Name: 【TED】Luke Syson: How I learned to stop worrying and love "useless" art (Luke Syson: How I learned to stop worrying and love "useless" art)
Uploaded: 2017-07-27T15:01:14.000Z
Duration: 13 min 11 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Two years ago, I have to say there was no problem.

Adverbs of manner

Two years ago, I knew exactly  what an icon looked like.

Everybody's icon, but also the default position

of a curator of Italian Renaissance  paintings, which I was then.

And in a way, this is also another default selection.

Leonardo da Vinci's exquisitely soulful image

And I use that word, soulful, deliberately.

the two versions of Leonardo's "Virgin of the Rocks"

that were about to come together  in London for the very first time.

In the exhibition that I was then in  the absolute throes of organizing.

I was literally up to my eyes in Leonardo,

So, he was occupying every part of my brain.

Leonardo had taught me, during that three years,

About taking you from your own  material world into a spiritual world.

He said, actually, that he believed  the job of the painter

was to paint everything that was visible  and invisible in the universe.

That's a huge task. And yet,  somehow he achieves it.

To see a vision of the universe that's  more perfect than our own.

So this, in a sense, was really  what I believed an icon was.

At about that time, I started talking to Tom Campbell,

director here of the Metropolitan Museum,

The move, in fact, back to an earlier life,

to take over the department of European sculpture  and decorative arts, here at the Met.

All the conversations were done  at very peculiar times of the day --

Again, I'd been there a couple of years before,

So, it was just before the time that  the Leonardo show was due to open

when I finally made it back to the Met, to New York,

To see what European sculpture  and decorative arts looked like,

beyond those Renaissance collections  with which I was so already familiar.

And I thought, on that very first day,  I better tour the galleries.

like 57 varieties of baked beans, I believe.

I walked through and I started in my comfort zone in the Italian Renaissance.

My head, also still full of the Leonardo exhibition

that was about to open, and I came across this.

And I thought to myself: What the hell have I done?

There was absolutely no connection in my mind

at all and, in fact, if there was any emotion going on,

This object felt utterly and completely alien.

Silly at a level that I hadn't yet  understood silliness to be.

So, I started thinking about why it was, in fact,

Leonardo himself had preached  against the use of gold,

so it was absolutely anathema at that moment.

And then there's little pretty sprigs  of flowers everywhere. (Laughter)

And finally, that pink. That damned pink.

It's such an extraordinarily artificial color.

I mean, it's a color that I can't think of  anything that you actually see in nature,

The object even has its own tutu. (Laughter)

This little flouncy, spangly, bottomy bit

Where all the little girls would come  either as a princess or a fairy.

There was one who would come as a fairy princess.

And I realize that this object was in my mind,

born from the same mind, from the same womb,

practically, as Barbie Ballerina. (Laughter)

And then there's the elephants. (Laughter)

with their little, sort of strange, sinister expressions

and Greta Garbo eyelashes, with  these golden tusks and so on.

absolutely nothing to do with a majestic  march across the Serengeti.

But something more profound  was happening as well.

were quintessentially the kind that I  and my liberal left friends in London

Subtitles ListPlay Video

【TED】Luke Syson: How I learned to stop worrying and love "useless" art (Luke Syson: How I learned to stop worrying and love "useless" art)

sort

absolutely

extraordinary

realize