[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":-1},["ShallowReactive",2],{"$9ZijusqCES":3},{"single":4,"locales":158,"slices":160},{"id":5,"uid":6,"url":7,"type":8,"href":9,"tags":10,"first_publication_date":12,"last_publication_date":13,"slugs":14,"linked_documents":16,"lang":17,"alternate_languages":18,"data":19},"ZBmoCREAACIAZDGt","the-art-of-diversification",null,"article","https:\u002F\u002Fartexplorer-prod.cdn.prismic.io\u002Fapi\u002Fv2\u002Fdocuments\u002Fsearch?ref=aCb60BIAACEA00zN&q=%5B%5B%3Ad+%3D+at%28document.id%2C+%22ZBmoCREAACIAZDGt%22%29+%5D%5D",[11],"Art Investment","2023-03-21T12:52:11+0000","2024-02-12T16:32:14+0000",[6,15],"buying-art-can-lower-the-overall-risks-of-your-investment-portfolio-by-helping-to-maximise-returns-while-limiting-losses-in-a-downturn.",[],"en-gb",[],{"title":20,"subtitle":21,"author":22,"copyright_cover":7,"cover_desktop":70,"cover_mobile":78,"thumbnail":83,"published_at":7,"slices":86,"meta_title":20,"meta_description":110,"og_image":111,"slices2":119},"The art of diversification ","Buy art, lower risk, maximize returns – is it so simple?",{"id":23,"type":24,"tags":25,"lang":17,"slug":27,"first_publication_date":28,"last_publication_date":29,"uid":27,"data":30,"link_type":67,"key":68,"isBroken":69},"ZBB4GBAAACgAzS2z","author",[26],"Robert Budden","robert-budden","2023-03-14T13:35:25+0000","2023-07-10T00:56:54+0000",{"description":31,"short_description":42,"job":46,"thumbnail":47,"cover":57,"uid":27,"title":26,"og_image":60,"meta_description":63,"meta_title":26},[32,36,39],{"type":33,"text":34,"spans":35},"paragraph","Robert Budden is ArtExplored's Art Market Editor. He is a financial journalist with expertise in personal finance and investment. He spent most of his journalistic career writing for the Financial Times where he held a number of roles including Deputy Markets Editor, Personal Finance Editor and Chief Media Correspondent. ",[],{"type":33,"text":37,"spans":38},"He has written extensively on many areas of personal finance and investment from hedge funds and mutual funds to stocks and shares, junk bonds and financial market instruments as well as alternative investments such as wine.",[],{"type":33,"text":40,"spans":41},"He has won around a dozen awards for journalism including Pensions Journalist of the Year (Business Journalist of the Year Awards), Investment Trust Journalist of the Year (Association of Investment Companies) and Pensions and Investment Journalist of the Year (Aon). He has frequently appeared on TV and radio for a number of  broadcasters including CNN, CNBC, Sky News and the BBC.",[],[43],{"type":33,"text":44,"spans":45},"Robert Budden covers the financial and art market for ArtExplored. ",[],"Art Market Editor",{"dimensions":48,"alt":26,"copyright":7,"url":51,"id":52,"edit":53},{"width":49,"height":50},2291,2446,"https:\u002F\u002Fimages.prismic.io\u002Fartexplorer-prod\u002Ff845a770-a008-44c8-9879-c9f3b0b5e52a_Robert+Budden.jpg?auto=compress,format","ZIsQqxAAACEAs6bQ",{"x":54,"y":54,"zoom":55,"background":56},0,1,"#fff",{"dimensions":58,"alt":26,"copyright":7,"url":51,"id":52,"edit":59},{"width":49,"height":50},{"x":54,"y":54,"zoom":55,"background":56},{"dimensions":61,"alt":26,"copyright":26,"url":51,"id":52,"edit":62},{"width":49,"height":50},{"x":54,"y":54,"zoom":55,"background":56},[64],{"type":33,"text":65,"spans":66},"Robert Budden is a finance and art markets writer at ArtExplored",[],"Document","dee36a3b-4a5e-4d8d-853e-c566138c7d74",false,{"dimensions":71,"alt":74,"copyright":7,"url":75,"id":76,"edit":77},{"width":72,"height":73},3840,2160,"The Money Changers","https:\u002F\u002Fimages.prismic.io\u002Fartexplorer-prod\u002Fae565da2-21f2-4c7c-b5ab-d8817755c291_Slide+16_9+-+88.jpg?auto=compress,format","ZLAO6xIAACAAamGW",{"x":54,"y":54,"zoom":55,"background":56},{"dimensions":79,"alt":74,"copyright":7,"url":80,"id":81,"edit":82},{"width":73,"height":72},"https:\u002F\u002Fimages.prismic.io\u002Fartexplorer-prod\u002F97040616-ff96-4d3a-ae2b-c1382d478718_9_16+%286%29.jpg?auto=compress,format","ZLAO7BIAACIAamGd",{"x":54,"y":54,"zoom":55,"background":56},{"dimensions":84,"alt":74,"copyright":7,"url":80,"id":81,"edit":85},{"width":73,"height":72},{"x":54,"y":54,"zoom":55,"background":56},[87],{"variation":88,"version":89,"items":90,"primary":92,"id":108,"slice_type":109,"slice_label":7},"default-slice","sktwi1xtmkfgx8626",[91],{},{"title":93,"content":98},[94],{"type":95,"text":96,"spans":97},"heading1","",[],[99,102,105],{"type":33,"text":100,"spans":101},"Buying art can lower the overall risks of your investment portfolio by helping to maximise returns while limiting losses in a downturn. The perfect investment would be one that behaves like cash – i.e., that doesn’t depreciate – yet performs like tech stocks during the dot-com boom. Sadly, no such investment exists.  \n\nThis is something the Chinese appear to have long understood. Indeed, the Chinese word for “risk” consists of two separate symbols: “danger” and “opportunity,” clearly explaining that risk brings with it the possibility of both losses and gains.   \n\nThis understanding is deeply ingrained in the psyche of any good wealth manager or financial adviser. Underpinning every investment approach is appetite for risk – in essence, an investor’s ability and willingness to stomach losses in the pursuit of profits.   \n\nThe other key tenet of savvy investing – first popularised by Nobel prize winner and father of modern portfolio theory Harry Markowitz – is diversification.   \n\nThe idea is that, by spreading investments across different securities (like shares in different companies) and different asset classes (like bonds or even wine or art), investors can maximise their financial returns while limiting losses in a downturn. When one asset is falling in value, another might be falling more slowly or even rising in price, cushioning the overall blows of challenging investment markets yet maintaining a long-term aim of delivering decent gains.  \n\nThis concept has been so rigorously tested by academics and investors of all shapes and sizes that it is pretty much universally adopted by all professional investors from pension funds and endowments to the world’s biggest global asset and wealth managers.  \n\nThe test to check whether another investment makes sense for diversification purposes is to look at how closely it performs with another. The tool used to do this is called correlation. It measures how closely one asset (or a particular stock or bond) has performed against another. Correlation is ranked between minus one and one with zero denoting that there is no performance relationship at all, while one signifies that two assets rise and fall in tandem. A negative correlation indicates that when one asset rises in price the other falls.   \n\nMost long-term investors will own equities and bonds as core holdings in their portfolios. So typical diversification assets might include property, private equity, hedge funds, or even art and other collectables. \n\nLike property or private equity, research indicates that art can also prove to be an effective diversification asset. Measured from 2000 to the end of June 2021, European Old Masters and Impressionist art had a “low” correlation of just 0.23 with the S&P 500 index of leading US stocks, according to data provider Artnet, indicating art has a noticeably different performance profile to US equities.   \n\nIn terms of how much of their wealth investors might want to tie up in art and other collectables, that will depend on multiple factors, not least personal and emotional ones. But, as a good guide, investment advisers suggest up to around 5% of total assets held in art and collectables can provide useful diversification benefits.  \n\nBut beware, not all art performs the same and some artworks will prove better diversification tools than others. Also measured from 2000 to the end of June 2021, Global Contemporary Art and Global Post-War Art had correlations with the S&P 500 of 0.72 and 0.70 respectively, according to Artnet, pointing to a strong performance relationship with equities.   \n\nFurthermore, it is important to look at the period over which correlation figures are calculated as they can vary significantly over time.   \n\nTake bonds and equities. From the late 1990s until very recently, high-quality government bonds had a negative correlation with equities: when stock markets fell, investors tended to rush towards the safe havens of US and German government bonds, driving up their prices during stock market turmoil. But this relationship changed in 2022, as rising inflation and interest rates hurt both bonds and equities. As a result, the correlation between the two moved from negative to positive.   ",[],{"type":33,"text":103,"spans":104},"\n\nNo one has a crystal ball. Similar changes could happen to art or within a particular art genre if it falls in or out of favour. The fact no one can accurately predict the future only underlines why it makes sense to put one’s investment eggs in a wide variety of baskets.   ",[],{"type":33,"text":106,"spans":107},"  ",[],"text$70e5d07e-6002-443b-907d-2b4441f2272c","text","Buying art can lower the overall risks of your investment portfolio by helping to maximise returns while limiting losses in a downturn.",{"dimensions":112,"alt":115,"copyright":7,"url":116,"id":117,"edit":118},{"width":113,"height":114},2400,1200,"The Money Changers \u002F The art of diversification  \u002F Article : Art investment ","https:\u002F\u002Fimages.prismic.io\u002Fartexplorer-prod\u002Fa1fd309d-8dbb-485f-a5af-9cdca078b85b_Image+Opengraph+The+art+of+diversification.jpg?auto=compress,format","ZK_8tRIAACIAahhS",{"x":54,"y":54,"zoom":55,"background":56},[120],{"variation":88,"version":89,"items":121,"primary":152,"id":156,"slice_type":157,"slice_label":7},[122,132,142],{"post":123},{"id":124,"type":125,"tags":126,"lang":17,"slug":127,"first_publication_date":128,"last_publication_date":129,"uid":130,"link_type":67,"key":131,"isBroken":69},"ZHc1QRAAACUAkmFm","podcast",[11],"ludovic-subran-is-art-a-good-hedge-against-inflation","2023-05-31T11:53:41+0000","2023-08-31T21:34:18+0000","is-investing-in-art-a-good-hedge-against-inflation","f9edf0b7-454b-4781-a524-57250c232961",{"post":133},{"id":134,"type":125,"tags":135,"lang":17,"slug":137,"first_publication_date":138,"last_publication_date":139,"uid":140,"link_type":67,"key":141,"isBroken":69},"ZA8MXBAAACgAyr6g",[136],"Conservation ","curtis-dowling-fakes-and-forgeries-in-art","2023-03-13T11:44:46+0000","2023-08-31T21:34:49+0000","curtis-dowling-art-forgery-fakes","a2a081ca-fd33-4f3f-b8d2-540527ec1b94",{"post":143},{"id":144,"type":125,"tags":145,"lang":17,"slug":147,"first_publication_date":148,"last_publication_date":149,"uid":150,"link_type":67,"key":151,"isBroken":69},"ZBNBcxAAACMAXuYT",[146],"Amedeo Modigliani","simonetta-fraquelli--annette-king-modiglianis-enduring-appeal-and-spotting-his-fakes","2023-03-16T16:19:49+0000","2023-08-31T21:33:41+0000","why-does-amedeo-modigliani-have-such-enduring-appeal","86197e82-f26b-4503-afd1-2759aae12b74",{"slides_per_view":153,"max_slides_count":153,"tag":154,"type":125,"title":155,"paralax":7},3,{"link_type":67},"Art Explored Audiocasts","carousel$36c78bbe-e63c-4051-818f-baa909fb67e2","carousel",{"en":159},{"slug":6},[161],{"slice":120,"payload":162},[163,270,386,541,672,827],{"id":124,"uid":130,"url":7,"type":125,"href":164,"tags":165,"first_publication_date":128,"last_publication_date":129,"slugs":166,"linked_documents":168,"lang":17,"alternate_languages":169,"data":170},"https:\u002F\u002Fartexplorer-prod.cdn.prismic.io\u002Fapi\u002Fv2\u002Fdocuments\u002Fsearch?ref=aCb60BIAACEA00zN&q=%5B%5B%3Ad+%3D+at%28document.id%2C+%22ZHc1QRAAACUAkmFm%22%29+%5D%5D",[11],[127,167,130],"is-art-a-good-hedge-against-inflation",[],[],{"title":171,"subtitle":7,"color":7,"source":172,"published_at":7,"duration":180,"cover":181,"copyright_cover":7,"description":186,"narrator_copyright":190,"music_copyright":7,"mixing_copyright":7,"deezer_external":191,"spotify_external":193,"apple_podcast_external":197,"slices":198,"meta_title":253,"meta_description":254,"og_image":255,"slices2":261},"Ludovic Subran: Is art a good hedge against inflation?",{"link_type":173,"key":174,"kind":175,"id":176,"url":177,"name":178,"size":179},"Media","183240df-4423-4fc7-af86-4f5d302a7018","file","ZJL3CBEAACgAEXYE","https:\u002F\u002Fartexplorer-prod.cdn.prismic.io\u002Fartexplorer-prod\u002Fafad441f-2150-4d4b-9fec-c1f9d51604ea_230616_ARTEXPLORED_AUDIOCAST_LUDOVIC_SUBRAN.mp3","230616_ARTEXPLORED_AUDIOCAST_LUDOVIC_SUBRAN.mp3","9661355",603,{"dimensions":182,"alt":7,"copyright":7,"url":183,"id":184,"edit":185},{"width":73,"height":73},"https:\u002F\u002Fimages.prismic.io\u002Fartexplorer-prod\u002F1d826534-1e01-4f9b-a802-3e4c69cf46f5_carr%C3%A9-4.jpg?auto=compress,format","ZK_u3hIAACIAafCl",{"x":54,"y":54,"zoom":55,"background":56},[187],{"type":33,"text":188,"spans":189},"ArtExplored's finance and markets editor Robert Budden talks to Ludovic Subran, the chief economist at Allianz SE, about the damaging effects inflation can have on investment strategies and art's proven record as a hedge against rising prices. ",[],"Robert Budden, Ludovic Subran",{"link_type":192},"Any",{"link_type":194,"key":195,"url":196},"Web","86b744eb-fbae-4cf5-9d5c-4a6189b15790","https:\u002F\u002Fopen.spotify.com\u002Fepisode\u002F7EDbEuCntvDhUUUYH5lfMh",{"link_type":192},[199],{"variation":88,"version":89,"items":200,"primary":250,"id":251,"slice_type":252,"slice_label":7},[201,207,213,218,223,228,236,241],{"speaker":202,"content":203},"RB",[204],{"type":33,"text":205,"spans":206},"Inflation is something we’ve forgotten about for quite a long time because we haven’t had much of it. Then, it came back with a vengeance. Can you remind us why inflation is important and why investors should be concerned about it?",[],{"speaker":208,"content":209},"LS",[210],{"type":33,"text":211,"spans":212},"Inflation is significant because it complicates everybody’s job. It complicates the investor’s job to yield returns. It complicates the household spending budget. It makes policymakers worried about how to finance social protection. It makes companies look after their margins like a hawk. Inflation is bad because it means the price of money is decreasing.\n\nIt’s true for the past ten years, and some may say since the 70s, at least in our part of the world, like in the US and Europe, that we haven’t seen much inflation. Recently, it has become a concern for investors because inflation can impact the value of their investments. When prices rise, the purchasing power of money decreases, which can lead to a loss in the real value of your investments. Even if an investment rises in price, if that price rise is less than the inflation rate, then the investor has lost money. That’s the direct effect. \n\nThe response to inflation is also through an increase in interest rates. Of course, an increase in interest rates leads to higher financing costs. If you want to use a bit of a mortgage to buy a house, or if you want to use some debt to invest, you’re also losing on that front, which is the overall cost of financing is much higher these days than it used to be just 12 months ago. It’s mostly through the value and the returns and, maybe, through the leverage angle that we see inflation bite investors. It’s creating concerns today about the future returns of investments.",[],{"speaker":202,"content":214},[215],{"type":33,"text":216,"spans":217},"If you are a long-term investor, ideally, you want an investment that will give you a good real return above inflation. What investments are best to protect you in an inflation environment? And would you include our investments in those?",[],{"speaker":208,"content":219},[220],{"type":33,"text":221,"spans":222},"There are many ways of investing during inflation. Beyond the more alternative investment space, like art or good wine, you have real estate, for example. Investing in a property with rental income is a good hedge against inflation because rental spaces are indexed on inflation (because the rent price is indexed on inflation). Even in the bond markets, with so-called inflation-linked bonds, you can buy a protection, a hedge. \n \n Also, in the vanilla bond market, to protect your returns and your payment of coupons from inflation, the equity market is known to be – when inflation is not too high – a good hedge against inflation. This is because you expect that those companies in the stock market should outperform the cost of inflation. They should pass on some of the increasing costs to the customers through pricing power and still make margins. Your investments should benefit from that. Many investments can be tweaked to become inflation-proof in a way. \n \n What I find interesting is that when you look historically, art has been a good hedge against inflation. The numbers are there to show it. It depends on the geography and how you account for it because there are different costs associated with it and various types of art. But if you go for quality and a buy-and-hold strategy and manage the overall cost of the transaction, art has proven to be quite resilient to higher inflation periods.",[],{"speaker":202,"content":224},[225],{"type":33,"text":226,"spans":227},"Was that also true in higher inflation periods like the 70s?",[],{"speaker":208,"content":229},[230,233],{"type":33,"text":231,"spans":232},"It’s hard to know. There are a few long-term studies. Christoph Spaniers, a researcher at the University of Leeds, says you can look at art as giving good returns but there will be differences between countries and areas of art. \n\nOverall, it has worked over the past 30, 40, and 50 years. As you can imagine, the art market is less liquid than others. You don’t see as much price discovery as in the SP500, the FTSE, or some of the indices that have been there for some time. \n\nMore recently, in the last year, we’ve seen a surge in inflation. It’s spectacular - that’s why people have been talking about the 70s. But it’s a very different moment. \n\nCentral banks are much more serious about killing inflation. We don’t have the same competitive environment or wage indexation. There is no wage-price spiral we saw in the 70s. Maybe we will also be more cognisant of fiscal spending than in the 70s. \n\nBut who would have thought that we would have 10% inflation in the Western Hemisphere, right? It has made many people look back into, for example, the performance of art in the long run when diversifying the portfolio and how much people have been making from this investment. \n\nIn the long run, contemporary art has shown a strong price appreciation of close to 15% over the past 30 years. Even during periods of high inflation, it does compare quite well to the equity market, which is usually ten, or real estate, which is also ten, and also for gold, which is in the tune of seven or eight. \n\nThere is a form of resilience and a good investment in periods of high inflation of blue chip art compared to the variability of the overall transaction.",[],{"type":33,"text":234,"spans":235}," ",[],{"speaker":202,"content":237},[238],{"type":33,"text":239,"spans":240},"It’s unusual where we are now, with the economies slowing in many countries worldwide, with interest rates rising and the edging away of central banks pumping money into the economy. What does all this mean for art markets and investment markets?",[],{"speaker":208,"content":242},[243],{"type":33,"text":244,"spans":245},"This is where you get the second aspect of inflation that could worry people. When you have lower growth and high inflation, people worry about their income’s purchasing power. \n\nArt is an investment you usually make after investing in more traditional things. It’s more something you do in a layered and structured approach, like with residual savings. \n\nWe’ve seen, for example, people turning to art because they had excess hoarding from COVID. They weren’t going out or travelling. They had extra savings to put into art. Of course, since then, inflation has eroded some of these excess savings and they had to tap into their more liquid investments to ensure they could protect their living standards.\n\nThe good news for the art market is this hedonistic dividend. The idea is that you put money into art not only because you expect solid, regular returns, like in the bond market. You don’t invest in art as you invest in the equity market because you believe in a company’s strategy and you’ve seen this company and its management making good decisions. \n\nWhen you invest in art there is a sense of je ne sais quoi, as we say in French, which is emotional, refined and one of the reasons why it is a resilient segment. It has continued to attract Gen Z, for example. We’ve seen several new platforms that show, just like the Robin Hood generation when it came to equity investment in the US, more young people are interested in this form of investment. This is despite the income and wealth shock of ’22 and relative fears about the recession, higher financing costs and central banks not being done with increasing interest rates. \n\nThe sentiment is not as good, but there is a form of resilience among investors, especially in the segment of investors educated about art. They know why they go there and are not necessarily looking for high-frequency trading, trying to time the market, but more into a buy-and-hold strategy. They know this investment will be a positive one for their portfolio in the long run, a bit diversifying because it’s not as correlated as the other asset classes.",[246],{"start":247,"end":248,"type":249},1106,1122,"em",{},"text_interview$3b969a72-6120-4632-baed-d07430cdce58","text_interview","Is art a good hedge against inflation?","Ludovic Subran highlights art's proven record as a hedge against rising prices",{"dimensions":256,"alt":257,"copyright":7,"url":258,"id":259,"edit":260},{"width":113,"height":114},"Art Explored audiocast with Ludovic Subran, the chief economist at Allianz SE","https:\u002F\u002Fimages.prismic.io\u002Fartexplorer-prod\u002Ff4eafce7-614a-469a-8ea3-2f61431c4c1d_Audiocast+Opengraph+Is+art+a+good+hedge+against+inflation+_.jpg?auto=compress,format","ZK_XhhIAACMAaY5F",{"x":54,"y":54,"zoom":55,"background":56},[262],{"variation":88,"version":89,"items":263,"primary":266,"id":269,"slice_type":157,"slice_label":7},[264],{"post":265},{"link_type":67},{"slides_per_view":7,"max_slides_count":7,"tag":267,"type":125,"title":268,"paralax":7},{"link_type":67},"Explore Audiocasts","carousel$ee4f582c-a0fd-486b-99f6-2ee753e8198d",{"id":134,"uid":140,"url":7,"type":125,"href":271,"tags":272,"first_publication_date":138,"last_publication_date":139,"slugs":273,"linked_documents":277,"lang":17,"alternate_languages":278,"data":279},"https:\u002F\u002Fartexplorer-prod.cdn.prismic.io\u002Fapi\u002Fv2\u002Fdocuments\u002Fsearch?ref=aCb60BIAACEA00zN&q=%5B%5B%3Ad+%3D+at%28document.id%2C+%22ZA8MXBAAACgAyr6g%22%29+%5D%5D",[136],[137,274,275,276],"curtis-dowling-on-fakes-and-forgeries-in-art","the-genuine-article-fakes-and-forgeries-in-art","does-the-art-world-rely-on-technology-too-much-to-spot-forged-paintings",[],[],{"title":280,"subtitle":7,"color":281,"source":282,"published_at":7,"duration":288,"cover":289,"copyright_cover":7,"description":294,"narrator_copyright":298,"music_copyright":7,"mixing_copyright":7,"deezer_external":299,"spotify_external":300,"apple_podcast_external":303,"slices":304,"meta_title":339,"meta_description":340,"og_image":341,"slices2":347},"Curtis Dowling: Fakes and forgeries in art","#7f9669",{"link_type":173,"key":283,"kind":175,"id":284,"url":285,"name":286,"size":287},"5d08282b-8707-4748-8029-58c5f8f794b5","ZKbdQhEAACQAWnTz","https:\u002F\u002Fartexplorer-prod.cdn.prismic.io\u002Fartexplorer-prod\u002F539e36ae-482f-4acf-8411-95762d46ca44_230616_ARTEXPLORED_AUDIOCAST_CURTIS_DOWLING.m4a","230616_ARTEXPLORED_AUDIOCAST_CURTIS_DOWLING.m4a","10707159",336,{"dimensions":290,"alt":7,"copyright":7,"url":291,"id":292,"edit":293},{"width":73,"height":73},"https:\u002F\u002Fimages.prismic.io\u002Fartexplorer-prod\u002Fa5ceef6b-814d-42f1-926e-a94b26a92c3e_carr%C3%A9-2.jpg?auto=compress,format","ZK_u3hIAACIAafCq",{"x":54,"y":54,"zoom":55,"background":56},[295],{"type":33,"text":296,"spans":297},"ArtExplored talks to Curtis Dowling, who claims to have never been wrong as an art authenticator in a career spanning 30 years, about the many forgeries plaguing the art market.",[],"George Nelson, Curtis Dowling",{"link_type":192},{"link_type":194,"key":301,"url":302},"401d06fd-7a8b-4166-a96e-9add1cd2d971","https:\u002F\u002Fopen.spotify.com\u002Fepisode\u002F228190XEW35l2CIRwPYPVY",{"link_type":192},[305],{"variation":88,"version":89,"items":306,"primary":337,"id":338,"slice_type":252,"slice_label":7},[307,313,325,332],{"speaker":308,"content":309},"GN",[310],{"type":33,"text":311,"spans":312},"Hi Curtis, you say never been wrong as an art authenticator in a career spanning three decades but there must have been at least a couple of occasions when you severely questioned your own judgement... ",[],{"speaker":314,"content":315},"CD",[316],{"type":33,"text":317,"spans":318},"Well, yeah. It’s an arrogant statement to make but I haven’t been, so it would be foolish of me to say anything other than I haven’t been wrong and I think we’re all good at something, aren’t we? Nobody’s been left out, and this just happens to be the one thing I am good at. And I’ve been very lucky that I’ve been able to make a career out of it for 34-35 years. But yeah, along the way, there are always pieces of art that are testing. For a lot of reasons. You’ll find with paintings, especially Old Masters, that they are never in the state that they were when they were first painted. They’ve been cleaned, they’ve been mended, they’ve been moved around, they’ve had all sorts of handprints on them and cigarette smoke, and you know … you name it, it’s kind of been around. So, when you come across a piece, even if you might know it’s genuine or not, you have to be able to document that and prove it beyond reasonable doubt. So, when things have been, for example, cleaned – and you know the Victorians were notoriously bad at cleaning – they might very well have used modern chemicals that stick to the paint. We had a painting the last twelve months that we knew was genuine, but every technical test proved it wasn’t and the truth was it had been messed around with so much – or cleaned, the list goes on – that all the tests were coming back that it had modern paint, modern chemicals on it, the wood didn’t quite match up. So, what you’re doing with all pictures is you’re trying to get in the mind of the artist to start with, but with some of the things you work on, you’ve got seven or eight hundred years of history to try and fill in, so there’s always going to be times when you sit down at the end of the day and think, ‘I just can't see how we can prove, one way or the other, our initial impressions,’ but after a while there’s always a way. There’s always something that comes up, that tips the balance, and turns a maybe into a definite. Whether that’s a definite genuine or a definite forgery, so yes, we get tested all the time. ",[319,322],{"start":320,"end":321,"type":249},1939,1944,{"start":323,"end":324,"type":249},1952,1960,{"speaker":308,"content":326},[327,330],{"type":33,"text":328,"spans":329},"Do you think the art world relies too much on technology to spot fakes? ",[],{"type":33,"text":234,"spans":331},[],{"speaker":314,"content":333},[334],{"type":33,"text":335,"spans":336},"Of course, it helps in some ways. What you do have to remember is any technical test or any technology that’s being used to authenticate items these days, is also owned by all the best forgers. Only bad forgers ever get caught. And of course, technology will pick up bad forgeries but then so will an experienced art dealer. So, it will pick up bad forgeries, it will pick up the wrong wood, the wrong paint, the wrong canvas, the wrong brush strokes. AI is probably a few decades away from being able to genuinely spot a forgery. But obviously, they’re working on it. Technical testing, we have to be sceptical about because we don’t just authenticate work, we forge items as well. And we forge it first of all for our own learning abilities but also from a presentation point of view. We were only in London a few days ago doing exactly that. And we can get around all these tests. So, all these tests you’ll pay £25,000 – all these big companies – I can show you with a shopping trip to Tesco’s, to get all the bits you need, how to get around them all. So yes they are useful, in a small way, they’re certainly of no use if you’re dealing with a forger that knows what he’s doing. As for AI, it will continue to become more useful as the years go on. Currently, again, it will catch out bad forgers, it won’t catch out the good ones and it’s the good ones that we’re trying to stop.",[],{},"text_interview$ba0cda50-eebb-4f2e-8f76-4bc367ba81b9","The genuine article: Fakes and forgeries in art","Curtis Dowling is an art authenticator who talks about the many forgeries plaguing the art market.",{"dimensions":342,"alt":343,"copyright":7,"url":344,"id":345,"edit":346},{"width":113,"height":114},"Art Explored audiocast with prominent art authenticator Curtis Dowling","https:\u002F\u002Fimages.prismic.io\u002Fartexplorer-prod\u002Ff96ebec8-52cf-46f5-bc03-bbf83f9020e0_Audiocast+Opengraph+The+genuine+article.jpg?auto=compress,format","ZK_XhRIAACEAaY5E",{"x":54,"y":54,"zoom":55,"background":56},[348,378],{"variation":88,"version":89,"items":349,"primary":374,"id":377,"slice_type":157,"slice_label":7},[350,354,364],{"post":351},{"id":144,"type":125,"tags":352,"lang":17,"slug":147,"first_publication_date":148,"last_publication_date":149,"uid":150,"link_type":67,"key":353,"isBroken":69},[146],"410a4d83-c489-4031-bd5c-4039ae1e6a83",{"post":355},{"id":356,"type":125,"tags":357,"lang":17,"slug":359,"first_publication_date":360,"last_publication_date":361,"uid":362,"link_type":67,"key":363,"isBroken":69},"ZB3OZRAAACIAzkAv",[136,358],"Paul Cezanne","jorella-andrews-a-phenomenological-take-on-paul-cezanne","2023-03-24T16:23:05+0000","2023-08-31T21:35:53+0000","a-phenomenological-take-on-cezanne","ea0b561f-7c5c-4801-891e-603ca2a1f0f7",{"post":365},{"id":366,"type":125,"tags":367,"lang":17,"slug":369,"first_publication_date":370,"last_publication_date":371,"uid":372,"link_type":67,"key":373,"isBroken":69},"ZBGaLhAAACgAzxTK",[368],"Picasso ","julia-nagle-how-is-science-improving-art-conservation-techniques","2023-03-16T16:45:51+0000","2023-08-31T21:35:17+0000","conservator-julia-nagal-discusses-how-restoring-paintings","7405d7ad-f82e-4f14-80db-b67b1774aee6",{"slides_per_view":153,"max_slides_count":7,"tag":375,"type":125,"title":376,"paralax":7},{"link_type":67},"Listen to more audiocasts","carousel$4924dcef-e296-4e84-9bd4-8613f80a2096",{"variation":88,"version":89,"items":379,"primary":382,"id":385,"slice_type":157,"slice_label":7},[380],{"post":381},{"link_type":67},{"slides_per_view":7,"max_slides_count":7,"tag":383,"type":8,"title":384,"paralax":7},{"link_type":67},"Read more","carousel$0918eb09-ba72-4702-a259-cc286c0d371b",{"id":144,"uid":150,"url":7,"type":125,"href":387,"tags":388,"first_publication_date":148,"last_publication_date":149,"slugs":389,"linked_documents":395,"lang":17,"alternate_languages":396,"data":397},"https:\u002F\u002Fartexplorer-prod.cdn.prismic.io\u002Fapi\u002Fv2\u002Fdocuments\u002Fsearch?ref=aCb60BIAACEA00zN&q=%5B%5B%3Ad+%3D+at%28document.id%2C+%22ZBNBcxAAACMAXuYT%22%29+%5D%5D",[146],[147,390,391,392,393,394],"why-are-the-eyes-in-modiglianis-paintings-so-mysterious","modiglianis-enduring-appeal-and-spotting-his-fakes","why-are-amedeo-modiglianis-paintings-so-captivating","why-is-amedeo-modiglianis-work-so-captivating-and-why-do-so-many-art-forgers-copy-his-work","why-does-amedeo-modigliani-have-such-enduring-appeal...-and-why-do-so-many-art-forgers-copy-his-work",[],[],{"title":398,"subtitle":7,"color":399,"source":400,"published_at":7,"duration":406,"cover":407,"copyright_cover":7,"description":412,"narrator_copyright":416,"music_copyright":7,"mixing_copyright":7,"deezer_external":417,"spotify_external":418,"apple_podcast_external":421,"slices":422,"meta_title":498,"meta_description":499,"og_image":500,"slices2":506},"Simonetta Fraquelli & Annette King: Modigliani's enduring appeal and spotting his fakes!","#ffd9a5",{"link_type":173,"key":401,"kind":175,"id":402,"url":403,"name":404,"size":405},"42cbefe5-f0b9-4c5a-b43b-f343bc00abc8","ZJQkvhEAACkAFt8n","https:\u002F\u002Fartexplorer-prod.cdn.prismic.io\u002Fartexplorer-prod\u002Fa63fe7fc-00bf-448e-b33f-17349a947691_230616_ARTEXPLORED_AUDIOCAST_SIMONETTA_FRAQUELLI.mp3","230616_ARTEXPLORED_AUDIOCAST_SIMONETTA_FRAQUELLI.mp3","9859499",600,{"dimensions":408,"alt":7,"copyright":7,"url":409,"id":410,"edit":411},{"width":73,"height":73},"https:\u002F\u002Fimages.prismic.io\u002Fartexplorer-prod\u002F7e5f9781-4dfb-4dcc-9c8c-93373690ccd5_carr%C3%A9-1.jpg?auto=compress,format","ZK_u3hIAACEAafCo",{"x":54,"y":54,"zoom":55,"background":56},[413],{"type":33,"text":414,"spans":415},"ArtExplored's North American art writer Will Corwin discusses why Modigliani's work continues to be so popular, his use of colour, and his subjects' mysterious eyes with Simonetta Fraquelli and Annette King, the co-curators of Modigliani Up Close, the artist's retrospective at the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia. ",[],"George Nelson, William Corwin, Simonetta Fraquelli, and Annette King",{"link_type":192},{"link_type":194,"key":419,"url":420},"f7537701-2cae-44a4-baf1-baf3c22f2ec1","https:\u002F\u002Fopen.spotify.com\u002Fepisode\u002F3hgiJBJvW5wc5Xtl7Jsz5f",{"link_type":192},[423],{"variation":88,"version":89,"items":424,"primary":496,"id":497,"slice_type":252,"slice_label":7},[425,431,437,442,450,456,461,466,471,476,481,486,491],{"speaker":426,"content":427},"WC",[428],{"type":33,"text":429,"spans":430},"Hi Simonetta and Annette, can you start by telling us why now is the right time for a Modigliani exhibition at the Barnes Foundation?",[],{"speaker":432,"content":433},"SF",[434],{"type":33,"text":435,"spans":436},"Annette and I both contributed and worked on an exhibition that was held at the Tate in 2017, a major Modigliani retrospective. And when we were working on that together with our colleague Nancy Ireson, we started looking at the technical conservation aspects of all the paintings, and we convinced the lenders to that exhibition to also look at their works. And from there came a series of articles that were published in the Burlington and further studies. And when the opportunity came at the Barnes to do a show, we felt that given that they had such a great collection of Modiglianis which had hitherto not been studied and which could benefit from being in a way catalogued and looked at carefully, also from a conservator’s point of view, we thought this was kind of a unique opportunity to build on what we had already done with the previous show and the previous research and to bring together a new group of paintings and to kind of further this work on the artist, which does open new kinds of avenues of research and understanding and really to be able to move forward with the artist in a way that had hitherto not be done, at least prior to the Tate show.",[],{"speaker":426,"content":438},[439],{"type":33,"text":440,"spans":441},"So, what is it about Modigliani’s work that gives him such enduring appeal?",[],{"speaker":443,"content":444},"AK",[445,448],{"type":33,"text":446,"spans":447},"He's an amazing colourist, so the colours really appeal and he seems to capture the essence of the subject without being too realistic or too representational but also there's a real elegance of form and because he was a classically trained artist, the more we looked at these paintings, the more we realised that he was bringing that to the paintings so they have a very pleasing harmony which may not first be evident. So, I think there's a lot about his paintings that really do appeal. And the sculptures.  ",[],{"type":33,"text":234,"spans":449},[],{"speaker":451,"content":452},"SM",[453],{"type":33,"text":454,"spans":455},"If I can also add to that in terms of his appeal, I mean, he's an artist who since the early 1920s and shortly after his death became a favourite both with collectors and with the public. And that has endured, as Annette says, all the way through. He was always a little bit outside of any specific group. I mean, he wasn't connected with the Futurists or the Surrealists or the Cubists, and he forged his own path, which I think has been one that the general viewer has been able to connect with in a way that perhaps other artists have not been so accessible. His art is in many ways, even though I think it seems very on the surface, simple and direct, is actually, as our conservation studies have shown, much more sophisticated and much more worked out than maybe one would immediately think.",[],{"speaker":426,"content":457},[458],{"type":33,"text":459,"spans":460},"As curators, how did you strike a balance between the formal assessment of his artworks and the technical scientific viewpoints, which have such a strong focus in the show?",[],{"speaker":443,"content":462},[463],{"type":33,"text":464,"spans":465},"So, as we mentioned, the Tate exhibition was the beginning of this project and close looking has always been an important part of the conservator’s role, but also an art historian's role. And as we discussed the paintings, we were looking at very different aspects of the paintings, but bringing them together gave us a much more rounded view of each work and then connecting with all the other conservators and curators from the lending institutions we realised that we could then extend the story of each painting into a much more rounded view of his development, his career. And it just made sense for us all to share our findings and look for patterns of material use techniques that emerged throughout his career, creating a bigger picture of how he was working and how his working methods changed, and for example, you bring up the canvas project. It was called the Thread Count Automation Project run by Don Johnson in Texas. He developed software that could sort of look at digital X-rays and match canvas weave anomalies, placing paintings on the same role of canvas, which is fascinating in itself, but it gave us an insight into the materials he was using. So, we realised there were practically no matches before 1917 and then after Zborowski began supporting him, there was much more consistency. So, it seems that the supplies are coming through to the Zborowski, he's buying them and supplying Modigliani. Also, he favoured certain formats, the marine format. It also gave us an insight into colour makers and how they were producing these canvases. So, producing different sizes and formats on each role to get the maximum number of canvases from each role and there are lots of intricacies within those findings that we were still trying to work out, but it was a fascinating insight into his use of canvases and where they were coming from. And in terms of the balance, it was quite difficult, and it took a lot of discussion between us. So, I'll hand over Sim now.",[],{"speaker":432,"content":467},[468],{"type":33,"text":469,"spans":470},"I think that both Nancy and I were very keen that we wanted to work with Annette and with Barbara and have them, as conservators, be part of the curatorial team. But we were also very concerned – not concerned – it’s not the right word. conscious of the fact that when you present an exhibition, you have to do it in such a way to engage the viewer. And I think I could speak for Nancy as well. We wanted the conservation material to be accessible and to be present in the presentation, but we also wanted the show to work visually as an exhibition. And we wanted to draw out certain kinds of visual connections between the individual, for example, between the sculptures and the paintings, or between the group of nudes in a way that allowed the conservation material to be present, but at the same time didn't detract from the paintings themselves. Because one of the problems sometimes with exhibitions where they do have a lot of conservation material is that you find that the viewers end up looking just at the conservation material, not at the paintings themselves. So, I think we were very conscious, all four of us, of creating kind of a visual balance within the exhibition that still allowed you to appreciate the works, but then had this other layer of conservation information available to you. Of course, the catalogue has much more than the exhibition does, and perhaps one could find in other exhibitions or other projects ways of including more technical information through digital ways or whatever into the exhibition itself, but very keen that the paintings and the sculptures would stand in their own right as well.",[],{"speaker":426,"content":472},[473],{"type":33,"text":474,"spans":475},"And my penultimate question, why have there been so many forgeries of his work?",[],{"speaker":432,"content":477},[478],{"type":33,"text":479,"spans":480},"I think that when you have an artist who has a market, inevitably there are forgeries. And his market has been very strong since almost after the day he died. And he wasn't super prolific. He painted a number of paintings, but nowhere near like Picasso’s output. But, where there's a great market, I think there are always forgeries, and unfortunately, his market has always been very strong, and consequently, there have been many forgeries over the decades.",[],{"speaker":426,"content":482},[483],{"type":33,"text":484,"spans":485},"And finally, why are the eyes in Modigliani's paintings so mysterious?",[],{"speaker":432,"content":487},[488],{"type":33,"text":489,"spans":490},"This is a question that practically every single person that comes to the Modigliani exhibition asks. So, obviously it does strike a chord. I mean, personally, I think it has to do with his looking at perhaps African masks or sculptures, he does write about looking into the inside person through the eye and sometimes you have an eye that’s open and another one that’s crosshatched. Sometimes you have very ordinary eyes. So, I think there’s a great variety. But I think that the relationship with African artefacts may well be the key to this, but I haven’t really come across really a satisfactory answer to it over the years even though it’s a question that comes up all the time.",[],{"speaker":443,"content":492},[493],{"type":33,"text":494,"spans":495},"And frustratingly he never expressed that in writing or in interviews so we don’t know, but if you do look at the sculptures and panitings you can see a similarity in the eyes of the sculptures and as Simonetta said they were influenced by African art. So, yes, it’s a long-lasting mystery really.",[],{},"text_interview$7a8ae707-b642-460b-b0b5-6e939d3a68f4","Modigliani's enduring appeal and spotting his fakes!","Co-curators of Modigliani Up Close – the artist's retrospective at the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia – Simonetta Fraquelli and Anette King talk to ArtExplored.",{"dimensions":501,"alt":502,"copyright":7,"url":503,"id":504,"edit":505},{"width":113,"height":114},"ArtExplored audiocast with the co-curators of Modigliani Up Close Simonetta Fraquelli and Annette King","https:\u002F\u002Fimages.prismic.io\u002Fartexplorer-prod\u002F74b29019-9ccc-4141-bd26-8eb960af3714_Audiocast+Opengraph+Modigliani%27s+enduring+appeal+and+spotting+his+fakes%21.jpg?auto=compress,format","ZK_XhhIAACMAaY5H",{"x":54,"y":54,"zoom":55,"background":56},[507,525],{"variation":88,"version":89,"items":508,"primary":521,"id":524,"slice_type":157,"slice_label":7},[509,513,517],{"post":510},{"id":366,"type":125,"tags":511,"lang":17,"slug":369,"first_publication_date":370,"last_publication_date":371,"uid":372,"link_type":67,"key":512,"isBroken":69},[368],"e22a6939-6ebf-46c0-b10d-483ee8c53dfc",{"post":514},{"id":134,"type":125,"tags":515,"lang":17,"slug":137,"first_publication_date":138,"last_publication_date":139,"uid":140,"link_type":67,"key":516,"isBroken":69},[136],"1fd9f3d6-60a9-4e00-b744-00db300d958c",{"post":518},{"id":356,"type":125,"tags":519,"lang":17,"slug":359,"first_publication_date":360,"last_publication_date":361,"uid":362,"link_type":67,"key":520,"isBroken":69},[136,358],"fb80ee80-3bbc-49ab-b002-7b14b03e3aa0",{"slides_per_view":153,"max_slides_count":7,"tag":522,"type":125,"title":523,"paralax":7},{"link_type":67},"More Audiocast","carousel$18625f0d-cea1-4b21-98e1-454e17a02310",{"variation":88,"version":89,"items":526,"primary":529,"id":540,"slice_type":157,"slice_label":7},[527],{"post":528},{"link_type":67},{"slides_per_view":530,"max_slides_count":7,"tag":531,"type":8,"title":539,"paralax":7},4,{"id":532,"type":533,"tags":534,"lang":17,"slug":535,"first_publication_date":536,"last_publication_date":537,"uid":535,"link_type":67,"key":538,"isBroken":69},"ZA9CHxAAAKdKyyuy","tag",[146],"amedeo-modigliani","2023-03-13T15:44:44+0000","2023-03-20T16:55:09+0000","b7c4e894-c095-4897-b417-7dcf91aa4295","Related Articles","carousel$5a8cbd87-eb7f-4250-8101-f425a76ddcac",{"id":366,"uid":372,"url":7,"type":125,"href":542,"tags":543,"first_publication_date":370,"last_publication_date":371,"slugs":544,"linked_documents":549,"lang":17,"alternate_languages":550,"data":551},"https:\u002F\u002Fartexplorer-prod.cdn.prismic.io\u002Fapi\u002Fv2\u002Fdocuments\u002Fsearch?ref=aCb60BIAACEA00zN&q=%5B%5B%3Ad+%3D+at%28document.id%2C+%22ZBGaLhAAACgAzxTK%22%29+%5D%5D",[368],[369,545,546,547,548],"how-is-science-improving-art-conservation-techniques","how-is-science-improving-art-restoration-techniques","how-has-the-art-restoration-industry-changed-over-the-last-couple-of-decades","how-restoring-paintings-has-changed-over-the-last-couple-of-decades",[],[],{"title":552,"subtitle":7,"color":7,"source":553,"published_at":559,"duration":560,"cover":561,"copyright_cover":7,"description":566,"narrator_copyright":570,"music_copyright":7,"mixing_copyright":7,"deezer_external":571,"spotify_external":572,"apple_podcast_external":575,"slices":576,"meta_title":634,"meta_description":635,"og_image":636,"slices2":642},"Julia Nagle: How is science improving art conservation techniques?",{"link_type":173,"key":554,"kind":175,"id":555,"url":556,"name":557,"size":558},"18170e30-c09a-407e-ac35-8d6e9ac29223","ZJL5khEAACkAEYIk","https:\u002F\u002Fartexplorer-prod.cdn.prismic.io\u002Fartexplorer-prod\u002F20903495-2838-423f-86f5-5007e709f134_230616_ARTEXPLORED_AUDIOCAST_JULIA_NAGEL.mp3","230616_ARTEXPLORED_AUDIOCAST_JULIA_NAGEL.mp3","8512043","2023-08-10",713,{"dimensions":562,"alt":7,"copyright":7,"url":563,"id":564,"edit":565},{"width":73,"height":73},"https:\u002F\u002Fimages.prismic.io\u002Fartexplorer-prod\u002Ff5376d69-fccc-487a-bbe5-8e4c2e0e37eb_carr%C3%A9.jpg?auto=compress,format","ZK_u3hIAACMAafCn",{"x":54,"y":54,"zoom":55,"background":56},[567],{"type":33,"text":568,"spans":569},"Julia Nagle set up her own studio in 2009 (Julia Nagle Conservation) and it is now the official conservator for Frieze Masters and Frieze London art fairs, while it also works with private collectors, insurers, commercial galleries, and public institutions worldwide. Julia explains how restoration and conservation techniques have advanced over the years.",[],"George Nelson, Julia Nagle",{"link_type":192},{"link_type":194,"key":573,"url":574},"d0620a8f-afb0-43f7-a5bd-d18b4c63a2e3","https:\u002F\u002Fopen.spotify.com\u002Fepisode\u002F6m3DK4JetPQ5UJnx0GVG0x",{"link_type":192},[577],{"variation":88,"version":89,"items":578,"primary":632,"id":633,"slice_type":252,"slice_label":7},[579,585,591,596,602,607,612,617,622,627],{"speaker":580,"content":581},"GN ",[582],{"type":33,"text":583,"spans":584},"Hi Julia, thanks for talking to me today. Before we start, just to avoid any confusion, could you please explain the difference between a conservator and a restorer? ",[],{"speaker":586,"content":587},"JN ",[588],{"type":33,"text":589,"spans":590},"A conservator is just a bit more of a modern term, but we also say restorer as well because people often don’t know what you mean. So, it’s just a more modern term because what we’re trying to do is really preserve things and sort of protect them as opposed to actually take them back in time to some previous state, so we sort of acknowledge the fact that ageing happens for example, by calling ourselves conservators a bit more than restorers.  ",[],{"speaker":308,"content":592},[593],{"type":33,"text":594,"spans":595},"How quickly is conservation developing and have there been any scientific or technological breakthroughs in the last few years, few decades, that have been real game changers for the industry? ",[],{"speaker":597,"content":598},"JN",[599],{"type":33,"text":600,"spans":601},"Technical art history is a discipline that has grown over the last 20 years, 30 years possibly and we’ve got all sorts of methods of analysing paint films without destroying the painting itself and imaging and things like using X-rays, all sorts of different technologies to understand what’s actually in a painting in the first place. And also to see when we’ve cleaned a surface, for example, you can look at it with a scanning electron microscope and you can see on a massively enlarged image, quite what you’ve actually done to the surface of the painting that might not be visible to the naked eye. So, you can really fine-tune your own techniques to ensure that what you’ve done hasn’t sort of leached a paint film or scratched it microscopically or anything like that. So, I think, possibly, for me anyway, I would say, the kind of analysis and the imaging and the understanding of what you’re actually doing on a much finer level than what the eye can just see is just huge. I mean there have been really important breakthroughs on how to clean acrylic paints because they’re fairly new, they’ve really been in use since about the 1950s and they do respond very differently to water compared to oil paints, for example. So, there’s been a huge amount of research there. A lot of it was EU-funded so I don’t know how that will carry on now, but there’ve been some interesting breakthroughs in nanotechnology and introducing gels for using water in a safe way, not as a liquid, but you can take dirt off of very complex surfaces using gels rather than using liquid water, so yeah, just even sort of technologies on how to safely use water and how to adjust, very finely tune the PH of water so that you can safely clean a film that you might not be able to clean otherwise and so really sort of fine adjustments with our own materials.  ",[],{"speaker":308,"content":603},[604],{"type":33,"text":605,"spans":606},"Do you have a preference regarding a particular period or movement when it comes to conservation?  ",[],{"speaker":597,"content":608},[609],{"type":33,"text":610,"spans":611},"I really loved working with older paintings, I really, really enjoyed my time doing that. I did it for about 10 years so it’s not that I dislike it, but it’s just fascinating working with modern artists and contemporary artists, and I think as a female, there are fantastic older ladies working… it’s a much less sort of a sexist world I think nowadays, and you know there are many, many more artists from different backgrounds and a lot, lot more women artists now who are recognised and that’s been fantastic working with them. I find a lot of the older women really, really inspiring. So, we’ve worked with Faith Ringgold at the Serpentine and Caroline Kunsman we worked with recently, and I think it’s really interesting the messages that people have got. I mean they are, the art there is, it's expressing our modern culture and expressing kind of issues of the day, and so as I really enjoy that side of it as well and understanding what messages people are trying to put forward and helping them to do that where we can. Also, there’s a lot of research that has to go into understanding what the artist’s intention was. Which is all really interesting and fun to do but it’s also great when you can just ask the artist and they’re there as well. I think it’s a really nice collaboration and I think one thing that I found which I think would surprise quite a lot of people is how much contemporary artists are really interested in their materials and interested in their techniques. And I really want to support artists, that’s what we are trying to do. We’re trying to get the art out there, trying to support artists and having their work exhibited in the way they want it to be seen and there are some really important messages to be understood from it.",[],{"speaker":308,"content":613},[614],{"type":33,"text":615,"spans":616},"You mentioned to me before we started speaking, Julia, that you once worked on a painting that had been vandalised by someone’s lover in a jealous fit of rage, like a very intense lovers’ tiff I think. Can you just explain a bit more about that story? ",[],{"speaker":597,"content":618},[619],{"type":33,"text":620,"spans":621},"A lovers’ tiff..... the person took bathroom paint, red bathroom paint and painted in big letters, big angry letters all over a painting, so that took a huge amount of time to remove the paint from the original painting but we did manage to do that. But yes, when someone’s angry as well they really press the paint in. So, we ended up using a porcupine spine to pick out tiny bits of paint from bubbles in the paint film where it kind of got pressed into these little crevasses in the paint film so we used a porcupine spine under the microscope to pick out all these little spots of paint to clean it. ",[],{"speaker":308,"content":623},[624],{"type":33,"text":625,"spans":626},"Do you have a favourite painting that you’ve ever restored or conserved and if so, why, why is it that painting? ",[],{"speaker":597,"content":628},[629],{"type":33,"text":630,"spans":631},"It’s very hard to say because you because it’s very hard to have a favourite and to pick out a favourite. It’s a great privilege to be able to touch what we can’t afford and to spend that one-on-one time, intimate time with great artists. So, you know, sitting in front of a Picasso, I had to clean off fly spots, fly faeces basically for a whole day but you’re sitting with a wonderful painting and so it’s always a privilege to work with wonderful art, and to have that one-on-one relationship, even if it’s for a temporary period.  ",[],{},"text_interview$78ced8c2-13ce-4812-b9d5-51bfdc9511f9","How is science improving art restoration techniques?","Conservator Julia Nagle discusses how restoring paintings has changed over the the last couple of decades.",{"dimensions":637,"alt":638,"copyright":7,"url":639,"id":640,"edit":641},{"width":113,"height":114},"ArtExplored audiocast with art conservator Julia Nagle","https:\u002F\u002Fimages.prismic.io\u002Fartexplorer-prod\u002F3f6680c6-48db-447c-93da-63b1e3a18f2d_Audiocast+Opengraph+How+is+science+improving+art+restoration+techniques_.jpg?auto=compress,format","ZK_XhhIAACAAaY5G",{"x":54,"y":54,"zoom":55,"background":56},[643,664],{"variation":88,"version":89,"items":644,"primary":661,"id":663,"slice_type":157,"slice_label":7},[645,649,653,657],{"post":646},{"id":124,"type":125,"tags":647,"lang":17,"slug":127,"first_publication_date":128,"last_publication_date":129,"uid":130,"link_type":67,"key":648,"isBroken":69},[11],"f4ad943e-5bfb-4fd1-985f-8696314f14b4",{"post":650},{"id":134,"type":125,"tags":651,"lang":17,"slug":137,"first_publication_date":138,"last_publication_date":139,"uid":140,"link_type":67,"key":652,"isBroken":69},[136],"fef8ef5b-79d2-4a35-97f3-04ec9fa3e932",{"post":654},{"id":356,"type":125,"tags":655,"lang":17,"slug":359,"first_publication_date":360,"last_publication_date":361,"uid":362,"link_type":67,"key":656,"isBroken":69},[136,358],"5db283db-43a7-4abb-8d8a-1969dc3b9783",{"post":658},{"id":144,"type":125,"tags":659,"lang":17,"slug":147,"first_publication_date":148,"last_publication_date":149,"uid":150,"link_type":67,"key":660,"isBroken":69},[146],"318a6424-6631-4600-ba64-850be0f387e2",{"slides_per_view":530,"max_slides_count":530,"tag":662,"type":125,"title":523,"paralax":7},{"link_type":67},"carousel$a3497cfe-0f72-49d4-871f-4d5b7a083b9d",{"variation":88,"version":89,"items":665,"primary":668,"id":671,"slice_type":157,"slice_label":7},[666],{"post":667},{"link_type":67},{"slides_per_view":530,"max_slides_count":153,"tag":669,"type":8,"title":670,"paralax":7},{"link_type":67},"Explore","carousel$37958bb9-5f44-4ea6-8ace-820083cac27c",{"id":673,"uid":674,"url":7,"type":125,"href":675,"tags":676,"first_publication_date":677,"last_publication_date":678,"slugs":679,"linked_documents":682,"lang":17,"alternate_languages":683,"data":684},"ZNY85BEAAB4AqwCv","samantha-friedman-moma","https:\u002F\u002Fartexplorer-prod.cdn.prismic.io\u002Fapi\u002Fv2\u002Fdocuments\u002Fsearch?ref=aCb60BIAACEA00zN&q=%5B%5B%3Ad+%3D+at%28document.id%2C+%22ZNY85BEAAB4AqwCv%22%29+%5D%5D",[],"2023-08-11T14:08:08+0000","2023-09-12T10:38:08+0000",[680,681,674],"samantha-friedman-moma-a-rare-glimpse-of-georgia-okeeffe","samantha-friedman-moma-a-rare-glimpse-of-goergia-okeeffe",[],[],{"title":685,"subtitle":7,"color":686,"source":687,"published_at":559,"duration":693,"cover":694,"copyright_cover":700,"description":701,"narrator_copyright":705,"music_copyright":7,"mixing_copyright":7,"deezer_external":706,"spotify_external":707,"apple_podcast_external":710,"slices":711,"meta_title":685,"meta_description":703,"og_image":798,"slices2":804},"Samantha Friedman (MoMA): A rare glimpse of Georgia O'Keeffe","#ee5d5d",{"link_type":173,"key":688,"kind":175,"id":689,"url":690,"name":691,"size":692},"409ba5c7-dba2-4093-8e4f-bc0e05ad1496","ZNY9OBEAAB8AqwJL","https:\u002F\u002Fartexplorer-prod.cdn.prismic.io\u002Fartexplorer-prod\u002F6eae61fd-54d3-4481-9a1d-c0cf9ed55baa_230811_ARTEXPLORED_AUDIOCAST_SAMANTHA_FRIEDMAN.mp3","230811_ARTEXPLORED_AUDIOCAST_SAMANTHA_FRIEDMAN.mp3","15494337",1020,{"dimensions":695,"alt":685,"copyright":7,"url":697,"id":698,"edit":699},{"width":696,"height":696},1080,"https:\u002F\u002Fimages.prismic.io\u002Fartexplorer-prod\u002F7874436e-6b77-4ac5-bf7a-90351fc27438_230811_ARTEXPLORED_AUDIOCAST_SAMANTHA_FRIEDMAN.jpg?auto=compress,format","ZNY9rBEAACAAqwRq",{"x":54,"y":54,"zoom":55,"background":56},"Georgia O’Keeffe. Evening Star No.III, 1917. Watercolor on paper mounted on board. 8 7\u002F8 x 11 7\u002F8″ (22.7 x 30.4 cm). The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Mr. and Mrs. Donald B. Straus Fund, 1958. © 2022 Georgia O’Keeffe Museum \u002F Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York\u002F",[702],{"type":33,"text":703,"spans":704},"MoMA’s Associate Curator, Department of Drawings and Prints Samantha Friedman, who curated Georgia O’Keeffe: To See Takes Time at MoMA, talks to ArtExplored about why the artist is one of the most significant painters of the 20th century.",[],"Will Corwin, Samantha Freidman",{"link_type":192},{"link_type":194,"key":708,"url":709},"a3b20513-c8f5-4e50-8fce-ed26fd965e47","https:\u002F\u002Fopen.spotify.com\u002Fepisode\u002F3mGpDNBundMZ0r8Dquj5Ft",{"link_type":192},[712],{"variation":88,"version":89,"items":713,"primary":796,"id":797,"slice_type":252,"slice_label":7},[714,719,724,729,746,751,756,761,766,771,776,781,786,791],{"speaker":426,"content":715},[716],{"type":33,"text":717,"spans":718},"Hi Samantha. Thank you for joining me today to discuss Georgia O'Keeffe and her exhibition To See Takes Time at MoMA. My first question is this. George O'Keeffe was born in Wisconsin to Irish-Hungarian parents and brought up on a farm. How much did this shape her interest in art, and did the landscape and environment in Wisconsin influence her choosing nature as the main subject matter of her work?",[],{"speaker":432,"content":720},[721],{"type":33,"text":722,"spans":723},"I think it's a great way to start in her early days. And I guess I would say I don't know that the landscape of Wisconsin per se shaped her interest in the landscape as a subject for her work specifically. But I will say that that upbringing was crucial in other ways to the artist that she became. Being from a big farm family of seven kids, being extremely self-sufficient, being comfortable in nature, I think were all qualities that very much shaped the person and artist that O'Keeffe would become. Her kind of comfort with the outdoors, her desire for adventure. You know, her family moved to Virginia when she was in her mid-teens so her landscape would shift. But I think from the very beginning, there was a kind of comfort within different landscapes and you know, that she would move across the country in those early years as she was growing as a young artist and a teacher. So I think that was really important for making her the artist she was. ",[],{"speaker":426,"content":725},[726],{"type":33,"text":727,"spans":728},"Why did MoMA choose to organise an exhibition focusing solely on O'Keeffe's works on paper?",[],{"speaker":432,"content":730},[731],{"type":33,"text":732,"spans":733},"I had organised a smaller exhibition a few years ago of post-war drawings from MoMA's collection called Degree Zero Drawing at Mid-Century and among the 80 some works from our collection I included in that show of drawings that were made between 1948 and 1961 was our latest O'Keeffe drawing, which is a 1959 charcoal that's in this exhibition. And when I hung it in that show, I hung it with an Ellsworth Kelly. It looked very at home and happy. And when I would take people through, they were very shocked to learn that this was an O'Keeffe drawing because it didn't conform to people's expectations of the artist. And I found that to be really exciting, that an artist who is so well known could still surprise people with her work that she made work not at the moment we consider to be her heyday of the 20s, and that it looked quite different from the blown-up flower paintings that are maybe the works that people most quickly and easily conjure in their heads when they're thinking of the artist. So, when I researched that drawing, I realised it was part of a series and that in fact most of the works on paper O'Keeffe made were themselves parts of a series, and there hadn't really been an exhibition that looked at bringing her series on paper together. I've been at MoMA for a long time. I'm well acquainted with some of our wonderful works on paper, the Evening Star watercolour, for example, the Train watercolour. I'd seen those works exhibited over the years, but I hadn't known that there were eight Evening Stars, and that there were three Trains. And I figured if I didn't know that, a lot of people probably didn't know that. And then the kind of last piece of the puzzle was realising that it had been 77 years since MoMA had given Georgia O'Keeffe a monographic exhibition. The last one was in 1946. I found that quite shocking, really surprising. It was a fact I had to check numerous times to make sure I had it right. So it seemed it was high time to honour her in that way. And that path that the previous project had led me down through that drawing seemed like an ideal way to do it, to show her in a different light, to shift the focus, to see a side of the artist that was maybe a bit fresh and showed her in a way that was quite different from how many of us encounter her.",[734,737,740,743],{"start":735,"end":736,"type":249},1367,1379,{"start":738,"end":739,"type":249},1410,1415,{"start":741,"end":742,"type":249},1517,1530,{"start":744,"end":745,"type":249},1558,1564,{"speaker":426,"content":747},[748],{"type":33,"text":749,"spans":750},"What is it about O'Keeffe's painting techniques and subject matter that established her reputation as an innovative modernist?",[],{"speaker":432,"content":752},[753],{"type":33,"text":754,"spans":755},"I would say that in these key early years of her developing her visual language – and we're talking about really 1915 to 1917 – we have an artist who is working both within the realm of radical abstraction that many artists in those early decades of the 20th century are embracing. But she's doing it in quite a personal way also. So she trains to be an artist, she trains with different teachers. She's absorbing all of these theories of the day. And at a certain point, she says, 'I have shapes in my head that are not like what anyone taught me.' And so she steps back to listen to those shapes. So she's working in a kind of radically abstract visual language that is resonant with a lot of the innovations that are going on in those decades of the early 20th century. But she's doing it in a way that feels very deeply personal to her. And I think it's that combination, you know, that really makes her language innovative and modern at that at that moment. ",[],{"speaker":426,"content":757},[758],{"type":33,"text":759,"spans":760},"Which artists influenced O’Keeffe throughout her career?",[],{"speaker":432,"content":762},[763],{"type":33,"text":764,"spans":765},"She talks about, in these key years which we're discussing, reading Kandisnky's Concerning the Spiritual in Art, I think Kandinsky was a touchstone for a lot of artists at this moment, talking about these almost synaesthesia qualities of the different arts, the way that visual art might aspire to the condition of music, the idea of different forms of being associated with different sounds, being associated with different colours. And this is really moving for O'Keeffe, really influential. Within the kind of American vein of artists that Alfred Stieglitz is kind of building up, it's Arthur Dove who is the most resonant for O'Keeffe and indeed who are most resonant for each other. O'Keeffe is equally influential to Dove. I think this ability to kind of live in the grey area between nature and abstraction is something that's really important for both of them. And she sees the work by Dove reproduced in an important book, and that kind of sends her on a path of really admiring him. And they would become, you know, close peers and co-admirers. I think it's interesting to note that it's not only draughtsmen and painters who were exciting for O'Keeffe. You know, of course, Alfred Stieglitz, the photographer and gallerist who would become her husband, is introducing her to many circles of photography in this moment. And his younger acolyte, Paul Strand, is someone whose work is really influential to O'Keeffe. She talks about a moment when he showed her lots and lots of his prints and she says, 'I almost lost my mind over them, photographs that are as queer in shapes as Picasso drawings.' She's actually referring to a very particular Picasso drawing. I don't think she was a very general overall admirer of him necessarily, but there was one particular Cubist Picasso drawing that Stieglitz was showing in his gallery that she really took a liking to. So I think, you know, it really runs the gamut. And then, of course, this wasn't really what you were asking, but of course, it goes both ways. She continues to also be really influential for many artists of the next generation. You know, we have letters between her and Yayoi Kusama, between Agnes Martin, this younger generation of artists who are equally influenced by her. So those conversations are very active in both directions. ",[],{"speaker":426,"content":767},[768],{"type":33,"text":769,"spans":770},"How significant is the relationship between O'Keeffe and MoMA, given that she was the first female artist to receive a proper retrospective at the museum? ",[],{"speaker":432,"content":772},[773],{"type":33,"text":774,"spans":775},"Interestingly, I think it's been a complicated relationship over time, right? I mean, it would have to be the first woman artist to receive a retrospective in 1946 and then to go 77 years without another monograph. I thought a lot about whether that's O'Keeffe specific, whether that has to do again with the fact that her popularity or her presence as a kind of an icon might have overshadowed a sense of her seriousness at a certain point. But I think also it has to do with MoMA's complex history with American art pre-1945. Right? We all know that in MoMA's earlier decades, so many curators invited American art, whether it was the Stieglitz circle of modernism, whether it was self-taught or folk art over the years as that kind of canon became more entrenched of this linear story of modernism with which the museum had become associated, the idea of American art pre-1945, this realism or these kinds of realisms that preceded abstraction and abstract expressionism, were a little bit sidelined, right? They didn't fit into this story. And so I think that those priorities complicated MoMA's relationship to the artist and to her work. I think that it's really exciting and great news that in the last decade or so, we've really complicated the stories that we're telling such that an artist needn't fit into some of those linear trajectories, and I think that's part of what opens up a place for her in a really exciting way. That being said, I think it really is interesting to look back and even if she hadn't received a monograph in all those years, to look back at some of the group exhibitions in which she was included, there's one in particular that I found to be really interesting an exhibition from 1968 called The Art of the Real that a curator named E.C. Goosen organised. And if you read his catalogue essay for that show, which is available on MoMA's website in the form, he holds her up as a kind of a precursor to Ellsworth Kelly to Jasper Johns in this way that feels at first really strange to the stories we've crafted about modernism but are really exciting. And so it's really interesting to look back at the moments in which she was, you know, held up for her innovations, even if she hadn't received a monograph in all those years. ",[],{"speaker":426,"content":777},[778],{"type":33,"text":779,"spans":780},"What is it about the charcoal drawings O’Keeffe made between 1911 and 1918 that propelled her career in a new direction and brought her work to the attention of the American public? ",[],{"speaker":432,"content":782},[783],{"type":33,"text":784,"spans":785},"These charcoal drawings are just amazing. I mean, the exhibition begins with a number of them, many of which she called specials a kind of loving nickname she would give to these early works when she found them to be particularly successful. They are so bold, they're so abstract. And they also contain the kind of blueprints for her visual language, for her whole career, these kinds of spiral forms, this repertory of marks, the way that she negotiates value, the way that she wipes away areas of mid-tone to achieve bright highlights. Like they're just, um, I mean, in addition to being really innovative, they're absolutely lush and gorgeous. Some of them feel very mysterious. Some of them feel very strange. Critics, even in those years struggled to describe them. Um, you know, they, they talked about a scarecrow or, you know, grasping at different ways to to describe them. There's one special from 1915 that she herself described as the drawing of a headache. So the idea that you might describe a physical sensation in visual terms. So just really radical investigation and exploration. And she was sending a lot of these works. She was rolling them up and sending them in the mail in a tube, which of course, not a method we would use to travel them today to her good friend Anita Pulitzer in New York and really wanting validation, wanting to show these works. Anita shows them to Stieglitz and he includes three of them in an exhibition in 1916 and then gives her a solo show in 1917 and that is what brings her work to the attention of the public. It really is through these charcoal drawings that the public sees O’Keeffe and finds her so captivating. ",[],{"speaker":426,"content":787},[788],{"type":33,"text":789,"spans":790},"Have you personally learned anything new about O’Keeffe during your time curating the exhibition?",[],{"speaker":432,"content":792},[793],{"type":33,"text":794,"spans":795},"I have to say, I don’t even know where to begin with that question because pretty much everything I’ve learned during the making of this show, which I collaborated on with some wonderful colleagues.... If you had asked me five years if O’Keeffe was an artist I even cared about, I would have said no. The idea of her being a very popular artist turned me off. So, the kind of process about learning about her work and her work on paper that I experienced, I hope people who see the show will also experience that same learning curve. I wasn’t coming as an expert, I was coming as a convert and so really, everything was new for me. The most gratifying response to the show that I’ve heard has been ‘I had no idea that O’Keeffe made this work’ because that was my response too. So, it’s really all been new. ",[],{},"text_interview$08922976-6c78-4426-bb8d-e3f89e236dc8",{"dimensions":799,"alt":800,"copyright":7,"url":801,"id":802,"edit":803},{"width":113,"height":114},"Samantha Friedman (MoMA): A rare glimpse of Goergia O'Keeffe","https:\u002F\u002Fimages.prismic.io\u002Fartexplorer-prod\u002Fe4dceda2-b044-4b5e-8d01-e23ed4c63f12_Audiocast+Opengraph+Samantha+Friedman.jpg?auto=compress,format","ZNZAdxEAAB4AqxGj",{"x":54,"y":54,"zoom":55,"background":56},[805],{"variation":88,"version":89,"items":806,"primary":823,"id":826,"slice_type":157,"slice_label":7},[807,811,815,819],{"post":808},{"id":356,"type":125,"tags":809,"lang":17,"slug":359,"first_publication_date":360,"last_publication_date":361,"uid":362,"link_type":67,"key":810,"isBroken":69},[136,358],"2105a804-8df0-4b46-ae52-a18cff5dad93",{"post":812},{"id":134,"type":125,"tags":813,"lang":17,"slug":137,"first_publication_date":138,"last_publication_date":139,"uid":140,"link_type":67,"key":814,"isBroken":69},[136],"9d0a3365-2d15-4aa2-a4c9-2cc6a046521a",{"post":816},{"id":366,"type":125,"tags":817,"lang":17,"slug":369,"first_publication_date":370,"last_publication_date":371,"uid":372,"link_type":67,"key":818,"isBroken":69},[368],"eb0f4d0e-d447-47c5-8451-1443481965e7",{"post":820},{"id":124,"type":125,"tags":821,"lang":17,"slug":127,"first_publication_date":128,"last_publication_date":129,"uid":130,"link_type":67,"key":822,"isBroken":69},[11],"4bf99a7f-1ab3-4566-9605-ae3b0507b27c",{"slides_per_view":7,"max_slides_count":7,"tag":824,"type":825,"title":376,"paralax":7},{"link_type":67},"*","carousel$fa580951-4d76-4c92-968a-5c51a1fd4bfc",{"id":356,"uid":362,"url":7,"type":125,"href":828,"tags":829,"first_publication_date":360,"last_publication_date":361,"slugs":830,"linked_documents":832,"lang":17,"alternate_languages":833,"data":834},"https:\u002F\u002Fartexplorer-prod.cdn.prismic.io\u002Fapi\u002Fv2\u002Fdocuments\u002Fsearch?ref=aCb60BIAACEA00zN&q=%5B%5B%3Ad+%3D+at%28document.id%2C+%22ZB3OZRAAACIAzkAv%22%29+%5D%5D",[136,358],[359,831,362],"a-phenomenological-take-on-paul-cezanne",[],[],{"title":835,"subtitle":7,"color":836,"source":837,"published_at":7,"duration":843,"cover":844,"copyright_cover":7,"description":849,"narrator_copyright":853,"music_copyright":7,"mixing_copyright":7,"deezer_external":854,"spotify_external":855,"apple_podcast_external":858,"slices":859,"meta_title":915,"meta_description":7,"og_image":916,"slices2":922},"Jorella Andrews: A phenomenological take on Paul Cezanne","#ffc289",{"link_type":173,"key":838,"kind":175,"id":839,"url":840,"name":841,"size":842},"620164bb-980e-475f-a50f-81faa23c0d0f","ZJQhMBEAACcAFs4R","https:\u002F\u002Fartexplorer-prod.cdn.prismic.io\u002Fartexplorer-prod\u002F3f657253-cbc5-4c92-b2aa-c463ccb83c9e_230617_ARTEXPLORED_AUDIOCAST_JORELLA_ANDREWS.mp3","230617_ARTEXPLORED_AUDIOCAST_JORELLA_ANDREWS.mp3","13166323",550,{"dimensions":845,"alt":7,"copyright":7,"url":846,"id":847,"edit":848},{"width":73,"height":73},"https:\u002F\u002Fimages.prismic.io\u002Fartexplorer-prod\u002Faeafb334-6a1d-40b8-ad91-e36a2325aa13_carr%C3%A9-3.jpg?auto=compress,format","ZK_u3hIAACIAafCm",{"x":54,"y":54,"zoom":55,"background":56},[850],{"type":33,"text":851,"spans":852},"ArtExplored talks to Jorella Andrews, a senior lecturer in the Visual Cultures department at Goldsmiths, University of London about viewing the French post-Impressionist painter through the lens of French philosopher and phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty. ",[],"George Nelson, Jorella Andrews",{"link_type":192},{"link_type":194,"key":856,"url":857},"9eb05eea-14a8-49ef-bfa9-4f5619ac5038","https:\u002F\u002Fopen.spotify.com\u002Fepisode\u002F02rM3eRCPWBm2DMcAYK3T0",{"link_type":192},[860],{"variation":88,"version":89,"items":861,"primary":913,"id":914,"slice_type":252,"slice_label":7},[862,867,873,878,883,888,893,898,903,908],{"speaker":308,"content":863},[864],{"type":33,"text":865,"spans":866},"Hi Jorella, to start things off, can you quickly explain how you came to study Merleau-Ponty?",[],{"speaker":868,"content":869},"JA",[870],{"type":33,"text":871,"spans":872},"I really came to the study of art theory through art practice, so I originally studied fine art and then I actually worked in the world of media, so I worked in video production. And then I returned to art theory with a massive interest in ambiguity as a thematic. And it was that interest in ambiguity that brought me to the work of Merleau-Ponty. ",[],{"speaker":308,"content":874},[875],{"type":33,"text":876,"spans":877},"I’m sure many people will never have heard of phenomenology. Would you mind just explaining what it is exactly?",[],{"speaker":868,"content":879},[880],{"type":33,"text":881,"spans":882},"Phenomenology is a branch of philosophy that focuses on the world of the experience and particularly the world as it reveals itself to consciousness. And so, for some phenomenologists, they were still thinking in quite an idealistic way in the sense that consciousness is something that is quite rarefied, it’s very much linked with a disembodied idea of thought but for someone like Maurice Merleau-Ponty who was active between the late 1930s and the early 1960s – he died in 1961 – he was really interested in this notion of consciousness being embodied. So, he’s moving away from that shift between disembodied mind and embodied… you know… the body. He’s seeing bodies as thinking entities and not only human bodies but other sorts of material assemblages as having a kind of thoughtfulness and he’s wanting to open that space up and encourage us to enter into that. So, with phenomenology, you’re not thinking about how the world could be or should be, you’re really trying to observe and enter into how the world is presenting itself to us now, and for that reason, the most important phenomenological method is description, which is often regarded quite dismissively as not actually accomplishing anything. But description is absolutely vital because as you describe, you are sort of entering into the world of the thing that you’re looking at and inevitably that process begins to kind of undo the expectations that you might have brought. And with that, you can see how applicable that is not just with becoming more intimate with a particular work of art but also with another person or a group of people, so you can see where kind of the political and social advantages of a practice like that, you know, where they might really come into play.",[],{"speaker":308,"content":884},[885],{"type":33,"text":886,"spans":887},"So, with this in mind how does Merleau-Ponty as a phenomenologist relate to Cezanne’s artistic practice?",[],{"speaker":868,"content":889},[890],{"type":33,"text":891,"spans":892},"If you read the essay for which he is very well known – Cezanne’s Doubt – he would argue what he wanted to do was uncouple the appearance of Cezanne’s work including his self-portraits from a kind of autobiographical reading where the painting is a symptom of the artist’s sort of inner sense of self. And what he wants to do is think very much about doubt or insecurity or whatever it might be, thinking about that much more as having to do with the painterly quest that Cezanne was on because when he was painting, whether it was painting himself or painting a landscape, he was very interested in, I would say, a way of painting that allows paint, and colour, and line, and those sorts of forms to take the lead and out of those forms of mark making which you could, at first sight, appear to be very unstructured, very unclear, allowing something to emerge from that and that is quite an insecure way of working. You’re not plotting and kind of demarcating figures and objects. You’re working in a way that will eventually allow those sorts of objects, faces, and figures to take form in the process of painting. So, it’s a way of working that carries a lot of uncertainty with it and that’s what Merleau-Ponty was interested in. You know, he was seeing Cezanne’s quest very much a kind of philosophical one but as philosophical, in a very materialised way. ",[],{"speaker":308,"content":894},[895],{"type":33,"text":896,"spans":897},"Does Merleau-Ponty approach Cezanne’s work and outlook from a specific angle in his essay and does he focus on any particular material?",[],{"speaker":868,"content":899},[900],{"type":33,"text":901,"spans":902},"The essay starts off with him criticising biographical readings that position Cezanne as mentally deranged and disturbed. And he positions the difficulties of Cezanne in terms of his quest, this painterly quest that he has, and he doesn’t know quite what it is. And what he does more is think about the kind of transitions in his work, the sense that he’s been looking at the works but he’s drawing a lot more on the sorts of things that Cezanne might have said himself about the process and he’s also doing some comparative work. Looking at the way in which Cezanne’s work was kind of departing from some of the other conventions and what he’s also doing is, you know, referring to and he’s in conversation with some books on Cezanne that would have been published at the time. You know, looking at sort of Cezanne’s use of space and things like that. So, he’s very much positioning himself between a whole range of materials. ",[],{"speaker":308,"content":904},[905],{"type":33,"text":906,"spans":907},"And finally, Jorella, what does Merleau-Ponty write about Cezanne’s stylistic development over the course of his career?",[],{"speaker":868,"content":909},[910],{"type":33,"text":911,"spans":912},"So Merleau-Ponty, a lot of the time is less interested in paintings per se, he’s not an art historian but he’s interested in what Cezanne had to say about the processes of looking and making. So, often that’s what he’s drawing on as a philosopher. And, when it comes to this he talks very interestingly about the stylistic development in Cezanne’s work and he talks about it very much in material terms like he, for instance, talks about this moment after Cezanne has been working, connected with the Impressionists, and that’s been really important for him. Particularly working very closely with Pissarro. But then, increasingly what you see in Cezanne’s use of paint and his mark marking, and what you also see in his writing, is that Impressionism isn’t doing it for him because Cezanne has this abiding interest in structure, underlying structure, and there’s that kind of expression really, this idea that what – Merleau-Ponty – what Cezanne is trying to do, is to almost refine the object underneath the kind of impression. That the Impressionists are so interested in. So, yeah, and one of the things that Merleau-Ponty does is he looks at the way in which Cezanne uses colour. He looks at his colour palette and the way in which that is so very different from what the Impressionists were using and it’s that sense of you know, what makes the difference for Cezanne quite often is the materiality, the application, out of which a different sense of the world then emerges in the work itself. 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