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Intelligence Squared

Rembrandt Vs Vermeer: The Titans of Dutch Painting

Intelligence Squared

Intelligence Squared

News, Society & Culture, Arts, News Commentary

4.21.2K Ratings

🗓️ 20 April 2018

⏱️ 63 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

(For a list of all paintings referenced by Simon Schama and Tracy Chevalier in this debate please go to: https://www.intelligencesquared.com/events/rembrandt-vs-vermeer-titans-of-dutch-painting-simon-schama-tracy-chevalier/ Rembrandt van Rijn is the best known of all the Dutch masters. His range was vast, from landscapes to portraits to Biblical scenes; he revolutionised every medium he handled, from oil paintings to etchings and drawings. His vision encompassed every element of life – the sleeping lion; the pissing baby; the lacerated soles of the returned prodigal son. Making the case for him in this debate was Simon Schama. For him Rembrandt is humanity unedited: rough, raw, violent, manic, vain, greedy and manipulative. Formal beauty was the least of his concerns, argues Schama, yet he attains beauty through his understanding of the human condition, including to be sure, his own. But for novelist Tracy Chevalier it can all get a little exhausting. Rembrandt’s paintings, she believes – even those that are not his celebrated self-portraits – are all about himself. Championing Vermeer, she will claim that his charm lies in the very fact that he absents himself from his paintings. As a result they are less didactic and more magical than Rembrandt’s, giving the viewer room to breathe. The debate was chaired by art historian , broadcaster and Director of Artistic Programmes at the Royal Academy Tim Marlow. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/intelligencesquared. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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Banta makes it quick, easy and scalable. And I'm not to say that because I work here. Get started today at banta.com. Okay, first up, Simon Sharma, Professor of History and Art History at Columbia University, author of 17 books, I think, to date and counting. Everything from slavery to the history of Britain to the history of the Jews, but also Rembrandt's eyes, which has just been republished

1:11.1

by Penguin. Tonight, he's Rembrandt's voice. Let him start 23 minutes on Rembrandt, starting now.

1:21.1

Thank you, Tim. No, we don't have time for that. We so don't have time for clapping. Billy have time

1:26.5

for breathing, actually. To begin

1:28.4

with, what do we want from art? How do we think of the very greatest art? It could even be

1:32.5

abstract art. Do we want art essentially to be an edited version of our own experienced human

1:38.9

reality and all its kind of sweat and dirt and flesh and blood and craziness and passion,

1:43.9

as well as its quiet

1:45.0

tender moments. Do we want that cleaned out? Do we want a vision? Is art supposed to give us

1:51.8

a vision of edited life, then crystallized in a beautiful cube of light? If that's what we want

...

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