of aristocrats and wealthy people going back a few centuries who would amass art and collect it and in some sense they had a private gallery and then these were eventually open to the public or donated to the public.

You know, they didn't really, galleries weren't particularly common. We certainly wouldn't have all been flocking to them until a couple hundred years ago. I mean, this year is 200 years, of course, since the London's National Gallery. Which the government bought off a private collector after he died.

Yes, exactly. But anyway, the point being, I mean, the obvious first issue with galleries, I think people know this, but it's sometimes hard to bear in mind, is that there are a very, very artificial way to see art. Most art you find in there wasn't painted to be put in a gallery. You know, the obvious example, especially given our setting, is something like an altarpiece. I mean, how could you go into a gallery and before you've got, you know, an altarpiece or a Madonna, a piece of religious art?

and whereas it was painted, literally painted specifically for the chapel. You know, you've got the candlelight and the incense and the singing and the shadows and the prayer and all the other context to, well, not to be worshipped, but to aid worshippers in the act of worship. To take that and place it in sort of a brightly lit air-conditioned gallery with tourists tiptoeing along and whispering about it and saying, isn't that pretty? Again, that I think immediately makes it very, very difficult to ever really grasp and understand what that painting was for and why it was made and how people felt about it in the past. Think of the Statue of Liberty, you mentioned.

Imagine if you put the Statue of Liberty in some sort of colossal gallery. You know, imagine some future civilization comes along, finds this buried beneath the sea, and then they put it in a big gallery. People go and look at it, wow, this is that famous Statue of Liberty. And the feeling they get seen it in the gallery would be nothing like seeing it. it's where it stands. I mean, I mean, you've been to New York and you've seen this Statue of Liberty, right? I mean, this sort of symbol of, it is the ultimate symbol of the United States. And it's the entry point. Precise the entry point. It's what you

see as you arrive. You're going there for, in search of a better life from, let's say, you know, the old world and it's all plague-ridden disease and horrible. You can just, you know, what you believe to be a great, big, beautiful future. And there's that statue welcoming you in. And it's still there today, still doing that. The sheer weight and it's meaning and it's purpose is evident, right? You put that in a gallery. There may be a little plaque describing it. Well, there's the poem. There's the poem that's inscribed on, I think, the inside of the Statue of Liberty, which describes her as mother of exiles. Yes. It's the poetry of what she's supposed to represent. I mean, she's the statue of liberty, right? Indeed. It's so much tied up in

where she is. Indeed. Exactly. And so the point is, I think for most of history, that is what art was like. I mean, rather than being sort of compartmentalized into galleries as a place where you go and sort of do art, now let's go and do some art this afternoon. That's how it feels, I think, when you go into gallery and you're looking at paintings. And I think that's why people sometimes struggle to get into it, because they feel the sort of pressure about art. There's so much, you know, nonsense that surrounds it, so much art speak, so much

gibberish. And, you know, before you can even look at a painting, you've got things telling you about all these isms and ists and all these movements and historical content. and you think, bloody, you know, I need to do a PhD before I can bloody look at this thing and enjoy it. For most of history, art was just diffused throughout society, wherever you went. David itself was originally supposed to be placed on the Duomo in Florence. It was too heavy to lift up there, so they put it instead.

It was supposed to be on the roof, right? Yeah, exactly, exactly. The cathedral. Indeed. So instead, they put it outside, but it was too heavy. Couldn't put it up there, so instead they put it outside the town hall. So David wasn't made to be in a gallery. It was made to be a public work.

of art, simply to adorn the streets of the city. And that's a hell of a difference between something that you go and see to say, I'm going to look at David. It is simply there. They still have a replica there. They do, no, I'm aware. They were a place where, not where David was originally supposed to go, but that second place, there is a replica, another life-sized replica.

I remember that's the first one I saw when I was in Florence. I see this replica and I was almost disappointed that I'd seen it because I thought, oh, that's a shame. It's sort of spoiled a bit for me. it actually hadn't at all. I was still just as blown away. But it was a different experience. And I think if you'd have swapped them over, I'm not sure that I would have known. The difference, yeah. But it would have felt different. But exactly. So in the feeling of seeing such a like David, rather than being sort of sequestered into this place, as I say, with ropes and plaques and mirrors and all of that, it's just simply a part of the streetscape.

I think art view like that is, is, you don't get that from a gallery. And the trouble is that that's what art has always. always been. And this chair we're sitting in, very, very nice chair. This is in some sense a work of art. It's a work of the decorative arts. A definition of art that I quite like is the human hand, heart and mind united in the act of creation. What do I mean by that? Well, it's the unity of skill and intellect and feeling towards a creation of an object, which could range from anything, the fine arts, something like David or any painting, all the way down to a simple spoon, although maybe on your case, but a chair, certainly, that can be a work of art as well. So art was diffused throughout society. You didn't have to think about it as art per se. It was

just there. You went to the church, there were the paintings, you were along the street, the refreshcos along the street. At home, you have it, you have a chair or a chest of drawers, that's been hand-carved, and in some, you know, just a dainty, fine or interesting way, playfully, art is all around you. You don't need to think about it as art. And that's the trouble with galleries. I mean, look, they're beautiful things. I mean, what a blessing that the public can,

people from all over the world can enjoy these brilliant works of art. And for free in many cases. And for free in many cases. Even if you have to pay, at least you can go and see them. Surely better there than in the home of some private collector. Yeah. Well, that's what I was going to say is... So, exactly.

What's the alternative? How should we house art? I mean, there's something, it's not just about the... how great it is that you can put them together and you can go and see mona and van goff in the same room as an alterpiece um there's also something to be said for the accessibility of it even even not just talking about private collections even if we said all art is public if you have a beautiful thing you are required by law to allow people to come and see it you would still have to like get on an airplane and and and go to a different country and and and and and and and

go and see this piece of art there's something beautiful about the fact that galleries often share art they travel they do exhibitions and so just by living in or in proximity to a city with a big gallery you can see all of this art and there's something wonderful about that which can't be done outside of a museum surely no no i i think you're right i mean there are exceptions with religious art for example um religious art from all of the world could be returned to the places or or at least put in places where it would serve its original purpose. You know, you go to VNA, and it's stuffed full of fantastic works of art. I mean, a lot of them are essentially ordinary objects from daily life of the past,

which I always find sort of, not amusing, but it's certainly, I think, very revealing when you go there and you think, how beautiful, and it's sort of just, it's a vase, or it's an incense burner, or it's some cutlery or some carpet. You wonder if a Bic Byro will ever make its way into a museum of the future? Well, it certainly will. I've no doubt and maybe people of the future will have the same reaction

so I'm not trying to argue for some alternative situation where we sort of auction off all art or hand it out by lot you put your name in the hat and you might get a Van Gogh and you can have it at home for you to enjoy

maybe that would be a good idea I don't know it's more something I think that people should be aware of keep in mind keep in mind and I think my concern is with art art is

there's so much to it and there are millions of people who do love art, but I know a lot of people can be put off because it seems at this pretentious high-faluting sort of a patrician field of expertise, right? And it's just a way to show off at dinner parties, or it's all just nonsense. This couldn't be less true. Art is, art is, in many ways, the whole point of living. Everything else we do seems to tend towards either the creation or the enjoyment of art. You know, what do we do in our spare time when we're not working if our job doesn't involve it,

usually we're either consuming to use that word, a piece of art, whether that's a film or a video game or a book, or some YouTube videos. Some of your YouTube videos might be described as works of art. I think these ones are pretty artistic. These ones, certainly. Think of it when you watch a film, right?

You don't go and think, okay, I'm doing cinema. And you don't start thinking about mise en sen and montage and film theory. You just go and you enjoy the film. I think I was bloody good. I think art is best enjoyed that way. you look at a painting, you're not worrying about all these movements and all the, you're just looking at and say, what am I looking at? What does it say to me? How is it saying it? What do I think about this? What do I feel? You just happens as you're enjoying it.

And with art, as the way it was throughout history, I think that's essentially how it was. And now we live in this age, as I say, of museumification. Surely a good thing, surely a good thing, because it means things get preserved and they're spread out more widely. But we have lost something. I think we've clearly lost something by putting art into this box. and literally into the box of the gallery. Again, just something to bear in mind, really. Yeah, it's worth remembering when you walk around a gallery that it's not the natural habitat.

It's a very artificial habitat. At least for older, older art. And also that other stuff, I think, can come later. It's like you say, like if you look at the description of a piece of art, if you look at the plaque next to the art, usually it tells you like when it was painted who it was painted by

how like what gallery it was bought from all of this kind of stuff it doesn't really tell you as much a lot of the time about the image and what it represents so I like a gallery where it really tells you what's happening in the story but I think if you just go and it's a bit like music right

like again you don't read I think people do they think about doing music yeah let's put some music on in the car kind of thing but the way you just say you don't think I'm doing music. People are interested in music, they like music, but there isn't this barrier to entry in the same way. And the funny thing is,

a lot of people will be able to tell you the difference between 90s hip-hop and classical and jungle and trap and D&B and Chalga for people from the Balkans. Exactly, you took the words out of my mouth. But the thing is, I don't think anybody started with that and thought, oh, I'd better learn about the history of music. What happened was when you were a kid, your dad played the Rolling Stones and you used to kind of like it.

And then you notice that some bands are kind of like other ones. And it's only later that you start grouping it into, oh, that's classic rock. That's that classic 70s vibe. Or I really like the 90s West Coast hip hop, right? That comes later. And the same thing can be true of art. If you walk into a gallery and just think, like, what looks pretty? What do I like?

Oh, I really like that one. And then you walk around the corner, I really like that one. You start to notice they've got something kind of in common. Oh, they both have this particular kind of lighting, or I can kind of just tell. You start to learn. By bye, by exposure. And then after a year or two of doing that, you read a book that describes the difference between Renaissance art and impressionism and whatever the hell else there is. And it's no longer something you have to remember when you go to a gallery.

It's something that you can just imprint onto what you've already experienced. There's no barrier to entry with music. You hear a bit of music you like it or you don't. For some reason, art feels like it has that barrier when it of right probably shouldn't do. And that might have something to do with the fact that music is still just dispersed everywhere. You hear the street artist playing a song that stops you in your tracks

because their version of it is so beautiful. And you don't think, oh, it's fake. or it's a copy or it's a cover. It's just a beautiful bit of music. So what if it's, you know, somebody else's song? You hear it in a car, you hear it wherever. I think we hear it too much. I wrote an article about that recently.

Very good article. But if we were to sort of take all of that music and put it into a room and you walked into a room and there were just like a bunch of boxes with headphones and you go one by one and you put the headphones on and it gives you a description of, you know, the particular kind of art style and a movement that it's a part of. I think it would kind of ruin it. It would really kind of ruin it. But unfortunately, that's not something you can really fix with art. Unless, of course, we realize that, like, the thing that's in the museum is the sort of novel, you know, there's the real canvas.

It's the artifact. You can still disperse. Well, I think that is what has been happening. In fact, I think, sorry to jump in there. Would you like to finish your thought? Not at all. Well, I'd been sort of thinking in the same way. that's something I've tried to do up to a point with my work, if I can call it that online,

is not trying to explain art too much in terms of isms and movements, but simply to put art out there so people can fall in love with it. Paul Valerie wrote a wonderful article about, I think, The Ubiquity of Art. He was talking about the same thing, mass reproduction, sorry, photographic reproduction, and he was speaking mainly about sound recording and the prevalence of music. His article wasn't so dissimilar to his essay wasn't so dissimilar to what you wrote, actually. And he said we haven't yet quite got to the point where anybody can enjoy attition in anywhere in the world or whatever. We're now at that point.

And although it's easy to sort of think about that in terms of, is this a real work of art or not? Is it, I don't know, where's the original object? But put all that aside, we are in this beautiful age where you can see art by accident or proposively when you most need it. You know, when you're feeling full of despair, you know, and it's hard at that point to say, okay, well, I need to. to go to a, you know, I need to go to the National Gallery's going to look at that painting that I really like. Now, if you have it, you can, maybe it sounds silly, I don't know, but you can get it out on your phone. And that painting that seems to capture something of where you are in that moment is there at hand. And this is the beauty of the internet. And what it has done for

art is to use that somewhat abused word, democratise it. And this is probably much for the better. So maybe this museumification of art could be beginning to shift somewhat. And it's what I've tried to do. I love art. I think we all stand to benefit from loving and learning about it. And I've tried to spread it for that reason. Do you think then, we started with the question of is there such a thing as bad art? And so there's a corollary question is whether there's such a thing as good art. Do you think that the way that a piece of art is housed by future generations can affect whether it's good or bad art? Because is it, I mean, in other words, If somebody intent, you said it's got a lot to do with what story, something's trying to tell, and how effectively it does it.

I mean, the story that an altar piece is trying to tell is one of reverence, is one of focus, is one of directing the attention towards the altar. It's stripped from its rightful place and moved into a museum. Is it now like a bad piece of art? Is it a good piece of art in a bad setting? Or is it like bad art? Because it's not doing what the art is supposed to do anymore. I think it's fair to say it's probably a good piece of art in a bad setting. It just makes it harder to see what's good about it, perhaps.

I don't think we need to go much further than that. Do you think that's a fair answer? You said, when I asked you what makes a bit of art good or bad, what is it you said? You said something about... Well, the question is how well... What I'm sort of lucidical and representation art, what I mean is rather than something abstract, which is purely decorative, I'm saying something which is clear... Which is, as I said, you know, a picture of you or your mother, whatever hell it is.

What is it trying to say and how well does it say it? I think you can evaluate it on those criteria. Sorry, do you want to finish the thought? No. You go ahead. When you take that altarpiece. It interrupts how well it's... Exactly.

And so it's almost like you've made it a bad piece of art. Which is like maybe you kind of have... Because you've made it decorative. Sure. I mean, why is an altarpiece in a gallery somewhere? decorative. Maybe it's wrong to say that it's like decorating the gallery, but it's decorating our lives. It's decorating, you know, the city centre. Sure, but although given everything I've just said, I don't think it's impossible to

have, let's say, religious feelings and to understand what you're looking at in a gallery. I'm pretty sure all the pieces in galleries can still be felt that way. But yes, no, no, you're not wrong. It is essentially destructive to the quality of the art to remove it from its from its context, you know, we're in a church now and there's a beautiful stained glass window there it's right above the altar. You know, and looking at that there, if I imagine that now, in this sort of a plain room

and as I said, you've got people, you can hear footsteps and you're shuffling and there's someone there sketching, a school trip maybe. Someone recording a podcast in front of it. One day, perhaps. Its impact is clearly interrupted. Yeah, so that we make art bad by putting it In galleries. Now, there's one hell of a thought.

Do you think there's such a thing as fake art? No, I don't think such thing is fake art. Is the David in Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas fake? Is Caesar's Palace fake? I don't think you can have, it's fake in the sense that it's not the one by Michelangelo. I think in a work of art could be fake in the sense when it's purporting to be something that it isn't, in the sense of forgery. I mean, this is a wonderfully fascinating question that people love. of talking about is a forgery of work of art.

There are some bloody good forges who are bloody good painters who've made very convincing replicas of other paintings or indeed made up their own painting and claimed it to have been by somebody else. I think it's only fake in as much as it's telling a lie about what it is. But if something is there, it doesn't make any sense. You can't have a fake work of art any more

than I think you can have a fake building or fake architecture. It can be a certain artificiality in the sense, that it's imitative, you know, the world is full of, I mean, you've just been to Vegas, right? Is the Eiffel Tower in Las Vegas fake? No, it's not fake. It's not really there. It's really there. Maybe I'm sounding a little bit thick by saying that, but I mean it, I mean, it's clearly not the Eiffel Tower, but it is a, I mean, the fact that it's a replica doesn't in any way make it fake. I don't think so.

And I think that sort of, I mean, it's easy to see why people think, I mean, it's fake in some sense, but I don't see why we should. enjoy it for what it is for that reason, as long as we're not pretending that it's anything else. Yeah, I found it very difficult to gather my thoughts in Vegas as one does, but specifically regarding the buildings, because, well, there's like a fake Venice and there's a fake Paris and there's a fake everything. And the thing about Caesar's Palace, for example, is I don't think is actually trying to replicate anything in particular. It's just a general sort of riff on, on like, classical architecture and the thing is it kind of is classical architecture but it's fate but it's not because it's there you can go inside it the question is is it good or is it not that's the question

regardless of what it's trying to reference do you think it is in and of itself an interesting beautiful building maybe um the fact that the reason you were so unsettled is that it was actually not particularly well built or designed and was therefore a slightly unsettling building you know That could have been what it was, I suspect. Yeah, it's hard to know. But your working definition of art, what was it, the hand, the heart and mind, the soul. Just the hand, let's see, just the hand, heart and mind united in the act of creation. United in the act of creation.

So, so, you know, there's skill, emotion, and intellect. And I think that definition covers most of what we usually mean by art and also other things as well, as I say, like, like, like, Like this chair, for example, could be, we wouldn't usually necessarily include that. But art is both the fine arts painting sculpture, cinema, if you like, video games, if you like. And then the decorative arts are what they were traditionally called, which is our spoons and our pens and our tea cups, maybe even on microphones, maybe even our phones are works with decorative art. You said before, Messi is scoring a goal. It seems to sort of fit that definition in many ways. And people would describe it as like, oh, that was art.

was artistic. But I think they're being like hyperbolic there intentionally. I mean, do you think it's rightful to say that that is art? Look, I don't like to get into games of definition. Look, I'm an Erasmian through and through. I think all this

theologian, scholastic stuff is usually a waste of time. But I think it's interesting. I think we can learn a lot from why people want to say that. People say the same about food, for example. And that might make more sense, I think, because there can be something graphic and visual to it.

But I think the reason people want to say Messi's scoring a goal could be a work of art. As I said, you've got the skill, you know, his technical ability as a footballer, his intellect in deciding what to do with that skill. Then something about the way it all came together, the moment of the match, what it meant the significance, the fans, the beauty.

There's that extra bit of texture, which I've decided to call emotion or heart, you could call it spirit or soul. That additional element is what seems to transform it in people's minds into a work of art. And that's pretty easily applied to objects, but I'm not saying that, and I don't really care whether or not we can specifically define that as a work of art. But I think we learn something from the fact that people want to say that about, as I say, a meal or some sport or even the conversation. Sometimes you see someone, approach somebody and talk to them and you think, wow, there was something there.

The art of conversation. Yeah. Well, people say that, you know, it's a fine art. the art of this. I think that's also partly... Pick up artists. Yes, but this is partly, I mean, what's the etymology of the word art? It's from the Latin, and the word originally, I think, essentially just means skill or technique, right? It says, so it didn't have this association we have now, which is confusing because we say art, you think you mean painting, well, actually, you just mean arts in general, do you mean the fine arts, you mean, all this stuff?

It's one of those general words that we need to be careful when we're using. Well, she and quirk. The Cultural Tutor. for your time. I should have mentioned at the beginning you have a Twitter account, an X account. People will likely, unless they've seen our previous episode, know who you are without knowing who you are. They might already be following you on X. They might think, oh, this is a great guy. I'll go and see what he's up to and find that they're already following you because your account is huge. But I appreciate you taking the time to put a face to the statue that

usually adorns your work and sharing with us the meaning of art. Well, I appreciate you rolling out a red carpet for me in these surroundings and um that's mustache well where did you get the idea to grow it do you i don't want to talk about it sure i don't want to talk about it's it's um nothing to do with nothing to do with you okay well in fact you're kind of putting me off the idea so i might i might go and go and shave it we'll see um at any rate i hope we can do this again sometimes and uh thanks for coming on good night and god bless