[00:00:31] Host Create clip she That was fantastic on this

[00:00:49] Host Create clip song. Apart from being one of my favorites, I sing like this every day.

[00:00:53] Host Create clip I'm not joking the

[00:00:55] Host Create clip reason I picked this song because it's called Angels on. Yet there is no God at the heart of that song, but there's a lot of the feeling that was formerly directed at our gods. Art is nowadays are new religion, and museums are our cathedrals. This is not me stating it. That's something that Theodore Zeldin, the cultural historian, said. Art is our new religion, and museums are our cathedrals. That's a beautiful idea. Because religion is on the decline on dhe culture is something that is eminently suited to filling its shoes. Let's take a look at the historical background to that. You know, Up until the middle of the 19th century, this was a pious nation. And then, around the middle of the 19th century, church attendance fell off a cliff and people started to worry. What were people going to do when there was no longer a god to hold a society together? Where were people going to find consolation meaning, a sense of morality, a sense of dignity on dhe, somewhere to go to in moments of distress, on with fears and terrors of mortality at a small but influential group off critics in the U. K. Came up with an answer which reverberates and challenges us to this day. Critics like Matthew Arnold and John Ruskin began to argue that there was something that could fill the gap created by the decline in organized faith on that thing. Was culture with a Capital C Culture could replace Scripture. This was the great promise off 19th century political thought that there could be something that could take up the slack. The essays of Plato, the novels of Jane Austen, the paintings of Titian and BOTTICELLI, the poetry off Matthew Arnold. These things could fill the gaps left by the departure off religion. It's a beautiful idea, one that at the school of life we take deeply seriously and one that I myself take deeply seriously. But I can't help but notice that there are a lot of lip service is paid to this idea in the cultural establishment, among the cultural elite in facts, that idea is dead.

[00:03:02] Host Create clip I'll tell you why instead and how you can prove that it's dead if you were to show up at any off Britain's elite cultural institutions. The university box for the University of Cambridge, the National Gallery, the Tate and you had said, I've come here at the fountain off culture on I've come to study because I'm lost. I don't know right from wrong. I'm confused. I'm terrified of death. The people in charge of those elite institutions will be picking up the phone and dialing, if not the insane asylum, the police. It is simply not acceptable to bring the aches and pains of our souls to the guardians of culture. Whatever lip service is paid to the importance of culture, it cannot be done now. What should we do with these pains and troubles? Well, if you're a relatively stupid person, there is one answer that is customarily given on that answer is read a self help book. These things are for stupid people. There are some of those people around on. They'll tell you how to live. But the elite answer says that anyone who's clever doesn't need that sort of stuff. And the reason is that life is relatively simple. After all, all you need to do in an average life is grow up. Separate yourself from your parents. Find a job that's moderately satisfying. Create a relationship where you can relate to someone. Start raising some Children.

[00:04:21] Host Create clip What's the onset of mortality in your parent's generation and then starting to lap up the shores of your own? And then eventually, when it gets you lie down in the coffin and shut the lid politely on, go off into the next world or no world it all on its simple Who's got any

[00:04:35] Host Create clip problems with that? Well, I

[00:04:39] Host Create clip think that's desperately wrong. I think we are very vulnerable franchise creatures in desperate need. Off support on dhe we generally don't get it. This is why the School of Life was founded. It's the founding idea off the school that culture can support us in our life, but it's a minority idea, and it's a constant uphill struggle to get that point across. What I'm trying to talk to you about today is a new book that I've written with a fellow faculty member, Jon Armstrong, which argues for the particular utility off art as a source off help with our problems, our innermost problems, the problems of the soul, if you like. And in a way it's arguing that art can be a form off self help and that there is nothing demeaning about the concept of self help, only the way in which some of self help has Bean done so far. But there is nothing wrong with it as a concept. I think there is nothing wrong with the art that's being produced in this country. It's not the art. That's the problem. It's the frame around the art. We are simply not encouraged to bring ourselves toe works of art. And for that reason, many a museum and gallery visit goes off half cocked. We don't admit that it's going off half cocked. But as we descend the whitewashed gallery steps, they're white. Be a sense of puzzlement. What was this about? What's it really? Four were intelligent and clever and sensitive and socialized being so we don't allow these thoughts public airing. But in our heart of hearts, the impact of art is often not what it should be because the frame is wrong on the screen. You'll see a rough go when I was a teenager in a very confused one at that I spent some time at Tate on Dhe looked at the Rothko's in the famous Rothko Room on Dhe. I remember looking at them and thinking, I don't really know what I'm allowed to feel in their presence. I think I know what I'm feeling. I'm feeling kind of sort of aching and sad and confused, but I'm not sure the caption didn't help. The caption told me that it was on acrylic and Bean painted a certain year in Providence that went to this gallery in that museum, this dealer and all the rest of it.

[00:06:47] Host Create clip And for years I was embarrassed until I came across an interview that Mark Rothko had given to Time magazine. And it was a rather crude interviewer of the sort that America blessed that nation sometimes produces. On the interview kept saying to Roth, coming after, What are you doing with your art? What is it? And Roscoe was evading and sliding, going into art. Speaking eventually, Rocky lost his temper in a productive way because he said, Look, what I'm trying to do with my works of art is you've got sadness in you. I've got sadness in me on my works of art are places where the two sadnesses can meet, and therefore both of us need to feel less sad. Beautiful. I wish they put that on a huge caption in the Rothko Room because that would have been a productive frame with which to enter a relationship with that artwork. So there's something wrong with the framing on. I'd like us to reframe the way we approach art to release its latent purpose on its power to help us to live and die.

[00:07:41] Host Create clip This was always accepted by religions. Religions have a much less conflicted idea off what art is for. If you ask a German art critic now, what is art for that? Whoa, It's very complicated. It's a door. No Heidegger. If you ask a religion. Christianity, what is art for? They'll give you a very simple answer. The point of art is to lend luster and conviction to the teaching of Jesus Christ. It's It's to convince you to be a bit more like Jesus. Very odd concept if you're not a Christian like me. But that's what believe he was up to in this beautiful altar piece on. That's what all great works of Christian art are doing their propaganda on behalf off the Christian church. I believe that art should be propaganda on behalf of something else, not theology but psychology. I believe that art should serve the needs of our psyche as efficiently and as clearly as it serves the needs of theology the hundreds of years. What cannot do in what way is aren't helpful and beneficial. I want to run you through a few concepts, some very obvious others a little bit more esoteric about what art could do for us to start it. Answer that question, which, unfairly is seen is unanswerable. What's art for very obvious.

[00:08:53] Host Create clip Now one of the things that aren't can do is compensate for the fact that we have really bad memories. If we had a better memory, we wouldn't need art. But we forget stuff. Particularly valuable stuff. John Constable went up on Hampstead Heath in the 80 early 18 twenties on love, the Look of Clouds, but he knew that he would forget them, and so would his audiences. So he had to hand aren't which captured the beauty, the evanescent beauty off the clouds as they Scud above Hampstead Heath, a work of art becomes valuable. The Maur that what we're capturing and memorialize ing is significant. The more significant and fragile it is, the more the work of art grows in our hearts because we know that it's touching on something that we otherwise can't put a finger on if you like. Art is a bucket, it's holding stuff, but it's holding the most important thing, which is our own experiences on our own emotions. This is a great work because of all the hundreds of things that Vermeer could have held on to about his sitter. He seems to have picked the right ones, and we just recognize that intuitively, that he's got to the truth off his subject. And we dignify that this artwork with the work great because it's drawn our attentions to the things that are of most significance on dhe. Whatever an artist is great.

[00:10:11] Host Create clip They're opening our eyes to facets of the world which would otherwise be invisible so we might go to America, we might say, or g this dinos very Hopper esque, And the reason we're saying it's hop arrest is that Hopper knew how to put certain stuff in his bucket. He memorialized it and has enabled us to sense an atmosphere which would otherwise have run through off 40 and floored memories. So art as a tool off memory, compensating for a cognitive weakness in the area of memory. This is the most famous and popular postcard on sale at the National Gallery. It's by money and its water lilies, and the problem with this painting is that elite people don't like it. They get very worried that the mass of the population likes this sort of postcard on. The reason is that it's pretty on for those who have no anything about the art world, Prettiness is not allowed. Prettiness is very anxiety inducing because there's a worry about the dark side. What about Syria? What about the Children who were beheaded in Syria and poison gas on bombs and explosions and cynical politicians and debts? How are we not going to forget this when we're looking at this sort of stuff, or indeed, this kind of stuff, really, for namby pamby? What's going on with this kind of off? Now? It's my firm conviction that most of us are not in danger of losing sight of the darkness in fact, we suffer from an opposite danger, which is being overwhelmed by the darkness, losing hope, not being able to cope, being so overwhelmed by the darkness that faces humanity that we can't go on anymore. In other words, art has a very important function in giving us hope.

[00:11:50] Host Create clip And this is not naive. And indeed the Maur, the simple images off happiness touch us the Maurits a sign that there's a lot of darkness in our hearts. I think the Maur you find something pretty moving the Maurits, a sign that you're aware that life is not a pleasant a roll call of one pleasure after another. For the most part, we start to be moved by the small moments off beauty that artists are very good at training our eyes to once we start to get to know the whole deal which normally well, certainly over 30 you're starting to get a picture of it. This this is a beautiful bunch of flowers. Eso Surely the guy who painted this was just totally ignorant of anything. Not a tall This is by far the Latour on 19th century France has produced lots of agonized artists Baudelaire, But this guy really takes the biscuit. He had syphilis. He got didn't get on with his mother with his father. He had money problems, et cetera. And yet he kept painting this.

[00:12:52] Host Create clip What's going on? Is

[00:12:54] Host Create clip he the idiot? What about why don't you paint the dark stuff beheaded Children? Why is he what's he doing? The reason is that he was so aware off the darkness, he used this as the life raft. And the reason why one senses in this something which is not sentimentality but prettiness is that the guy knew about the dark side. Sentimentality is a no attachment to the good that refuses to countenance the bat, but, um, engagement with prettiness on adult engagement Prettiness, of course, recognizes that it is an exception on an island in an otherwise dark world, and that's why it gains value. So don't be embarrassed of pretty flowers on water lilies. That's what art can do. Art restores hope, and prettiness is in the central part off its mission. Another thing that art does is make us remind us that we are not alone in suffering because all of us suffer on all of us. At various points are convinced that we're alone in suffering now. One of the most the greatest fears that all of you have is a fear of being a loser and a failure. Who here is afraid of being a bit of a loser failing at their lives? Everybody, everybody is terrified off this. Who here's anxious? In general, you have, Of course, we're all anxious. We're all collapsing. We're all vulnerable and fragile, friend. But the dominant social mood, how you find how you find great way have are nervous breakdowns in in private for the most part. But works of art are provide opportunities for communion around the dark realities of our life in a way which is eloquent and dignified on the screen. You've got a wonderful sculpture by the great American sculptor Richard Sara. It's called Fernando Pessoa. Uh, for those of you who know persona Portuguese poet off sadness and grief and melancholy, it's a giant, simple, off the roll off sadness in our life. It's a big, hulking, melancholic thing. It's the Nelson's column of sadness on dhe. It's nice to have that sort of stuff around. It's like putting on a Leonard Cohen CD when things are bad it doesn't drag you down. It brings you up by acknowledging that we're all in this on. That's why we like looking at Caspar David Friedrich on other dark works thistles by Edward Hopper. It's called a Charette and to the left of the screen, people having fun. They're watching a film, that laughing. Reason popcorn. But there's a sad person in the picture. The usher rent on dhe Hopper has, with great dignity and sensitivity, bathed in light. She's the Virgin Mary. She's the Madonna. She is the suffering soul at the heart of a superficial world. She is us, and we are being invited to sympathize and identify with her on. That's what's going on in this painting, but it's more generally what goes on in many great works of art. The usher it in a sad world that's laughing rather superficially.

[00:15:46] Host Create clip There's another issue that art can do for us on. Art can re balance us. Now. All of us are slightly unbalanced in one way or another, there's something a bit extreme about all of us were too masculine to feminine, too practical, too emotional to two into the arts do into the sciences to into nature to inter cities with all sorts of things to into Children, not enough into Children. Also, things were unbalanced in a certain way. Now allege that the kind of art that moves us and draws us is very often a work of art that are unconscious. Recognizes contains a concentrated dose of are missing virtues the missing bit of us on. By coming into contact with that work of art, we hope to correct our list one way or another. And it's because of this that all of us have rather different tastes in art because all of us are missing slightly different things. So the first thing to ask someone when you know about their taste is to head for that question. What bit of you is missing that you're finding in the object of art that you find beautiful rather than hating other people's taste or being scared of it? And often people states is quite scary. Asked that question, What are you afraid off? What is this art compensating for some fascinating answers thistles, an environment that I find really beautiful on? The reason I find this really beautiful is not that I am like this, but that I really want to be. But I'm in exile from my true self on this'll. True self is calm and rational and balanced on dhe serene. These are things I deeply love, but is anyone who knows me. And everybody at the school of life who has to work with me knows these are qualities that are only tentatively managed to summon to the surface on a daily basis on dhe. That's why I find this apartment by John Paulson Very beautiful. But people are liking different things. I think of the people who built the Palace of Versailles. Gold mirrors, chandeliers. Is that What were they afraid off? What? What do they want their art toe pull them away from and drag them toward that great fear? Was being a peasant being in the mud, being like everybody else? When it wasn't so nice to be like everybody else, they had a deep fear of poverty. Now, not everybody in the Palace of Versailles had those fears, and towards the end off its reign as a royal palace, the Queen of France, Mary Antoinette, had grown up in Austria. Andi was rather more comfortable about a lot of things felt that she was lacking something else. It's all the mirrors, and the gold in the kind of Saudi Arabian taste of Versailles was a little bit too much, and she wanted something else. So she had at the bottom of her garden, a miniature village built this'll wasn't by Barratt Homes. This'll waas the pretty three Anil where a model peasant village was built. Now it's worth thinking that society has to be very rich before it finds any charm in this sort of environment.

[00:18:41] Host Create clip Enjoy the kind of peasant aesthetic you need to be way up the socioeconomic ladder. It's only because Britain is really quite rich as a nation that we see the charm in the humble Barrett home development, which is made to look like a kind of medieval small Windows environment. This is This is a sign off Britain's wealth, and it's alienation, if you like, from the soil from nature, from traditional looking at a magazine the other day on was looking at that seemed to be an interior design magazine, and I thought that really they were basically two kinds of kitchen on offers. Endless kitchen adverts on the first kind of kitchen is the empty, serene kitchen, a kitchen of calm, the steel thing. Everything's all the appliances, discreet. Later, it's one kind of kitchen. And then there's the kind shaker kitchen rough sort of peasant. Look, you know, I've kind of been stewed on the on the argha, etcetera, very dogs running around, very natural. And then I thought, you know, this is telling us what's missing in Britain. What? What have we lost? Touch with what we desperately attracted to? We've lost touch course with calm and serenity can't get hold of it because of the conditions of modern life.

[00:19:51] Host Create clip And the other thing that we can't hold on to properly is tradition and history, and the soil and nature can't do this. And we're trying, in a strange way through our magnet kitchens to get back in touch with it. And that's what married Antoinette was doing. So art is a re balancing agent. There's something else that art is very good for artist. Fantastic for propaganda. I'm really keen that we should learn to use art as propaganda. Now, a bit of a frightening word, I confess when you think of artist propaganda, his friend Jellicle painting hell terrify Christians into behaving well. Otherwise they would be boiled and their fingernails pulled out. And they would, you know, have their Children dismembered in front of the net Central. This lusciously brought out in some beautiful works of art on DDE. Regimes on governments on dhe power bases have always used the idea that art can star us, move us and motivate us. But it's scary because, you know, we think of this guy and he wasn't doing propaganda too well.

[00:20:54] Host Create clip So if I'm saying that art can and should be propaganda, I don't mean propaganda on behalf of evil. I mean propaganda on behalf. Off, Good off the good. This is propaganda, I think, on behalf of the goodness is an Indonesian sculpture of the Buddha. The Buddha believed in compassion, kindness, friend, little Buddhist friendship, the worship of nature, integration into the community on Dhe. The idea is that by looking at the statue of the Buddha, you're supposed to gain inspiration to be a bit more like him. And this is very odd because we've got very conflicted ideas about role models in our society. We've got these people called celebrities, famous people find it on the right hand column of that website. You go to Andi. Wait. I think I have been looking at that, but I don't mean it a bit ridiculous and it really I'm not really interested. But secretly you are. I believe that a well functioning society and I'd like the Daily Mail to take this on board Take Should should have role models at its heart that we can, in a non ironic way, look up to admire and model ourselves on. A very important to be able to model yourself on someone on the kind of propaganda that we need is propaganda on behalf off the good of good things.

[00:22:07] Host Create clip Kindness. We will want all that what they are. Kindness, friendship, compassion set. These truths are deeply important and yet go stale. But the problem about life is not that we don't know what being good or kind or meaningful involved or is, but that we are motivated to act on a knowledge that lies steroidal within us on the point of art is that get us motivated, you know? Think of angels. That's a song. A song about gratitude to someone on dhe. You know most of us are, in theory, grateful to a lot of people. But it's only probably by the second chorus of Robby's great song that some of that idea of gratitude is coming to life in our hearts. And that's what great art does. Sorry to call Robin is great, but I think it is in its own way. ITT's attempting to breathe life into a cliche, and that's what great art does on. But we need a variety of role models around to guide us towards good things, and that's what I can do. It's a lovely role model she's by Aren't she's called Madame Divorcee? She lived in the 19th century, and she's kind of like a modern Buddha. And the reason I say that is because if you look at her, she's got all sorts of wonderfully attractive psychological traits emanating from her physical form. She looks like the sort of person that if you went to her and I told you had a problem with a complex issue in your private life, she doesn't seem judgmental. She seems steady, perhaps a little bit stern but confident, compassionate, all sorts of things you can see in her face just as all sorts of things we can see in the Buddhist face. We need role models around us in order to keep us on track on Git isn't just figures that have a moral that emanates from the abstract. Art does this as well.

[00:23:48] Host Create clip Many works of abstract art have got a philosophy of life that emanates from them, and it's useful to have them around. Think off this beautiful Korean moon jar. Now Korean ceramics like Japanese ceramics, has a philosophy behind it. It has a philosophy related to the acceptance off imperfection in life. The glazing is on purpose, not perfect. And yet it's attractive. And that's a very, very hard thing for our age in our society, to hold on to the idea off something that could be good but in perfect something that could be floored and marked but on the right side. And that's the moral that's emanating a Buddhist moral that's emanating from this beautiful 12th century ceramics that you can see in the British Museum. So art propagandizing on behalf off the good that sweet Nikki function. Something else that art can help us with is this kind of thing now This is a wonderful party that was given after the Oscars last year on DSA. People whose names I don't know. They look very nice and having a really, really nice time on Dhe after it's all good, have champagne on, then have some caviar and our party on into the night on the right hand column lots and lots of stuff about them. And how they loved the problem is that I wasn't invited and nor will you on this'll makes us sad. This makes is very sad because because our lives are so drab. Here we are in the Institute of Education is really ugly on.

[00:25:15] Host Create clip We don't have anything that exciting plan for the evening on. It's all a bit humdrum on Somewhere out there is a world of glamour on. We wish that we could get into it, but on where? Where is it? Well, works of art have always attempted to open our eyes to the neglected value off the every day. It's not that everything every day always has value, but there's a lot that we walk past on dhe. Many, many great works of art are essentially picking up on things that we've seen 1000 times but never looked at properly. So they are helping us. To re see on dhe turn are jaded eyes back to certain aspect of our lives that we've grown spoiled about. This is by the Danish artist Koepka, who spent most of his professional life going around his native Copenhagen, painting gardens and moths on windows and cats wandering around alleyways and clouds in the sky, and some cows etcetera on Dhe. When you look at them after a while, you think there is a bit of glamour in Copenhagen, not the sort of glamour that these guys a runabout but a different sort of glamour glamour off the actual conditions of existence on this fragile, beautiful planet. It's not gonna last very long, incredibly beautiful, and art reminds us off value that we've grown tired or bored or blind, too. Now, a key thing in what I want to do in life is change the way that museums are arranged, framed on dhe invite their audiences to respond to them.

[00:26:43] Host Create clip This is a plan off the National Gallery in London. On Dhe. It's arranged. All the rooms are arranged in possibly the most stupid way that you could ever imagine organizing a space that holds art. Those You can see it. It's telling us there are paintings from 12 52 1515 116 107 100. It's arranged pretty chronologically, as if the most important aspect off a picture is, you know, what side of December 17 99 It was painted it. This is utterly daft. Imagine arranging your bookshelf according to when the work was written. This would be the least effective will tell you something, but it would be the least meaningful way off during it. And yet this is the way that we have grown used to organizing works of art. I think this is a mistake on the clue. I think to how we should proceed is to be found here. This is a friary church in Venice, and it's a mess from a chronological point of view. There's stuff everywhere from all sorts of ages, even different materials. There's a lenient Donatello and event. It's Yanal rubbing shoulders, and it doesn't matter because it's not really a mess. It's a mess from the curatorial point of view that we've grown up with, but it's absolutely not a mess according to the ideology off the institution that commissioned the work of art. Because the institution that commissioned the art wanted art to serve our souls. It was a giant machine to help us to live like Jesus Christ. Very weird concept. But the thing works on, if that's your mission, you could make stuff up. You don't need to have it all by the right date on the right material. Just mix it all up according to its theological purpose.

[00:28:21] Host Create clip Now I believe we should take a leaf from the book of the friary church and other churches before and after on dhe. Learn to arrange our museums of art according to the needs of our psyche that that is the thing that should come first, not the date on DDE. What? How would that work? Well, some good news, Some good news. The other day I was a conference in Amsterdam and I met a man who runs the Reichs Museum ankle vim Pieties. And he says, What are you writing about now? And I said, Well, I'm so writing a book that says that your jobs completely useless and you've not done it very well he said, Oh well, send me the book. So I said in the book on Dhe. Then a few hours later, he called me up and he said, was very interesting, very interesting. Can't come back to me so we won't have a chat on Then he said A little while later he said, Okay, I would like to give you on the school of life a chance to re hang my museum according to this weird and wonderful method that you've devised. So in April of 2014 through till September 2014 we are re hanging the Rights museum in Amsterdam. Theo, you don't know what it's like, but we're giving it a go. We're giving it a way. Did try this with Nicholas Penny at the runs the National Gallery. Hey wrote to me, dear, out of the bottle. Thank you very much for sending your book. I will look forward to reading Maur of it as soon as I'm back from my travels. Do drop in any time to say if you want to tell me more, This isn't one for us at the moment, Exclamation mark. In other words, do not darken my steps again. but bless the rights we seem. So how would one start setting up rooms? How would one arrange spaces? Well, we mentioned anxiety. I mention anxiety before anxiety is a very powerful factor in our lives. On I would Love a space, a rumor floor dedicated to some of the most common forms off anxiety.

[00:30:18] Host Create clip One of the anxieties that we have is that we are going to lose our jobs on dhe, lose our status and be ashamed on dhe end up trapped and we got tramp anxiety here.

[00:30:30] Host Create clip Everyone's got tramp anxiety,

[00:30:31] Host Create clip right? We're going up the trump well, so I think that we kick off with a room of anxiety with this guy who really did become a trump poor man. This is a painting by Dave Eat called Bellisari is begging for arms, and he used to be one of most powerful soldiers and generals in the Emperor Justinian armies. Then he fell foul of some court politics and ended up begging on the steps of the temple in Rome on dhe. Very sad, but it helps to dignify something as a general feature of human life. It happened to Bella Saris, and it will in some way happened to you and to me, all of us, because it's written into the script of how life goes. We end up losing status and, if not necessarily begging for arms during the status equivalent off this, we end up being looked after by other people on dhe way end up in a position off weakness. So we're headed for that art can, with great grace in doctors towards an essential truth of life. Next to that, I might hang an Ansel Adams trees in the autumn beautiful, melancholic scene.

[00:31:33] Host Create clip We greet our own mortality, and this is in many ways I think, a photograph about mortality or around which our thoughts on mortality can coalesce quite well. We're all going to die. And all of us. It seems a fiction, Andi Not quite fair. Ansel Adams with great grace. Great dignity shows us that it's written into the script. The leaves will fall and we will die. It is part of the cycle of nature, of which we are an ineluctable part, and therefore we must bow down to its demands rather than protest angrily or be frightened or a bitter. It is part off the script off life. This is what emanates for me, at least beautifully from the Ansel Adams. I think about anxiety is that it's very connected to losing perspective to not knowing how to place an event. Ah, missed phone call of a betrayal from a friend within a context that suitably large enough, we are creatures who lose perspective very easily. It took artists a long time to find perspective, literally, to find how to make how to do perspective. And it takes all of us as adults a long time on great masters. Try and hang on to perspective. It's quite nice when you're looking for perspective to look a Tsujimoto on this. This is the Atlantic Ocean and its vast, and it makes us feel small in a good on redemptive way. A lot of the life with spent, feeling small in a bad way, humiliated.

[00:33:00] Host Create clip You go to a smart hotel and guy treats you like nothing. You know, I feel small. That doesn't make me feel small ones, always making us feel small. Well, there's some things that make us feel small in a way which is redemptive because they are so large and they have within them a kind of sublime quality, which means that our ego is still in front of something huge, dignified and beautiful. One of the greatest artists off the 21st century is the Hubble telescope on dhe before the news every day, if I was in charge, I would put the Hubble one of the feeds from the Hubble telescope. This is what we need before going to the news and before going to many aspects of our life. This is called a globular cluster. That little corner of the Milky Way on dhe. Just what we need on dhe too often don't have enough. Another floor. Another area of the ideal museum should be, I think, devoted to love because love is really tricky. So many things go wrong around love.

[00:33:55] Host Create clip One of the things that goes wrong around love is that we stop being grateful at the beginning. We're really, really grateful. It's just unbelievable. After lots of courting and dating, et cetera, somebody has agreed to come home with us Fantastic. On DDE. It's a great night. And if anyone had that today, yesterday, um, anyway, so sometimes, yeah. Oh, great. Uh, so wait. You know, it's fantastic moment, but it passes, So I think we'll get a Pizano. This is deafness. And Chloe on Dhe. He is. He can't believe his luck. She read. She said Yes, Let's go for it. You know, that's great on Dhe and and he can't believe as you sleeping that he is finally in the inner sanctum with someone who he appreciates. Andi wonders that with huge gratitude that goes very important, I'd start the room with That is a fundamental reminder off the enormous gratitude we owe to anyone who'll put up with us for even a day were tricky. All of us are tricky on dhe. Very important to remember. Andi feel grateful.

[00:35:03] Host Create clip Perhaps next to that, I would put something which acknowledges that was so tricky where we've all got sort of gnarled, weird bits of our personality that kind of irregular and jagged and don't fit with the demands of others on Get love is an attempt to harmonize the jagged to regularize the irregular. And that's why I put a beautiful Richard Long, which perfect circle made out off very irregular elements which nevertheless holds together difference and unity in a way that seems a metaphor for how a relationship might ideally go. Um, something else that's really difficult to do in relationships is to remain curious. People will sometimes the part, our partners will sometimes tell us things. Okay, I've heard that before. I know a way we won't push the questioning, and we'll actually tell them how they're feeling. Well, we'll go. Oh, yeah, I know that because of your mother, isn't it? That's your That's definitely What's your mother doing that we always bringing in your exit? This moment on the passengers? No, listen to me. Listen, don't project. Listen to what I'm actually telling you and we go. No, no, no, no, no. What? On at this moment, we should look into Leonardo because Leonardo is a master of curiosity.

[00:36:12] Host Create clip He didn't just imagine or project what? The business off a child growing up inside his mother's time. He was gonna be like, he went out and found out. Nowadays you can find out on Wikipedia very easily. So the drawings that Leonardo did of fetuses is not gonna tell us anything that were factually new, but it stands. And Leonardo's work stands as an emblem. The quintessential emblem off curiosity of what it takes for somebody to just go and find stuff out rather than imagine it as we almost all of us do our otherwise. So he's a hero in this story on dhe. That's part of the story of love, the failure off curiosity and a desperate need to remain curious about those who've done us the favor off. Being with us, something else that often goes wrong in relationships is sex. Don't worry, but it's very hard to integrate. Sex with other stuff is just so weird. It's after a while. It doesn't necessarily all hang together on dhe. Sensuality on the demands of practical life are often in opposition, and we have a really hard time holding on to that unity.

[00:37:22] Host Create clip I think the architect and what I'm talking about is applies to art and architecture and design away everything. Visual. I think the reason to go to is Oscar Niemeyer, great late Brazilian architect on dhe, Wonderful quote from him. I almost couldn't believe it the first time I came across a bit. It's true, I didn't make it up. You can google it if you want to hear, he was once asked, What do you want your architecture to do? And he said, I want my architecture to revoke the beautiful natural landscape off Brazil and in particular, its large breasted women stone. But in some ways he succeeded in his mission. This is a house that he did for himself. And I think many of the tensions between mind and body, between reason and emotion between sensuality and practicality are, I think at least we're invited to be harmonizing them through this beautiful villa. So art that somehow acknowledges difficult it is to hold on to the different parts of us on four grounds. Those things which were perhaps very attached it, but having a hard time holding on to something else.

[00:38:29] Host Create clip Asparagus everywhere. We never really think of them way Don't really look at them. Twice we've grown. Used to remember the first time we ate one. It's got pretty special, but now I don't know whatever they're always around, Man, I didn't think so. So this is my money. And he looked at asparagus and painted a beautiful bunch and found something extraordinary, made something iconic, looked at them as though he had never seen them before on what Manny did to asparagus. We need to do with our partner. Look at them as if we've never seen them before to rediscover their virtues and values. Um, a lot of us behave quite shamefully in relationships on dhe end up in situations that seem bizarre on we think no one can be going through what we've gone through. No one would spend an hour arguing about whether the fingerprints on the window who was supposed to know whether there was a slight slight in the word that you said nice at the party. You nice, bizarre arguments. I just go on and on. It's 11. 30 and having a life and death struggle over the pronunciation of the word nice on. What do we do? Well, again, Not much public discussion about this. Generally, people are fine until they're not gonna get divorced. But until they get divorced on then and then the divorce and we're really good friends. And we're just gonna stick, stay together, very friendly for the kids, and, you know, we're gonna we're gonna stay friendly. But, you know, we don't really know what goes on in the relationships of others. In their darker moment works of art can help to enlighten us about this. This is by Jessica Todd Harp. It's agony in the kitchen on on dhe. We've had many agonies in our kitchens on dhe. Art knows this on. Artists can draw us to with sympathy towards some of the moments that we know exist but that we have a hard time airing publicly. It expands the conversation.

[00:40:14] Host Create clip It makes us less lonely with the more private and sad parts of us. Um, look something else that art. It's good that day, and that's helping us to feel involved and proud off our community. We are social creatures. We belong with others. But it's something very hard to find the motivation, really toe want to join in with others because the world can, particularly as refracted through many, many organs of the media can look just terrifying. Not we're not a social, communal world that we would ever want to join, sometimes a rare moments when an athlete has won something we can feel that we can join in. But those moments of national and collective pride and effort are offs few and far between. I think it's one of the tasks of art to make that civic pride Maur available Thesis by Michael Hopkins and Partners It's the Velodrome 2012 on DDE. It's a beautiful building that speaks of all kinds of lovely things. No, it's elegant. It's harmonizing nature with technology. It's sort of classless. It's looks towards the future but acknowledges the past. It does all sorts of things that Britain often can't quite do, but perhaps like to do more off its if you like. It's an essay in flattery. Um, I think flattery is quite important in life. We have to flatter our kids. You know, the kid who's basically quite not that generous. But you know, eventually, little child's may be given a biscuit to her brother on all the pan. Parents got all that so amazing. You're so generous or you've given a biscuit toe to your brother. That's a brilliant person. Everybody clapped. No, quite true. But by saying it, perhaps it could become a little bit more so.

[00:41:55] Host Create clip And works of art can similarly flatter us. Take Switzerland. Switzerland is a land off Nazi sympathizers, right wing docks, bankers who squirrel away stolen loot. But it's also got other sides. It's also a country that's generally very classless. That's properly democratic in every way That's in tune with nature has got lots of I'm Swiss, by the way, so I could get away with it. When the architect Steven Holl was asked to design theme Swiss Ambassador's home in Washington, D. C. He knew about Switzerland, but he didn't make a haven for drug barons and Nazi sympathizers. He tried to foreground the most attractive elements off Switzerland so that they might become or really in the Swiss imagination. And that's something that works of art and architecture are very well positioned to do. Take Brazil. I don't have those, you know Brazil well, but Brazil is not really like this. It's nowhere near is calm and modern and rational as this. This is the capital, Brasilia, designed by our friend Oscar Niemeyer. It speaks of a future Brazil where wonderful and uncorrupt civil servants with on the 15th floor B delicately filing away important pieces of documentation while in the parliamentary chambers, last bits of justice in this land are worked out.

[00:43:18] Host Create clip Brazil's not yet like that, but it might one day be, and this is an invitation to Brazil to be the way that it should be but isn't quite yet. So that's a very important function, not just the great public monuments that do this. Cutlery could do this as well. When David Miller was making cutlery in the 19 sixties, he was struck and offended by how class bound Britain waas by UN attuned itwas to natural life. But how unmedicated Iranian itwas. And he studied the implements off simpler Mediterranean societies and came up with a range of cutlery called Mediterranean on dhe. It's looked extremely odd when it was first released on completely in opposition to the dominant kinds of cutlery. Bob, it's day now. It is, it looks totally normal. Took a long time for that to become normal on for the values behind those knives and forks and spoons to become more normal. It's a subtle It's a small invitation, a small object, but works of art in architectural design sometimes whisper, but they're not less effective for that foot for whispering.

[00:44:21] Host Create clip Um, this is by this is called the ideal city by we think Leon Battista Alberti. That could be by Franjieh Lika, Piero Della Francesca site confusion. It's a picture of how the world might one day be. And that's something that art is very good at showing us how things might one day be not in order to be a dream idly but in orderto interests towards perfection, which would taste and smell and on into it in our more hopeful moments, but which is day to day, a little bit out off our control. I want to come to the end of my talk now. But really, what I'm trying to do with art is invite you, all of you, to start to use art as something that can alleviate your sorrows, bring you hope, give you courage, a resource, a living resource that's there for our hearts, and not an academic or historical exercise.