 So again, the definition is a selective recreation of reality. So according to Rand, there has to be reality there It has to be something Because otherwise, what are you gonna respond to a circle? There's nothing to respond to there. There's no story. There's no characters. There's no values there. There's just a shape Shapes are not creators of values here. There's values You can't be neutral to that. I mean you could but you know what's going on here Now a slide does incredibly injustice to David So you should all go to Florence at the academia and go and see it for yourself And then tell me if you can be indifferent to it I don't think anybody who goes into that room is indifferent to it, right? Because it's telling a story a story we can respond to and even if I didn't tell you as David if I said I didn't give you the name You would know what it's about. You would know what it represented. We'll talk about that in a few in a little bit so What I want to do is I'm gonna go through the history of sculpture It's a crazy thing, but we're gonna cover the whole history of sculpture or almost the whole history of self We're gonna do it very fast. So we're not gonna go very very deep but one of the things I want You to see one of one of I think the best ways to see how sculpture does this is by looking at different cultures and seeing how different cultures through Western history at least have Have reflected their ideas about the world. They fundamental beliefs about our values about the values that you should care about in their sculpture now for everything I'm gonna say they're gonna be exceptions within a particular culture because Cultures don't produce art who produces art Individuals and not all individuals are gonna have obviously share the same values But it is interesting to see that there are cultural similarities That is between different sculptors during similar periods of time because they're influenced by the same ideas by the same cultural attitudes So for everything I say you probably find an exception. That's great They're always individuals who are different, but these are the dominant trends within those cultures within those time periods So let's start with the Egyptians Egyptians are the first to really do sculpture on a significant scale And what do we see with Egyptian sculpture what it what is it's static Very little movement Not particularly anatomical Very little anatomy very little sense that these people could get up and move. They're not quite us They're always Fun-facing there's no back. They're not three-dimensional in many respects. They're only two-dimensional or two-dimensional plus a little bit of depth What do they look like Do these look like they were alive and vibrant and excited and they're going out to conquer the world Not conquer not brutal sense, but conquer the world in terms of achievement No They look half dead They look like they belong in a mausoleum They look like a celebration in a sense of death and if you know a little bit about Ancient Egypt Egyptian culture. It's a culture obsessed with death It's a culture that for thousands of years progressed very little a Culture that built pyramids why I mean these magnificent buildings that nobody to this day know exactly how they did it For what? Why did they build them to bury somebody in sight? Right not to achieve anything not even just to work not even as a temples to the gods But as a place to bury It's a static culture It's a culture that basically answers the question of how do we know we know because the gods tell us we do what the Gods tell us to do and the gods are a myriad of different creatures and you can see it in other sculptures You can see the different snakes and cats and Alligators and and they're all gods of some form or another This is a culture that really Has no individuals faces are very similar. There's no individuation. There's no emotion being expressed These people are not living They're not alive they're not Striving they're not particularly suffering and they're not particularly enjoying themselves They just flat They're half dead or living dead Awaiting to die Which is what the culture of Egypt was all about it was all about this idea of what happens afterwards You know that the the kings were buried with all their treasure, right? One of the reasons treasure hunters always go to pyramids says they were they they were because they need the treasure in the afterlife, right? There was no caring about the people you're leaving behind It was all about what happens on this journey into an afterlife and the sculpture reflects that and they got you know This culture became it's not that they necessarily couldn't figure out anatomy Right any more than we'll see in a minute the Greeks could It's they chose not to use it. They chose not to do it and And if you look across Egyptian sculpture, it's almost all the same Never in the round never in three dimensions always flat always fun-facing always like like a You know It's like somebody dead in a casket right facing up. That's the kind of perspective you get on of course Very different once you get to the Greeks Suddenly you have movement All kinds of poses the Egyptian sculptures are always left leg forward That's it static hands Anatomy is bad anatomy is very static. They they they connected somehow to the column behind them here free-standing Three-dimensional they could walk off There's a sense here a power of confidence a sense here a people who could of of a Reflection of the values of competence ability Heroism and if you think about Greek culture, what is Greek culture all about? You know Greek is the first philosophical culture. It's a culture where they discover their reason Where they believe in the competence of human beings we can achieve things we can do things They are signed the first scientists And Of course they worship the human body another thing you will see in Greek sculpture that you won't see in Egyptian sculpture Noody the nude There's a penis there staring you right in the face right You'll see later on as we go through the history of it. That's past at some point that goes away But the Greeks believe that the human body was a beautiful thing and He should be revealed and it should be celebrated and it shouldn't be hidden away That sexuality was a positive thing that should be celebrated and embraced That sensuality was but also strength and power and and Athleticism there we go if you look at the discus throw one of the most famous of the Greek sculptures. I mean look at the movement One has to wonder just you know, this is carved in marble I mean just the skill the skill to do that and again think of that circle that we saw in the first slide Just thinking there's a skill right you could probably do that with a power tool can't do that with power tools And the beauty of it the symmetry the form One leg is almost off. He's almost just standing on one leg The the tree stump in the background is there to support the marble because the you know the marble could could easily break Or look at Lancon now. This is a tragic story obviously, right? But look at the struggle look at the emotion on the face These are not just Everybody's the same. We're just waiting to die. We're just accepted death We've just accepted life as it is We're just waiting for the gods to tell us who we are what what are the gods for the Greeks the gods for the Greeks are Perfect humans in some regard and here what you get is struggle The attempt to live the emotion of that struggle you get an individual who's not like everybody else Greece is Culturally the first time in which individuals are elevated heroes are elevated We identify with those heroes athletes Because the mind the body are beautiful things according to Greeks culture and win victory, of course that would be an abou of a ship at least in wood, right and You can't really appreciate it here But but again the artistry the craftsmanship of I'll be able to create the clothes draping over the woman's body almost transparent The sensuality of it at the same time the power and the strength and the determination is no face and yet because the head's gone But yet you get I mean you again you can't look at that or not get the motion The there's a sense of excitement. There's a sense of conquering the world of being able to dominate in a positive sense Your life and the world around you. This is not some Yeah, life sucks This is life. I can you know, I can attain it. I can go for it and that's kind of the metaphysical Value that it projects and that's the emotion it evokes in us. So this is Greece and then we go to this This is the dark ages the gargoyles the dominate dark ages Sculpture, you know monsters scary stuff Why well again is a reflection of the ideas of the culture. This is an era dominated by mysticism By a view of the world just waiting for catastrophe waiting For the end of the world waiting for judgment sending you to hell, you know, if you don't like gargoyles, I mean Wait a second. There was an oh we get it. So this is this is a world in which Again individuals are gone look primarily at the your left the which is the Middle Ages now And what I'll do is I'll compare and actually slides compare kind of the Middle Ages with Renaissance Sculpture and you can see the differences Renaissance is Renaissance of what? What are they bringing back? Greek the being bad Greek after a period of gargoyles after a period of darkness of a period Pessimism after a period where you can't trust the human being you can't trust the individuals and they're no individuals and look life expectancy Was below 30 it was it was not a good period to be alive and that's reflected in the sculpture So when people saw this they recognized their world in it their horrors in it their values in it You can see already with the Renaissance you can see a difference Here the Jesus has no Muscular has no real bodily form. He's just a pile of suffering on The right which is of course 150 years later it's already the beginning of the Renaissance You're seeing muscles. You're seeing form if you look at the face. You actually got character. You've got emotion You've got suffering. It's reflecting back what really is involved. This is not a happy portrayal of the world But it's individuated. It's not that everybody's the same that was bought was certainly in Egypt, but then you get the same thing in In the Middle Ages conformity sameness These are the kind of sculptures that were being Produced in the in during this period right of the the Dark Ages Middle Ages Very little shape No anatomy look at the one in the middle. That's Eve. There's no anatomy. There's no laws of physics are not really working there It's not it's of course not the dimension. There's no there's no in the round again in the Middle Ages and Dark Ages There are no sculptures in the round all the sculptures are got a wall behind them. So you only see them up front Again going back to Egypt It's interesting how these things cycle and how we go backwards, but this is very similar to Egypt anatomy is wrong There's no motion here than the Egyptian sculpture. There's more angst But look at the look at the distortion figure that's Isaiah of of Isaiah over there There's no again. No sense of what's actually going on other than it doesn't look good. There's ugliness a lot of ugliness and This is all art. It's all reflecting something. We're all Their values here. They're not positive values They're negative values. This is the world crumbling. This is there's nothing really worthwhile living for and That's reflected in the fact That human beings are not being portrayed and this is you know, there's some lost skill here But it's interesting how somehow in the Renaissance they rediscovered the skill So it's just a question of when they could rediscover their skill set But here there's no anatomy no skill no three dimensions and again nothing in the round In a round makes you an individual in the round Positions you separated from the group here. Everybody is just a collective amass. I like these three pietars because they're pretty reflective So the left pietar is a is a Middle Ages pietar And you can see I mean there's anguish there's grief There's no beauty. It's ugly purposefully ugly there's horror and That's what's being reflected In the middle pietar Again, definitely worth going to see it's at the Vatican Museum Unfortunately behind glass because somebody tried to shoot it shoot it. Yeah, shoot it So they had to put it behind bulletproof grass. He can't get close to it anymore, which is just tragic but This is Michael Angelo's pietar. I think you know, maybe one of the top three Just just in terms of evoking and in terms of the ability Ability one of the best sculptures ever It's tragic But you don't get the sense of horror You don't the sense that the world is over that everything is horrible It's a mother and a child a grown child She's mourning his loss there are no tears But she's clearly in mourning He is a robust youth. He's muscular. He's strong and yet. She's holding him on her lap It's beautiful sad beautiful It gives you the sense of the potential of life What kind of life could this man have lived if he just stood up and and went about his business? He's it's real. It speaks to you I mean this speaks to of horror and death and destruction even though this is the same story Depicted in two different ways you get a completely different effect So it's not the story that's doing it It's the way the story is communicated to you and part of what I think is interesting and tragic is the third Peter Because the third Peter ties the same guy who did the middle one the same Michelangelo It's what is it 50 years later 60 years later It's incomplete. It's not finished. So we don't know what it would look like if it was completely four But we get a sense of what it's going to be like And I don't know how much you know about Michelangelo's life But Michelangelo was super religious Probably homosexual and really struggled he starts There in a sense full of promise Full of optimism for the positivism about life full of energy full of excitement And you can see in his sculptures if you see his sculptures if you go see the the dying slave in the Louvre and you see You see the slow change in his attitude towards these metaphysical values in his slow growth of pessimism depression a Lack of excitement and energy about a future he sculpts he's sculpting into his 80s, right? I mean he lives a long time for the period and You can see that in the last pietà. There's none of the the you know Jesus is being held up by Mary in the back Drooping figures There's none of the vitality the energy the strength of the middle pietà you can see Just evolution of Michelangelo's attitude towards life and if you've read biographies about Michelangelo Reflects what he actually went through in life sculpture does reflect your values It reflects your attitude as a sculpture and it reflects your attitude as a viewer and it definitely reflects the attitude of a culture The middle culture is a culture of a renaissance of a rediscovery of reason rediscovery of science rediscovery of heroism Rediscovery of the comp the ability of man to change the world to have an impact Now I don't need to tell you this is David for you to say To know what about this young man strong He's powerful He's unbelievably confident There's something he's engaged in some heroic activity even if we don't know that he's facing a giant now What's what's cool about this sculpture is it is a giant right? It's enormous and yet imagine Goliath Goliath is much bigger, right? He's got a sling so we know he's preparing for battle. He's got a rock in his hand He's looking. He's got a bit of a frown. He's a little anxious. He's a little worried. He's entering battle in some form But he is a beautiful specimen of a man With all the rigor with all the confidence of a human being that believes that they can be successful in life That reality is not against them that reality is with them That they can win that they can succeed and this is the spirit of the Renaissance The spirit of rediscovering reason of starting to dabble in science The rediscovery of that human spirit that they learned from the Greeks There's nothing here that reminds us of the kind of Christian middle ages of depression and you know incompetence of man and There's no original sin He's nude again Just like the Greeks. There's no shame. There's no embarrassment again This is Michelangelo in his youth. This is Michelangelo in his early 20s. I remember right He wouldn't do this in his 80s Because his attitude to life has changed dramatically So it's static in a sense, right? He's got a foot forward But you don't get a sense of static you get a sense of motion. This guy could walk off He's going to walk off and fight Goliath. We know that again whether we know the story or not and one thing important about art I think You shouldn't have to read an explanation You should be able to look at a piece of art and know something about what it suggests And the explanation is always helpful. I always like to do that after I look first. I want to make my own evaluation I want to look experience it see how I am Emotionally react to it see what I can understand about what's going on in the artwork then I want to see what the context is and what the history And if there's a story, what's the historical context for the story and all the rest of it? It adds But it can't be the essential if you need to read to understand a work of art Be suspicious about whether it is art Art should be able to be understandable At least at some level To almost anybody Thank you for listening or watching the Iran book show. If you'd like to support the show We make it as easy as possible for you to trade with me. You get value from listening. You get value from watching Show your appreciation. You can do that by going to Iran book show dot com slash support I go to patreon subscribe star locals and just making a appropriate contribution on any one of those any one of those channels also if you'd like to see the Iran book show grow Please consider Sharing our content and of course subscribe press that little bell button right down there on YouTube So that you get announcement when we go live and for you those of you who are ready Subscribers and those of you who ready supporters of the show. Thank you. I very much appreciate it