Newman Lecture: Psychology and Visual Art by Paul C. Vitz

0:05Is in its twenty third year and following our tradition aims at building a body of learning discussion that is Catholic both in its breadth of research and in its dialogue with contemporary Catholic Christian thought. And now I invite our president, father Charles Sikorsky, to open us in prayer. Go to Charles. Thank you, Steve. In the name of the father, and the son, and the holy spirit, amen. Heavenly father, we wanna thank you for this great liturgical season of Easter where we remember and celebrate the resurrection of your son, our lord Jesus Christ, from death. We thank you for this great season, experience of races, of new life, the graces of hope, the grace of knowing that we can always trust that your power is greater than the cross and greater than death itself.

1:03So many times in life, things are difficult. We suffer. There's so many suffering people in the world. Your son took all those things away and gave them new meaning and back on the cross. And most of all, in his trying, help us to always remember that in the midst of every cross, every sacrifice, every suffering and disappointment of Good Friday comes joy, the new life, and the love of Easter. Help us to celebrate this season with open hearts close to you with great hope and great joy. We wanna pray for all those now who don't see that light. We're suffering in many different ways today in our world. We pray for an outpouring of peace, of love, of unity in our world to that in our church as well.

1:56And we thank you as well for immense talk and speaker. We're gonna talk about talk about the truth. You're good. You're truly good and beautiful today. You expect the night in such a way. We thank you. We put this presentation to the scene. How you are reflected in beauty. In beauty and art is and that inspires us to think about you and the wonders of your creation. We pray to doctor Bitz as he continues and is ready preparing for retirement. We thank you for all the years of his service and love of our students and our students. We we pray that your holy spirit will guide him tonight so we all can be edified and pointed toward the goodness and truth and the beauty of your son, our lord Jesus Christ.

2:45In the name of the father and the son and the holy spirit. Amen. Amen. Amen. Now please welcome doctor William Nordlin who will introduce Petra. It's a great privilege for me to introduce my dear colleague and friend, doctor Paul Vicks, as he completes this year's Newman lecture series with the presentation on psychology and visual art, modernist painting, and postmodern art, mainly of beauty. Paul Vicks is one of the founding fathers of the Institute of Psychological Sciences and of its becoming Divine Mercy University. He had been with IPS DMU since its inception in 1999 and actually taught the very first course offered by the IPS. In his twenty four years career with DMU, he has made essential contributions to the intellectual foundation and missions of the university.

3:54Doctor Biss is coeditor and coauthor of a groundbreaking book, A Catholic Christian Meta Model of the Person, Integration with Psychology and Mental Health Practice, which won an international expanded reason award in 2020 from the Vatican Foundation for its expansion of the relationship, of faith science and psychology. Doctor Vitts is also professor emeritus of psychology at New York University where he taught for over three decades prior to joining DMU. At DMU, he made important contributions in experimental psychology, cognitive psychology, and more broadly began his scholarship critiquing modern psychology. His influential book, Psychology as Religion, the Cult of Self Worship, was a sobering call to psychology to recognize its limits and its needs to make a place in psychology for transcendence and truth instead of reductionism and relativism.

5:05Generally, the introduction would stop now. We can move on to the presentation. Now this would leave the audience not truly introduced to our speaker. There are at least three extraordinary things contained in the previous comments that are implicit, but injustice should be made explicit in order for you to understand what a remarkable gift doctor Paul Bitz is. First, it's been mentioned that doctor Paul Bitz is a professor of Emeritus of Psychology at New York University. In academia, this status is only awarded very selectively to faculty members who've given a lifetime of service to their institutions and made significant scholarly contributions. This means that in 1999, when doctor Bitz learned about the project to create IPS, now DMU, he was already a well respected scholar in his mid sixties with tenure at a very prestigious university.

6:12Yet he heard the call of God and joined an effort to found a new university from scratch. This was an act of faith, hope, and charity. Second, most scholars have a very small intellectual playground. They have a narrow area of specialization, which they focus on almost exclusively throughout their careers. However, if we extend this metaphor of intellectual playground, the professor gets, we would have to say his life work was the size, scope, and diversity of an intellectual amusement park. One close to the size of Disney World. Experimental psychology, cognitive psychology, personality theory, research on serial killers, a comprehensive analysis of a Christian view of a person, and tonight for us, art and beauty are but a selective listing of the areas of inquiry that have captured this creative and curious mark.

7:22Finally, it's it's easy to look at the remarkable big picture achievements of our presenter and to lose sight of the micro level of day in, day out actions that reveal his character as a person. Through over a thousand lectures carefully prepared, hundreds of meetings patiently mentoring students on their dissertations, through your regular meetings and collaborations with your colleagues, through your frequent expressions of friendship, concern, and encouragement. You had, doctor Bitz, helped your students and colleagues grow in knowledge, wisdom, and character. For this, we thank you. But more importantly, for your exemplary remodeling of generosity, sacrifice, and self giving. You have helped your students and colleagues become better Christians and helped DMU to more vibrantly live out its Christian mission.

8:26For this, we are eternally grateful. I now trust you to our speaker, Doctor Paul Fitz. Wow. And after that, I have nothing I can say. Thank you, Bill. Well, this evening, I'm presenting material that I've never presented before. So some of the edges may seem a little rough. But we have a question and answer period where we could smooth things out, I believe. In addition, we'll be talking mostly about painting and about images. And so I think you will find it interesting. Paintings and images are interesting, sort of, intrinsic. It's not just a word lecture. And so not only interesting, I hope what would every now and then, we'll also find it just plain fun. So we are now gonna go and look at slide one.

9:39There. Not so pretty, of course. But here we see we're gonna start with what it does take to make an image with a little bit of a a look at children's developmental art. And we're gonna assume that children start, and there's a lot of evidence that there's effect. They start art with what I call stage one, the scribble stage. Examples here. Next slide. On the left, we have a list of the kind of basic scribbles that children show developed by, a woman named Kello Kello who's very deeply involved in the study of children's art. So we see here a group of the basic scribbles that start the beginning of an image. And I call this the basic scribble stage level one or stage one. Over here, we see that after stage one, which is shown here as number one, you'll begin to see it at the beginning of what I call stage two in the development of an image.

10:48And that, I call basic very simple patterns. You know, simple geometric patterns. Okay? And we see them here square. They're this so you can all see them. The third stage, which comes after, geometric patterns, is what I call schematic images. Schematic images are short forms of a of an image of something that you can rec recognize. In In other words, they are schematic objects. And here's we assume that's a face. That's the beginning of stage three and the making of an image. There's some more stage three getting more complex in terms of a schematic object. Here you see the the the face is getting legs. So we're starting to move toward what is obviously at the highest level, still the schematic representation, of an object.

11:50In this case, the person. So that's level three. Level one again, basic scribbles. Level two, geometric patterns. Level three, schematic objects. Level four is going to be three d dimensional. Okay? Next slide. And, doctor Diggs, let me just invite you. If we may if you have a row number, like five or six when you're talking about the levels, if you can name that for our online viewers. Oh, okay. We'll try. Thank you. Next slide. We're ready for the next slide. Here are some more detailed examples of the schematic level. Very early schema, you can tell that's supposed to be the face of a person and presumably legs or possibly arms and so forth. And down at the bottom whoops. You see a a higher levels, schematic object of of a person.

13:11See, a girl's with dresses, a dog, and so forth. Almost all human beings when they go through this development of how to draw an image or make an image, they all go through at least the stage three that is to the schematic objects. And that's where your stick figures and so forth would occur. The last stage, stage four, which is three d realism, is only, in a few few very talented, young people and is not normally what we all learn how to master. Next. So here are the stages. Can we get this off of there? Working on it. There you go. Okay. Yeah. Stage one, basic scribbles. Stage two, geometric patterns. Stage three, schematic objects. Stage four, three d realism. And I put up another stage in here at level zero or stage zero.

14:20And this is a plain surface to draw on. It's really not the image, but it's the surface on which you're going to begin to make a plain piece of paper or plain piece of canvas or whatever. I call that stage or level zero. Okay. Let's go. And these are the levels that the child will go through up to schematic objects, and almost all of us can do at least a schematic object image drawing right now. I can tell that degree of talent that's present in the Next slide, please. What we have here is a we're now moving from the normal development of a drawing as it occurs with children. Now what we're going to look at are drawings made by patients, by patients who were either getting more and more depressed, more and more pathological, or in a few cases, we'll see where patients were getting better and better when they were re recovering.

15:24These are drawings by them. And what we see here is a a woman. She's this is her first drawing, and it's a pretty high level, stage three. It's sort of schematic, but it it it's pretty high level development. There's a little bit hint of depth in the hair and so forth. We move over here in the second the second object of of the image. Here, we see that she has begun to regress. And so what we're looking at here is a a kind of measure of the increase in pathology in a person by looking at the way in which they go back down the stages that would normally be present in a in in development. So she's at the stage three, high level, three level here. She's now that's very, schematic. She's more more pathological here.

16:16And at the last stage when the last drawing was made, she was even more severely pathological. And here, we see that we're down to, well, a fair number of basic scribbles. We see a simple geometric here. We're not quite sure what that might mean. And here we see a schematic object. So she's moved down the hierarchy that normally a child moves up. Okay. Next slide. Here's another this was an artist. We've lost some of the detail here, but this one he was not especially disturbed. And these are rather realistic. There's some of the detail as well that shows the three dimensionality of these. But then I think you can see that these are more realistic. They're they would be really I would call them low level stage four.

17:10Realistic. But as he as his depression increased and his pathology increased, we have a drawing like this. At this point, we're into we're out of stage four four altogether. We're into schematic entirely. And then when he's this is two years later. He's now almost entirely well, that I guess there may be a hint of a base there. I don't know. A hint of the schematic. Most of it is this kind of thing you find at level two with geometric shapes and possibly some scribbles. So we see, again, regression in this in the expression of this person's increased pathology. In a way, these could also almost be used as as measures of which way the of the degree of pathology of a person in terms of the extent to which they regress down the the schematic, representation of an image.

18:13Next. Here's the patient who got better. There's his first one. I'd say that's hardly I don't know that we'd even say that's a schematic base. You might, but it's certainly filled with some geometric patterns and and scribbles. Here, we have clearly, you're you do have a base here. We're up to very low levels, steeped at level three, very low level. Here we're at a little higher level of schematic. And finally, at the last drawing by this man, he's beginning he's part of part of level four is showing up there. He's beginning to get a little bit of depth along with the realism. So he has both the schematic at the high level and some real depth and, realism in the at the fourth level. So it's a mix of those two levels.

19:06But it's very clear that you can see as this person goes up the stages that they're that they're obviously getting better. Next. This patient was a young woman who was brought into, I'm sorry, emergency hospital in New York, and she was completely, I don't know whether that's quite the case, but completely gone. She was on drugs. And this is the first thing she drew when she came in. It's entirely on basic scribbles. And this young woman stayed there until, late the next day, and she drew around noon on the on the first day she was in there. She drew this. And here we see schematics. It's a big improvement from here. She's recovering from her drug exposure. And so in fact, by the time she gets to this drawing, she's at real we have three d realism.

20:07She's at stage four, and she was released. So this was a very quick positive response due to, a serious drug overdose problem. In other words, she was not mentally disturbed in that sense. And it's just the effect of that of the drug. But you can see it was very powerful in terms of the original norm. Next. Here's another patient. This is one who came in in in that same clinic. One of my students, pieces of paper for the for the patients to draw on. Here's the first one when he came in. That's a clear schematic level three of a person. We come to this one, and although we can see some squares and some geometric pattern, there are no rec no schematic objects that are recognizable here. So we've dropped from level schematic level three.

21:09He's dropped down to level two completely here. And this one, the only geometric that's left is this one little section here in the middle, and the rest of it looks all like basic scribbles. And she this this, patient would then act it was shortly after this one, which was about about three days later. It was, submitted to the long term psychiatric care. What what I'm trying to point out here is that, again, movement up and down the stages of creating an image is a very interesting notion to keep in mind. Next. Oh, big change. I'm I'm having that. What I'm now gonna be talking about is is technically called modernist art. It's what most people think of when they think of the term modern art, but it isn't.

22:06Modernist art is that trajectory in the history of painting that ended up with abstract art, and we'll see where it finally ends up as well. And that we'll call modernist art. Alright? All art in the modern period is not the same by any means. So this trajectory that we're looking at is that very fascinating one that led to the development of abstract art and so forth. And what I'm going to be arguing here is that these artists are gonna go down that hierarchy as though they're pathological, but they're not. None of them were, as far as I know, at all ill in any particular mental sense at all. But what I would like to propose is this, is that the hierarchy that you can come up and under pathology, you can go back down on, that hierarchy is available for any one of us to investigate as long as we can regress in the service of the ego.

23:06And what here, let me explain what I mean by this. Regression means that you can go back to earlier periods of your own life, memories, experiences, and so on. You can go to some degree, to earlier time periods. But in the service of the ego means you can bring it with what you've regressed to. You can bring it back up and deal with it with your artistic talent, your artistic knowledge, and so forth. The problem with our mentally disturbed patients that we were looking at is they couldn't come back voluntarily. Most of them, they just regressed, but couldn't come back because the placebo wasn't strong enough. They were still, trapped down there. A few people such as some of the cooking ones in my show, my second young lady, they weren't so badly regressed so badly regressed by the drug that we had inserted.

23:58They couldn't come back in a few days and we have very natural abilities to grow. But what I'm gonna therefore argue is that the creativity of the modernist movement was regression in the service of the artist's ego that can come back up. And then second, I'm arguing that they're gonna regress historically on average. Historically, modernism is gonna start at level four or at realism, lose depth and move to conceptual objects, lose even reference to objects and moves to, geometric patterns, and then move from geometric patterns to something that's that we'll call basic scribbles. That was called abstract expression when when it was a painter. And then I got that. You'll even get down to level zero.

24:53Yep. Okay. Next. Well, well, I didn't mention this. This is sometimes Manet, French painter, who is sometimes considered the kind of person to show the hint of a modernist movement. And what he did whoops. We'll go back one. In this portrait, he had made the first little movement from three-dimensional realism, level four at the highest. And began to move towards flattening on the picture. That is the loss of depth. And that's the hint that then will allow basically the artist to go even further in their regression. And he's lost some of the depth that you'd normally expect at this time in the background and even if there's something somewhat absent even in the clothing and the face. And this was picked up very much by his critics at that time, and they didn't like it.

25:50But, anyway, that's. And that's roughly 1865 or something like that. Okay? In France. Now we're going to Cezanne. We're about twenty years later. I'm skipping a lot. I skipped the impressionists. We all know about them. We all know that the impressionists brought flatness back in, but they had such beautiful color, and he didn't miss the distance that would normally be involved in in third dimension. We didn't miss them. We got some of the beautiful colors. But here's Cezanne with another, portrait, and you can see it has gone further toward loss of depth. There's much less of the trip of the depth of the base and the mustache and so on. And you can begin to sense that this is gonna become a picture that's maybe more like a conceptual, schematic portrayal of a face.

26:42Next. As we move from Saison, we can see this even more striking change in the faces. This is a famous Picasso, the ladies old avenue. And you can see the faces are moving very much more toward they're really schematic objects. They're no longer in serious amounts of shading for depth and so on and so forth. It's the beginning of what was then called cubism. Most of us are from New York, leaving spanning the ladies of Avenue. We're the night ladies, so, we'll leave that aside. And, we go on to the next drawing, which is called the the green stripe. It's by Matisse. It was about the same time early '9 in the early twentieth century, we moved from, impressionism, which I haven't shown, from Cezanne and, his his paintings, which were at the end of the, nineteenth century.

27:48We've now moved into the twentieth century. We're about nineteen o five, something like that. And, this is called the green stripe. But you can see how the depth is, again, going away and how this is really I in my judgment, would be a high level of schematic things. It's very attractive because of the colors. Of course, I don't know what his wife thought because that's what she it's being that's who's portraying. But, anyway, Matisse then moves very, very decisively to the, schematic level. This is on the border between, three d realism level four and level three because it's beginning to show mostly schematic qualities, And depth is almost gone. But now we go to the next level of almost entirely schematic, representation.

28:47Next slide. Next slide, please. Okay. Okay. These are met both Matisse. This is a schematic called Blue Nude, and the Blue Nude scene series went on for a long way. There were a lot of different expressions of it, but most of them were of this type. But here we see something that's purely conceptual. It represents something on the schematic concept of specimen and nothing very little real emphasis on depth at all. So that's pure level three. Here is level three also. It's you can look at it, but it's very much reduced to the point where you're not quite sure that it's a human form. But then you look at the top and you say, oh, yes. Yes. That is that is. But what you are now is at the bottom of level three.

29:43You're getting very close to just the geometric pattern being impressive. Next slide. Somewhat on average, a few years later, we now see a move completely to level two. On the left, we have, a French painter whose work was you can see it's entirely geometric shapes. Over here, we have a famous Russian painter, Kandinsky, who also moved that way. Kandinsky, in his early drawings, did things that were moderately realistic and certainly, very dramatically, schematic. We did them. Nice colors are very, very important that way. But he then continued his regression in service of the ego, And he comes up now, maybe it's later in his earlier, a completely geometric patterns. Next slide, please. This is actually an early Mondrian.

30:58Most people would recognize it as Mondrian, but the Mondrian we had Mondrian just like Kandinsky. In his first paintings, they were in his early work. They were relatively realistic. He did a even more realistic one of this in the Jewish sculpture tree. And this is it looks something like a tree here. But you can see he's already broken it down almost to the geometric level. But this is still a schematic object if you recognize it as a tree, particularly if you could look at over here to the left, which there isn't any place to look at. He did some beautiful examples of this same tree that were more fully tree like, if you will, but they were still conceptual level trees. But we're gonna see now, Mondrian will move to the complete geometric level even simpler than the ones that we've just seen.

31:47Next slide. And so here we have the typical Mondrian on the left. Vertical or horizontal lines, basic primary colors. The one color that Mondrian didn't consider primary was green. That's because the pigments where you're red, blue, and yellow, you get greens, so it can't be primary. So you'll never find as far as I've been able to notice, you'll never find green in the. But, anyway, we see a perfectly geometric here, all level two. But, of course, you can go below the geometric, can't you? Who do you think we have here? You know who it was. This is our first American painter. The scribble stage has arrived. This is Jackson Pollock. Okay. Let's look at the next slide. Next slide, please. You thought I was kidding.

32:54An artist might just give you a scribble. These are both pay games. Expensive. You get don't try to buy them. There but thereby Franz Kline, the American abstract expressionist, who was a contemporary of Jackson Pollock. And the whole abstract expression is one of the main figures. Excuse me. Like, to call this a scribble stage, it doesn't seem unreasonable, does it? Of course, these are much larger than on a small piece of paper. They're rather large canvases in fact. But those are the scribble stage that we finally have reached in the trajectory of modernism. The modernist movement has come and we've seen it gone down the same hierarchy that previously children would go up, and recovering mentally disturbed people would go up.

34:00Alright. So let's look at the next slide. This is. Well, even we're getting now to what I would call almost level zero. And we're at the lowest level in a certain sense. We'll go a little further. These are Rothko's, a very well known painter at that time. And, they would be called color field paintings, and, they're very attractive in the midst of the colors. But, of course, they're very simple. We're beneath the level of scribbles. We're almost down to we're almost down to level zero where there's nothing to, nothing but the plain surface. But the it was later paintings. This this is one of this is an early Rothfeld in a much happier state of mind he was at that time. This is near the end of his life shortly before he committed suicide.

34:58Very dark, color fields, if you wanna call them color fields. Next. Okay. You can get even more extreme than the rock, though. This is, Yves Klein, a Frenchman, and then this is sometimes called Klein blue. He painted all of his paintings in different sizes and shapes, but all one color blue. So there's not even there's not even a color field mixture of two colors or a little bit of the egg that would be found with the Rothko. And there's somebody who's took whose actual work is is even more extreme than this. And I wanna talk to you about it, but you can't show him. There's nobody he he's as identifiable as that wall. Robert Irwin made what were called all white paintings, but they were called scrim pieces.

36:01And that's because what he did is he had in a gallery, there would be, let's say, four walls in the gallery. He made sure there were no windows. It's four walls, and he'd walk in where your work would be presented. And on one of the walls, he would tack, a piece of fabric called the screen that was all white. And he'd tack it across the top, tack it along the bottom and on each side. And it was the same white as the other three walls that were painted white. So when people walked into the show, what did they see? They saw four bare walls. In other words, the artwork itself had disappeared for everyone to be able to see in any normal sense. A few people were condescending. They knew what Erwin Mcdonald.

36:52They went around poking the walls. And finally, they found one wall where the string piece was had been established, and it was about three inches off the regular wall. We said, We found you out. But this is where the painting has been reduced entirely to level zero. But I don't call that a real level of an image because there's not even a scribble on it. And that's what exists in here in between these two. Even more extreme, believe it or not, you can get more extreme in the trajectory of going from four d realism not three d realism at stage four down. And you get even more extreme than an all white canvas or a canvas that you can't even tell is the surface of a painting. And that came with something about 1970.

37:47And remember, these things are roughly in chronological order, roughly. And this was called conceptual art. Conceptual art, the the artist when I was at NYU, I even had someone who was one of the more well known conceptual artists and who came over and talked to us in some way. But he said the problem with art is this. He says, you don't want there to be an object. You want only the concept. Art the best art is a concept, and it hasn't and if you make it into a physical object, that's no no. Because then people can buy and sell it, and it gets corrupted by all of the things that people do with art. So he said the best art is a concept in your head, but then nobody could say who was a good artist or a bad artist or anything.

38:39You know? I could tell you. I'm I'm really a great artist at this idea. I don't care to make it objectively visible because that would violate my aesthetic principles. But, anyway, so the the conceptual artist the ideal conceptual artist was one who did not have to make the concept visible. But, of course, they couldn't get by couldn't get by with that. So they did make objects that represented conceptual approaches to art. And this is one. And this is by. And what it was, it was a black square with, in white, the dictionary definition of the word document. He also had one that was exactly like this, except the word was idea. Then he had the words spelled out in white print exactly as it came in the dictionary, mentioning its difference in uniqueness.

39:34There are lots of conceptual artists or were at the time about 1978. And I would start to say that conceptual artists at the end of the monitor's trajectory where we've gone from three d realism, which we've been just about a dominant at the time of Manet as we've gone on we've got less and less realism, less and less three-dimensional schematic objects, you know, that's east, etcetera. And then we go down further into all geometric, and, and that the prime another one very low level in, beyond conceptual and the geometric is I don't know if you know his dad, Reinhardt. He did sometimes move with the call. He would call all black days. He made one mistake. He would leave a black square visible against an almost equally black background.

40:33So there was something to see there. It wasn't just the the thing. But this was something, at the time, often called minimal art. But what I'm trying to say is that the artist has now moved down, to the to the geometric stage or even further kind of extremals or even further down to almost nothing at all when it comes to the plain surface. And that's the end of modernism, 1970. It went out with a whimper. I don't think it's a part. Art critics and people study it. They know all about their reports and write their education on the subject and so forth. But in 1970, what were you gonna do if you were a young artist? You gotta do something different. Right? So what did you do that was different?

41:28Well, you had to go back to the image, and that's what postmodernist art was. They went back to the image. Now let's look at the next slide. Next slide, please. I I propose that the first postmodernist artist was Andy Warhol, and he went back to the image, but in a different way that had ever been done before. His famous Marilyn Monroe on the right, and it is it is Campbell Soup can on the left. It was called Pop Art, and you can see why. But they're going back to the image, but they're going back to it with a different attitude. If this with Andy Warhol, the attitude was relatively positive and humorous. Sort of fun. Hey. Here's Marilyn Monroe. We've also been looking at just done her four times now and with slightly different coloring in some of them.

42:26And, isn't that great? And it was. They they they had given the image up entirely with with conceptual art and with minimal art, and now we're back to it. But it's in a with a new attitude. It's the attitude that's gonna change and make the difference in what we call postmodernism. Let's take a look at the next slide. Here's along along with, Andy Warhol at the same time, early postmodern would be Roy Lichtenstein. And so what he did is he took comic strip strip images and made them large as canvases, and they're also kind of fun. The attitude is still rather pleasant and rather fun. But what's going to change more and more in postmodernism is the attitude is removed from being so fun and having a good time with the work.

43:26It's gonna change to increasingly, a criticism in my part. I would like to call postmodernism primarily a kind of paint, the mustache on Mona Lisa, which was actually a painting by somebody that will get to. But one of the main perhaps the most famous American postmodern artist is an artist named Jeff Koons. And here we see this is called the, the balloon lady. Those are balloons or this will be balloons, but it's a large sculpture. But it's certainly not a celebration of feminine beauty, or beauty anyway. It's, some kind of satire. Let's look at some more postmodernism. Next slide. This is an another Jeff Koons, and this is called the balloon dog. Funny little nose right at the end. But, again, it's a sculpture.

44:38Another, postmodern sculpture who was kind of fun and and different is Oldenburg. And Oldenburg in this sculpture here is called the plug. I wonder why. But, again, we're back to realism, three dimensions in the object, but it's with this strange, slightly, critical, slightly distancing and ironic attitude. Next slide. Here's another Oldenburg. That's a typewriter eraser. You remember them? Yeah. Yep. It's huge. Well, Oldenburg also did one with a big lipstick, but 15 feet tall. So there's a kind of fun in it all. Today, if Oldenburg were a lot of it making these sculptures, he would make a a cell phone. 20 foot high cell phone where everybody could go and worship. And on the right, though, we have a different attitude showing up in postmodernism than just humor or distance.

45:59This is the probably the most famous of the postmodern artists is a, a British artist named Damien Peirce. And this is one of his works of art. Again, don't try to buy it. That's a new. But what's he saying about art? Not nothing very good. Okay? Let's go to the next slide, please. This is another Damien Hirst. Hirst, One of the things he did, he he would get a cow, cut it in half. Now he did all this himself, the butchering or anything. He cut it in half, took the skin off of it. This was a cow. Put half a cow in one of these, glass boxes. Sometimes they were lined with aluminum, sometimes with white, like, it's white metal. And in that, he put the half a cow in that glass box, filled it up with clear formaldehyde to preserve it.

47:10Took the other half, did the same thing, but did put it in a different box next to it. And then he took a calf, a baby cow, cut it in half, put it in a smaller box right behind this other one and behind the the the the, other other half as well, and called it mother and child. This one is the head of a cow that's been skinned, and it was one of 12 all in the same kind of box, and they were called the deciders. Also, another postmodern artist, but this is not Damien Hirsch. This is a picture of postmodern, painting of the Virgin Mary in which elephant domino was also used. And this became rather well known as a kind of mocking, whatever might have been considered, same thing as important. That is what's done here by calling this, the disciples, one of 12, they were called the disciples.

48:16This one is actually called and I think it's something of an error. It's called say it was called Saint Paul or just Paul. It's not one of the 12, so, you know, I'm sure what your name is correctly, Paul. By the way, Damien Hirsch graduated from Catholic High School in London. And this was by, an African artist, postmodern. It was the Virgin Mary. Not a very certainly, level three schematic object recognizable. And then, as I said, element of knowledge in the swivel as well. Next slide. Here are two other postmodern works. This one, you can't see it very well. It's a crucifix. It's in a it's in a container with clear glass sides. It's a crucifix, and the red the yellow is urine. It's called piss cries, and that's a clear and important post postmodernist's work.

49:18And it was the urine of the, artist. So this is a different aspect of postmodernism, but one of one that was given a great deal of attention actually. On the far right, we have one of the last works by Damien Hirst. It's a skull, and it's covered with diamonds. And when it was sold for, I think, £50,000,000, it was considered the most expensive work of art ever bought by a living art. But it's a skull, covered with the the diamonds presumably began to do its work. I don't know. Next slide. Next slide. Okay. All of this is the postmodern world as far as I'm concerned, ended roughly, again, with the whimper, probably around the year 2000, 2005, something like that. This kind of mocking of our this kind of not mocking of things we value, this kind of distancing yourself, even if it's done in a little bit of a fun way, that may step into maybe the most but the negative knocking of our by creating a mustache on on what Belize is, I think, has peaked and has started.

50:53You know, after all, many of her decisions, he's about 71. So, you know, the young artist is is looking for something new. We will get to that in a short time. But what was going on all along in the art world anyway? I'm gonna only focus here on American art, but America has long had a a very powerful tradition of three-dimensional realism. Now we'll go back now to the start of modernism. We're back around 1900. And here is a with the artist here, his name is Tanner. He's an African American artist. Not well enough known, but he's getting more and more known today. He does wonderful stuff. And this is one of them here with a couple praying at lunch or at dinner. And, in 1900, when the world was going toward cubism in France, he's painting in America something very realistic and very significant.

51:59And here's another painting by, Tanner. It's a famous one. It's called the Annunciation. He was a very devout Christian, a Protestant. And then I noticed this particular image of the Annunciation, which is so wonderful, which he painted later after that, maybe some years after this one, we see him in the left. Actually, I even seen it in the Catholic calendar. So I don't think anybody can make any attention. They were very devout. And, obviously, they're very out. That's a that's a that's a masterpiece of the painting as well as what's painted. Steven was h o Tanner. Next slide. So So this is going on in the American tradition. Of course, these are well known now American realists, and I'm gonna pick up.

52:59This is, old, Homer Hopper. Excuse me. Hopper. Okay? He was painting, these paintings in the same time period that abstract expressionism was around, and people were moving on that not on his trajectory toward uncovering a mixed level of the image. He's continuing with realism, plenty of three dimensionality in this. These are very well known paintings now, operated until, into the nineteen sixties. This is another hopper of a different type. But, it shows you that American realism along with the, by Frank Tanner is, alive and well. Next slide. Another American realized that most of you probably heard of Andrew Wyatt. These are two of his famous paintings. So here, everybody is going god down in the art world again over modernist art, going toward abstraction and minimalism and minimal art.

54:13But here's why I have beautiful, realistic paintings. This one is, like, you're almost supposed to think that the curtain is really, really out there. The bird will venture toward you, that the wind is coming in from the sea, which is why it's important to explain to you. So these are famous Wyeth, Andrew Wyeth. His father, Nancy Wyeth, is a well known illustrator, and he had a son named Jamie Wyeth who's continuing the realist tradition. Next slide. Here's another American realist, Bader, who's going against the grain of what was going on in. Another African American of this. His name is Hendricks. They looked at his own. He's he's not paying any attention to what's going on in that world of minimalism or postmodern negativity.

55:05You know, this is what this was done this beautiful portrait was done in 08/1970 at the very at the very time that the, Irwin scrimping, which was all white, and you couldn't even notice it was there, it was being shown. So he's holding on to the American tradition of realism. And they've they've done a beautiful job of maintaining that. And these are two of his paintings. That that was done in 1970. They were done this one was done, I think, in thirteen eighty something. So it was continuing to learn this tradition. Okay. Next slide. Now we're back to today. Postmodernism is is, I think, over. I don't know that anybody has held a public funeral. We can take the crucifix out of this stuff out of this price and put it back where it belongs.

56:02We can do all sorts of we'll be in another one of the Virgin Mary, which is beautiful again. But we don't have to suggest religious realism. Realism is bad in a big way. And what this means is about is is that the transcendental virtues of that. Mhmm. Those are beauty, goodness, and truth. There's nothing better than more to be more optimistic about it to think that beauty, goodness, and truth are now things for artists to devote themselves to in a way that won't be won't be an issue as to being out in fashion with the with the modernist trajectory and what have you. Some people may continue to do abstract works. You have them. But the main thing is new important artists that are coming today are realists, and they're focusing on goodness and truth and beauty.

56:55And I think here are just these I'm not mentioning the artists here. We we're just gonna look at some examples that I found by chance in my own question. And the admirings really. I mean, they're still different. They're interesting. They're different. But you sense in in the beauty, you sense that they're truthful, that is they're telling the truth about some reality, and that they're good. That what their message is in story. The next slide. Here's another example of contemporary realism. It's beautiful. It's good. It's truthful. What's being shown to you? What's real? So real that it looks almost like you could bite one of those cherry bits. Mhmm. Wonder what kind of wine. Here's another another realist painting, also very contemporary, showing what's going on now.

57:51Do we have any more images? Where are these the last? Next slide. Oh, yes. Two more realists today. Again, very interesting. Different, you know, not some sort of standard realism. The images are realistic and three-dimensional, but they're very different and new and interesting. And this is the last slide. Okay? Thank you. No. We should be optimistic. We're out of the postmodern we're out of modernist that's been completed. We're out of the postmodern period. So we're now being able to go back in a very realistically approach, you know, beauty, goodness, and truth. It was maintained all along by very important artists. I mentioned two that are not well known, but should be. One is, Hendrix.

59:00He he recently died, but he was a black American artist with shingle stature, which also can. Any questions now? Must have left a few gaps here and there. You know, that covered a lot of our histories, but a hundred and seventy years ago. Why don't we take questions from the room first, and then we do have some online questions that we can respond to. Would you like to sit for the part of the, or would you like to remain respond to. Would you like to sit for the part of the, or would you like to remain standing? We'll adjust our camera. These are online questions. Those are from the online people. Yeah. Okay. Any questions from the audience for the problem too? I have one. Are there any artists today that have actually sort of acknowledged some of what you've kind of gone through?

59:53I would think. I would I would assume so. They knew what that those who were traditionalists and painters were quite aware of how they were being socially ostracized. And the galleries went and picked them up and tried to sell them a little bit. And then after a long time, maybe we'd give us maybe opera or maybe, I don't know. I don't know. Yeah. I think that's, Hendrix got relatively well known. By the time he died, he was a well known artist. But they knew they were opposed to this minimal abstract stuff, which is an interesting thing. But to me, the most important thing about it was one that it showed me the regression and the development of the of the image, which was, in this case, in the service of the ego.

1:00:43So it was interesting, even though it didn't represent in an obvious sense, beauty through her goodness, But it did have some of that left, beauty that and truth and goodness as long as it stayed at the schematic level. Matisse is almost a lot of Matisse is at the level to be, and it's often very beautiful. So you but once they started going into pure geometry, it's okay. But what I'm looking for, and then you get to scribbles. But it's maybe you wanna have a, you know, some thought, but I'm not very big. I mean, Jackson, probably try to buy it for for you. So that's interesting in that way, but it isn't it hasn't maintained the the the free trans and. So if you put in this beauty, the truth.

1:01:44And these artists are aware of that. I'm sure it will continue to be black. Before we like Any other question here? Yeah. So I was going to argue about how second probably healthier as we move into twenty first century. Is that related to which are serving here with, the postmodern number? Now we're engaged in a new cultural moment where, the transcendental are. So is that related, or is that true? And, doctor, if you're gonna invite you to repeat the question, because doctor The question is I understand that is is modern psychology in any way, particularly the last, say, twenty years in psychology, in any way in sync with what's been happening in painting, which is moving back toward the transcendentals.

1:02:34Yes. I would say this is a hypothesis. I would say yes. And the answer to that would be the evidence would be the fact that psychology has moved back to allow religion to be part of it. It's moved back to understand the the importance of the virtues themselves. Work on the virtues. It's been a great contribution to psychology, but the virtues are three of them are the transcendentals. Right? And he actually includes those in his work as something that should be done. Part of what is about. So I say I think the same openness to the and the loss of contact with the sort of rigorous modernist, rationalist understanding has has disappeared in psychology as well to be replaced by something that I'm much more optimistic about.

1:03:34I'm much more optimistic about the next fifty years of psychology than, would be about the last fifty years. Well, at least maybe not let's say, look, from the ninth from the year 2000 back. From 2000, modern psychology or contemporary psychology was, I think, moved in a way that's in sync with the art world capturing again with these higher values? Good question. There's a hypothesis that I'm calling, and this is in sync. So does the art in the postmodernism that's which you said is over and back. A predictor of what's gonna happen in the general culture later or is it will it follow how Well, here, I'll make another hypothesis. Another hypothesis which is much more optimistic than the fact that we it's quite possible that the art world mirrors in advance of the general public.

1:04:42You saw examples in the last slide. It's a beautiful works. Beauty has been beauty and and not only that, the pictures of the of the emails. I think I thought of the one, on the right, relatively I I guess she was African American. I'm not sure. It was really not just beautiful. It was it was exhilarating in the sense you recognized the person as good and truthful at the same time. And that was in the work. We don't have that in our culture at large. But maybe it's slowly the culture will line up with art pushing it from one side to the better and psychology from the other side. So we could then have in spite of all of our current misgiving stops and worries, something really positive for, I mean, I'm a longer in the future for the culture of life.

1:05:42Okay. Now I get I get to get to these things. I mean, so So you want more questions? You have more questions. Yes. I've you've spoken a number of times about the, the regression being at the service of the. I kinda have two parts. One, if you could stand on that. But second, it seems to me, like, if we take this as a movement, perhaps this very process of regression is at the service of the current ego return to the. Yes. And I wonder if if that's part of your hypothesis as well. What we saw was regression and creation of advantage, which was in the service of being, though, in the case of monarchs. But even the existing there is the proposal that I went up and you for the hypothesis. That regression in the service of the ego is the essence of creativity of any time.

1:06:37And then all the moderners, the the the contemporary painter, the painting is something beautiful and realistic. They didn't get that idea easily. They even the realist has to regress to realistic images and experiences or understanding in their own past, visions they've had, people they've seen and known. They they have to go into their unconscious, find something new and interesting, bring it back up to consciousness, and therefore, bring it back into the service so they can build their artistic talent and their skills. And I think that's to be done whether you're in any one of these artists' traditions. If you're anomalous, even, you know, you have to regress in some way to the maybe to your own understanding of family life when you were growing up and people and those kind of like and then bring it up and put it in a modern world reaching your town.

1:07:35But you can't the an artist who I think I don't wanna be too big, but an artist that I don't think is very creative is I don't know his name, but you've seen him on TV, you know, the one who showed you how to paint a mountain with the big big wave. You you know who I'm talking about. Again? Yeah. I mean, there's great talent there and great ability, but the images are all so that that person has talent, but you can't regress to get something interesting to paint. You can't regress in your own experience to get something that's interesting. Resolving does this paint ways that we're all familiar with in a very quick way. And that so that's, our without the progression. That's our just. Yes. So they did go through modernism and postmodernism.

1:08:41What would you name the new period? The new period? You say we're we're past. Pardon? Yeah. We're alright. I'm not saying we're past. I reality. We're back to the something that's real, something that's beautiful and real, good and real and truthful and real. Our culture at large is not there yet. But I guess that's what I'd caution. If you can think of something better, more than five minutes. It's not too bad. Neorealism. Neorealism. Neorealism. Neorealism. Neorealism. Neoreal reality. Ne we can call it neos, and that makes it sound general. So neos then after a while becomes, you know, old. So we can then wait. So I mean, I'd say neos. Yes. Yes. Still got her. Let me see what's written on the chat box.

1:10:22Okay. Is it better for a child to learn to draw before they learn to paint to to print something like the alphabet? Also, does their development of learning to print letters follow the same stages? Well, letters first of all, they can begin to pay before they know letters and know anything about, reading the text, most children can begin painting scribbles. Right? I mean, it's two easily or earlier. And then by age three, then most of them are into, schematic objects. We recognize, no. That's that's you, dad, or whatever. They're drawing somebody usually by then. And so it starts earlier. And so I don't think they come at the same time. And for that reason, that they would it would be normal for them to learn to make images before they make, letters.

1:11:23And, of course, to make a letter, you've already got to get back past basic excuse, over the basic scribble stage, the letters. We've got to get at least into the geometric stage to be able to make the letter. And so that's why I think it's probably better to have them learn, to draw off first and then finish this first and then it'll set them up to be able to make, print letters. And then you can do it with side by side. You saw one of them. It was a picture of some like a a girl with a long dress and the family above it. It said Emily. Emily was printed. So I think they could do both of them. Once they've gone past the geometric level, not other than that as to whether they should be separated or how to treat them differently or not.

1:12:13I don't know. To me, I think there are stages in the appreciation of art as opposed to producing. Yes. But I don't know what they are. I would I would people who've had a lot of experience of allowing developing it as an aesthetic appreciation of anything. It's clearly that people grow in their appreciation, so there must be, in a sense, certain stages of growth with focus and so on. But what they might be, how to approach that, I I think people who have experienced trying to teach the appreciation of art know much more about that than I do. Okay. Mhmm. Nice dissertation. Any materials you recommend for a non specialist adult to start appreciating art, and especially the most recent well, you wanna appreciate art.

1:13:38I told you, you have to find the person who's been teaching people how to appreciate art. And, one of the ways is to talk about one is typical of different art movements. But then I gave a very large scale representation of art movements. I didn't go into minimal art and the humanist art and all sorts of, you know, the full, and all of the different local names and the different forms of of monitors as it develop. That might be helpful for teaching people how to appreciate art, but I'm not so sure. I just don't know enough about how to teach people to appreciate art and to give you good advice on where to go to find out how to do it. Except find somebody who's done it and see what they said.

1:14:31Four, can an individual's emotional mood cause them to regress in their artwork? Also, is it possible that individuals are using art to indicate the memory? Oh, yes. And, yes, emotional, the an emotional mood can be part of your regression. Sometimes people regress under regression or even possibly under anxiety. It might help you to if you wanted to regress as long as you can come back. You don't wanna be regressing just and not being able to come back. You don't wanna regress and not come back with the. It can affect you. I think that's whether you are able to regress. People get depressed. They're used to thinking about something in advance. Worrying about how it might affect the. See, what is that?

1:15:29Maybe you can paint it. I'll give you some funny examples. There's something in psychology called the screen memory. It was in it was first described in putting the psychological literature by Sigmund Freud. This a screen memory is an early memory that screens or covers the trauma. So it isn't the trauma itself that we use, right, it's something that covers the trauma. Okay? In the class, when I described this, I've asked the class, do each member of the class, do you have an early memory? Not the earliest necessarily, but an early memory that somehow or other has kept reoccurring. You had it this time. You know, you may have it over and over again or something. If you have it, it's a memory.

1:16:30It's not a dream. And it's not necessarily the first memory, but it will be an early memory. Write it down on a piece of paper, and I collect birth. And you talk about what the the screen memory is. One out of three this is a portion of the scoring on the telephone. One out of three of the screen is is a screen covering an attachment anxiety situation. The actual screen when I ask them what what what what I'm on the beach, and I lost where my parents were. Suddenly, there were strings around me, and they picked me up, and they found my parents. Or, there were two students in a class who were both artists. I asked them what was their screen if they had a screen memory. One of them came up afterwards.

1:17:22He he he said, yeah. He said, what are you doing? And I'm like, painting fishes. Lots of colorful fishes, but depending on what's your earliest dream memory? And he said, well, my earliest memories, I'm in the back of the car with my mother. My mother and father are arguing with each other and having a fight. And one short time later that my father left and my my dad's got a divorce. Alright. You see the attachment anxiety situation. Right? And I said, what does that have to do with fish? He said, I don't know. I don't know why. We had just left the Boston of where where the argument had occurred. We started. Another one. Well, I'm talking about how maybe that's the question. I want the memory.

1:18:23There's another screen memory. The the student, who's also an American student, drew a picture, a square, and then around it another square with lines in there. And he says that with a baby in the middle of it. And he says that baby's me. My earliest memories being in a crib with, you know, the the lines of the crib all around me and me looking out. And I remember looking out and seeing my father read me and going to work. So we had a nice example of a separate, you know, an attachment problem. It's not a meeting. And he said, yes. Later, my father left us altogether. Later. And I said, alright. But what what kind of what part are you doing? He said, I'm a photographer. Oh, oh, I go, what are you doing?

1:19:25I'm taking pictures of New York City. And I said, and I'm taking all of the pictures to a grid. Just like the world looked at that kid, it was in the book into the the bars of that child contraption in his unit. You saw that from the drawing that he made the drawing of the lines. We were representing the vertical lines of the of the. We're not. We're not. We're not. I've come across other examples of this, but these are examples where two artists' early memories were both related to the attachment of the drama and yet were screening them. And yet now been so fascinated them that they felt they had to draw a paint on it or draw a photograph or draw it. Does that answer your question? I can give you another example of a famous woman sculpture who did the same who had the same manner that her early childhood memory, attachment, fear, attachment loss.

1:20:46Now her sculpture, which made her famous, it was a recreation of her earliest attachment to her asperienced. Next. Were Matisse and Picasso reflecting and expressing some regression of western civilization? And such regression, we picked up on a subconscious level by artists who cannot fully understand what we are present. That is is it not only personal, but also a wider level of understanding? I don't know. It would be very interesting if you could point out at the core of Western tradition at that time in France and, other artists here even in The US up to, like, in about 1915 or '17. And there was a there was something aggressive going on in the in the world that they were picking up on.

1:21:47I don't know. It would be a fascinating concept to, identify, but I don't know. Have you anything to say about Lascaux and other prehistoric, sites? Many modern researchers are saying that these drawings and caves are in a way coded. The way in which they're coded, I don't know enough about the answer. I do know they're they're trying to do this. But I also know that the cave drawings, the first drawings that were there were not those nice animals that were so exciting and and attractive. Those were the last ones. The first ones was basic scribbles. And then straight lines or, you know, patterns of these Clearly not made by animals. Animals do not naturally the matrix are by, you don't naturally paint.

1:22:47When they do occasionally be given a flat surface, they will do a few scribbles. And that's all you can do when you move something that's not really interesting. But other than that, I don't know whether there's a sequence of development of the kind that you see in children's drawings that you've been finding. You could historically date the distance of the particular examples in the curves. There is some evidence that the development of art in the Greco Roman tradition began with simple scribbles and then basic geometric designs. He finally turned into schematic objects and finally turned into realism. The latest stages of Greek and Roman art were heavily realistic. Then there was a cultural collapse in the next best part of the art.

1:23:35It was back to the schematics. Anyway, these are interesting possibilities. I read them for you to have fun with or think about, you know, or tosses. They should go. You don't waste any of this. The aesthetics of Gilson, Marathon, and Hildebrand are quite different. Whose view do you most subscribe to? I don't know. I know there are aesthetics, but I'm not I'm talking about something psychological in the construction of an image. I'm not judging whether something is good or aesthetic or not. I do think that as long as I'm dealing with the work has to deal with at least schematic objects, recognizable objects, you know, or realism, it'd be really, really interesting. But I don't think most of those theories dealt with that issue.

1:24:49Architecture is the queen of the arts, but many consider modern buildings ugly and regressive. Would you provide a comment on that? Yes. Well, look. A lot of the worst of modernism in art, you you couldn't get down to art. You had to have something physical. You couldn't be an architect. You'd be in conceptual art. A conceptual architecture would be nonphysical. You couldn't make it just a simple plane, but you could come close to it. So with modern art, a lot of it is close to either, geometric patterns. You can see a lot of Baudrillon and modern art. And you can see a lot of the very plain, well, you know, minimal art. Shows a lot of, you know, kind of modern art that now we call motel modern.

1:25:55That kind of modern art is not very attractive as art. It has lost all decorative characteristics. It has lost a lot of the functionality. And for example, if we we made every room equal to every other room, that's one of their place books. We didn't design in their architecture. A kitchen is distinct from the drawing room. It's distinct from, you know, our library is distinct from the bedroom. They came down with just one they came down with minimal notion of what a room should be. So there were similarities between minimalism and, in modern art, and ugliness and regression in the, modernist tradition. So there are tradition. And I do I would say this. Architecture is also now going into a neorealistic movement.

1:26:47For about the last twenty years, those really ugly modern things, that anyway, they're all over Europe too. They're not being built anymore. And when you have a really good architect now, they're often. So I think we're seeing some something relatively similar in the world of architecture. Still the queen of the arts is also shaped up. Do I attribute any meaning to someone like Warhol or Salvador Dali who run the gamut of lesser art like world's Campbell Soupian, who really decide? I don't know how to compare them. I have trouble with, surrealist art like Salvador Dali. He's very three-dimensional, but he's not very realist. He makes unreal configurations with a lot of three dimensionality.

1:27:58See, with my lead. But I have trouble with surrealist art fixing behavior. I don't think it fits in my sequence. I think it has to be treated separately and how to treat it in any way that would relate to what I'm talking about. I don't know. Other than seeing any connection between, Salvador Dali and Andy Warhol, no. I don't see any. But I'm open to evidence if you have it. Question 10. Okay. Rothko also did a stations on the cross, a combination of spiritual things that very low on your scale. What do you think of that? You can have a very minimal cross. And you could have all stations of the cross slightly different Not much I mean, I meant the word shown. Rothko would not show a picture of Jesus.

1:29:04We're gonna use word. You can have a very minimal I'll give you an example. They could you can do that. I don't think it's the best way to do it. You know, I don't think it's communicates the essence of the stations as effective to do most people. But you could do it in a way that would be effective for certain kinds of people. There was an artist called Ad Reinhardt, and he did paintings that were black on black. But what I meant by black on black, it wasn't all black. It's one color. It would be a black square on top of a slightly less black pattern. But he also did some Christian paintings. He did a black cross, four black squares of one of the same color and formed the cross on a slightly different black pattern.

1:29:57So it was minimal. It was a minimal cost. That that's the kind of thing I had imagined Rothko doing or something like that. Otherwise, he might not even put a cross in his I don't know that word. Rothko did do some of his paintings or a Buddhist, church, Buddhist, Buddhist ceremony, you know, or environment. And they were very dark and and what you would call, you know, screen color screen paintings. Okay? Very dark. Not as black as the last ones you did before you you had suicide. They were more gray and so on. And those would be likely to suggest he meditate on Buddhist states. That would be okay. That makes sense. How we would do the stations in the cross for a Christian? I don't know. And he might have done the right hand right there.

1:30:54When there was the end of the cross in a minimal way, it would be possible for a person to meditate on in a way that would be truly Christian is spiritual. But it's interesting to be minimal. You know, only certain people could respond in an adequate way. And so We do have a final question from doctor Scruffoni for you. Number one here. Hi, doctor Scruffoni. We don't have a question from doctor Scott. We have three. One. We have art in the caves of France going back over twenty thousand years that seem to have achieved the realism we are rediscovering today. In fact, these sketches are considered evidence of the beginning of higher cognitive thought. Are we catching up to the past? I would say yes in a certain sense.

1:32:17I would argue that historically, there have been times when art has moved from the beginning of the culture that was just starting. We're working within that culture now, within that tradition, not outside of it, within it. And it has moved from simple stick figures or even geometrics or scribbles up to realism and stopped. And I would be happy to see somebody, as I mentioned earlier, who could date all the different images in those caves, in the different caves. So we could see possibly that what the caves had drawn on 20,000, you know, let's say 30,000 years ago, then 28,000 years ago, then 25,000 years ago, then 20,000 years ago. And see if there were in those cave drawings evidence of such a progression.

1:33:06And then in every cave that had any change in its images, if there was that same kind of progression, and maybe from stage one to stage two, maybe stage two to three, maybe just three to four. But the realism of the the caves in France is pretty good, but it is not as detailed in-depth as modern mayas are. You see the shading on the individual animals, but there's not, really a complete three d representation. We don't know why. Now now how was that related to the human cognition? I think the caves are the sign that the first look. I think human beings came into existence about forty thousand years ago. They came into existence when human consciousness first occurred. And what happened when the first when consciousness first occurred, they also had the ability back to when they began human language.

1:34:09Human language would not be picked up when it was first being developed. We had no ticket holders to do that. But the first sign of the human consciousness would be the human drawings. And the fact that we don't have drawings prior than, say, thirty thousand years ago, maybe I mean, there's some debate as to whether certain scribbles are drawn, you know, animals, you know. But let's say the earliest scribbles, the first the earliest human beings that we know that are drawings are maybe 30,000 years ago. I think that's when human consciousness first arose and when it's human language at the same time. That's when death arose. That's when death first occurred. Animals don't know there's death.

1:34:57We know it. What we mean by saying death first occurred was when you when when the knowledge of death first occurred. There's no reason to think, you know, young very young infants don't know there's death. Not a ton of language I think. So I think that's when the human consciousness began and when the first human beings began. They were the first ones. There might have been an Adam and an Eve. I I don't know. It probably was a small tribe. Probably in the guess is probably in North Africa. First, you had human consciousness and therefore and but then it spread quickly and very quickly among all the primates who were capable of it once it was could be taught or listened to or heard. But somebody had to think of it and had the experience of human consciousness without somebody telling them about it.

1:35:48Without somebody talking to them yet. Nobody was talking at all. And somebody had to first discover they could start talking, and people think they're better than I expected. It had to do with the interaction between two very bright primates. And somebody bang, hey. Time, death, past, future, all sorts of things subject into existence. The way you can find out what it was like, read the the story of Helen Keller coming to human consciousness. And I think that happened in time in some very smart magnetic. Let's say a pair. That's my guess. So over and over again, then we would get human we would get the revealing of those stages of development when we start at a low level up through through realism.

1:36:47Do you know artwork predates words? I'm arguing that artwork is the first expression that words have occurred. Human language has occurred. Human consciousness has occurred in your first expression, probably in words, and then very quickly afterwards, even in law. What can you say about the dynamics and statics in the painting you discussed? No. Thank you very much, Socrates. Great, Wes. This is the first time I've ever presented this material, so I'm not I'm sure it was done. I hope that the basic ideas on an image can be thought of as constructive to four stages. The zero level is that, my madness. You know, we can regress up and down it as a function of developing as children or developing as artists.

1:38:02We we develop up and we can go down in a regressive stage with the mental problems. We can sometimes recover from them and go back up. And and that the best kind of art is at least have realism or have conceptual art, schematic art, excuse me, schematic art where you can recognize shape, in an object such as the. And that the minimum that the minimal are geometry and, well, scribbles. You know, you can get some out of it at any point. You get there to the other, because you've lost realism and lost the the most important centers you believe in. The beauty of the universe is the most, in my jacket, we've also wonderfully expressed in babies in the beginning. And then some things would be natural.

1:38:56So he removes that. I do invite us to continue our conversation over refreshments with the waiters on the side of the room. This guy's a good lecture. Thank you.