Invitation To Art; Rembrandt; Invitation To Art: Rembrandt

And. So light is like a living thing it's infinitely versatile and now it dazzles now merely glows it can caress it can strike it can reveal. I can see you opposed to shadow it creates our expectation of the world before we touch. Light is of the essence of Western art. It is inseparable from the moment in the timelessness of Western Art is the moment from long into eternity by the Oriental annihilates the moment to reach infinity. We are going to see a number of moments when the flux of light is held still by the miracle of our When light is lit not by chance but by an artist who in his turn as creator say's. Let there be light. Another site has just been written. Rembrandt and writing discover that light which resting humble figures from the darkness invests them with eternity. It's a light that never was in the world of reality.

It's a spiritual thing a radiance that transforms everything that it touches and it touches everything. The boards of doors and windows and pots and plants draperies and above all it touches flit. It seeks out the nukes in the crannies of all the mundane things among which we live and discovers in them such an importance that after seeing Rembrandts works we are constantly impelled to re-examine the real world the world of the sense that I suppose is one of the primary functions of us because art too is an experience just like anything in the world around us is an experience. And after experiencing great change because we are the sum of our experiences that's all we're left with in the end. The total of our experiences and our reaction to them that's OK by the way great our changes are very mysterious but it does change

and it sends us back to nature in the studio. So that within the next half hour you will be changed even in some little way by this man member so that some time perhaps you will look at look at something and say Oh that's right and you will remember it made me feel like this. Now I was going to change this and what exactly is he going to change us with. Let's we're going to but first of all Rembrandt for all of us is a breath remember and stand beside us and we can reach out and touch. That's the wonderful thing about. Now the others in this league of this league of giants don't do this Michelangelo for instance brings us up to the rarefied ice with him where we can hardly breathe. Leonardo Leonardo looking at his art is is like looking at the sleeping face and wondering of green lies behind

that Rembrandt is a fix it ends with the thing that I remember once Jack Butler yet saying to me there's only one way to fame and that's with a Rembrandt with it like that. Well now let's go back and let's go to the boy was father of the man. Remember when it came to this young boy enlighten who goes to the University of the age of 14. He's out again at 15 and then he goes and studies for a brief while and later at the cafe at Amsterdam and then he comes back to lighten again to his hometown and this boy is a young master already and to tell him the story of under fatality has it paints with such capacity that it takes the sight out of your eyes. He really does just look at this. He's a real and he's a young man a drama in him as you can see here. See the way he still works there is also that it stands on the three legs like some animate object. He really takes that easel and he hammers it into your right. It's more in the picture than the boy himself.

And it's you know just standing there on its three legs with them simple things are very hard to explain and sometimes I see another like that silhouettes. This easel is painted on the wall you see behind it you don't even see it teeming on the wall so that you can feel it as you pass by in the middle of the night. And this boy is really learning to make light work for him so much so that in this blank space the hell it using the pellet it's perfectly recessed and hang solidly on the wall and it's a very different difficult thing to do just recess and Becky so it can do just that. Now look at the wonderful little figure with the great black cat dressed up remember and love dressing up and so does models and that face that little face is no bigger than your thumb. It's smaller than them but already it's painted with with an air of mast and you know you can tell that this is a picture he painted for himself and it's not a formal commission. He sets the stage here

and puts himself on. And another thing it must be to be a great artist to be able to set your stage to be able to say within the four walls of this frame I am king I am master I can create a world and I can draw you in. I can create in fact like God and the others can and. And to do this thing is only to struggle with one thing with himself and Rembrandt more than any other turns his thoughts in and makes great art out of himself so that his art appears not the mirror of his will. It appears to be the very movement of these things. Remember there was one artist who said that so much was lost between here and there and Rembrandt it seems as nothing and maybe it's this that made a German artist next leave of them. When I see friends I want to start painting and I see Rembrandt I want to stop. Each artist handles painter in his own way. It's the most personal thing like a signature and

Rembrandt handles most when I want to look at it. Here it's take it's juicy it's rich it's got the consistency of oh the queen and he moves it around so that there's a beauty that is goes beyond merely what it represents. And talking about signature and when you see things like this you don't need a signature this is a memory. Now let's look at their little face again. It's a move just the way films shadowed by the brim. The two eyes shed and Rembrandt looked at his own face many times. So let's look at this brilliant young master practicing his game. Searching around for means of expression as he starts to hit the top. Now here in his hometown unlike the great future coming up. Well here is a pent up expression look at their dozens of novelists. A half dark face with a hair flying out like an explosion as if it were electrified like rays of lightning it's moments and there's a dramatic contrast of light and

shade here in the dark and bright which reminds you and there's a way of kind of that you. You started to look into the mirror. This is Rembrandt looking into the mirror. This is the face that looked up to himself and this is the beginning of their communion with Him so the plots are like that almost clinical examination of his own features which he did more as far as I remember more than 80 times so that his face becomes especially in the early work. The laboratory in which the experiments in the mysteries of expression on the mind which really is paying and what it can convey. Once he wrote to a friend and this is one of the few things we have from Rembrandt he wrote I try to express the maximum amount of motion by outward movement here he is working in the mirror making faces and then trying to get into the mind behind the face. Rembrandt in a can open mouths and staring at the title of this room and in all the changing faces by the way and the

moving expressions and the distortions to which is subject his own features. There is that great ridiculous nose look at its unchanging Its like a rock coming up out of the sea. Now the future is changed around it and here again by the way is the attitude of surprise rather than surprise itself. And he was again studying the modes of expression in the face and it is the Dutch face that expresses the emotion just as Italian hands communicate and express. And remember Rembrandt is never a great one for the dazzling gesture he can make a face tell a whole story and especially in his later work gesture becomes almost chastely classic in its lack of movement. It is the light that means the light becomes more eloquent than any gesture. Well Gary has been trying a catalogue of expressions that were to enter his repertoire for portraying the human drama and he wanted to portray the human drama this was the day and then he bleeds into the expression he reads emotion

and a golden light that gradually begins to fuse with the softness and which it strikes that light does so that eventually the light seems to come from within and not without. Now this is very interesting because you see how introspective a man Rembrandt do. He's the supreme introspect and you know some of that seems to be happening here as you look at this this light this picture which was painted by the way shortly before he left lighting problems. And this light in the Father and His light in the face. It's like the light scene at the end of a long tunnel as you're coming out of the subway or driven out as the the end of the tunnel and the light just streaming in. And this light is the same concentration and the same quality of making one more aware of the surrounding them. And the closer you get to this now this is going to be one. Now the closer you get to see how paint and light are becoming one and it's transformed into me so that every square inch that Rembrandt seems an emanation of his own spirit.

It's marvelous to see things as close as this look at that you can see the very way the brush moved and you can follow it with your hand and with your eye and you feel the motion of the brush and the little things he did with it. Here's what he did he turned it upside down took the handle made a few slashes a few little strokes there in the way and to turn out I mean missions and this is tremendously exciting it really is because now you feel really in contact with a great man is communicating with you and in no other artist as the means of expression Rembrandts means of expression so intimately associated with what he actually expressed. And now this is a nice picture but I think really it has the components of Rembrandt's distinction rather than the distinction because it's the young man looking at old age and as I'm always saying young people are very blooming. It's all people who are good. And later when Rembrandt comes to date when he himself is owned and he's looking out from the inside these old heads of his seem to contain a

very little world a cosmos of sympathy and understanding. Well his painting just about before he left lighted and before he goes to Amsterdam to test himself against his heroes is an ambitious boy he's really ambitious and he wants to be a greatest article and it's a truly rock and Bush but now let's pause here for a moment and see what he brings with brings with him a great talent and a wonderful capacity already for handling life as you saw here. He's lied early on. Yes you know a little like a blow. But then gradually he refines and the thousands of internees like balls of the night. And early on especially is influenced by a man who is one of the great booking the ins and now a man who lives life like that. No we spoke about and that of course is kind of our job and how often again and again we come back to care about you. This man who seems to be the beginnings of the era so much of Iraq came out

of that style sicko's gesture and spiral and move and hand on the gesture of one to the other. So to make tremendous resonate patterns in three dimensions of Iraq which succeeds the the and easy style of manners mannerism is full of dumps just as the Reformation is full of dumps and just as the block succeeds the men mannerisms style so do the certainties of those who are for or against. See the Reformation the Brock is sure of itself. Well now this light of cat Avengers has exploded a few miles away and it's wonderful all these little towns of Harlem lighting all together and these great painters and. It's exploded in the crypt. And of course Rembrandt is aware of what they're doing over in Harlem painting realistically that's for FRONT OF HOUSE. In Amsterdam the theme is the greatest article picture and Rembrandt as we said wants to be a great historical painter so he goes to Amsterdam and his first picture is what we would call a smash hit. Rembrandt in

and his connections there already and he gets on very well because the man is a relative of these dealers. She's a beautiful young girl she's money and she loves him and he loves her and have more can you want. And now this is the beginning of a period in Rembrandt's life which I love to call the roaring 30s the period from about 16 32 to 16 32. And in this everything goes right for Rembrandt nothing goes wrong and you find him at the auction house buying from the dealers making the beginnings of that wonderful collection of his and his childhood with commissions as well traveled with commission. Now this is a young genes. So how does he keep from that point. Let's have a look. Is this a point about that it's wonderful it's wonderful. And this is a face painted with with dignity and solidity it felt all the way through human feeling as in this and this young man of twenty eight years of reeling from that over frame by the way that we just lighted in that economy.

And this lady is just a simple statement directly a young woman with a pleasantness about her eyes you know Rembrandt's eyes are needed. I also noticed and did you notice in the lives of his art like like Charles you know well has that wonderful face and it's shiny like the pearls around her neck and that her head is on top of her wonderful shining umbrella of let's look at it it's a joy to look at it because it was a joy for him to paint it. And this face you know it goes remarkably deep for a man who's just rapidly fulfilling one of his many commissions. There's a room full of life and the finish and the colors seem to appear and disappear as you look at when the police tell them. And sewed into it so much that you can feel the pressure of them that the pressure of the lips as they rest one against the other in the moisture. But he has simplified. It's not realistic in a way because he's simplified an immense amount to get

through want and in reality he's like has washed the face clean leaving only the sin and the essentials as you see there. They recreate a living force whose image involves us and sort of this person you know this is the companion of the light is more slanted here and it falls obliquely across the face and I don't think this is fine for my man even allowing for the fact that that shadow on the right end of the face the right hand side has suffered a little by the way since Rembrandt laid down the brush but it's a Rembrandt. It's a Rembrandt and he very rarely falls down on the job. It's always worth looking at the line by a Great Master I can say more than a finished canvas by someone else. See in this picture there are two persons to please. There's the patron the man looking at you now and there's a Rembrandt painter in the picture. Well now let's look behind the former commission and come upon something in which the artist is merely pleasing himself

and it's around the same time as this too it's the early 30s and miraculous little sketch this is a wonderful Just look at the dog in the dog house and this is the sort of thing this little incident that catches Rembrandts always in the drawing you can see again and again the observation of some very commonplace of domesticity transformed into art by what can only be called interest and affection never sentimentality. And he does it by just getting the essential oils in there. Brown has his with the pen a flick of the brush and the atmosphere springs up all round it and you have something that calls directly on our experience you know this is something that has an echo in ourselves the dog in the Dog House and the next door you see in the dark eyes that don't look at it again. This changes your viewpoint a little. It's wonderful the way it's curled up with a comfortable twist to the body. Well that's just a little glimpse over the young man's shoulder. Little limbs between to form a commission. And now we're going to show you a great commission form a commission where he's really

stretching himself and he's still trying to get he was painting very well that your That's the year he made it and it's also the early into the great Rothschild portraits and art. Well here we have. A pier that is painted for a young man the same age as himself the young man of twenty eight on the right we have Mr Ellis and here is his wife on the lift. The English people English Dutch from knowledge in England they're visiting their son and he has the young Rembrandt painting now standing here between man and wife. I think we'll go to the lady first. And and then Brenda loves the dark the darkness which encourages quietude in middle of the ring and all handling darkness as one called it. And out of this darkness you can literally bring his thoughts to light. And you see how shadowed under this earth and lit from the light reflected from the

mill stone rough comes the face of Marietta just got a new cap on under the head and you can just see of people like to tiny wings that are temples you see there. Now this man's instinct for character is infallible. See where the face recedes a little from you it's rather withdrawn. You have to you know go searching for it and that in its way tells you what sort of a person she was. She has you know you've got it we're not just passive peasants Eller husband so male and strong and powerful and fully lit and it comes out at you and impresses you with its weight and its substance and the look of you with such an outgoing gaze that it's no longer you were looking at him and searching into his character but if he was looking at you you see the subtleties with which he reveals character by varying the character of his lighting. Even so early is that he has in that light it is a source of infinite possibility a powerful instrument which is well above all. Of creating a wide variety of mood

and his range is as wide as has been said of Shakespeare. And his deepest revolution they seem to come with faces that are in the form as few so that the object to the expression becomes neutral like a pane of glass through which we look into the mind behind which we always wanted to do. Now let's have a look at some brilliant paintings but I think of that look at it it's wonderful it's curly and casually brilliant. It's probably done tossed off with a few strokes reminds you of this stuff and it's just a joy to look at because again it was a joy for him to think. And it's there for a reason you know because if this wasn't here this shadow down here would become far too well and so he puts this in here and it brings the figure out and it also makes one aware of those other lighted spots. And. This is the center and the others go out from you see you as a man thinking all the time and I think I was the guy who said that a picture demands as much cunning and subterfuge

as the perpetration of a crime. Now the young man 20 years into those roaring 30s we talked about. But end 16 42 was much as they do in any day. And his wife is beautiful right in his eyes. Dip into the night watch that is most baroque painting and then begin one of the most extraordinary things in the history of art for Rembrandt with all he was drawing into himself and the townspeople now passing his window and studio the see the lights lighting at night and they begin to call him the Rembrandt becomes. And now this journey into himself he gains a compassion through his own spirit and beyond it but seems as wide as the world it seems to encompass everything you see searching in his own spirit. He discovers the God man through MAN HE GOES TO GO. Now that's different from the Italians who

discover. Man from God from the ideal. They go to man and that illustrates two attitudes of mine and it illustrates two religions as well. Because remember Rembrandt is the great Protestant painter and he makes the Bible relevant to every act in our daily lives and that is the particular loading of Rembrandt end of Protestantism. Now this wonderful sympathy of his is a warming thing it really is and his art. I often think is like a great continent in which the pull and the humble and the lowly and the persecuted. I don't know their full dignity as a human being which many of us don't often do because you see in and remember there are no color bars and there are no reserved areas. He's later ard. The last ten or fifteen years it would seem to me to have a stillness about them so that in a way these heroes can be

described as a class of all. So in your opinion are between the Bible and the rococo. Now I have only a few other things to show you but they strike deeper than anything we've already seen and I think nothing explains this journey of Rembrandt into his own spirit so much as the fact that he edged sketched out painted himself more than 80 times. Now this is not conceit and I think it's best explained by something that nature when he said that each man is to himself the remotest of be fearless Rembrandt. He's now forty two. Faces and shouting and his face is all the lack of emphasis the lack of grammar and expression as a person who say's here I am. And that's it. The fact of this face the fact silences doesn't there's nothing more to be said. I've always loved this itching the dark the window open to the

light and the raised angle of the book which cues your life in work. Choose your value in what I mean and then you are made free of the space for Rembrandt sips. It's not really yours it's wonderful. And here is the miracle of art that calls to the deepest places in our lives. You see the work of art is an experience and after seeing this we are changed and different in some way even in the smallest way. Now from the land of the individual we go to the open men's capers island under a sky just clearing of rain. It's the three trees standing up against the sky and it's maybe his best known itching and I wanted you to see it because I wanted to see how he's light as hell and he's itching as well as in the painting and to show you something more than tremendous skill. With which he does this and we look into the infinitude of strokes made

by the needle to produce this effect this distance this air this sky which expands with light. Because the way he handles the needle in this he's like a great diverter also on a violin and the density of each stroke the depth the direction of a very. And then here and there the admission a little about it. And they're all all the time control to produce an effect or a summary of nature which amounts to a symbol of natural symbol of naturals which are revealed through application and effect. When. We kept the good wine into lust and I've had this masterpiece up my sleeve all the time and event of this when I was about 60 and in a way it is a climax and contemplation that time makes in that journey into his own spirit. And I hear something that's I really want you to know and it's difficult to get across because I feel that in Rembrandt's out there there is a

tremendous unity. Man is brought into unity which all of us need. Because in him since the world is a human aged by the spiritual the spiritual is to live by the sense of what man is run. Here. The rich final textures of that integration there's a wonderful role in the world here which creates a living texture of darkness and out of it comes that face that wonderful things. It's tremendous. Really to see the way the eyes are a veiled insult and surrounded by the movement of shadows. Now in this light as in the last great work of Rembrandt there's a final distillation a feeling and this is a quality this life that I can only call blooming as you look at it it's growing and growing at such a few seeing your vision and to use a warm and richly mellow It is a world of humanity and a broader

sympathy than which we are commonly. And then we realize we're in a different world we're in the world created by Rembrandt and this world is in some small way as we experience it more. Than 60 69 Rembrandt was age 63. His pictures remain with us and there are messages from him because he has signed them as one would sign a little too afraid with his first name not remember but remember like you and me. Yes. Yes. Yes.

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