0:11

Hello, it's that we cannot. I've been

0:13

leak. This week the Whitney Biennial reviewed

0:15

visitor figures at museums and a Peter

0:18

Broker the Elder during. The

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latest buy a new at the Whitney Museum

0:31

of American Art opened this week and I

0:33

discuss the show with Ben Sutton the Aren't

0:35

newspaper editor in the Americas and the critic

0:38

Annabel Keenan. Our annual survey, a visitor numbers

0:40

at Museums is published in the next print

0:42

edition of the newspaper and Li Cheshire, the

0:44

co editor of our report joins me to

0:47

discuss the findings and this episode work of

0:49

the week is Pieter Bruegel the Elders during

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the Temptation of St. Anthony. From around Fifteen

0:54

Fifty Six, it reaches in the exhibition Broil

0:56

to Rubens Great Flemish Drawings, which opens this

0:58

weekend. At the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford

1:00

in the Uk, and Van Camp, the

1:02

curator of the show, joins me to

1:04

discuss this remarkable study. Ah,

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1:25

the eighty first edition of the Whitney

1:28

Biennial is now open. The event has

1:30

since ninety thirty two surveyed Contemporary out

1:32

in the United States. For those of

1:34

you who are doing baths It began

1:36

as an annual exhibition. The latest edition

1:39

features seventy one artists and collectives, many

1:41

of whom feature in film and performance

1:43

programs selected by Guess curators alongside the

1:45

main organizers of the show Who Christie

1:47

Isles and make only both Curators at

1:50

the Whitney. To quote the museum, the

1:52

selected artist collectively probe the cracks and

1:54

fishes of the unfolding moment. And

1:56

the show's title is even better than the

1:58

Real Thing or editor. America's Ben Sutton

2:00

and the critic Annabel Keenan have been to the

2:03

Whitney to see the biennial, and I asked them

2:05

what they made of it. Ben,

2:07

the exhibition's called Even Better Than The Real

2:10

Thing. What do you think's meant by that

2:12

title? I went

2:14

into the exhibition expecting, based on that

2:17

title, for there to be a lot

2:19

more engagement with artificial intelligence and

2:21

disinformation and all the sort of hallmarks

2:23

of the last 15

2:25

or so years of reality kind of flipping away.

2:28

And there are a couple of pieces

2:31

in the show that fit that bill,

2:33

but honestly it felt far more nuanced

2:35

and unclear exactly what the

2:37

focus on the real meant or how

2:39

it was manifesting in the show. There's

2:41

one piece that is very overtly about

2:43

and uses artificial intelligence, but aside from

2:45

that, at least as far as I

2:47

can tell, it felt like a very

2:49

kind of impressionistic title. Yeah, that's

2:51

curious, isn't it Annabel? Because actually, you know, in

2:53

the blurb around the show, one of the first

2:55

things that is mentioned is about AI complicating our

2:58

understanding of what is real. So I was expecting,

3:00

like Ben, that there was going to be a

3:02

hell of a lot more stuff about AI and

3:04

its effect on our culture. And we know that

3:06

there's lots of art being made about that right

3:08

now, but it's surprising that not much of it

3:10

makes the cut into the show. Yeah,

3:13

I agree with that. I mean,

3:15

I was expecting there to be a

3:17

lot more artificial intelligence. I

3:20

was pleasantly surprised that that wasn't

3:23

really what was being taken on directly. Obviously,

3:25

the title made me think that is what

3:27

we were about to dive into. The

3:29

only piece, like Ben mentioned, that

3:31

I recalled was just one work, and

3:33

then there was also a way that you

3:35

could access through their digital

3:37

portal to kind of engage with

3:39

it more. But you know, the

3:41

title, I think for me, what

3:43

it really brought up was this

3:45

concept of authenticity and

3:48

reframing what exactly that real

3:50

lived experience is for lots of

3:52

different people, different groups. And I

3:54

felt that that did come across

3:56

a pretty strong way for me, you

3:58

know, rethinking what exactly the lived experience

4:01

is for different people. So

4:03

that's kind of how I approached it

4:05

and was glad to see that it was

4:07

a broader understanding of the word real. I

4:10

guess, Ben, that's present in the sort of

4:13

materiality of lots of the works in the

4:15

show. It seems like a show that is

4:17

surprisingly, given what our preconceptions might have been,

4:19

textural and willing to visit her to get

4:21

a sense of touch, if you like, in

4:24

the work. Yeah, absolutely. And that's honestly

4:26

going into the exhibition. I was surprised by that

4:28

because if you look at the kind of checklist

4:31

and the list of artists, it's

4:33

a lot of video, it's a lot of installation,

4:35

it's a lot of work that you wouldn't necessarily

4:37

expect to have that kind of richness of texture.

4:39

But yeah, there is so much work that

4:42

is really just sort of begging you to

4:44

reach out and touch, whether that's, you know,

4:46

Suzanne Jackson has this absolutely gorgeous room of

4:48

hanging paintings. I mean, calling them paintings

4:51

is sort of oversimplifying it, but her

4:53

work is just these kind of gorgeous,

4:55

translucent, hanging, multi-material objects that

4:57

for lack of better vocabulary, we

4:59

have to call paintings. There's

5:02

a beautiful set of hanging sculptures by Ector Garcia

5:04

that are just kind of similarly, you just want

5:06

to sort of get in there and like pull

5:08

apart. There's a lot of work that really

5:10

does invite the senses in a really nice

5:13

way. And I guess, yeah, to Annabelle's

5:15

point, maybe the point of engaging with the

5:17

real is more about the kind of reality

5:19

of lived experience and of material than

5:21

this question of AI that we've all been

5:23

so focused on for the last couple

5:25

of years. Absolutely. And

5:28

Annabelle, another thing that sort of very much

5:30

flagged up in advance was the

5:32

biennial totally in keeping with its history

5:34

as an quote from the blurb around

5:36

the show, a space where difficult ideas

5:39

can be engaged and considered. Do

5:41

you feel that in the show? Is that something that

5:43

is front and center? To

5:46

be honest, that was one of the points

5:48

that I had really reflected on

5:50

because with the Whitney Biennial in

5:52

particular, in the last few editions,

5:55

I think that we were all

5:57

expecting a lot of controversy. in

6:00

this global climate, I think that we were

6:02

perhaps expecting it even more. I didn't

6:05

really feel that the issues

6:07

that I expected to be taken

6:09

on were taken on in a very loud way. I

6:11

thought there was a lot of quiet

6:13

activism in a sense. I think that

6:16

one word that a lot of

6:18

critics and during the members preview as

6:20

well, there was a word that I kept

6:22

hearing, which was it was kind of polite and

6:25

safe because there wasn't anything too

6:27

controversial. That's not to say that

6:29

the messages were not impactful, but I just felt

6:31

that there could have been a few stances that

6:34

were taken on in a stronger way, which

6:36

I'm happy to go into as well. Right,

6:39

absolutely. We'll go into that in a bit.

6:41

Ben, I'm picking up on that point about

6:43

the reviews that Annabel just mentioned. The New

6:45

York Times did a review where they asked

6:47

three different critics to take on and each

6:50

of them in their own way used terms

6:52

very much like the polite one that Annabel

6:54

has said. Jason Ferrago says, it was low

6:56

risk and polite. Travis Steele said that it

6:58

was riskless. And Martha Schwendina said

7:01

that it was well researched, well intentioned, beautifully

7:03

installed if to date. These are not words

7:05

you associate with the Whitney Biennial, are they?

7:07

No, but that was my initial

7:09

reaction as well that I sort

7:11

of wanted more of like a

7:13

brash statement, especially after, I think

7:16

the 2022 edition in particular is

7:18

a good example of sort of curators playing

7:20

to what we expect from the Whitney Biennial.

7:23

You know, that was the first edition after

7:25

the pandemic. It was in this moment of

7:27

sort of total upheaval coming out of the

7:29

Trump presidency in January 6. And the

7:32

Black Lives Matter movement and sort of all the things

7:34

that we went through from 2020 onward. And you know, the curators

7:37

organized it into these two levels, one

7:39

of which was completely somber and dark

7:41

and very sort of steeped

7:43

in trauma and grieving and the other that was

7:45

full of light and kind of possibility. And it

7:48

felt that, you know, for the moment, like a

7:50

very kind of brash curatorial statement. And this, like

7:52

I was saying, my initial reaction was kind of

7:54

like, oh, you know, I wanted that, or I

7:56

was expecting or perhaps subliminally

7:58

craving that. kind of broad

8:01

territorial statement in this one and I'm sort

8:03

of slowly coming around to the sense that

8:05

maybe actually the lack of that kind of

8:07

grandstanding as a strength of the show that

8:09

there are these kind of like discrete

8:12

couplings and certain rooms where you know two

8:14

bodies of work really speak to each other

8:16

nicely or areas where you

8:18

know three or four pieces that are

8:20

kind of in the same conversation around

8:22

like you know archaeology or aging or

8:24

you know there are these kind of

8:26

interesting subsets of work that speak to

8:28

each other really nicely and I think they've

8:31

done a very nice job the curators Chrissy Iles

8:33

and Meg Onley of sort of allowing the work

8:35

to breathe in a way which hasn't always been

8:37

the case in Whitney Biennials you know for better

8:40

and for worse often there's just this sort of

8:42

crunch of work everywhere

8:44

and it's sort of like pieces are sort

8:46

of fighting to get their point across and

8:48

they've done a very nice job I think

8:50

of like not overdoing it. I was wondering

8:52

Annabel actually if one of the reasons the

8:54

show is as it is is because in

8:56

a way it would be the most obvious

8:58

thing in contemporary America to make an

9:01

extremely combustible show and to make a

9:03

show which is all about firecrackers and

9:05

and extreme kind of language and so

9:07

on and that to make a subtle

9:09

show seems counterintuitive and therefore maybe is

9:11

a very Whitney Biennial thing to do.

9:13

Yeah I agree with that

9:15

one thing that I really reflected on was

9:17

the fact that you know

9:20

we are so accustomed to these loud

9:22

displays of activism in daily life not

9:24

inside the museum on social media

9:26

in everywhere we interact going

9:28

down the street if you're in a big city

9:31

like New York there's activism everywhere and for

9:34

me I didn't feel that the

9:36

show wasn't doing enough I

9:38

felt that it actually was doing enough

9:40

because I think that even

9:42

you know the activism in the show it

9:44

is there sometimes you know you

9:47

have to look for it but I think

9:49

that for me it kind of validated that

9:51

perhaps activism and standing up for issues is

9:54

becoming the norm and that

9:56

is something that's worth reflecting on as

9:58

well. about the work

10:00

which has attracted the days,

10:04

Ben, because it was a work which was a

10:06

sort of guerrilla bit of activism, if you like,

10:08

by Demi and Diney Yazi. Can you tell us

10:10

more about that? Yeah. So this

10:12

is a large neon piece by the

10:15

Diney artist, Demi and

10:17

Diney Yazi, and it faces one

10:19

of the giant walls of windows

10:21

in the Whitney, so it actually

10:23

looks out onto the West Side

10:25

Highway and Hudson River, and

10:27

it's this large three stanza text

10:30

neon piece. The text is a

10:32

piece that the artist composed. It's

10:35

about apocalypse and this sense, I

10:37

guess, very much speaking to the

10:39

current moment of the impossibility or

10:42

the difficulty that we have in imagining

10:44

a kind of happier future

10:46

and the fact that we sort of tend to

10:48

go for the apocalyptic and the doomsday-ish in

10:51

our forward thinking. And so the piece

10:53

is basically about sort of imagining utopia

10:55

or liberation or, you know, freedom from

10:57

things like genocide and violence and environmental

11:00

collapse. And so during

11:02

the preview, several people noted, and it's

11:04

very, very subtle, but across this three

11:06

stanza piece, there are these individual letters

11:08

that sort of start to flicker and

11:12

cut out, and the rest

11:14

of the piece stays illuminated in this kind

11:16

of like very hot red color, but then

11:18

these few letters go out,

11:20

and if you piece them together, it

11:22

says free Palestine. And it

11:25

was revealed in reporting by the New

11:27

York Times and ArtNet that the curators

11:29

didn't know that this was actually in

11:31

the piece until it was

11:33

pointed out to them. So yeah, it

11:35

kind of really subtle, very, very subtle

11:37

bit of guerrilla activism. And

11:39

I think, to the Whitney's credit, they

11:42

have said, we didn't know about this, but

11:44

this is to be expected. We're asking artists to come

11:47

and make these works. There's no sense in which they've

11:49

reacted in an attempt to shut it down or anything

11:51

like that. Yeah, no, not at

11:53

all. I mean, I can't imagine that they would have.

11:55

I mean, that would be such a

11:58

bad look. But you know, I

12:00

never know, man. And Annabelle, is there

12:02

much in the way of directly

12:04

political work in the show in

12:07

that sense? Is there much

12:09

that relates to specific issues or

12:11

is it much more sort of general points that are made? No,

12:14

there are quite a few direct points. I

12:16

mean, the piece by Demi and Dina Ashe

12:19

that you just mentioned, I did

12:21

not notice the message at the press

12:23

preview. I did go back

12:25

during the members preview and to be

12:28

honest, once I knew the message was

12:30

there, it was impossible for me not to

12:32

see. And I felt

12:34

like this was an important parallel to the importance

12:37

of knowledge in general. And

12:39

I felt that it kind of, for me, was

12:41

an interesting way to reframe the show as

12:43

I went through again, because I felt that

12:45

it really showed me that these lived experiences,

12:48

these histories, these truths,

12:51

you know, the real, as the

12:53

exhibition title says, are erased, silenced,

12:55

ignored. And once we kind of

12:57

unearth them, we can

13:00

challenge our own perspective and understand each

13:02

other better. And so that

13:04

was more subtle. But the more direct

13:06

ones, certainly Ty and William's outdoor installation,

13:08

which was on the sixth floor terrace,

13:11

their work is entitled Ruins of

13:13

Empire II or The Earth Swallows

13:16

the Master's House from 2024. And

13:19

it's a replica of the North facade

13:21

of the White House made in steel and dirt.

13:24

And you can see it from the street, actually,

13:26

as you're walking up to the museum. And it's

13:28

this tilted structure that's kind of crumbling. And

13:31

there's a clear metaphor for the

13:33

US political system. And

13:36

then there's also Carmen Weynand's

13:39

massive prints. There

13:41

are photographic prints, there's 2,500 of

13:43

them that feature images of daily

13:45

tasks of abortion, health care. So

13:47

that's one that takes it on as well. And

13:50

then Ben, the idea of bodily autonomy was

13:52

again another theme that was mentioned in the

13:54

blurb ahead of the show. Does

13:56

that appear elsewhere? Or is Carmen Weynand's work

13:58

the sort of most... clear manifestation of an

14:01

engagement with that territory. Yeah, I mean, I

14:03

think there are a few other pieces that

14:05

address it. It's definitely the most overt in

14:07

Carmen Wynett's piece, which is pretty spectacular. On

14:09

the third floor, one of the only parts

14:11

of the show that's not on the fifth

14:13

or sixth floor of the Whitney is a

14:16

series of, I guess there are

14:18

Xeroxes of drawings by Pippa Garner,

14:20

who's an artist who sort of

14:22

made work about remaking bodies, remaking

14:24

cars, remaking gender, deconstructing gender. So

14:26

it's certainly more subtle than the

14:28

Carmen Wynett piece, but not that

14:30

much subtler. And then there's

14:32

also a piece quite near the

14:34

Carmen Wynett installation. There's a series

14:36

of paintings by Harmony Hammond, one

14:38

of which features like essentially swabs

14:40

of blood in an abstract composition.

14:42

And that piece is also very

14:44

directly addressing women's bodily autonomy. Like

14:47

I said earlier, there's sort of, there's

14:49

one room that's kind of oddly all

14:51

work about aging, which is really interesting.

14:53

So I quite appreciated that sort of

14:55

kind of body politics theme. Once

14:57

you start to kind of piece out the different

15:00

constellations of themes, I think you can really draw

15:02

some interesting connections across the show. And

15:04

Annabelle, of course, there's this additional element

15:07

of the show or two actually additional

15:09

elements, a film program and

15:11

a performance program. When you go to the

15:13

Whitney and see this exhibition, are you sort

15:15

of conscious of that as a very present

15:18

element or does it feel like a separate

15:20

entity in terms of the show? You

15:23

know, I feel like it's a bit

15:25

of a separate entity. I think that

15:27

the film that's incorporated in the main

15:30

show is done well. But I don't

15:32

know that it's clear

15:35

to the average museum goer that these

15:37

other elements exist. Certainly, if you go,

15:39

you will 100% see the

15:41

films, they are integrated

15:43

very well, built out very well.

15:46

But I can't say that the

15:48

other programs are made that clear.

15:51

Ben, did you find the same? Yes, I

15:53

would agree. I think there is already

15:55

so much video work in the exhibition

15:58

proper that I don't know. that

16:00

most visitors are going to

16:02

say, oh gosh, I really need to

16:04

watch more video art. I'm

16:07

going to come back for a film program. To be

16:09

honest, though, I think this is a problem that every

16:11

Whitney Biennial encounters. In each one, there seem to be

16:13

at least five or six hours of

16:15

video in the galleries, and then they

16:17

always curate a film program on top of that.

16:19

And it seems like a mixed blessing to be

16:22

one of the artists selected for the film program,

16:24

because you're in the Whitney Biennial, but you're not

16:26

in the gallery. Yeah, I

16:28

was wondering about that, because talking about the length of things,

16:30

I mean, there's a magnificent work which was

16:32

in London not too long ago by Isaac

16:34

Goonian, which is called Once Against Statues Never

16:37

Die, and it's an extraordinary piece about the

16:39

Barnes collection and Adrian Locke and the Harlem

16:41

Renaissance and so on. But that

16:43

in itself is almost feature length in my memory.

16:45

I'd imagine it's about an hour long. So as

16:48

you say, once you include those in the main

16:50

show, it's going to be incredibly difficult to sample

16:52

the exhibition as a singular entity. But I guess

16:54

what I want to ask, Annabelle, is to what

16:56

extent does the Whitney want that to be the

16:58

case? Does the idea of a

17:01

film program and a performance program suggest that

17:03

the Whitney want the Biennial to be something

17:05

more of a festival than an exhibition as

17:07

such? Maybe, perhaps that's what they

17:10

want. I don't know that that comes across.

17:12

I definitely think that they could do that.

17:14

But I do feel that if you are

17:16

the average viewer, there are some films in

17:18

the exhibition that, like you

17:20

said, they're long, but some I do feel like

17:22

you could pop in and see a little bit.

17:24

Sharon Hayes, for example, it's a

17:26

series of interviews for the last decade

17:28

that focus on sexuality and gender in

17:31

the US. And she interviews groups kind of

17:33

like in a round table. And

17:35

I do feel that visitors could kind of pop

17:38

into that and at least get some sense

17:40

of the film. But others, like you said, the

17:42

Isaac Julian one, I mean, I sat there for

17:44

forever. And one

17:47

thing I always think about Biennials is, do

17:49

they leave space for delight? Do you have

17:51

moments of pure, aesthetic

17:53

joy? Is there space for that

17:56

in this biennium? I think

17:58

there is, yeah, I think so. Well,

18:00

actually the piece that Annabelle just

18:02

mentioned, the Sharon Hayes video, I

18:04

found really just delightful and very

18:06

heartwarming and engaging, and I sat

18:08

there for like at least 10

18:10

minutes during the preview watching it.

18:13

I think there's a lot of work that

18:15

is just sort of from an aesthetic point

18:17

of view really rewards close and sustained looking.

18:19

I mean the Isaac Julien video that you

18:21

just mentioned, there's an installation

18:23

of sculptures by Rose B. Simpson, these

18:26

kind of four totemic ceramic figures kind

18:28

of looking at each other that's

18:30

really quite stunning. There's a Clarissa Tossen

18:33

video and installation, which I really, really

18:35

enjoyed. She basically 3D scanned ancient Mayan

18:37

instruments and then made replicas of them

18:39

and then recorded herself and other performers

18:42

playing them by sort of like using

18:44

them as wind instruments, which you can't

18:46

do with historic objects. And that piece

18:48

is really beautifully installed and very engaging

18:51

and the objects are there on view.

18:54

I mean, the Keon Williams piece that

18:56

Annabelle mentioned is pretty strident, but also,

18:58

you know, materially very rich and you can

19:00

kind of get lost in it. The

19:02

other element of it is a stainless steel,

19:04

I believe, statue of Martha P. Johnson standing

19:06

off to the side of it, kind of

19:09

protesting the White House. And there's

19:11

a lot of play and fun to be

19:13

had in that interaction. So yeah, I think

19:15

there is some work that you can really

19:17

kind of get lost in. On the other

19:19

terrace of the show, there's a very, very

19:21

large turquoise dyson sculpture and installation, which you're

19:23

actually encouraged to sort of walk on and

19:25

touch and interact with. You

19:27

can literally get lost in it. I mean, it's kind of got all these nooks

19:30

and passageways and it's just kind of very

19:32

delightful to walk around. There

19:34

was a mention there of Martha P.

19:36

Johnson and there's another work, of course,

19:39

by Tourmaline in the show, which references

19:41

Martha P. Johnson. That too

19:43

is something that Wish the Whitney was at pains

19:45

to point out ahead of the show is

19:47

that it will address the transphobia that is

19:49

widespread in the US right now and elsewhere in

19:51

the world. It was also notable

19:54

that in the list of artists that were

19:56

sent out ahead of the show, pronouns of

19:58

all the artists accompanied there. names.

20:01

Is there a focus on gender identity in

20:03

the show Annabelle? I mean

20:05

I think that the works that you pointed

20:07

out, yes, but I don't think that that

20:09

was like the strongest through line throughout the

20:11

show. I mean I do think it

20:14

does lend to the overall

20:16

theme of real and different lived

20:18

experiences, so I think that

20:20

it certainly is there and I'm happy that

20:22

it was there and I'm happy that it

20:25

was done in a very graceful and successful

20:27

way. I did notice that there were no

20:29

pronouns on the wall labels though, which was

20:31

interesting to really have them on the information

20:33

leading up but not when you're

20:35

there. Right and Ben in a sense

20:37

that extends into a sort of second part of

20:40

this last question which is to what extent is

20:42

this a sort of inclusive biennial in terms of

20:44

wanting to reach a broad audience and

20:47

to what extent is it about

20:49

a broad natural audience for the

20:51

Whitney's program anyway? In other words

20:53

there have been some critics who said it's a

20:56

show which is a mirror rather than a window,

20:58

as in it's appealing to a silo of art

21:00

goers, a community who would naturally come to the

21:02

Whitney anyway. Do you have a sense of whether

21:05

this is a show which can appeal to a

21:07

broader audience, can it extend beyond the Whitney and

21:09

reach into parts that the Whitney wouldn't in terms

21:11

of other shows? That's something that

21:14

I was sort of asking myself afterwards after

21:16

the preview when I was contemplating my own

21:18

expectations of the biennial and whether it was

21:20

strident enough or not or too restrained or

21:23

not restrained enough and yeah it was this

21:25

question of who's the biennial even for right?

21:27

I mean is it for the New York

21:29

and broader art community and just for

21:31

us to check up on who curators think

21:34

are the most interesting artists or is it

21:36

to bring the most interesting contemporary American art

21:38

and beyond? There's a few artists who are

21:40

not based in or from America at all

21:43

the show which is the whole other question. Is

21:46

it to bring those artists to a

21:48

kind of wider audience and I think

21:50

there is work like the tourmaline video

21:52

is an example that really does kind

21:54

of break out of the language of

21:56

contemporary art and you could come into

21:58

very easily just from sort of like visual

22:01

pleasure kind of way. I mean, it's

22:03

installed beautifully. It's probably the first piece that

22:05

most people see. It has this like giant

22:07

portal in the shape of a flower and

22:09

it's very visually stunning. So the Keon Williams

22:11

piece is also quite polemical and grabby. So

22:14

yeah, I think there is work that the general

22:16

audience can get into the show through. Well,

22:23

Annabelle, Annabelle, thank you so much. Thank you,

22:25

thank you. The

22:31

Whitney Biennial, even better than the real thing, is at the Whitney

22:33

Museum of American Art in New York until

22:35

the 11th of August. Coming

22:37

up, visitor figures at museums

22:39

and a drawing by Peter Broigl, the Elder.

22:42

That's after this week's News Bulletin. On

22:48

the eve of the Art Basel Hong Kong Art Fair, which opens

22:50

next week, a new security law amending Hong Kong's basic law, or

22:53

its mini-constitution, was passed on Wednesday and

22:56

will be implemented from Saturday. The

22:58

Article 23 measure, which passed unanimously in

23:01

the Hong Kong legislature, is a local follow-up

23:03

to the national security law imposed

23:06

by mainland China in June 2020. Backers and

23:09

opponents alike say that the new article reinforces

23:11

extended policies that have clamped down on

23:14

resistance against Hong Kong's Beijing-controlled

23:16

government and that its impact will

23:18

depend on actual implementation. A Hong Kong-based

23:21

curator speaking to the newspaper anonymously said

23:23

that some contemporary art, like abstract art,

23:25

will not be affected but added that,

23:27

quote, the space for the broader

23:29

relevance of art is tightening and closing down. A

23:33

spokesperson for Art Basel Hong Kong said that

23:35

the fair has had no indication that Article

23:37

23 will impact their operations, had

23:40

never faced any censorship issues, and had not been asked

23:42

to do anything differently since

23:44

the introduction of the 2020 national

23:47

security law. Three paintings

23:49

by Peter Paul Rubens will stay in Britain after

23:51

the UK's Bouliation Advisory Panel ruled that the

23:53

trio of works should remain with

23:56

their current owner, the Courtauld in London, the

23:58

work for one site by the Jamboree. banker

24:00

Franz Wilhelm Koenigs who transferred most of his

24:02

collections to the Lisser and Rosengrants Bank in

24:05

Hamburg to secure a loan in 1931. When

24:07

the bank went

24:09

into voluntary liquidation in 1940 it

24:11

sold the paintings to Camp Antoine

24:13

Celan who later bequeathed them to

24:15

the Courtauld Institute. The Spoliation Advisory

24:17

Panel which rules on the ownership

24:19

of disputed works of art rejected

24:21

claims for three separate parties for

24:23

the Reuben species including Koenigs's granddaughter

24:25

Christine Koenigs. She claims that Celan

24:27

smuggles them without the necessary papers

24:30

into England but the panel concluded that the

24:32

Clemens had neither a legal nor a moral

24:34

claim to the three paintings. The

24:36

Denver Art Museum will repatriate 11

24:38

Southeast Asian antiquities from its collection.

24:40

The works have been connected to

24:42

the late British smuggler Douglas Latchford

24:44

and his collaborator in Colorado the

24:46

late MSC Bunker, a longtime trustee

24:48

and partner of the Denver institution.

24:50

The pieces will be returned to

24:52

Vietnam, Thailand and Cambodia according to

24:55

a museum statement. Bunker, an art

24:57

historian who played a key role

24:59

in Latchford's decades-long trafficking scheme, donated

25:01

all of the aforementioned objects to the

25:03

museum. Five are known to have passed

25:05

through Latchford's hands. Bunker, who died in

25:07

2021, introduced Latchford who died in 2020

25:10

to the museum and persuaded him to

25:12

sell and donate a variety of historically

25:14

significant statues from the Gmer Empire to

25:16

the museum. She was never officially charged

25:19

with a crime but her name appeared

25:21

in five civil and criminal cases related

25:23

to Latchford's dealings. You can

25:25

hear more about the trafficking of Cambodian antiquities

25:28

in our episode from the 27th of May

25:30

2022 and read all these stories and much

25:32

more on the website or the app. Now

25:38

our annual survey of museum visitor figures

25:40

is published in full in our April

25:42

print issue and online. As ever it

25:44

looks in depth at the number of

25:46

people attending museums across the world. In

25:48

the past few years the numbers have

25:50

of course been hugely affected by the

25:52

pandemic and the slow resumption of global

25:54

tourism. Visitor numbers have been rising gradually

25:56

since 2020 but we're still

25:58

far behind those in 2020. So

26:01

what do the fingers from 2023 tell us?

26:03

I spoke to Lee Cheshire, one of the co-authors

26:05

of the latest report. Lee,

26:08

since the pandemic we've had 2019 as

26:10

this sort of benchmark year. Where

26:13

are we at with that? Well

26:15

yeah, for the last few years we've been checking

26:17

every year to see whether museums have got back

26:19

to the kind of levels that they had in

26:21

2019 before the pandemic started. And it's

26:24

been going slowly up. So in 2019 there

26:26

were 230 million visitors to the top 100

26:28

museums in

26:32

our survey. Then that fell to just

26:34

54 million in 2020. So

26:36

it's been going up slowly, slowly. And

26:39

then this year it's back up to 175

26:41

million. So not quite to the same level

26:43

that it was, but we found

26:45

that a lot of the big museums have

26:48

got back close to or sometimes ahead of

26:50

where they were in 2019. Yeah,

26:52

the big museums are in a way the

26:54

most instructive parameter to assess the health of

26:57

museum visits in a way, because they are

26:59

such landmark institutions in their cities, in their

27:01

countries and so on. And actually they tell

27:03

us quite a lot about the individual country's

27:06

health in terms of tourism and so on.

27:08

Let's look at the successes.

27:10

So Uffizi for instance, it's

27:13

had its best every year, and that's in Florence of course. Yeah,

27:15

apparently it's got up to 2.7 million visits in 2023, which is

27:17

15% more than in 2019.

27:24

And the academia in Florence has

27:26

always gone up. They always had a record year of

27:28

2 million visits. Right. And then in the US the

27:30

Met has done really well. So the Met's 10% up.

27:34

Yeah, although they did actually revise their 2019

27:36

figures down because of a change in counting

27:38

methodology, but they're still 67% up from 2022.

27:40

So that's a great year on year rise.

27:45

And generally lots of what we think of as

27:47

the big museums and galleries, so the Prado, the

27:50

National Gallery of Art in Washington, the

27:52

Vatican Museums and the Rice

27:54

Museum for instance, they're all in the

27:56

sort of around 0% to sort of

27:58

minus five or 10. So they're

28:00

doing basically what they were doing in 2019. Yeah,

28:03

for many of them 2019 was a record year. So

28:06

we've said that anything within 10% of

28:08

the 2019 figures, we would

28:10

say is kind of back to normal. So yeah, lots of

28:12

those are getting close to, or

28:14

in some cases exceeding those figures. And the

28:16

Vatican Museum is particularly striking because it had

28:18

a record year in 2019. It was basically

28:20

up to that level. Yeah,

28:23

so 2023 would have been its

28:25

second best year on record. Right.

28:27

Now, let's talk about problematic institutions.

28:29

The National Gallery in London, I

28:31

think, is the sort of most

28:33

landmark figure that we're looking at.

28:35

Because not only is

28:37

it significantly down on 2019, but

28:39

it's not that much up on 2022, for

28:42

instance. And often you're

28:44

seeing in the figures versus last year, like quite

28:46

a sneak climb upwards. But the National Gallery is

28:48

not doing that great, even compared to that. No.

28:50

Well, they've gone up 14% from 2022, and

28:54

they're already kind of struggling a little bit in 2022. Compared

28:57

to their peers. So we found that

29:00

they had the biggest fall of absolute

29:02

visitor numbers of any museum in our

29:04

survey. So in 2019, they had

29:06

about 6 million visitors. And

29:08

this year, well, in 2023, they had 3.1 million. So

29:12

it's still pretty good. It still puts them just outside our top

29:14

10. But obviously, that's a drop of

29:16

2.9 million visitors. So that's a lot

29:18

of people to not be visiting

29:20

your museum that were before. On

29:23

the other side, the same three-ring has been closed for the

29:25

whole of 2023. So they've had reduced

29:27

gallery space. So a lot of the collection has not

29:29

been on show. One less entrance

29:31

to go in. It's a bit more complicated the way

29:33

you get into the gallery now. So

29:35

that's probably going some way to explain why their

29:38

figure hasn't been up as much as their peers.

29:40

But yeah, they're still 48% down on a 2019

29:42

figure, worse

29:45

than most of the other museums in

29:47

our survey. And also are looking at

29:49

Alva's figures there. They're the Association of

29:52

Leading Visitor Attractions in the UK. The

29:54

National Gallery had the biggest fall of any of

29:56

their institutions in their top 100. So

29:59

it's a lot of... people missing. They're sort

30:01

of being quite relaxed about it or sounding quite

30:03

relaxed about it in the sense as you say

30:05

they're pointing to the fact that part of the

30:07

building is closed and so on and that's reduced

30:09

their programming but they're not saying part of the

30:11

building is closed and we're at capacity are they?

30:14

So they aren't lacking visits it's not like they're

30:16

turning people away they are genuinely down in a

30:18

broader sense. Yeah well it would

30:20

be interesting to see what happens in 2025

30:22

when the Sainsbury Wing reopens. We found this

30:24

year the National Portrait Gallery just around the

30:26

corner reopened after a long closure so we

30:28

didn't compare them to 2019 figures because they've

30:32

been shut for the last few years

30:34

and reopened with a you know a

30:36

rehanging and a renovation and they've been

30:38

receiving record visits. I think the reopening

30:40

month was a record month for them

30:43

and they're from course now to maybe

30:45

even double their pre-covid visit numbers. So

30:48

maybe the National Gallery will follow the same

30:50

trajectory. That is a particularly notable example because

30:52

the National Portrait Gallery is effectively the same

30:54

building it's right at the back of the

30:56

National Gallery but I wonder if one of

30:58

the key issues here is about access and

31:00

one of the things about the National Portrait Gallery's

31:03

reopening is that they've got this grand new entrance.

31:05

It's super welcoming there are people outside imploring people

31:07

to come in and being all friendly the minute

31:09

you walk in whereas the National Gallery as you

31:11

say they've got one entrance closed but I do

31:14

think there's a problem in terms of access in

31:16

terms of people walking up to the gallery thinking

31:18

how the hell do I get into this building

31:20

and I do think that's something that that new

31:23

bit that they're opening in 2025 really has to

31:25

address doesn't it? Yeah I mean this

31:27

is something that we looked at last year we saw

31:30

that the National Gallery's website sort

31:32

of implied that you have to buy

31:34

a ticket or you know you at least

31:36

reserve a ticket online. You don't you can

31:39

just walk up to the museum and walk

31:41

in but the website feels like it was

31:43

dissuading people when you get there there's a

31:45

long queue there's obviously more security arrangements than

31:47

there were before because of the

31:49

various things that have happened in the last few years. So compared

31:53

to the yeah the National Portrait Gallery they've

31:55

got that brand new exit facing towards Leicester

31:57

Square it just feels wide open and you

32:00

you can just walk in. And even though,

32:02

of course, they have the same security arrangements

32:04

and issues the National Gallery does. So that

32:06

seems like it is kind of

32:08

weighing on those figures. In terms of

32:11

UK museums are unique because they're nearly

32:13

all free entry, which is unusual compared

32:15

to most of the museums in our

32:17

survey. And I wonder whether the benefit

32:19

that they have from that free entry

32:21

in terms of extra visits is slightly

32:23

being eroded by the increased difficulty of

32:26

getting into the galleries of having to

32:28

reserve tickets online of people

32:30

perhaps not coming into the city.

32:32

I've just been reading Laura Cummings'

32:35

book, The Observer Critic. Thunderclap. Thunderclap,

32:37

yeah. And she talks about when she's

32:39

still working so her. And she used to go and walk

32:42

into the back entrance of the National Gallery and go

32:44

and see one of their favorite paintings on the way

32:46

home from work. And you can't really

32:48

do that anymore because it would take you 20

32:50

minutes to get through the queue to get in.

32:52

And it's not so easy. So I wonder if

32:54

some of the air has been knocked out of

32:56

the UK and the London visitor numbers because of

32:58

that. That's interesting. That's true about the National

33:00

Gallery and I think more generally. But at

33:03

the same time, curiously, we've been talking a

33:05

lot on this podcast about crises at the

33:07

British Museum, multiple crises. And yet here it

33:09

is having this really quite good year. I

33:11

mean, one of the absolute lowest drops from

33:14

2019 of all the British

33:16

museums. Yeah, just 7% down on 2019. And

33:20

the other figures, they were the most visited

33:22

attraction in the UK in 2023. So

33:26

yes, they seem to be doing

33:28

well. Interestingly, the international tourism figures

33:31

for England, as far as

33:33

I understand, were 7% down on 2019, which

33:35

was a record year. So they've recovered strongly as

33:37

well. And it's interesting that the British Museum is

33:39

also 7% down. So obviously,

33:41

a lot of their visitors are from international

33:43

tourism. And also, key to point out is

33:46

that the British Museum entrance is not a

33:48

simple process. You do have to go through

33:50

something like an airport type check-in and security

33:52

check-in. So it's not that that puts people

33:55

off entirely, is it? So that's a good

33:57

example of a museum where there is quite

33:59

stringent. security but you still can get

34:01

numbers in close to six million people visiting.

34:04

Yeah, I guess as visitors are getting more motivated

34:06

if you're coming to London to go and see

34:08

the British Museum or if you're going to Paris

34:10

to go and see the Mona Lisa, you're going

34:13

to go and send in a queue and book

34:15

online and even pay for a

34:17

ticket. Whereas the visits that people go into

34:19

the National Gallery perhaps and places like Tate

34:21

where there were perhaps more casual visits or

34:24

local visits, then perhaps that's why you were seeing

34:26

a big drop there. Yeah, and you think disparity

34:29

in the Tate figures aren't we? So Tate

34:31

Modern is getting close to where it was.

34:33

It had nearly five million visits last year

34:35

and Tate Britain's nearly 40% down on

34:38

2019. So a bit of unevenness

34:40

there. Yeah, although the Tate have pointed

34:42

out that 2019 was a

34:44

record year for Tate Britain and they were having

34:46

a rehang in 2023. So some of the galleries

34:49

were closed as well so we should point that out. But

34:51

yeah, 40% down is still quite high compared to some

34:54

of their peers. Central Europe's an

34:56

interesting one because that seems to be

34:58

much more back to normal than London,

35:00

for instance. Yeah, and we found that

35:02

last year in lots of the Paris museums that were kind

35:04

of already back to normal in 2022. So yeah, as we

35:06

said, the Louvre just

35:09

8% down, but that's still with 8.9

35:11

million visitors. So they're not sure to

35:13

people visiting there. Musee D'Orsay was 6%

35:15

up on 2019, so they had more

35:17

visitors. So a lot of the European

35:20

cities are particularly the kind of more

35:22

tourist oriented ones like Paris and Rome

35:24

and Florence seem to be doing really

35:26

well. And one of the institutions we focused on

35:28

a lot on this podcast is the Humboldt Forum,

35:31

which is obviously a deeply controversial project in Berlin,

35:33

but that now does seem to be very much

35:35

established as one of the leading museums. They

35:38

were the most visited museum in Germany that

35:40

we found in our survey. They're one of

35:42

a set of museums that opened during

35:44

the lockdown or maybe a few years before the

35:46

lockdown that sort of had record years in in

35:48

2023, including the Louvre Abidabi,

35:51

the National Museum in Oslo

35:54

and then Plus. Now

35:56

let's look at the US because the US is

35:58

like the UK quite uneven. What did

36:00

you detect in the trends for the US? Yeah,

36:03

again, it's hard to really pick out a trend really. Some

36:05

are doing well, like you said, they've met was kind of

36:07

67% up, but 5.3 million

36:10

visits. So they're doing

36:12

well. Some of the smaller museums like the

36:14

Crystal Bridges Museum in Bentonville, they had a

36:16

record year. That's a free museum,

36:18

isn't it? So that's the rare model for the

36:20

US, but it seems to be working. Yeah, definitely.

36:22

But then some of the other big New York

36:24

museums are not doing so well.

36:26

The Guggenheim's kind of being quite slow to

36:28

get back to its 2019 figures. The

36:32

Whitney, both of those are getting less than

36:34

a million visits. So quite surprisingly

36:36

low, considering kind of how big

36:38

and famous and how amazing those

36:41

museums are. That's one of the things that

36:43

you do notice across the survey, we were talking about the

36:45

UFTSE having its record figures for the year,

36:47

but it's still below the National Gallery in London.

36:49

So these things are relative in their different places.

36:52

Staying with the US, Los Angeles is really

36:54

consolidating its place in the kind of museum

36:56

firmament. It's always been a major museum centre,

36:58

but the numbers are looking impressive there. Yeah,

37:00

I know they've been solid this year. They're getting doing well.

37:03

LACMA, Huntingdon, all doing well. And of course

37:05

LACMA is part way for quite a major

37:07

redevelopment. So when that opens

37:09

next year, it keeps changing the times, but I

37:11

think they're due for next year now. So

37:14

that should see a big boom in visits there.

37:17

As you say in the US, there are

37:19

these sort of landmark museums whose reputation actually

37:21

has always sort of been about,

37:23

I guess, the kind of radical

37:25

nature of their programming, more so than just the

37:27

fact that they attract loads of visits. But

37:29

something like the Broad, which has come along

37:31

in Los Angeles, is an

37:34

example of effectively a private museum, which is

37:36

getting major museum numbers, right? Yeah, I think

37:38

it's kind of a popular programme there. It

37:40

reminds me a little bit of the Sartre

37:42

Gallery, perhaps. So you've got

37:45

lots of very well-known artists. I

37:47

think they've had a successful Keith Haring exhibition

37:49

this year. So they're putting on things that

37:51

people want to go and see. Right.

37:54

And one of the stories that we've covered a lot over

37:56

recent years is China. 2023 was a major year. year

38:00

in terms of Covid restrictions. So do

38:02

the figures bear out the kind of

38:04

intensity of those lockdowns in China? Well

38:07

we don't have the figures yet for

38:09

the big mainland Chinese museums, but the

38:11

figures that we have for Hong Kong

38:13

museums like M Plus are

38:16

really strong. So M Plus opened in 2021

38:19

during kind of the lockdowns. It's never really had

38:21

a good run yet in a full year. So

38:23

2023 was its first full year without being into

38:25

the Goodbye Lockdowns and they had

38:27

nearly 2.8 million visits. So that's

38:30

enough to put it in the top 20

38:32

of art museums worldwide above the

38:34

Rijksmuseum and the Efisi and

38:36

the Tretrakov in Moscow.

38:38

So yes, it's going to establish its place

38:40

really on the top table. Lee,

38:47

as ever, thank you very much. Thanks Ben. The

38:57

Visitor Figures report is in our

38:59

bumper April issue alongside our Venice

39:01

Biennale magazine, an Expo Chicago supplement

39:03

and the Art of Luxury magazine.

39:05

So do subscribe. And

39:08

finally, it's time for the work of

39:10

the week. This Saturday, the 23rd March,

39:12

the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford in the

39:14

UK opens the exhibition Bruegel to Rubens,

39:16

Great Flemish Drawings, which includes 120 works

39:19

on paper by Flemish artists of the

39:21

Renaissance and Baroque periods. Among them is

39:23

Peter Bruegel the Elder's drawing, The Temptation

39:25

of St Anthony from around 1556.

39:28

And I spoke to Anne van Camp, the curator of

39:31

the show, about this work. Anne,

39:34

Peter Bruegel created this drawing in

39:36

1556. How old

39:38

was he then and what level of fame had he achieved

39:40

by that point? So at the

39:43

time when Peter Bruegel the Elder was

39:45

making this drawing, he was sort of

39:47

in his early 30s, so pretty early

39:49

in his career. We know he was

39:51

born around 1525, probably in

39:54

an area near Bredza in the

39:57

northern Netherlands. We know he registers

39:59

in the Antwerp guild for painters

40:01

around 1551. Then as most Netherlandish

40:03

artist at the time, he spent

40:05

a few training years in Italy

40:07

to really soak up the old

40:09

masters to get inspired by all

40:11

the Roman ruins. And of course,

40:13

with Bruegel very famously, it's been

40:15

said that when he traveled across

40:18

the Alps that he swallowed them.

40:20

And then when he was back

40:22

in Flanders in the southern Netherlands, he

40:24

spewed them back out in his wonderful

40:27

landscape drawings. So with this

40:29

drawing, with the temptation of Saint Anthony, we're

40:31

pretty close to soon

40:33

after he returned from Italy. He

40:35

returned from Italy around 1555, so roughly a year after

40:39

his return to Antwerp. And

40:41

it's really crucial to establish that Antwerp

40:43

at that time was an incredibly bustling

40:45

center for print and commerce. It was

40:47

an important trading place and was a

40:50

very buzzing city at that moment, wasn't

40:52

it? Absolutely. It was one

40:54

of the richest cities across Europe

40:56

and mainly because of its strategic

40:58

position is sort of pretty centrally

41:00

located in Europe, but also near

41:02

the river Skelz. And the river

41:04

is really the key to Antwerp

41:06

success because it connects to all

41:08

the inland rivers. For instance,

41:10

the river Rhine is very accessible. So

41:13

then you access the whole Holy Roman

41:15

Empire from there. You

41:17

can go to France, to

41:19

Switzerland, but also the river

41:21

Skelz is connected to the North

41:23

Sea. And then of course you can

41:25

go south to the Mediterranean, you can

41:27

go north to the Baltic Sea, and

41:30

the river Skelz just has that correct

41:32

depth to allow international ships and local

41:34

ships. So it's almost providence that Antwerp

41:36

is located on this river. And

41:38

the print business in Antwerp is so crucial

41:40

to the image that we're going to talk

41:43

about, isn't it? Because it was made specifically

41:45

for a print, for an engraving. The

41:48

drawing is a print study and

41:50

Antwerp was indeed a huge center

41:52

for printmaking, for print publishing, for

41:55

book publishing, bookbinding, anything related to

41:57

the distribution of words and images.

42:00

took place in Antwerp at the

42:02

time. And the reason for that

42:04

is that Antwerp has some great

42:06

publishing houses. And the publishing

42:09

house that Peter Brogl worked for

42:11

us, you know, sort of new

42:13

on the scene again back in

42:15

Antwerp after his journey in Italy

42:17

is the publishing house of Hieronymus

42:19

Koch. And Hieronymus Koch really sort

42:21

of catered towards a high end

42:23

print production like the real connoisseurs

42:25

who wanted to have wonderful prints

42:28

to show off to their friends in their

42:30

collection. And so this drawing is

42:32

indeed a study for one of

42:35

Brogl's earliest print collaborations because Brogl

42:37

was not a printmaker himself. To

42:39

be an engraver at the time

42:41

is a very specialist, very complicated,

42:43

very highly skilled job. And

42:45

so was usually left to do by

42:48

professional printmakers who trained for years, ruined

42:50

their eyes staring at the shiny

42:52

metallic copper place trying to scratch lines

42:55

into the surface. And so

42:57

usually what the print publishers did in

43:00

Antwerp is they hired an artist, a

43:02

designer, to come up with a

43:04

really great design. And then that design was

43:06

then passed on to the professional engraver

43:08

to be translated into the copper

43:11

place. What's really amazing

43:13

about this drawing is that

43:15

it exposes Brogl's naivety or

43:17

inexperience of printmaking at the

43:19

time, doesn't it? Because when

43:22

you see, and one will see in your

43:24

exhibition, the print next to the drawing, you'll

43:26

see that they have the same orientation, which

43:28

means that Brogl's trying to get his head

43:30

around how to make a drawing for the

43:32

engraving process. Is that right? Absolutely.

43:34

Yeah, you hit the nail on the

43:36

head because normally when you make a

43:38

print design, you have to make it

43:40

in reverse because then the printmaker can

43:43

copy your design exactly onto the copper

43:45

plate. But once it's printed, imagine them

43:47

running a sheet of paper on the

43:49

copper plate, peeling it off, and then

43:51

it appears in reverse. So a print

43:53

designer, an artist who makes a print

43:56

study, always has to make his design

43:58

in reverse. And that's it. And yet,

44:00

as you say, Bruegel is not used

44:02

yet to working with printmakers. He might

44:04

be sort of his first fully fledged

44:07

print design. And so maybe he's still

44:09

trying to work out how to collaborate

44:11

with these printmakers. So what we can

44:13

assume is that Bruegel made this wonderful,

44:16

fantastic drawing in the same direction as

44:18

the print to sort of maybe show

44:20

to Horonma's cock and say, do you

44:22

like this design? Is this what

44:24

you had in mind when you employed me? Is

44:27

this something that your printmaker can work

44:29

with? And then maybe one's

44:31

cock said, yes, this is great. Maybe

44:33

he then made the drawing in reverse,

44:35

which was then used by the printmaker.

44:38

Right. And is an extraordinary drawing. And

44:40

it makes me wonder about what the

44:42

engraver thought when they were presented with

44:44

this drawing, because it's so teeming with

44:47

imagery, as one would expect from Bruegel,

44:49

and gives the printmaker all sorts of

44:51

challenges in terms of how to render

44:53

this extraordinary depth of field and the

44:55

amazing detail and these incredible, of course,

44:57

fantastical creatures. Tell us about the composition.

45:00

Yeah, I do wonder what the printmaker thought

45:02

when he got this drawing. Was

45:04

he horrified? Was he amused? Was

45:06

he engrossed in all the imagery?

45:09

Because what we see indeed is

45:11

a coastal scene or a riverscape.

45:14

And in the middle of the drawing, the drawing is sort

45:16

of dominated by this massive floating

45:18

head. The head is quite

45:21

grotesque. One of its eyes got the

45:23

shape of a paint window, which

45:25

is broken with the burning baskets

45:27

and sticking out of it. The

45:30

nose of the head is pierced with a

45:32

pant's knee. If you

45:34

look further down is gaping mouthes,

45:36

like smoke billowing out of the

45:38

mound. And then to top it all

45:41

off, there's a giant fish lying on top of

45:43

their head. And there's lots of things happening

45:45

within the fish as well, with sort of

45:47

grotesque creatures. I think that the

45:49

people at the time, even for us looking at

45:51

this drawing, it's pretty bizarre, but for the people

45:53

at the time, it must have been even weirder.

45:56

But what it did, I think,

45:58

immediately conveyed was a... sense of

46:00

the imagery of Hieronymus Bosch, who

46:02

was of course the famous artist

46:05

who lived three generations before Bruegel.

46:07

They never met, but it's

46:09

clear that Bruegel was heavily inspired by

46:11

Hieronymus Bosch when he was making this

46:13

drawing. And I think the simple

46:15

reason for that is that commercially they

46:17

were very popular images, whether

46:20

they were sort of used in a more

46:22

religious way to instill fear and

46:24

faith, or whether they were more

46:26

satirical or amusing or a compensation

46:29

piece. But these Boschian images were

46:31

very, very popular at the time.

46:33

And Hieronymus Koch as a publisher knew

46:36

this. So he knew if

46:38

we keep publishing more of

46:40

these Bosch images, these crazy

46:42

creatures, these demons, these fantastical

46:44

half human, half beast, half

46:46

jug, half whatever creatures,

46:48

then we might have sort of a

46:50

bestseller on hand and we might actually

46:52

sell this print. So what is interesting,

46:55

although of course now everyone knows Peter

46:57

Bruegel, in 5056 almost

47:00

no one knew Peter Bruegel. So his name

47:02

doesn't even appear on the print

47:04

because he wasn't commercially viable, which is

47:06

a really, really interesting sort of

47:08

historical context for this drawing. Absolutely. Are

47:11

you suggesting that it's possible that Hieronymus

47:13

Koch thought, well, if there is no

47:15

signature, people might be convinced that it's

47:17

a Bosch and therefore it will sell

47:19

in greater volume. Absolutely. Absolutely. I think

47:22

that was his little trick that he had up his sleeve.

47:24

The interesting thing is that of course, when you describe

47:27

the images in the picture, of course

47:29

it's dominated by this head and this fish, but it's

47:31

called the temptation of St Anthony and St Anthony is

47:33

there, but you'd never know he was the main focus

47:35

of the actual picture. But tell us about how he

47:37

appears in the work. Yeah. So you

47:40

really have to look really, really

47:42

closely at the image to find

47:44

the poor, poor hermit, St Anthony,

47:47

kneeling and praying in the

47:49

lower right corner of the print. So

47:51

you really have to sort of drag

47:53

your eyes away from that grotesque head

47:55

and everything else that arounds it to

47:57

sort of land in a very peaceful

47:59

corner. of the Prince and what's

48:01

happening. It's the great Saint Anthony, he's

48:03

sort of the father of monasticism, he

48:06

was the hermit monk to

48:08

sort of isolate himself into

48:10

the desert in Egypt to really focus

48:12

on his faith, to get away from

48:14

all the distractions of the Church or

48:17

other people trying to distract him from

48:19

faith. And so he is sort of

48:21

the ascetic figure of Catholic

48:23

history. And so we

48:25

see him really trying to pray,

48:27

concentrate and everyone else around him

48:30

is trying to distract him from his

48:32

faith. But he looks very strong to me,

48:34

I think he will persist and he will

48:36

be able to keep his faith. Exactly. And

48:38

I think one of the things that that

48:40

really stresses is Bruegel's brilliance

48:42

in terms of he's often characterised

48:44

as a kind of crude painter,

48:46

a painter of peasant excesses and

48:49

so on. But he's also a

48:51

master of delicacy. And the depiction

48:53

of Saint Anthony is so exquisite,

48:55

actually. And for instance, the way

48:57

in a drawing, the way

49:00

that Bruegel is able to establish the

49:02

halo around his head, his holiness is

49:04

so clear, is so manifest in the

49:07

drawing. And then there's the delicacy of

49:09

the drapery, for instance. So Bruegel's master

49:11

is so multi-layered, it seems to me.

49:14

And that's really evident in this drawing.

49:17

Absolutely. And he must have worked really

49:19

closely with the Prince-maker Peter van der

49:21

Heeherden, who did ultimately make the Prince

49:24

after his drawing. Because as you say, to

49:26

sort of make that halo pop in

49:28

the image, you need to have clear

49:31

instructions like don't touch that area of

49:33

the copper plate, keep it blank, make

49:35

it shine, make it really stand out

49:37

against all the images, all the lines,

49:39

all the crosshatching that you're applying to

49:41

all the other areas. Yeah, it is

49:44

a truly wonderful Prince, I think. You

49:46

talked earlier on about Bruegel's ability to

49:48

absorb landscape in the context of the

49:50

shapes. But one of the things, again,

49:52

about this image, which is so instructive

49:54

about what happens from here, is

49:57

Bruegel's amazing ability to depict

49:59

space. and I find it

50:01

so moving every time I encounter his work,

50:03

how marvelously, even despite everything else going on

50:06

in the picture, he's able to capture the

50:08

feeling, the atmosphere of landscape and even in

50:10

a drawing like this, he's able to do

50:13

that, isn't he? Yes, and

50:15

I think the river onto which the

50:17

head is floating is really that vehicle

50:19

in this image where it really draws

50:21

you into the background and once

50:23

you get past the grotesque images and

50:26

all the fantastical things that are happening

50:28

in the foreground, once your eye sort

50:30

of quiets down and you can focus

50:32

on the background, you can just keep going, like

50:35

you can keep staring at it and

50:37

there's tiny villages popping up in the

50:39

horizon in the background. There's even a

50:41

village on fire in the right background,

50:43

which at first sight you might not notice,

50:45

so you sort of get the turmoil

50:48

on the right hand side of

50:50

the image and then you get

50:52

the peaceful, Brabantian landscape surrounding

50:55

Antwerp in the background of

50:57

the image. Now, of course,

50:59

it's a religious subject, there's an element

51:01

of fantasy and so on about this

51:03

work, but to what extent was it

51:05

informed by the religious turmoil of the

51:07

period? Because of course, 1556 is right

51:09

in the heart of the religious battles

51:12

across Europe, the Counter-Reformation was gathering pace

51:14

and so on. Antwerp is a Catholic

51:16

city in the southern Netherlands when Holland

51:18

is now a Protestant space and so

51:20

on. So tell us what's going on

51:22

around Brueghel if you like and to

51:24

what extent is he taking note of

51:26

it? Yes, so Brueghel, definitely Catholic

51:29

and Antwerp, as you say, is sort of

51:31

in the middle of it all

51:33

because it's strategic position in Europe, because of the

51:35

trade, because of the commerce, because of

51:37

the intellectual centre of it being the

51:40

print publishing capital of Europe at

51:42

the time. And there's a real tug

51:44

of war going on between the Catholics

51:47

and the Protestants and so the Spanish

51:49

king, Philip II, was

51:52

very interested in that region and so

51:54

there's constant battles about the regions and

51:56

so the Spanish did eventually conquer and

51:58

that's the reason why. reason why Belgium

52:01

nowadays is still Catholic and why

52:03

Holland or the Northern Netherlands are

52:05

still Protestant because the Spanish could

52:07

never conquer above Antwerp. But what

52:09

is interesting about the drawing as

52:11

well is because of the date, the

52:13

1556 date which appears

52:16

on it. And that year is quite

52:18

significant as well regardless of religious

52:20

troubles because it's a bit

52:22

of a disaster year for the

52:24

Southern Netherlands. There's a plague raging

52:26

but also for crops, however, agriculture

52:29

was a disaster year. So maybe

52:31

the imagery, the doom, maybe

52:33

was also related to that disaster year

52:35

with the plague and with crops. And

52:38

of course, let's not forget that St

52:40

Anthony is the patron saint of infectious

52:42

diseases, of skin diseases. So that's where

52:44

the link with the plague comes back

52:47

in as well. Right. So in a

52:49

way, Bruegel here is

52:51

perhaps illustrating the importance of

52:53

faith in difficult

52:55

times. Absolutely, but in a really

52:58

fun way, I'd say. Well,

53:03

Anne, thank you so much for joining us on the

53:05

podcast. Thank you. Bruegel

53:12

to Rubens, Great Flemish Drawings is at

53:14

the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford in the

53:16

UK from the 23rd of March to

53:18

the 23rd of June. And

53:23

that's it for this episode. You can find

53:26

us on X-Formly, known as Twitter, at Tan

53:28

Audio and on Facebook, Instagram and Treadz. The

53:30

week in art is produced by Julia Mahalska,

53:32

Alexander Morrison and David Crack. And David's also

53:34

the editor and film designer. Thanks also to

53:36

Daniela Hathaway and to our guests, Ben and

53:39

Annabel, Lee and Anne. Thank you for listening.

53:41

See you next week. Bye for now.