 Hi and welcome to today's Barnes Takeout. My name is Amy Gillette. I'm the Collections Researcher at the Foundation. Today, let's go into room number three and we're going to look at this painting right over here. Let's see, minute any bit entitled Dramatic Poetry and subtitled Askelis painted right around the year 1896 by French artist Pierre Vita Chavan. And as is really standard practice and I think is productive before looking at our particular picture, I think it's always nice to contextualize it within the ensembles that Dr. Barnes orchestrated when he was still living. And so something that hops out to me immediately is maybe I guess we could say this element of line, how if we look at the top of our painting, it's arched as is the inside art of this confessional cage, the lock of the padlock above it, and both of these are done in France a little bit earlier, maybe 17th into the 18th century. And something I think would have absolutely delighted Albert Barnes is the fact that in this building across the parkway where the Barnes is now, we see these arched windows. And on top of that, we also do see our painting looking forward in many ways to this painting over here entitled The Nursemaid painted by American artist Milton Evry in the year 1934. And so if we look at the ensemble, we see that the paintings are similar in their dimensions, in their color palettes. But if we look a little bit more closely, what we can see as well that there are geometric grids that govern them both. In fact, dramatic poetry has been x-rayed and there is a grid that Pruvita Chabon had delineated underneath. And so looking at both of them as relatively kind of freehanded as the Milton Evry piece might seem, you may be able to see that any kind of scumbling, what looks to be accidental is purely internal. And so what we're going to do now is look a little bit more at the context of dramatic poetry, both in terms of where it was installed in stylistically. So heading on in, here we are. Like I mentioned, the subtitle of this painting is Aeschylus and that refers to this man here reclining in this purple robe on this grayish rock. This is the the ancient Greek poet Aeschylus. He was active in the earlier fifth century BCE. And we see him reading from the script of a play that's traditionally attributed to him entitled Prometheus Bound. And that is the action that we see unfolding in the water of the Aegean Sea before us. And so we've got this tall purple rock on which the titan named Prometheus is chained if you look at his handcuffs, the way he's chained on his ankles as well. And what he has done is he's given human beings the gift of fire. And this is made Zeus and the Olympian God very angry and Zeus is somebody who's just very recently taken control of the cosmos and wants to rule it tyrannically and wants to overthrow human beings. And so Prometheus has given them what's basically the kindling of knowledge and Zeus wants to punish him for it. And so not only is he bound to the rock, but there's this bird of praying, either an eagle or vulture depending on what you read. That comes every single day to devour the liver of Prometheus that then again regenerates on a daily basis. And so these women that we see floating around him are the ocean mints, one of whom one of whom is his mother. And in conversation with him in the play, he Prometheus says that 13 generations then he will be rescued by the Greek hero Heracles or Hercules if we use the Latin name. Now that's that's the story. And, and I think it's important to note that this piece that we've gotten the Barnes was not meant to be a standalone one, but rather was one in a series, among eight others installed in the Boston Public Library. And so probably looking at this image right here, you see right away why I've included it where this is a much bigger version of the ones that we've got at the Barnes, either ours is a study for it or a scaled down version of it. But it's a representation of dramatic poetry, again, flanked by pastoral poetry, epic poetry, other branches of human knowledge. And this one over here, as a matter of fact, is actually electricity or physics. You see the electric wires over here. And I think ours was particularly apt for this installation because in the play that is attributed to Escalus, it turns out that Prometheus, it said that he hadn't given human beings just fire, but truly all the branches of knowledge that are consequent from that, the humanistic as well as the natural sciences. And then kind of dovetailing that let's go ahead. This is the summation of the scheme in the loge of the Boston Public Library with a complex title. It's called the inspiring muses acclaimed genius messenger of light. And so here's the figure of genius, just zooming in on this cloud with I suppose these olive branches or florals kind of flanking and then the different muses with their musical and other instruments all about and really making the point truly that human knowledge and human freedom are a hand in the glove. And this is something that I think is quite delightful in the sense that profetish von was a French artist, but gifting this art to a new American institution and going ahead from there, I do want to think about the style that we see these images rendered in. So here, this is an image that's at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. And again, like, like the site of the Boston Public Library that I showed you, you probably can guess why you're seeing it where again, we've got this vertically oriented purple rock rising out of the sea. We've got more floating human beings over here is the hero Perseus about to rescue and drama and Roman art, as this was made in the first century CE in the Bay of Naples, was a major inspiration to him. And you can see not only the color of the pigments and proof he did make some interesting scientific experiments where he used special techniques to blot out the oil. But on top of that, we see this desire to integrate painting as well as architecture that in the way that proof did it was not only retrospective, but future looking to and to make that point, let's go back to the Barnes Foundation, let's step into the main calorie in the parkway and look up at this just glorious painting series of paintings that French artist Aaron Matisse did in the early 1930s entitled the dance. And Matisse had made it size to order for the dimensions of the main calorie of the Barnes Foundation. Like Previta Siobhan, he did not paint it actually on the wall, but rather in France, to the measured dimensions of the space. And if you look beneath the springs of the vaults over here, you may even be able to see the canvas seems like there and there. And Matisse acknowledged his debts to Poovie in terms of how he was able to respect past traditions, architecture, look to the future. And I'm going to read you a quote that he said after his acknowledgement to the artist that had preceded him. And Matisse wrote, I'm going to read, in my studio, the dance was only a painted canvas. There in the Barnes Foundation, it became a rigid thing, heavy as stone, and one that seemed to have been created at the same time with the building. Dr. Barnes said, one would like to call the place a cathedral now. Your painting is like the rose window of a cathedral. And I love that as a quote to think back to our own painting, where we went together myth and painting and architecture, light, the branches of human knowledge, that do borrow from what comes before us, but ideally always look ahead. And with that, I thank you for watching today. And that is it for today's Barnes Takeout. I'm Tom Collins, new Bauer family, executive director of the Barnes Foundation. I hope you enjoyed Barnes Takeout. Subscribe and make sure your post notifications are on to get daily servings of art. 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