Tracy Chevalier: Finding the story inside the painting

http://www.ted.com When Tracy Chevalier looks at paintings, she imagines the stories behind them: How did the painter meet his model? What would explain that look in her eye? Why is that man ... blushing? She shares three stories inspired by portraits, including the one that led to her best-selling novel "Girl With a Pearl Earring."

TEDTalks is a daily video podcast of the best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where the world's leading thinkers and doers give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes. Featured speakers have included Al Gore on climate change, Philippe Starck on design, Jill Bolte Taylor on observing her own stroke, Nicholas Negroponte on One Laptop per Child, Jane Goodall on chimpanzees, Bill Gates on malaria and mosquitoes, Pattie Maes on the "Sixth Sense" wearable tech, and "Lost" producer JJ Abrams on the allure of mystery. TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design, and TEDTalks cover these topics as well as science, business, development and the arts. Closed captions and translated subtitles in a variety of languages are now available on TED.com, at http://www.ted.com/translate

If you have questions or comments about this or other TED videos, please go to http://support.ted.com

• Category

  People & Blogs

[cbawt]

Impressive how much people dislike this talk, i found it quite nice actually!

[Blake Dizon]

everyone's different. what attracts and interests us are different. 

[corneliusofdark]

Just keep writing!

[corneliusofdark]

The Girl With a Pearl Earring...is Lady Gaga.

[shinigami01]

Girl with the Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier was the first real novel I read at grade 5. It's what drew me into the amazing world of literature, and I read the novel a number of times. I stole it from my school library, in fact. My guilt has since then left me to donate every other book I go through to the elementary school library, though many are turned back now since they are too mature. Still, Tracy Chevalier and her book changed my life, I hope one day she might read one of my own novels.

[milica57]

omg.. the last story was so touching...

[Davyd Whaley]

sweet , if your buying posters. but if you are buying art this is ridiculous.

[emerald764]

Really interesting talk. The girl with a pearl is such a striking painting, far better than the Mona Lisa in my opinion. I like Tracy's way of looking at paintings but I think she's reading too much into the Elizabethan painting. It was common for people to be painted with rosy cheeks as a sign of good health.

[0pteryx]

Then I would advise you to seek help.

[alvar0pere7]

Narrative is the most basic, most boring, and most outdated vehicle for interpreting painting. We are all much much stupider for having watched this.

[VoiceOfAleppo]

I suffer from an affliction....

it's called TED Video fatigue , thumb this up if you have it too !

why are we supposed to have a connection to each and every TED video? why can't be just selective?

okay , i'm gonna randomly pick a TED video out of the 1200 something uploaded once and ignore all the others...

btw i'm gonna ignore this one.

[ThomasHaberkorn]

first world problems.