 Welcome to another episode of Art Discourse. Today I'm privileged to have a very special guest, none other than Dr. Jeroen Broek. Welcome Jeroen. Yeah, it's gonna be here. If you don't know Jeroen, he's the Chairman of the Board of the Vectors of the Anari Institute. But more importantly for this show, Jeroen I think is one of the biggest proponents of art, of proper art in our world. I can't think of many other public intellectuals that speak so much in each show, public lectures and panels about art and also giving us practical advice on how we can apply art to our own life, advice that I also took from him where I got and printed my favorite paintings to hang in my house. So I hope we all can learn from you today. So let's just jump right into it because we don't have much time. So first of all Jeroen, I know it's a difficult question, but what is art? But please describe it in your words. We don't need too many difficult definitions. What is art? I mean definitions are important. So it's important to have a definition. But art is basically it's an individual expressing his deepest beliefs about the world, his deepest understanding of the world. A deep understanding of belief that he might not even know he has. He might not even know he has. In a medium, in some kind of medium, and the medium can be obviously can be in color, painting and in three dimensional, three dimensionality, sculpture, in a whole in a story, literature, in visual that moves and music, cinema. I mean there's a lot of and they might be new art forms we don't even know about yet. Basically to stimulate in the viewer an emotional response to those fundamental deeply grounded belief that the artist has. So art is something that stimulates a response. It stimulates an emotional response, not in everybody, but in most people. Good art certainly does that in most people. And it is that emotional response is ultimately driven by those very fundamental ideas and views that the artist has manifest in his creation. So most profoundly you're saying art is about ideas. It's about ideas and also values. Well it's dangerous to say ideas because ideas takes it to a particular level. Because you know, I ran talks in the definition of art, which is the selective recreation of reality based on an artist's metaphysical value judgment. Metaphysical value judgments are particular type of ideas that particular types of values. And you know, for example, in modern day today for you know, artists viewed as is almost exclusively political. Everything is political. Every piece of art has some political meaning of a legal statement. That's exact and that's exactly the opposite of it's exactly not the case. Real art might have a political statement, but that's not its crux, that's not its essence, and that's not the value it represents. What the value represents is these very, very basic ideas that we have about the world and metaphysical value judgments, which is a hard concept to grasp. But these are statements about the very nature of man, the very nature of reality and our view of that. So it's a value. So this is something that the artist wants. If you have a malevolent view of the universe, if you think life sucks and the universe is going to collapse, and all life on earth will end in 10 years because of whatever, AI or a meteoroid or climate change, whatever your choice of catastrophe is. If that's what you're obsessed about, then now over-flect in your art, even if you do something that's pro-capitalist and pro-technology and everything, it'll come through in the art if it's good art. The ultimate theme will be something that reinforces that metaphysical view that you have about nature and the world and life and whatever you're attempting to do politically, let's say the Fed Capitalism, you won't be able to pull it up because capitalism contradicts this very basic assumption. So art recreates something in reality because it's the only way in which people can understand it. Art needs to be understood. It can be just in the mind. I'm sure that when Kandinsky is putting blotches of paint or dots of paint or whatever it is on a canvas, it means something to him. I'm sure it means something, right? Probably just an emotional outburst more than anything else. But it's not understandable to anybody else. He's not communicating. And art is definitely a form of communication. And in that it is communicating, it has to be identifiable. And in order to be identifiable, it has to be recreating something that is identified as a human experience. Now, we'll get to music. Music is harder. We don't really understand completely what it is that music is recreating, although I had some theories about that, which I think makes sense. But every other art form, it just has to be within our experience. And blotches of color, yeah, I've seen blotches of color, but it doesn't mean anything. It doesn't have any significance. And it certainly is not reflective of any kind of metaphysical value judgment. It's not reflective of any kind of fundamental basic idea or conclusion that you have come to about reality. What if we have something more simple, like still life painting, for example, painting over flowers? What does that mean? Well, I mean, it depends on what is actually being painted, right? So you can put a vase of flowers in a very dark setting. The flowers can be half-dead on the way to dying. That would say something. You could make the painting blotchy and blurry and hard to exactly figure out, you know, really an effort it takes to even see that there's flowers there. Or you could make it sharp and crisp and alive and full of light. That would be something else. And I'm not saying one is better art than the other. All of them are art, but they all reflect different metaphysical value judgments about it. You could also just do flowers. Most still lives that I see painted, you know, they mean something, but it's just boring. It's another thing about art. It has to interest you. It has to want you to look at it. It has to want you to stay looking at it. So it has to be interesting. So there has to be something of interest in it. So to make flowers interesting and to convey something is a challenge. But I think it's doable. Again, the way you portray the flowers and the context in which the light, the drama, lack of drama or whatever, that light is a dramatic means, is going to determine what ideas are being reflected by the particular painting. I think one interesting thing about painting specifically because I write about painting is some works are so universal, like the one behind me, for example. Everybody has a specific feeling that he feels when he sees that. And I can show you maybe later. There's a very interesting picture of this painting in the museum where it's hanging. And there's a group of students and you can see how they are looking at that painting. Everyone has his own face that is pulling, is pointing to this thing, to that thing. So this is also about communication and it touches us, right? When we see something like that, it really touches us. How do we explain that? Well, I think the painting that is universal is going to be a painting of a subject that people can relate to. There has to be something there that is reflective of the experiences that are more universal than other experiences. If he was an astronaut, it would be, you know, and he was looking at something in space and you could create something, I'm sure, just as impactful. But it would be hard for people to relate to because it wasn't something they've experienced. Nature is something we all experience. Man alone in front of nature is something most of us have experienced. We know what that feels like, so I think it gives it a certain universality. And then, of course, it's the genius of the artist to make it something interesting. That also gives it, if it's boring, if it's uninteresting, people are just going to walk by it. They're not going to stop and look. So in this painting, the contrast between dark and light, it gives a drama that gives it a silhouette almost. It's something that makes you stop and look. There are all kinds of, if you will, tricks of the trade. Ways in which great artists know how to... There's at least one pyramid there. There's actually triangles of very powerful geometries in painting. There's at least two that are... And I haven't studied this painting, so this is the first time I'm looking at it. There's the two right there. One, obviously, with a figure in it, so very dark and in the front and a mountain in the background, which is reflective of the same shape. Again, it's interesting, right? There's perspective. There's something close. There's something far. So all of that is... So I would add the figure himself. We don't see his face. So we can imagine ourselves there as well. Yes. I mean, I was just even... Without even talking about that theme or about... Just in terms of the way a painting is structured is going to determine whether you stop and gaze at it and whether you don't. So a lot of it... But a lot of it also is cultural. So, for example, if you take a Leonardo da Vinci or you take a Caravaggio painting of a saint or some religious saint, and you stick it somewhere, you don't put the sign Caravaggio or Leonardo da Vinci. You just put it up on a wall somewhere. Today, some people will stop and look at it. I will immediately say that's either a Leonardo influenced by him. I'm not sure I'd identify the actual thing, but influenced by... A lot of people stop and look at it, but a lot of people just walk by it. If you'd put it up in the Renaissance, everybody would have stopped and looked at it. Because it was speaking to a theme and in a medium and with symbolism that related to the culture in which it was made. What makes it universal and timeless is the fact that if you learn a little bit about the context, you're blown away by it, right? You'll stop and watch it. But most people don't. So most people walk by it without thinking twice about it. Whereas in the Renaissance, they would have all stopped and they all admired it and recognized it. And this is the thing. Recognized it as a masterpiece because they were already attuned to religious paintings and this is different and what makes it different. So, the universality of it is... Some of it is educational. Sometimes there are paintings out there that are great paintings that shouldn't be universal. And people don't respond to them because they don't have the information they need to know to respond to them. They did in the past because maybe it's a historical context or something like that. Particularly with painting, which is more... Painting is more... There's more of a story in painting than there is in sculpture, at least some painting. There's no story in sculpture. There are a few sculptures with stories, but most sculptures, the story is irrelevant. With painting, often you need to know what's going on. Now, not here in the painting you are behind you. You don't need to know anything about the story. A lot of portraits, you don't need to know anything about the story. But when they're multiple figures and they're clearly interacting with one another, often the story has some significance and it adds to your appreciation of an artwork. So what do we have? We have... Art needs to communicate. It needs to be within reality. It also relates to our culture that affects how we react to it. It's all because of communication, right? You can't communicate if it's not in reality. You can't communicate if you're not using tools that are culturally understood. So it really is... Communicate captures a lot of that and it needs to communicate. But of course, there's a lot of stuff out there that communicates, but it's shallow and doesn't have any kind of deep meaning. Or its communication is so in your face that there's no... You look at it, maybe it inspires you for five minutes and then every time you look at it afterwards you're bored. So I call that... Most of that is often illustration or just not very good art. And it's gimmicky. It doesn't capture you and it doesn't keep your interest over the long run. One of the things that Ayn Rand talks about in her writings in the Romantic Manifesto is the connection between art and epistemology and human cognition. She talks about that we think in visual terms. When we get something that is concrete and visual to us, it can reduce a wide array of abstractions. For example, we can imagine in our mind five elephants, but if we were to imagine 100 elephants, it would be impossible. But when we see it in a painting, we can understand how that looks like. It's impossible to imagine 100 elephants. I think you can imagine it. Can you imagine 100 elephants? Sure. Through a visual, you create a visual in your mind of lots of... Exactly. Through the visual. And there's a sense in which it's not 100, it's many. There's not 100, it's many. But what Ayn Rand is saying is most of our most important ideas are really abstract. It's not about 100 elephants. It's about love or it's about liberty or it's about... Even more importantly, it's about life is worth living and the universe is normal and A is A. Things that are very, very fundamental and yet very, very abstract. And it's very hard to hold that. You hold it in your mind as concepts. You hold it in your mind as propositions. And that is a lot of work. Your mind is doing a lot of work in holding that and then you have the whole proof or the whole justification of that proposition, justification of that axiom or justification of that value. All of that is conceptual. And what Odd does is it takes all that and it replaces it with a picture. So the concept of hero, well, you replace that with a story. You replace that, which you read about and you can hold in your mind as, I don't know, Ivan Ho. I've got Ivan Ho in my mind. I know. Hero. In the same with, I don't know, the clarity of the universe. The universe is knowable. It's clear. It's identifiable. Yeah, you can hold my mind painting by Vermeer where everything is clear and knowable and reflecting back to you. So what Odd does is it creates a condensation, a concrete for a massive abstraction. Right? The role of the mind in human life. That's a massive abstraction. But once you read Odd La Shrugged, then it's Odd La Shrugged. Okay, I get it. It's all those characters in Odd La Shrugged and what they did. I get the role of the mind in human life. And in fact, my mind is a particular way in which it manifests itself. I can run through a particular character. And you know, if I need an image of a determined hero facing amazing odds, I can think of a sculpture of David or something like that. So it's a quick condensation that allows us to hold these abstractions and live with these abstractions without being overwhelmed by them. So it makes it real. It reinforces what they mean to you, whether they're true or not is not what's important. They reinforce what they mean to you. They reinforce your view of them. And so it reinforces that and it confirms it for you. Not in the sense of proving it. So it reinforces that and it confirms it for you. Not in the sense of proving them because it doesn't prove them, right? In that sense, it doesn't make it real. But it confirms it for you because it condenses kind of whatever proof or whatever conviction you have around it in something concrete that you can actually see. Okay, so let's move to another chapter in the Romantic Manifesto, which deals with the sense of life. The sense of life for me is still trying, I think I'm still trying to figure it out. And it plays a big role in art. So to my understanding could be wrong. Apply to art what an artist does with his sense of life. He has specific things that he cares about more. He has specific values. He has specific style, specific ways in which he has a specific approach to life. He likes to have beautiful things around him or he likes to have ugly things around him. All of that manifests into a canvas or a piece of marble. And art is the manifestation of that. It's essentially an art is the artist himself. He's showing us the most candid, personal image of his own conscious. I mean, it's something like that. But look, a sense of life is almost emotional, but it's a particular state of consciousness that you have that underlies everything that you do and underlies your style, the way you deal with the world and the way you interact with the world out there. In a way, in a sense, you interact with yourself. It's the conclusion of given the values that you've chosen, given the metaphysical values that you have, it's the kind of personality and character that is the result of that. And it's the manifestation of that. So it's not something that you consciously work on. It's something that is the consequence of all the things that you might have consciously worked on or not consciously worked on. And therefore, it's a consequence of somewhat accident. And to some extent, it is going to be a consequence of accident because a lot of it is a sense of life. A lot of it is a consequence of things that we experienced and conclusions we come to when we were young. And we can change it, but it's not easy. And then what artist does is an artist, in that he is painting based on his metaphysical value judgments, that is, that is what is reflected in the art. Those metaphysical values are molding and shaping a sense of life. So the art reflects his sense of life. The art is an expression of the metaphysical value judgment, which operationalize, in a sense, in the sense of life. And every artwork has a particular sense of life. You, in the way you respond to an artwork, are responding based on your sense of life. Again, based on the conclusions you have come to about the world and about the metaphysical value judgments. So it's the interaction between your sense of life and the other sense of life, which you get, what you get is the emotional response that you get. Is it always the case that a work of art represents the artist's sense of life, or it could be that it doesn't represent it? I think to some extent or another it always represents this in some way. Because I'm thinking like paintings of someone like Adolf Hitler. I know he had very ugly, but realistic, boring, banal paintings. Doesn't look like a painting by Adolf Hitler. A guy was a monster. Yeah, but they're not particularly good paintings. I mean, that's the point. Anybody with a little bit of skill can paint something on a canvas. But to be meaningful and to really be substantive as a painting it has to reflect a sense of life. So not everything that everybody paints is a reflection of sense of life. If I scribble something in a piece of paper, it's not a reflection of my sense of life, partially it's a reflection of the fact that I can't paint. And I do think you can say that, well, I don't think you can read anything into bad art. I don't think you can read a lot into bad art. Bad in a sense of just boring, banal, meaningless. Yeah, if somebody goes to art school and they paint because the teacher told them to paint a particular way, you can't read anything into that sense of life. Yeah, I see that. Okay, so now let's talk about the inherent selfishness of art. We consume art on our own unless we go to movies with someone. But when we experience a painting, our experience with the painting is entirely our own, also with the movie. And you were talking in one of your panels with Onkar about there's a sense of duty that you have to go to a museum and see all the artworks. And I, for example, when I go to the museum, I skip all the medieval art, for example. So I go right into the type of art that I want. But most people, they have to go through this exhausting. So maybe you can elaborate on that. Yeah, I mean, I think we all, you know, art is to be experienced. It's a personal experience. And there's an immense selfish pleasure that one can get from experiencing great art. And, you know, particularly when you're new to art, it can be overwhelming because, you know, people talk about museum fatigue. And the primary reason for museum fatigue is that all of this art is impacting you, even if you don't know it's impacting you. It's doing something to your subconscious. It's doing something to your emotional state. And when you're overloaded sensorily, when you've got so much going on, you experience so many things, you get fatigued. It's exhausting. And you don't know why exactly, but it's because your consciousness is exposed to a lot. There's a lot of work going on in your head to deal with all of this. So, you know, I tell people, focus on the things that you love, find the things that you love, you know, and go straight there. But, right, as you mature in your art appreciation, or as you know more about art, or as, you know, you know more about what you like or don't like, it makes a lot of sense to try to understand and to expand the things that you like, right? So, for example, you know, there's a lot of art that you need context in order to fully appreciate. And so, you know, you might skip a lot of the Renaissance to Jesus again and again and again and again. But when you know more about what's going on, when you know more about art history, when you know more about the story that's being depicted, when you know more about the style of the particular painter, then suddenly a lot more becomes interesting to you and a lot more becomes... And then there are all kinds of other reasons you might be interested in. So I drive my friends and my wife crazy because I often go to the medieval sections and go look because, you know, I am actually interested in the way Jesus is depicted in the Dark Ages and the Middle Ages and the Renaissance in the modern world because I find it historically interesting. And in different countries, you see different expressions, there's a different way in which religious paintings are done in the Netherlands and in Italy and Spain, they're just not very good painters. So it's interesting to actually go and see this stuff and whenever you see... Often when you see a really good painting, particularly from early on in Spain, it's almost always an Italian painter who came to Spain to paint. Later they have Velasquez but there's a lot of... So trying to understand, most people will walk by the Da Vinci... There's a joke around the Mona Lisa. Why does everybody go see the Mona Lisa? But the Mona Lisa is a brilliant painting. It is a magnificent... It's a true masterpiece. But I'm not sure just a casual viewer could look at it and see it's a masterpiece. You have to have some background info. So over time it's worth expanding. Plus, when we're young, we often like paintings that we outgrow in a sense that they might not be as complex or they might not be as interesting or we might develop a finer aesthetic. So you've got to constantly learn and expand and try to understand. It doesn't mean you want to expose yourself to bad art, but if the experts out there, if the art historians are saying this is a great painter, it's at least worth going to explore why they think. I mean, there's some painters I still don't get why they're considered great painters. Goya comes to mind and there are a few others. But I think it's valuable, certainly pre-20th century, to at least experiment with going to museums and doing different things in museums and looking at different... It's nice to live in a city that has a museum and you can go there many times so I'm visiting London. I have to see everything in the National Gallery tomorrow. But when I'm in London, I have no problem going to the National Gallery and just going to see the five paintings that I know I want to see. And then sometimes, a few years ago, and I did a show on this, I actually went and started with the Dark Ages and just did the whole museum. I did every painting in the museum and it was fascinating to see the progression of art. Like you got art history and I know enough about art history to be able to say what's going on in each period and what's happening. So it was fun, it was a blast to do that. So you can go different times and do different things in different museums and different museums I don't know, the other museum in London, the Tate, Tate Britain. Tate, the Tate British which is one of my favorite museums but it's... I mean it isn't, it isn't, right? Because one of the problems in the Tate is that they have the good artwork, they all crammed together one on top of the other and it's like, you can't appreciate it because there's too much, your eye is distracted, there's no mental focus there's no modern stuff there too. Yeah, but you can ignore that, that's easy. I'm much more concerned about the fact that the good stuff is displayed in ways that is hard to fully appreciate. So, you know, different visits you can focus on different layers and different, you know, there's stuff way up there in the ceiling and it's hard to even see. But yes, it's one of the museums I try to go to in London periodically and they also have some good visiting exhibits or temporary exhibits. They have an unbelievable storage facility somewhere with some amazing paintings that they never see. Oh yeah, I remember, I wanted to see a specific Turner and they said it was in storage. Yeah, I remember that. Oh yeah, 95% of everything they have is in storage. Particularly the good stuff because they have a bias against the good stuff. Crazy. So, another thing I would suggest myself listen to lectures, some YouTube's of museums. They have some really good lectures by their local art historians. For example, I listened to one from the National Gallery in London about John Constable who always found very boring but when he started to really explain what he was about, his childhood it became much more interesting to me. So I also suggested I still don't like his paintings, but yeah, I still find the paintings boring, but yes. But no, there's a ton of lectures. Art historians are generally good. Again, if they deal with pre-20th century, they're typically good. They know what they're talking about. It's always interesting. When I was in Rome, I got somebody to give us a tour of the Caravaggio and the different churches in Rome. A private tour and it was phenomenal because you can look at a painting and you kind of get it and I know Caravaggio pretty well, but actually what are the breakthroughs here? What's new? What's challenging? Why did he do this? Why did he do that? Interwoven into his whole life, which was a fascinating life on top of it, gives you a whole other dimension and appreciation for the artwork. So yeah, definitely try to take courses in art history and lectures on particular artists. It's definitely worth it. But also no rush if you're still trying to figure out something specifically that you like. I think it's okay not to have a rush about it. So I want to talk to you a bit about heroes. Why do we need heroes and why is it so central to art? Well, because I think heroism is something that is definitely something that we need a competition for because it's something that is often rare in our own lives, particularly on a grand scale and it's something that is, for the most part, therefore an abstraction. We don't have personal experiences necessarily with it. It's also something that's hard. It's not easy to be a hero. It's hard to be a hero. So to the extent that you want to be heroic in your own life, you want to pursue heroism, you need to have some kind of inspiration to get you through it because it's hard. So, for example, having integrity which I think heroism is a sub branch of as a virtue requires effort and requires focus and requires and to have a model for that makes it makes it easier. It's also the case that God, I was going to make a second point that it slipped my mind. So, heroes are people who overcome incredible obstacles in order to attain a particular value, a particular goal and a lot of us have that. Most people live bland unheroic lives and most people's conception of the hero is pretty bland and stupid. It's on a Schwarzenegger or it's a it's all about physical effort and it's all about physical courage whereas the real courage is a courage of values, a courage of integrity, a courage of sticking to your chosen values and so it's hard and therefore we need an image. Another thing about heroes is they're inspirational. Heroes represent what we would like to be, what we would like to achieve, what we would like to attain and having that image is incredibly emotionally powerful. It reaffirms us, it shows us that it's possible. Rand has that quote. Yeah, definitely. It shows us what is possible and in that sense it reflects to us what we are capable of even if we are never going to be in a situation where that particular form of heroism is required. Let's talk about beauty. I know it's a big subject but for me it's of paramount importance. I try to, it's an advice I think I took from you. I try to surround myself with beauty wherever I am also with what I'm wearing with my house. For example now I made an historical move from Android to iPhone. I can now also do that. And for me it was... Yeah, everybody's taking that. So for me I'm still bewildered by that. It's so aesthetic. It's so beautiful. And everything for me is just, it's improving a lot of things for me. So it's a small thing but it shows. What is it about beauty? Yeah, I think beauty is really, really important. It's really crucial. It's a difficult topic because you know, what they say beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Well, not really. There are universal principles around this and I think great designers understand this and know this and if you look even across cultures there's certain things that are just perceived as beautiful but there is some extent there's a lot of optionality in beauty. There are definitely differences in how people can see of what is beautiful and you can tell it by how they live and what they choose to surround themselves with. I often go to people's homes and they think it's beautiful and I just think it's horrific. Part of it is second-handedness. Part of it is trying to be like everybody else or impressing people. There's a lot of reasons why people do what they do but it's also people do have different perceptions of beauty. Exactly why where that comes from. It's not enough about what the psychological elements that construct beauty are but there's clearly something about at least for me about symmetry about clean lines and about space, spaciousness that I find beautiful. I find particular kinds of furniture beautiful particular kinds of architecture beautiful so it's another stuff I can't stand and again it's very contextual in a sense of the culture so what I find beautiful today if I have been born in the 18th century I probably would have a very different taste. I hate 18th century architecture I hate 18th century furniture and I don't understand antiques I don't I love the art and I hate everything around it and I think that there's something clean and about the modern world that should be reflected in architecture and furniture and things like that but yeah to the extent that you have control over it why not make the environment at which you live aesthetically pleasing so that you are inspired or you enjoy the space in which you are living the space in which you are living has meaning it has it's important it has a substance and if you can enjoy it because it's one more element to helping you enjoy life more broadly and helping you be happy more broadly so to the extent that you have opinions about it to the extent that it's important a particular thing is important to you focus on it I couldn't care less what clothes I wear indeed ideally I wouldn't wear clothes at all so it's I like to be my comfort is orders of magnitude more important to me than how I look so I go for comfort so you have to figure out your independent particular hierarchy of values and figure out what makes sense for you in terms of and that's also part of how you relate to a space right if you're uncomfortable it's going to affect you in all kinds of ways so for me wearing a tie is like I can't be completely myself because I feel like somebody is trying to strangle me it's just a question of when they're going to hang me from the nearest tree but I get that it's symmetrical you know but in that sense it's nice so you have to figure out what and when then of course when it comes to even your environment the space some people can afford small homes that don't have a lot of space or they can afford whatever furniture they can pick up on I've been there I've done that I've lived that life but even then you know the furniture that we brought home for whatever used store used furniture store was always I mean we look if you look at the 40 years I've been married and the kind of furniture we've had in every single place you'll see a theme there's definitely a theme to every sofa we've ever had there's a theme to kind of the way we set up our rooms there are themes that carry through the different periods but that's me right those are the things that are important to me I would only add that I think it's a false dichotomy between comfort and beauty but I can prove it to you later so let us talk about disablying I haven't spoken to you about it so maybe you don't have anything interesting to say about it but for me yeah that's what I thought so for me it's a big deal because I like 19th century German paintings so I go to for example I was in Leipzig in Germany last week and they had a very beautiful art museum there a lot of paintings about similar to this about the greatness of nature you know things like that what do you think about that about German painting about the sublime as an idea in painting I mean I think the sublime is a yeah I mean it's a it's a fantastic something to express in a painting whether nature is the only way you can do it I'm a little skeptical I'd have to think about what the sublime means but it doesn't strike me as it requires beautiful nature when it comes to paintings of nature I prefer the Americans to the Germans they were taught in Germany they learned their style but then what they chose in terms of their themes is grandeur and drama that I think they think that Birstadt and people like that achieves these magnificent magnificent effects but what is the sublime I don't know what the sublime is exactly I mean it's it's really about God the notion that there's something greater than man in that sense it's a negative idea but it also I think I don't think it has to be greater than man it's just that there's a grandeur to the world there's a grandeur to man and to the world and that we can and have the potential to achieve that kind of grandeur that it's attainable I think that's what a rational view of sublime would be and I think a lot of paintings a lot of the great paintings have that it you know the theme has to be something that transcends just a particular story or a particular narrative it has to be something grander and bigger than that I certainly think although I don't know how you would prove this or you would show this that a lot of music is definitely reflective of this Wagner for example sometimes but I think a lot of music I think a lot of the romantic music achieves that you know when there's a sublime so I don't think it necessitates a god but it does necessitate kind of the sense of grandeur of the world of nature and of oneself so now let's move to more personal issues I want to ask you yourself you're a PhD in finance you talk about economics about politics about I don't know what does that have to do with art? nothing I mean art is not something that I think everybody should be interested in art I don't consider myself having any kind of special anything with regard to art I just have identified that it's something everybody should take a serious interest in and I do I think a lot of other people don't or don't identify it or don't I'm not known publicly to have identified it but I don't think I'm unique in any regard I think everybody should have an interest doesn't matter what you do as long as we all hold abstract concept as long as we're all human art is a need as a need it's food for the soul it's food for your character it's food for your mind so I think everybody should be engaged in it and should be interested in it I talk about art because I like it not so much because I feel like I'm qualified to talk about it because I'm probably not or less qualified than many others I wish more people were talking about it there's so much to say and there's so much to do and there's so much to think about it and there's so much to experience of it I've taken it seriously for years I've read books I've listened to courses I've traveled I've been going to art museums I've taken tours I've just experienced a lot of it I have a lot of experience but beyond that I'm not an artist I can't paint, I can't sculpt I can't write music I'm completely incompetent when it comes to any art form in terms of production so I'm stuck with liking it and learning as much as I can about it when did I start probably 42, 41, 42 years ago let's talk about music I know it's also a big deal for you I don't know much about music there are some works that I really like I listen to a lot of music but I don't know much beyond that so a bit about music and also have some tips on how to start listening to classical music Yes, again I don't know anything about music I can't read sheet music I don't know what a chord is just the basics I do not know I know what I like and I know a reasonable amount of art about the history of music because I read some books about the history of music which I found fascinating again I find it interesting to connect with the history I think those relationships between the history of art and history what's going on in the world at the time it's fascinating so I find that all interesting so I read about it I think music is of all the art forms the one that can evoke the strongest emotions and can evoke them and evokes them directly it doesn't require any kind of mental effort talking about classical music it requires some focus but focus exclusively on the music not interpreting it not understanding it not what happened before not what happens after but just being in the moment and really experiencing it and I think that's what's really really necessary to have a deep appreciation of music most popular music is intended for instant gratification it's candy it's sugar coated candy and some of it's sugar coated poison it's just there to be danced to it's there to be listened to and tap your foot and some of it's great but it's there to be experienced in the moment and most of it to have forgotten what you'd call contemporary music contemporary to what period but contemporary to different periods in the 20th century but once everybody figured out that everybody likes a beat and people are willing to spend a lot of money on being entertained by having a beat then forget about it all you get is a beat so modern popular music is just a beat there's almost nothing there there's no complexity there's no sublime there's no nothing interesting you hear a song once it could be like 10 other songs they all follow the same formula that gets that instant gratification it's like the fact that if you stick sugar in every piece of food a lot of food people will gravitate towards sugar because sugar is just too addictive it's addictive in a sense addiction the use of the term addiction of addiction is blown up but yeah it's too gratifying to let go of and you lose the real the real depth and emotion that music has and again a beat and a popular music can get you to feel good in the moment but it doesn't have any lasting effect it doesn't affect your psychopistemology doesn't affect your emotional state it doesn't affect your sense of life it's just it's just this classical music has a real can have a really profound impact on you and it can really evoke powerful emotions in you it can it can also teach you a lot about your own sense of life and about your own what you like and what you don't your own values classical music also requires work because it requires focus and focus is something that in modern society attention span another reason why music is so appealing popular music is because it doesn't require attention and we have we've been again trained to have very very very short attention spans you can blame iPhones if you want television, lots of things cause us to have very very short attention spans and everything has to be visual it's not visual, we lose interest music videos were big once upon a time because it was you can focus on the music alone yet actually see something classical music has to have has the potential for this but it does require real effort it requires real focus and it requires real attention it requires being in the moment without letting your mind drift and just experiencing something not for one or two or three minutes but for 20 minutes for an hour and letting that experience overwhelm you and that's how you get to the sublime you get to the sublime by really immersing yourself in it I hate when classical music is used as background music because it's not something to be experienced in the background that's contemporary music even jazz I think could be used for that but classical music needs to be really you need to devote time and you need to devote effort to it but the rewards are stunning when you do that and then again with music the more you listen to the more you learn, the more you can listen to the way you you know you can start out by finding you know Wagner very very difficult to listen to but you can train yourself and by listening to other composers ultimately it makes Wagner easier you can start out by listening to Bach and thinking there's nothing there but as you learn more about music you find that you can appreciate Bach I don't think he'll ever rise to the level of Beethoven but you can appreciate him the same with a lot of the great composers if you read a history of if you read an history of music the people who are identified as great composers are probably great composers there's probably something there that makes them great composers aesthetically so whether you want to figure it out or not is up to you but it's there's value in figuring it out why they're considered great it expands your breath in terms of the music even if you never fully enjoy them the only period in which I think the historians of music are too dismissive and this is true of painting and sculpture as well is the 19th century where there were so many great composers so many great painters so many great sculptors that it's easy just to focus on a few names and dismiss everybody else even though the second third tier sculptors and painters were better than first tier sculptors and painters and maybe any other era so the 19th century just there's so much literature there's so much painting there's so much music there's so much art generally it's just this explosion of great art and actually there's a great lecture there about connecting that to capitalism and the enlightenment and then maybe I'll do that one day it's a good idea I have a suggestion by the way if somebody is interested to expand his music playlist what I do for example I like Rachmaninoff's second piano concerto I go to chat gbt and I tell him I love Rachmaninoff's second piano concerto recommend me other works that could be similar to that and it gives you a whole list of great works so it's not hard in classical music because there's so much there is so much it's difficult to pick for so much it makes it not anyway you know there's so much it's but yes I mean if you can use chat gbt that's great but there really is I mean I I'm still discovering pieces I don't know that are beautiful and yeah there's just and the other thing about music but like painting and sculpture is the really good stuff you can listen to again and again and again and again and it doesn't get it never gets boring it never gets boring whereas most pop songs even the best like I can listen to Pink Floyd I love Pink Floyd okay I can listen to an album once and then I probably have to wait 3 years before I listen to it again like it's not something that I want to listen to once on but you put on Beethoven and I'm into it no matter when right and it doesn't it doesn't change that fact so and if you get to the really mediocre popular music once is too much so let's end with your favorite paintings one of your favorite paintings and one of your favorite sculptures I have a lot of favorite paintings I don't have strong favorites I have a lot of favorite paintings I mean the painting right back there the astronomer by Vermeer is one of my favorites and as is the even more I like even better is the geographer which is harder to find I mean this is one of my favorite paintings among many I was looking for Frederick Layton this is Frederick Layton it's a painter's honeymoon it's just I think it's a the whole organization of the painting is to focus you on a triangle again there's always triangles in great paintings right and that is their heads their faces linked together drawing you down to their hands linked together drawing you to his hand painting I mean he is a painter but she is completely in on this career choice right she's not fighting him over his choice to be a painter she's completely committed it's clearly reflective of you know a real bond between them of real love her expression is an expression of interest his expression is a certain intensity that comes from being a painter the scene is a beautiful scene it's beautifully painted it's sharp it's in focus but you know that doesn't mean it's flat in the sense that your eye will go anyway your eye goes where the painter wants you to go it goes to her face looking at the drawing if you look at where where does the light shine the light shines on her face on their hands together and on his hand drawing that again is a triangle the garment if you look at her dress and the light and the folds and the dress all moving your eye upwards towards her face and her hair it's driving their eye up so a good painting always has the artist has always thought about where your eye is going to go and where he wants your eye to go the details he wants you to capture whether you're capturing it consciously or subconsciously most people just look at this painting they're not seeing anything beyond wow I mean look at that that's beautiful but you've also got a place you've got a sense of a place there's not an emphasis on three dimensionality but there is three dimensionality here you've got a sense of a rich kind of background of a beautiful location wherever this is happening that tree in the background with fruits and that that golden wall in the back but the real emphasis is on them is on the couple and what painting means to them there's a real warm fear with the color palette it's really really warm it's a very what do you call it there's a term the color palette is all the same it's all brown right I mean everything here is a shade of brown what's that monochromatic you want to say thank you it's very monochromatic and the whole painting is monochromatic there's gold but even the gold is shaded towards brown even the food is shaded towards a brownish color so it's very monochromatic and it's very difficult to pull off a good painting with monochromatic because it often becomes boring it's often uninteresting but I think that the theme here and the use of light here is very powerful you'll notice the light is all coming in from the top left hand corner and going down no for the top right on the right yeah I think that there's a window there yes now for the sculpture yeah I mean this is a good one on the issue of heroism this is at the Louvre this is a sculpture of Spartacus but nobody has to tell you it's Spartacus you know this is somebody who's just broken the chains right if you if you look at his right arm he's holding a sword but on his wrist is the remnants of a chain on in his left hand he is actually holding what is left of the chain so he's already freed himself he's got the sword he's fighting back he's got this amazing pose of confidence and determination readiness for action which I like a lot in painting I mean yes I think if you think heroism here's heroism here's a man who's enslaved and rebelled against it and stood up to his enslavers and ultimately gets killed but that's in the distant future so who cares and it's not in the the outcome is not in the sculpture I like the I'm thinking of the guy he's looking at he's going to kick his ass he's going to there's a little bit of similarity here Michelangelo's David in terms of the look and the angle of the head there's actually another copy of this I just recently discovered another museum I think in France it's breathtaking for me I still haven't gotten into sculpture so it's always interesting to see new examples I wasn't aware of this one yeah and the thing about sculptures I think Leonard once said sculpture should always be new don't put clothes on sculpture because it's centralized it's very very essentialized there's only so much you can convey in sculptures it's all very condensed into a figure okay so I think we have come to our conclusion what is our call to action to the viewers besides becoming a Ron Brooks show member go experience art go out there and visit museums put on stream some classical music but don't do it while riding a bus and while running around I've often recommended turn off the lights light down on the floor blast the music to 11 and put on Beethoven's 4th Piano Concerto and let it take over Ron Brooks it's been a pleasure thank you very much this was fun