Free Thinking - John Gray
Arts & Ideas
BBC
4.2 • 599 Ratings
🗓️ 3 March 2015
⏱️ 44 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
John Gray talks to Matthew Sweet about why the Aztecs might have had a better understanding of freedom than we do and other human illusions about meaning and progress. Also we consider how artistic movements become successful as the National Gallery stages an exhibition devoted to Paul Durand-Ruel, the french art dealer who discovered the Impressionists. Matthew talks to National gallery curator Christopher Riopelle. Also Jacky Klein, art historian and Godfrey Barker, man of letters and art critic discuss the anthropology of the art world through time.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome back to the home of the oxymoron. Evil genius. He asked the newspaper to print his obituary early so he'd enjoy it. That's like hiding at your own funeral. Yeah, it's a big, great gig. I'm Russell Kane. Join me to weigh in on whether the biggest players in history are more evil or genius. Becoming that rich, I'd say that at some level of genius. It also helps |
| 0:21.2 | that it's a long time ago, right? It's like the podcast version of telling your kids the ice cream |
| 0:26.1 | van plays music when it's out of ice cream. Listen to evil genius on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:32.0 | Hello, the philosopher Thomas Hobbs said that life is nasty, brutish and short. Tonight we bring you the political |
| 0:39.3 | philosopher who says that Thomas Hobbs was a bit of a softy, really. John Gray will shatter all |
| 0:45.4 | your comforting illusions a bit later in the programme. First, though, we're going to spoil French |
| 0:50.4 | impressionism for you. Spoil it, that is, if it's important for you to believe in the |
| 0:55.0 | purity and spontaneity of artistic movement. A dirty great new exhibition of works by Manet, Monnet, |
| 1:02.2 | Moriso, Desgar, Pizarro and Renoir opens this week at the National Gallery in London. But the guy |
| 1:08.5 | with his name in the title of the show is not an artist, but a dealer, |
| 1:12.6 | Paul Durant-Ruelle, the man who perhaps argues the show did more than sell impressionism. |
| 1:18.7 | Perhaps he invented it in London. Later, we're going to debate the role of the dealer in contemporary |
| 1:24.9 | art and discover whether people like Paul Duran-Ruehl are still |
| 1:28.7 | determining what you and me think about art. First, though, imagine yourself in the National |
| 1:34.0 | Gallery, in a room that represents the domestic life of Paul Duran-Ruelle, Catholic, |
| 1:39.2 | patrician, proper. Here he is on the wall, rendered by Renoir in austere tones. And here's his family, |
| 1:46.0 | all by Renoir too, but with more of those airy impressionist phenomena on the canvas. |
| 1:51.7 | And here's a door from his apartment, each panel decorated by Monet. And here's the co-curator, |
| 1:57.5 | Christopher Riapel, and me, saying to him, invented the movement here in London, |
| 2:03.0 | are you sure, invented it? |
| 2:05.2 | In the case of Dioran-Ruel, he underwent a kind of conversion on the road to Damascus, |
| 2:10.4 | like St. Paul, here in London, when in 1871 he was introduced to Monet and Pizarro, saw their first paintings, pictures of London, |
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