When I was considering a career in the art world, I took a course in London, and one of my supervisors was this irascible Italian called Pietro, who drank too much, smoked too much and swore much too much. But he was a passionate teacher, and I remember one of our earlier classes with him, he was projecting images on the wall, asking us to think about them, and he put up an image of a painting. It was a landscape with figures, semi-dressed, drinking wine. There was a nude woman in the lower foreground, and on the hillside in the back, there was a figure of the mythological god Bacchus, and he said, "What is this?"
Kada sam razmišljao o karijeri u svetu umetnosti, upisao sam kurs u Londonu i jedan od mojih profesora je bio naprasiti Italijan Pjetro, koji je mnogo pio, previše pušio i preterano mnogo psovao. Ali on je bio strastven učitelj, pamtim jedan od početnih časova kod njega, projektovao je umetničke slike na zid pitajući nas šta mislimo o njima. Bio je to pejzaž sa figurama, poluobučenim, kako piju vino. Tu je bila naga žena u donjem prednjem delu, a na brežuljku u pozadini bila je mitološka figura boga Baha i on je pitao: "Šta je ovo?"
And I -- no one else did, so I put up my hand, and I said, "It's a Bacchanal by Titian."
I ja – niko drugi, podigao sam ruku i rekao: "To su Ticijanove Bahanalije."
He said, "It's a what?"
On, na to: "To je - šta?"
I thought maybe I'd pronounced it wrong. "It's a Bacchanal by Titian."
Pomislio sam da sam možda pogrešno izgovorio. "To su Ticijanove Bahanalije."
He said, "It's a what?"
On reče: "To je - šta?"
I said, "It's a Bacchanal by Titian." (Laughter)
Rekoh: "To su Ticijanove Bahanalije." (Smeh)
He said, "You boneless bookworm! It's a fucking orgy!" (Laughter) As I said, he swore too much.
On reče: "Ti beskičmeni knjiški moljcu! To je jebena orgija!" (Smeh) Kao što rekoh, mnogo je psovao.
There was an important lesson for me in that. Pietro was suspicious of formal art training, art history training, because he feared that it filled people up with jargon, and then they just classified things rather than looking at them, and he wanted to remind us that all art was once contemporary, and he wanted us to use our eyes, and he was especially evangelical about this message, because he was losing his sight. He wanted us to look and ask basic questions of objects. What is it? How is it made? Why was it made? How is it used? And these were important lessons to me when I subsequently became a professional art historian.
Bila je to važna lekcija za mene. Pjetro je bio sumnjičav prema formalnom umetničkom obrazovanju iz istorije umetnosti, plašio se da ono puni ljude žargonom i da oni potom klasifikuju stvari bez posmatranja, a on je hteo da nas podseti da je sva umetnost nekad bila savremena, hteo je da otvorimo oči, posebno je bio pobožan u vezi sa tim jer je gubio vid. Hteo je da gledamo i da postavljamo osnovna pitanja o predmetima. Šta je to? Kako je napravljeno? Zbog čega je to napravljeno? Kako se koristi? Ovo su mi bile važne lekcije kasnije, kada sam postao profesionalni istoričar umetnosti.
My kind of eureka moment came a few years later, when I was studying the art of the courts of Northern Europe, and of course it was very much discussed in terms of the paintings and the sculptures and the architecture of the day. But as I began to read historical documents and contemporary descriptions, I found there was a kind of a missing component, for everywhere I came across descriptions of tapestries. Tapestries were ubiquitous between the Middle Ages and, really, well into the 18th century, and it was pretty apparent why. Tapestries were portable. You could roll them up, send them ahead of you, and in the time it took to hang them up, you could transform a cold, dank interior into a richly colored setting. Tapestries effectively provided a vast canvas on which the patrons of the day could depict the heroes with whom they wanted to be associated, or even themselves, and in addition to that, tapestries were hugely expensive. They required scores of highly skilled weavers working over extended periods of time with very expensive materials -- the wools, the silks, even gold and silver thread. So, all in all, in an age when the visual image of any kind was rare, tapestries were an incredibly potent form of propaganda.
Moj eureka momenat je nastupio posle nekoliko godina, proučavao sam umetnost u sudnicama Severne Evrope, o njoj se mnogo govorilo u vezi sa slikama i skulpturama i arhitekturom toga doba. Ali kada sam počeo da proučavam istorijska dokumenta i opise savremenika, otkrio sam da jedna komponenta svuda nedostaje, gde god sam naišao na opise tapiserija. Tapiserije su bile sveprisutne u srednjem veku i do dobrog dela 18. veka, bilo je jasno zbog čega. Tapiserije su prenosive. Mogu se urolati, poslati unapred, mogu da stignu na vreme da bi se okačile, možete transformisati hladan vlažni enterijer u bogato obojenu prostoriju. Tapiserije su bukvalno bile velika platna, na kojima su tadašnji pokrovitelji mogli da prikažu heroje sa kojima su hteli da se identifikuju ili čak sebe, a u prilog tome, tapiserije su bile veoma skupe. Bili su neophodni vrhunski vešti tkači, koji su radili u dugim periodima sa vrlo skupim materijalima – vuna, svila, čak zlato i srebrni konac. Dakle, u periodu kada je bilo kakva vizuelna slika bila retka, tapiserije su bile neverovatno moćno sredstvo reklame.
Well, I became a tapestry historian. In due course, I ended up as a curator at the Metropolitan Museum, because I saw the Met as one of the few places where I could organize really big exhibitions about the subject I cared so passionately about. And in about 1997, the then-director Philippe de Montebello gave me the go-ahead to organize an exhibition for 2002. We normally have these very long lead-in times.
Postao sam istoričar tapiserija. Na kraju sam završio kao kustos u Metropoliten muzeju, jer sam video Metropoliten kao jedno od nekoliko mesta gde bih mogao da organizujem zaista velike izložbe o temi koja me je jako zanimala. Otprilike 1997., tadašnji direktor Filip de Montebelo dopustio mi je da organizujem izložbu za 2002. Obično imamo ovako duge rokove.
It wasn't straightforward. It's no longer a question of chucking a tapestry in the back of a car. They have to be wound on huge rollers, shipped in oversized freighters. Some of them are so big we had, to get them into the museum, we had to take them up the great steps at the front.
To nije bilo jednostavno. Nije bilo više pitanje kako ubaciti tapiseriju u gepek. Treba da se saviju na velike koturove, isporuče u ogromnim teretnim brodovima. Neke od njih su bile tako velike, pa smo morali da ih unosimo kroz velike ulazne stepenice muzeja.
We thought very hard about how to present this unknown subject to a modern audience: the dark colors to set off the colors that remained in objects that were often faded; the placing of lights to bring out the silk and the gold thread; the labeling. You know, we live in an age where we are so used to television images and photographs, a one-hit image. These were big, complex things, almost like cartoons with multiple narratives. We had to draw our audience in, get them to slow down, to explore the objects.
Ozbiljno smo razmišljali kako da predstavimo ovu nepoznatu temu sadašnjoj publici: da izdvojimo tamne boje od preostalih boja na objektima koji su često izbledeli; o postavci svetla da bismo izdvojili svileni i zlatni konac; o natpisima. Živimo u eri kada smo navikli na televizijske slike i fotografije, popularne slike. A ovo su velike, kompleksne stvari, gotovo kao crtani filmovi sa mnogim pripovedačima. Trebalo je da privučemo publiku, da ih nateramo da uspore, da ispituju objekte.
There was a lot of skepticism. On the opening night, I overheard one of the senior members of staff saying, "This is going to be a bomb." But in reality, in the course of the coming weeks and months, hundreds of thousands of people came to see the show. The exhibition was designed to be an experience, and tapestries are hard to reproduce in photographs. So I want you to use your imaginations, thinking of these wall-high objects, some of them 10 meters wide, depicting lavish court scenes with courtiers and dandies who would look quite at home in the pages of the fashion press today, thick woods with hunters crashing through the undergrowth in pursuit of wild boars and deer, violent battles with scenes of fear and heroism. I remember taking my son's school class. He was eight at the time, and all the little boys, they kind of -- you know, they were little boys, and then the thing that caught their attention was in one of the hunting scenes there was a dog pooping in the foreground — (Laughter) — kind of an in-your-face joke by the artist. And you can just imagine them. But it brought it alive to them. I think they suddenly saw that these weren't just old faded tapestries. These were images of the world in the past, and that it was the same for our audience. And for me as a curator, I felt proud. I felt I'd shifted the needle a little. Through this experience that could only be created in a museum, I'd opened up the eyes of my audience -- historians, artists, press, the general public -- to the beauty of this lost medium.
Bilo je mnogo skepse. Na veče otvaranja čuo sam jednog od starijih članova osoblja kako kaže: "Ovo će biti bomba." Ali u stvarnosti, narednih nedelja i meseci stotine hiljada ljudi je došlo da vidi izložbu. Izložba je bila dizajnirana da bude jedno iskustvo, tapiserije je teško reprodukovati u fotografije. Želim da upotrebite maštu da zamislite ove objekte visoke kao zidovi, neki od njih su po 10m široki, opisuju raskošne scene u sudnici sa dvorjanima i kicošima koji deluju kao da su kod kuće na stranicama današnjih modnih magazina, scene gustih šuma sa lovcima kako se probijaju u potrazi za divljim svinjama i jelenima, nasilne bitke sa scenama straha i herojstva. Sećam se kada sam doveo razred mog sina. Tada je imao osam godina i svi dečaci su – znate, bili su mali i onda im je jedna stvar privukla pažnju, bilo je to u jednoj od scena lova, jedan pas je kakio u prednjem delu slike -- (Smeh) -- kao da vam se slikar smeje u lice. Samo možete da ih zamislite. To im je donelo živost. Mislim da su iznenada uvideli da to nisu samo stare izbledele tapiserije. Bile su to slike sveta u prošlosti i za našu publiku. Kao kustos, bio sam ponosan. Osetio sam da sam malo pomerio stvari. Kroz ovo iskustvo koje se može stvoriti samo u muzeju, otvorio sam oči svojoj publici – istoričarima, umetnicima, štampi, opštoj publici – za lepotu ovog izgubljenog medijuma.
A few years later, I was invited to be the director of the museum, and after I got over that -- "Who, me? The tapestry geek? I don't wear a tie!" -- I realized the fact: I believe passionately in that curated museum experience. We live in an age of ubiquitous information, and sort of "just add water" expertise, but there's nothing that compares with the presentation of significant objects in a well-told narrative, what the curator does, the interpretation of a complex, esoteric subject, in a way that retains the integrity of the subject, that makes it -- unpacks it for a general audience. And that, to me, today, is now the challenge and the fun of my job, supporting the vision of my curators, whether it's an exhibition of Samurai swords, early Byzantine artifacts, Renaissance portraits, or the show we heard mentioned earlier, the McQueen show, with which we enjoyed so much success last summer.
Nekoliko godina kasnije, pozvali su me da budem direktor muzeja i kad sam prevazišao reakciju - "Ko, ja? Stručnjak za tapiserije? Pa ja ne nosim kravatu!" - shvatio sam činjenicu: strasno verujem u iskustvo izložbe u muzeju. Živimo u vremenu sveprisutne informacije, gde je dovoljno samo zalivanje vodom da stvari uspeju, ali ništa ne može da se uporedi sa predstavljanjem značajnih objekata u dobro ispričanoj priči, a to je posao kustosa, interpretacija kompleksnog ezoteričnog predmeta, na način koji zadržava celinu subjekta, koji ga čini – otkriva ga opštoj publici. Za mene je to izazov i zabavni deo mog posla je da podržavam viziju mojih kustosa, bez obzira da li je u pitanju izložba mačeva samuraja, artefakti ranog vizantijskog doba, renesansni portreti ili izložba koja je ranije pomenuta, Mek Kvinova izložba, koja je bila veoma uspešna prošlog leta.
That was an interesting case. In the late spring, early summer of 2010, shortly after McQueen's suicide, our curator of costume, Andrew Bolton, came to see me, and said, "I've been thinking of doing a show on McQueen, and now is the moment. We have to, we have to do it fast."
Bio je to zanimljiv slučaj. U kasno proleće ili rano leto 2010., neposredno pošto se Mek Kvin ubio, naš kustos za kostime, Endru Bolton, je došao do mene i rekao: "Razmišljao sam da napravim Mek Kvinovu izložbu i sad je trenutak. Moramo da to uradimo brzo."
It wasn't easy. McQueen had worked throughout his career with a small team of designers and managers who were very protective of his legacy, but Andrew went to London and worked with them over the summer and won their confidence, and that of the designers who created his amazing fashion shows, which were works of performance art in their own right, and we proceeded to do something at the museum, I think, we've never done before. It wasn't just your standard installation. In fact, we ripped down the galleries to recreate entirely different settings, a recreation of his first studio, a hall of mirrors, a curiosity box, a sunken ship, a burned-out interior, with videos and soundtracks that ranged from operatic arias to pigs fornicating. And in this extraordinary setting, the costumes were like actors and actresses, or living sculptures. It could have been a train wreck. It could have looked like shop windows on Fifth Avenue at Christmas, but because of the way that Andrew connected with the McQueen team, he was channeling the rawness and the brilliance of McQueen, and the show was quite transcendant, and it became a phenomenon in its own right. By the end of the show, we had people queuing for four or five hours to get into the show, but no one really complained. I heard over and over again, "Wow, that was worth it. It was a such a visceral, emotive experience."
Nije bilo lako. Mek Kvin je tokom cele svoje karijere radio sa malim timom kreatora i menadžera koji su jako štitili njegovo nasleđe, ali Endru je otišao u London i radio sa njima preko leta i stekao njihovo poverenje i poverenje kreatora koji su pravili njegove fantastične modne izložbe, koje su bile prava umetnička dela i mi smo produžili da pravimo nešto u muzeju, što nikad ranije nije napravljeno. To nije bila samo standardna instalacija. Ogolili smo galerije da bismo ponovo stvorili potpuno drugačiju postavku, stvorili smo njegov prvi studio, dvoranu od ogledala, čudnovatu kutiju, potonuli brod, dotrajali enterijer sa video i zvučnim zapisima od operskih arija do svinjskih bordela. U ovoj vanrednoj postavci, kostimi su bili kao glumci i glumice ili žive skulpture. Mogla je biti olupina voza. Mogla je da liči na izloge Pete avenije za Božić, ali zbog načina na koji se Endru povezao sa timom Mek Kvina, prikazivala je sirovost i brilijantnost Mek Kvina i izložba je bila prilično uzvišena i postala je pravi fenomen. Do kraja izložbe, ljudi su stajali u redovima po četiri ili pet sati da bi ušli na izložbu, ali niko se nije žalio. Čuo sam ponovo: "Vau, vredelo je. Bilo je to pravo unutrašnje, emotivno iskustvo."
Now, I've described two very immersive exhibitions, but I also believe that collections, individual objects, can also have that same power. The Met was set up not as a museum of American art, but of an encyclopedic museum, and today, 140 years later, that vision is as prescient as ever, because, of course, we live in a world of crisis, of challenge, and we're exposed to it through the 24/7 newsreels. It's in our galleries that we can unpack the civilizations, the cultures, that we're seeing the current manifestation of. Whether it's Libya, Egypt, Syria, it's in our galleries that we can explain and give greater understanding.
Opisao sam dve veoma impresivne izložbe, ali isto tako verujem da kolekcije, pojedinačni predmeti mogu imati istu snagu. Metropoliten nije osnovan kao muzej američke umetnosti već kao enciklopedijski muzej i danas, 140 godina kasnije, ta vizija je proročanska kao nikad do sad jer živimo u svetu sa krizama, sa izazovima i tome smo neprekidno izloženi. U našim galerijama otkrivamo civilizacije, kulture u sadašnjem trenutku. Bez obzira da li je Libija, Egipat, Sirija, u našim galerijama možemo da objasnimo i pružimo veće razumevanje.
I mean, our new Islamic galleries are a case in point, opened 10 years, almost to the week, after 9/11. I think for most Americans, knowledge of the Islamic world was pretty slight before 9/11, and then it was thrust upon us in one of America's darkest hours, and the perception was through the polarization of that terrible event. Now, in our galleries, we show 14 centuries of the development of different Islamic cultures across a vast geographic spread, and, again, hundreds of thousands of people have come to see these galleries since they opened last October.
Naše nove islamske galerije su ilustracija koja ovo opravdava, otvorene su 10 godina posle 11. septembra. Mislim da su mnogi Amerikanci malo znali o islamskom svetu pre 11. septembra, na nama je bilo da doprinesemo shvatanju jednog od najmračnijih trenutaka Amerike kroz polarizaciju tog strašnog događaja. Sada u našim galerijama, prikazujemo 14 vekova razvoja raznih islamskih kultura preko ogromnog geografskog područja, ponovo stotine hiljada ljudi je došlo da vide ove galerije od kako su otvorene prošlog oktobra.
I'm often asked, "Is digital media replacing the museum?" and I think those numbers are a resounding rejection of that notion. I mean, don't get me wrong, I'm a huge advocate of the Web. It gives us a way of reaching out to audiences around the globe, but nothing replaces the authenticity of the object presented with passionate scholarship. Bringing people face to face with our objects is a way of bringing them face to face with people across time, across space, whose lives may have been very different to our own, but who, like us, had hopes and dreams, frustrations and achievements in their lives. And I think this is a process that helps us better understand ourselves, helps us make better decisions about where we're going.
Često me pitaju: "Da li će digitalni mediji zameniti muzej?", mislim da ti brojevi pokazuju da se to neće desiti. Nemojte da me pogrešno razumete, veliki sam pristalica interneta. To nam daje mogućnost da stignemo do publike na celoj planeti, ali ništa ne može da zameni autentičnost predmeta koji predstavi vatreni učenik. Uživo prikazivanje objekata je način da spojimo ljude sa ljudima kroz vreme, kroz prostor, čiji su životi možda bili mnogo drugačiji od naših, ali koji su kao i mi imali snove i nade, poraze i dostignuća u svojim životima. Mislim da je ovo proces koji nam omogućava da bolje shvatimo same sebe, da donesemo bolje odluke kuda ćemo da krenemo,
The Great Hall at the Met is one of the great portals of the world, awe-inspiring, like a medieval cathedral. From there, you can walk in any direction to almost any culture. I frequently go out into the hall and the galleries and I watch our visitors coming in. Some of them are comfortable. They feel at home. They know what they're looking for. Others are very uneasy. It's an intimidating place. They feel that the institution is elitist. I'm working to try and break down that sense of that elitism. I want to put people in a contemplative frame of mind, where they're prepared to be a little bit lost, to explore, to see the unfamiliar in the familiar, or to try the unknown. Because for us, it's all about bringing them face to face with great works of art, capturing them at that moment of discomfort, when the inclination is kind of to reach for your iPhone, your Blackberry, but to create a zone where their curiosity can expand. And whether it's in the expression of a Greek sculpture that reminds you of a friend, or a dog pooping in the corner of a tapestry, or, to bring it back to my tutor Pietro, those dancing figures who are indeed knocking back the wine, and that nude figure in the left foreground. Wow. She is a gorgeous embodiment of youthful sexuality. In that moment, our scholarship can tell you that this is a bacchanal, but if we're doing our job right, and you've checked the jargon at the front door, trust your instinct. You know it's an orgy. Thank you. (Applause) (Applause)
Velika dvorana Metropolitena je jedan od najvećih portala u svetu, koja uliva strahopoštovanje, nalik srednjevekovnoj katedrali. Odatle možete odšetati u bilo kom pravcu u bilo koju kulturu. Često odem u hol i u galerije i posmatram naše posetioce. Nekima je ugodno. Osećaju se kao kod kuće. Znaju zašto su došli. Drugima je neprijatno. To je zastrašujuće mesto. Osećaju da je ta institucija elitistička. Pokušavam da razbijem taj osećaj elitizma. Želim da omogućim ljudima da razmišljaju, da budu spremni da se pomalo izgube, da istražuju, da vide nepoznato u poznatom ili da pokušaju nepoznato. Za nas, sve je u tome da uživo vide sjajna umetnička dela, uhvatiti ih u tom momentu nelagode kada postoji namera da dohvate svoj iPhone, Blekberi i da se stvori prostor gde njihova radoznalost može da se raširi. Bez obzira da li se radi o izrazu na grčkoj skulpturi koja vas podseća na prijatelja ili psu koji kaki u uglu tapiserije ili da se vratimo na mog tutora Pjetra, one figure koje igraju, koje se opijaju vinom i ta gola figura u levom prednjem delu. Vau. Ona je prekrasno otelotvorenje mladalačke seksualnosti. U tom momentu, naš student može reći da je ovo bahanalija, ali ako svoj posao radimo dobro i ako ste ostavili žargon na ulaznim vratima verujte svom instinktu. Znate da je to orgija. Hvala vam. (Aplauz) (Aplauz)