Here is the audio, video, and transcript. From the episode summary:
Tyler and Andrew discuss whether it was inevitable that we’d rediscover Vermeer, how that rare and extinct movement left its fingerprints on his life, why the Met misread his. An Allegory of the Catholic Faithwhether Vermeer painted money or refused outright, where the Gardners were stolen The concert it may be, why Dutch music never flourished as Dutch painting did, how the Church of England opposed the Cultural Revolution in destroying British art, whether you can still recognize an English painting when you see it, the love filled with the late Rembrandt and the mystery of his rising print prices, a nail in the wall that proves what two Vermeer paintings mean to Stubbs paintings, why Stubb paintings are French Stubbs, we suspect that Stubbs is George. you can still love Malevich, why Andrews calls the latest Richter “almost like printing press,” why female artists and vintage textiles are always ridiculously cheap, why no one builds beautiful landscapes, and much more.
Quote:
COWEN: In what sense was Vermeer a liberal?
GRAHAM-DIXON: However, the main finding of my book is that Vermeer was among the early pioneers of what we now call free culture.
COWEN: What we now call the Netherlands, was then the Dutch Republic.
GRAHAM-DIXON: In the Dutch Republic, and the Dutch contribution to the Enlightenment, which is the origin of liberal culture, has been largely forgotten. That is at the heart of my book, an attempt to remember these people, to return them to their rightful place in history. I’m not just talking about Vermeer. I’m talking about his friends, his patrons, because that’s the discovery of the book, that he and his friends were an amazing group of people, and they’ve been completely forgotten, and what they believed in has been largely forgotten as well. We need to remember it now, perhaps more than ever.
COWEN: This was also a religious organization.
GRAHAM-DIXON: Yes.
COWEN: Doctrinally, how would he differ from, say, the Protestants of England? Collegians, Remonstrants?
GRAHAM-DIXON: Yes. Vermeer’s supporters, it turns out, and Vermeer himself, were part of a Protestant sect in Holland called the Remonstrants. They had an extreme manifestation called the Collegians, and they were different from all the Christian sects of the time against absolute division, enmity, enmity. The only thing they wanted was to bring all Christians, indeed all people—including Jewish people and Muslim people—they wanted to bring everyone together in a faith that adhered only to the essentials of what Jesus Christ said, especially in the Sermon on the Mount.
They said, “If you follow Jesus in the right way, you will never fight, you will never persecute someone who is different from your views, you will never choose someone because they believe something different.” They were very, very intolerant. They formed the first pacifist movement in European history. They lived in a time of terrible wars, the Thirty Years’ War, probably the worst war in the history of the modern West. Fifteen million of Germany’s 20 million people died within 30 years, and of the remaining five million, all the women were crippled, and all the men had only one arm or one leg. It was really brutal.
They are responding to real traumatic historical events. They react to what is happening around the corner where they live. They came up with this wonderful way of life, full of hope, full of positive vision. For almost 20 years, the Dutch Republic has actually lived by these belief codes to a large extent. It is the only tolerant country in Europe.
And this:
COWEN: What makes George Stubbs such an underrated artist?
GRAHAM-DIXON: I think he is forever underrated because of his story. I blame the French. The French in the 17th century developed a system of classifying works of art according to their subject. Up high, you and I, we can wear armor and face each other with swords, and Poussin would paint us. That would be a historical painting made from life. That would be at the top. Then it can be a drawing of an event, maybe a meeting between big men. Then, below that, there will be a picture.
You’ll keep going down, and eventually you’ll reach still life paintings, like flowers and fruits, or animal paintings. These were the most inferior works of art because they depicted very inexpensive materials. I think Stubbs, to some extent, was a victim of that.
COWEN: Are we now able to see ourselves correctly?
GRAHAM-DIXON: Yes. It hasn’t been a problem since Stubbs and Constable, more than anyone else, are a little bit controversial to say, but I think they paved the way for modernity because they showed, not intentionally, but they showed that anything that can be drawn, anything at all, like a piece of mud or a piece of a river can be drawn in such a way as to touch ideas and beliefs that are very deep in thoughts and minds. which is irrelevant. Cézanne acknowledged that when he said, “I want to surprise Paris with an apple. I’m going to paint an apple, and I’m going to paint it with such incredible concentration that you will see it as an epistemological challenge to your whole philosophy.”
I think French art gets that from British art because British art has to be like that because it’s all the aristocracy that will work. They look down on people like Stubbs, in a sense. If I am an aristocrat in the 18th century and I want a really important picture, I will go to Italy and I will buy, thank you very much, and I will buy my history painting from Titian. You, sir, Stubbs, paint my horse. He is my racehorse, and I love him dearly. Paint him well and don’t be afraid of him.
Recommended, interesting throughout. And here is Andrew’s very interesting new book on Vermeer.
