Michael Yonan
Description: Michael Yonan, Alan Templeton Endowed Chair in the History of European Art and Professor at the University of California, Davis. His recent work focuses on the decorative Art of the Rococo period and material culture theory in the 18th century of which we cover in depth in the episode. Additionally, we talk broadly about art history, its methodologies and how students should go about analyzing a piece of art. Professor Yonan emphasizes the importance of increasing accessibility in art appreciation and how students can about finding a personal connections with art and the world around them. We hope you enjoy.
Websites: Michael Yonan
Publications:
Knowing the World through Rococo Ornamental Prints
Toward a Fusion of Art History and Material Culture Studies
Resources:
Nicki Minaj as Madame de Pompadour
Botstiber Institute Podcasts on Art
Courses:
Show Notes:
[0:00:01] Introduction and Background at Davis and Art Interest
[0:01:05] Discovering Art as an Immigrant Child
[0:03:59] Pursuing Art Against Parental Expectations
[0:05:19] The Role of Art History in Producing Art
[0:08:10] Analyzing Art by Medium and Techniques
[0:09:56] Art as an Artifact of History
[0:13:39] Challenges of Ambiguity in Art Interpretation
[0:16:21] The Publication Challenges of Embracing Possibilities in Art History
[0:17:58] The Influence of Art on Different Communities
[0:18:15] Exploring the World of Ornamental Art
[0:18:22] Appreciating heavily decorated art: the allure of rococo
[0:21:17] Exploring the ornamental beauty of rococo mirrors
[0:28:08] The Dynamic Relationship Between Art and Viewer
[0:30:44] Taking Agency in Art and Its Impact Beyond
[0:31:24] Art history's relevance beyond the museum
[0:34:03] Art history's popularity at UC Davis and its impact
0:38:10 Material culture and its connection to art history
[0:41:23] Globalization and its Impact on Art Diversity
[0:45:06] Value of Handcrafted Art vs. Artificial Intelligence
[0:46:46] The Philosophical Question of Art's Illusion
[0:49:20] The Future of Art and the Role of Social Media
[0:52:01] The Impact of Social Media on Engaging with Traditional Art
[0:55:08] Intimidation and Posturing in Art Interpretation
[0:55:24] Rejecting the Authority of Art Experts
[0:58:47] Henri Matisse: A Favorite 20th Century Artist
[1:01:57] Empowering Students to Appreciate Art on Their Own Terms
Unedited AI Generated Transcript
Introduction and Background at Davis and Art Interest
Brent:
[0:01] Welcome, Professor Michael Yonan. Thank you for coming on today.
Michael:
[0:04] My pleasure. I'm happy to be here.
Keller:
[0:06] We'd love to start off by hearing a little bit more about your story.
How did you get to Davis and what got you interested in art history?
Michael:
[0:12] Yeah, well, I'll start with the Davis part first.
I'm a relatively new arrival at the university.
I was hired in 2020 and the immediate reason for my hire was that a person named Alan Templeton funded the position that I have, which is an endowed chair in European art.
And so that's the immediate reason why I came here, there wasn't someone in this area, actually before he did that.
And then my story really goes back all the way to, you know, my childhood and being exposed to the arts in school, and in books, and through museums, I grew up in Chicago area andhad many childhood trips to the Art Institute of Chicago, which is a great American museum.
Discovering Art as an Immigrant Child
[1:05] And slowly kind of discovered that the arts existed through those routes.
I wanted to make the point that I don't come from a family that is particularly involved in the arts. I have a pretty, I'm the child of immigrants.
And my parents, my mother was was born in Greece, my father was born in Iraq, and I had a fairly typical American immigrant experience of you're gonna go to school and get a reallyhigh-paying job and become a doctor maybe, and sort of validate the family in all sorts of ways.
But I was too seduced by the arts to go that route. So I found my own way through life, and I really discovered art on my own.
Brent:
[1:45] Yeah, what were some of your favorite?
Museums besides that, or shows that you saw that stand out to you?
Michael:
[1:52] Wow. So, I remember going, it's relatively early in my museum going experience and seeing an exhibition devoted to the art of Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent, who was a majorTurkish Ottoman leader.
And the Art Institute of Chicago had a big show devoted to that person historically, and the art connected to him.
And I remember going and just being blown away by some of the things in the collection in the exhibition that were on display then.
And then when I got the chance to travel a little bit, I went to other museums as well and got the chance to go to Europe, for example.
And I remember my first trip to the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, where I later ended up doing some research just blew my mind.
I mean, such amazing things and beautiful things to look at, but also for me, they were interesting objects not just because they were pretty, but because they gave insight into this sort ofworld of the past and of other cultures that I otherwise didn't have a lot of opportunity to connect to.
So, yeah, I haven't thought about that exhibition in a while is a good question.
Brent:
[3:04] Do you have a favorite museum now?
Michael:
[3:06] So, I literally was just in Chicago last week to give a lecture and had the opportunity to go back to the Art Institute of Chicago for the first time in several years.
And that will, I think, always be my favorite museum just because, you know, I was literally one of the kids on the school bus being brought to the museum in second grade to look at thepictures.
I remember some of those paintings from my childhood. So, it's like, I've been looking at some of those works of art for a very long time.
And so, I think that will always be the default favorite museum.
It's a beautiful collection. So, yeah.
Brent:
[3:45] My sister lives out there and we've been most times that I'm there.
Michael:
[3:48] Pretty stunning.
Brent:
[3:49] Yeah. Yeah. Definitely.
Michael:
[3:50] Yeah.
Keller:
[3:51] Did you face any pushback for deciding to carve your own path and pursue the arts?
Pursuing Art Against Parental Expectations
Michael:
[3:59] Absolutely did. You know, it's, it's, it was a difficult thing for me to tell my parents that I wanted to do this with my life and career, because they had sort of a different idea of whatmy life would be like.
Would be like. My father came around pretty quickly when he realized that I actually could do this and was interested in doing this. My mother took a little longer.
But I think when I realized that there was a way to sort of create a career where I could think about art professionally, that possibility was so appealing to me as a life choice that I waswilling to take the risk really of maybe having things turn out badly in order to just have the possibility to do that with my life.
And I've never regretted it, although it has not always been the easiest path to choose.
Brent:
[4:54] That makes sense.
Michael:
[4:54] Yeah. Yeah.
Brent:
[4:56] I'm going to pull your mic up a bit.
Michael:
[4:58] Oh, sure.
Yeah, tell me I just okay. All right, great Perfect.
Yeah, that's fine.
The Role of Art History in Producing Art
Brent:
[5:19] Okay And then given that your job is all about thinking about art Is there ever any requirements to produce the art yourself or a similar thing?
Michael:
[5:28] So that's an interesting question question. Depending on the university program, there are some programs that ask art history students to also take some courses in studio art.
And so, students have that sort of hands-on opportunity to make art themselves and learn a little bit about what that feels like and what's involved.
I never had that experience. So, I come at this really much more from the history side of art history, where I was never asked to take an art course.
And once I got to college, it was never something that was put in front of me that I had to do.
I took a lot of history. And so, I came more to art through the history side of things.
And that means that the techniques of art making are things I've had to teach myself more on my own later in my life to fill in a little bit some of that experience that I had, that I didn'thave and get a sense of what it's like to actually make things.
Brent:
[6:29] Yeah. It's very interesting.
Keller:
[6:31] And what do you think everyone can learn from studying art?
Michael:
[6:35] Well, so I thought about this question a lot because, you know, art historians are very good at justifying our existence.
Typical university situation is not entirely sure why we're here.
Like they kind of have maybe some loose idea of what an art historian should be doing at a university.
I think of this in terms of, you know, like what I say to my students in the survey class that I offer here, which is that art is an opportunity to, first of all, learn about the past because a lotof the art we study is from previous moments in world history.
It's an opportunity to engage with other cultures because you are looking at works of art that are from other parts of the globe or from societies that are very different from Americansociety.
But it's also an opportunity to learn about yourself because how you respond to a work of art is usually very telling with regard to kind of what you believe about the world and how youview the world.
And there's a self-reflection quality to engaging with art that I think can be really revealing to people. Like, why do I like this and not like that?
Why does this seem really interesting to me, but this other thing over here does not.
I think those are opportunities for people to kind of reflect a little bit on their priorities and their view of the world.
So, art history kind of enables all of those things to happen.
Brent:
[7:58] And then when you study the art history and all of the different forms and mediums, how do you go about analyzing them and does it change by medium?
Analyzing Art by Medium and Techniques
Michael:
[8:10] It absolutely does. So, one of the things that attracted me to art history was that unlike some academic disciplines that have a fairly like prescribed set of techniques that you use to toengage in the scholarship.
Art history is kind of very all over the place. It's very flexible.
And so you can kind of bring a lot of different perspectives to a work of art, and you can approach it from a lot of different directions.
And that to me was always very exciting, because it meant that you were sort of figuring that out in the process of analyzing whatever work of art you're trying to study.
For me, you always have to go back to the object itself.
To me, that's the sort of the most important part of this is to make sure that you are not just talking about the history and not just talking about the artist, but you're somehow talkingactually about the object very closely.
And the object needs to remain sort of at the center of what we're doing.
So we've developed, art history has developed techniques for helping people analyze things visually and also structures of interpretation so that you can say, well, here's what I think isgoing on here and then now I can put that into this framework and see where that takes me.
[9:32] It helps also in art history to be a good writer because a lot of what we do is about argumentation and so, the more you can make the case that the way you look at a work of art isconvincing, the easier it will be for people to sort of follow what you're doing.
Brent:
[9:48] Definitely.
Michael:
[9:48] Yeah.
Keller:
[9:49] What are some of those arguments within research? What are you typically writing about?
Art as an Artifact of History
Michael:
[9:56] Yeah, so that's a great question because I think every art historian is going to answer this very differently.
So for me, I'm trying to ask what this object tells us about history.
And so, I really think of it in terms of almost like this is an artifact of a different era.
So I'm trying to take this object and use whatever we have that we can see in the object or we can determine is part of it, to squeeze out some sort of understanding of history that wouldotherwise not be available to us.
And so for me, that dimension is what I'm trying to, when I ask questions of a work of art, it's typically in order to, like, what is this thing telling us about the past?
And I believe also that works of art tell us things that are very different from what you will find written in a novel or written down in the record of a historical event, some document, thatartworks are often keys into the way people thought about the past that maybe no one thought to articulate because it was too obvious at the time and yet somehow it needs to be clarifiedand a work of art is a way to do that.
Brent:
[11:13] And then when you're saying objects, are you talking about furniture or paintings or sculptures or.
Michael:
[11:20] Yeah. So one of the interesting things about art history is that, so when people think of art, they often think of paintings or like two-dimensional images that are hanging on a wall.
But actually art history is a lot bigger than that. And so my area of specialization in my research is often in decorative arts, which are things like furniture.
I've worked a lot on ceramics, you know, sculpture, things like that.
And then a lot of art historians actually work on architecture.
So, there's a lot. Yeah. So, like architectural history is really very closely connected to art history. And so, it can quickly get bigger than just, you know, famous paintings in a museum.
It can become more about like the world that people are actually living in and the the sorts of things that they encounter on a daily basis in their environments.
So, yeah, so I always try to make like a really strong case for art history being as big and as broad a subject as possible, you know.
Brent:
[12:20] And then, do you ever look at...
Objects that weren't created as art, but are still reflective of the time period?
Michael:
[12:28] So, yes. And I am a really big believer that we should be doing more of that because, you know, a famous painting by a well-known artist is really, in some ways, a fairly limitedthing.
Like it would have been seen by a certain number of people and have a connection to a, you know, a sector of society probably, but not a huge sector at all.
Whereas something like a table or a print or some other kind of work of art that maybe had more currency got around a little more, might give insight into broader segments of society andmight have been relevant to more people.
So I love art museums, but I also love history museums because somehow that kind of object actually ends up a lot of times in history museums and you'll sort of see like the spoons thatpeople were using in 1750 and you'll be like, wow, that's really, that's weird.
That doesn't look like our spoon, right? It looks like a different kind of spoon.
And it gives some some sort of insight into how those people lived.
Brent:
[13:34] That makes a lot of sense.
Keller:
[13:36] Yeah. That increased insight come with another set of difficulties.
Challenges of Ambiguity in Art Interpretation
[13:39] Cause I would imagine if you're studying a painting from one artist, you have a degree of background of where they were coming from.
Whereas for a vastly produced table, like you lose a lot of that.
Michael:
[13:50] Yeah, no, it's, it's a, it's totally true, which, you know, one of the reasons people work on famous artists is because we know a lot about them.
Brent:
[13:58] Right.
Michael:
[13:59] So a Van Gogh painting, we have a lot of information we can bring to a Van Gogh painting to help us understand what we're looking at.
If you find an old spoon like I used before, I mean, you don't maybe don't know who made it, maybe you can figure out who made it, you know, Bobby, where did it come from?
So you don't have sometimes the names associated with that kind of study.
And yet that to me is actually sort of appealing because it suggests that it's coming from maybe some sort of, I don't like it's coming from a place of being more common and that that hasthe potential to reveal some parts of the past that I think we need to sort of think about a little more, you know?
Brent:
[14:41] PW And then when you talk about uncovering parts of the past, I feel like in art, there's often a lot of ambiguity.
Have you developed a mental model of how you like to work through some of that? CB Yeah.
Michael:
[14:53] So, I am really interested in ambiguity.
So, it's great that you brought that up. That term is very, interesting to me art historians were trained. And yet, I don't know if we really look at the world that way. Like, I don't think wedo. I think there are layers of meaning to everything.
And ambiguity is how we often experience the world.
Like we kind of understand what we're going through, but then sometimes we don't and we maybe half understand it. You know, there's that level of never quite being able to pin downexactly what some things we encounter mean.
And I've been attracted to art that I think allows us to think about that a little bit and to sort of talk a little bit about the possibilities of understanding the world rather than just confirming,well, okay, the dog means fidelity and the light refers to God or something like that.
That to me is a more, I don't know, that's not really how we live.
That's not how we experience the world.
Brent:
[16:17] And then in the research process, is it harder to be published if you're talking
[16:21] about possibilities versus kind of more in a certain tone?
Michael:
[16:25] That's probably true. Yeah, that's probably true. I think because I was interested in those sorts of questions, I would say the beginning of my career got off to a start.
I mean, it got off to a fine start, but like I was definitely, you know, sometimes working against what people expected when I tried to publish my ideas because they're like, well, youhaven't confirmed that this is what you're trying to, you know, say it is.
And I often thought, well, I don't really want to confirm that, right? Like I want to open up that possibility historically through the object, but don't necessarily want to close down what wethink this work of art can mean.
Because actually, you know, I think about this also in terms of teaching, you know, I sort of present what I think these works of art are about to our students, but I also try to give thestudents a space where they can kind of imagine the work of art becoming something that they want it to mean.
And then we kind of find the ways to sort of create those spaces while also recognizing that the work of can't just mean anything, right?
There's a certain set of historical conditions that it comes from.
You know, for a student who is unfamiliar with art, that's often a very liberating feeling. Like they'll think, oh, I can sort of bring my own imagination a little bit to this. And I'm like, yeah,absolutely you can. Good for you actually, if that's what you want to do.
Brent:
[17:52] That's a great, great story.
Keller:
[17:54] Is that ambiguity accepted?
The Influence of Art on Different Communities
Michael:
[17:58] I think it's, it depends probably a little bit on the community and it depends on the kind of art, right? I mean, there's certain kinds of art that are more about that than others.
And so, it probably depends on who you're trying to convince.
Keller:
[18:15] CB And then going into some of your work more directly, can you talk to us about ornamental art?
Michael:
[18:22] DRH So, I love heavily decorated art, at least to study.
The art I study tends to be very, very heavily decorated.
So, I do a lot of work on rococo art, which is an 18th century European mode of decor.
And it is, to our eyes today, extremely heavily decorated. And most students, when they first see it, are usually like, ah, you know, it's – I don't want to even start to think about this.
But I'm attracted to that kind of art because I think it's beautiful.
I'm not sure I would like my living room to be decorated like that, but it's very beautiful to look at. And And then it's interesting to think about more than anything.
It's difficult for us today to understand a world that liked things to be decorated that much.
Brent:
[19:16] Could you maybe try to talk through a little bit? I will. Okay, perfect.
Michael:
[19:20] Yeah, I'd be happy to because we today look at the past from the other side of modernity, right?
And the modernism and the development of modern culture and then, of course, modern art as part of that.
And there's been a real push through modernism to think of everything in terms of efficiency and streamlining and kind of pairing everything around you down to the bare essentials andhaving everything be functional, right?
I often think of Ikea, like you go to Ikea, right? And I taught a course here at UC Davis on Ikea, which is a great sort of like, it's a design area that everyone is familiar with.
And Ikea really makes this point in their advertising that they're all about like, you know, making this simpler way of living with a streamlining of the furniture and everything is, youknow, serves a function and all of that.
And you go back into the past and they just, you know, the pre-modern world didn't think like that at all, right?
So decoration was actually really important and it was an essential part of how, how a work of art or a decorated space or a building functioned.
[20:34] And so, we have to sort of get out of this modern way of viewing ornament as this extra thing that doesn't need to be there and try to think more like how people thought in the pastwhere the ornament was actually this really important place in a work of art and try to recreate a little bit the mindset that people brought to that kind of design, because Because if wedon't, we're always going to misunderstand it, you know?
Yeah, and exactly why I'm attracted to ornamental art, I'm not sure I can tell you why, just something about it is very interesting to me. And I don't know, it's maybe because it's sodifferent from how we think of aesthetics today.
Maybe that difference is appealing to me.
Exploring the ornamental beauty of rococo mirrors
Brent:
[21:17] Yeah. Could you maybe describe what the ornament would be? Say, take a mirror.
We're very used to a mirror being 95% mirror and like a thin little border.
You bet. What would a rococo mirror look like?
Michael:
[21:33] Sure. So, yeah, because if you imagine a mirror that you could – well, an IKEA mirror, right?
You go and the mirror is really what you're paying for.
And there will be usually a little simple frame around that mirror that is like a piece of wood or plastic or something, and it's usually pretty small.
Like a Rokoko mirror, you would have the mirror, but then there would be this elaborate sort of...
The frame would be made of these elaborate curves and shapes.
And those curves are these kind of fragmented forms that kind of blend into each other in various ways.
Some of those curves are gonna look a little bit like leaves, some of them are gonna look a little bit like water, some of them might look just like sort of abstracted shapes, but they all kindof are like morphing in and out of each other in unusual ways.
And they will be a big part of how that mirror works because they're actually a prominent part of the mirror's construction.
And they're acting to kind of decorate what you see in the mirror, which is you, your reflection, but they're also connecting to you in various ways through what they represent and kind ofengaging your mind in a way that a simple flat Ikea mirror is not going to do.
[22:56] And so, part of what attracts me to Rokoko actually is that the forms are based in these kind of natural forms like...
Rocks and leaves and things like that.
Brent:
[23:05] Yeah. Oh, okay.
Keller:
[23:07] Yeah. And could you talk about, I guess, briefly on the timeframe that Rokoko took place and kind of the conditions that led up to its creation?
Michael:
[23:14] Yeah, sure. I should have said something about this before. So, it's 18th century European.
It comes into existence in the years after Louis XIV of France, the famous Sun King of France, the guy who built Versailles into what it is today.
And he dies at a certain point, 1715 in the early 18th century.
And at his death, there's this kind of loosening of sort of design ideas in France during that time.
And to be very simplistic here, in that process of loosening the state's hold on what happened to the arts, the Rococo kind of comes out of that.
It's based in garden design, actually. It's based in like, you know, the sorts of things that people would have had in like rock formations in their gardens or fountains, things like that.
And Rokoko is kind of an elaboration of that language being used in other areas as well.
So, it sort of starts circa 1720 and it goes on depending on where you're looking at until 1780, something like that. Yeah.
Keller:
[24:22] And was a lot of the art mainly held by the aristocracy or was it something that the middle class and lower classes also experienced?
Michael:
[24:30] Oh, it's such a great question because the way it's taught sort of leads people to think that it is just exclusively an elite mode of decoration, but actually it wasn't.
And something I've been trying to really push in some of my work is this idea that actually lots of people engage with rococo design.
We just don't talk about them as much in art history because we talk a lot about kings and princes and famous people and we do all of that. And sometimes we're not talking about theseother people in the world.
So you can go to any like little regional museum in Germany or Austria and see all of this rococo furniture that would have been used by sort of middle-class people.
And it's not, you know, the highest quality perhaps, maybe it's made of local wood, maybe it's painted sometimes a little bit crudely, but it's still using that formal language of rococo. Andwe rarely ever talk about those things at all.
So part of my mission is to say the rococo is more egalitarian than we let our students believe about it, that it's not just an elite mode of decoration.
Brent:
[25:40] Yeah, and then was it primarily in Eastern Europe or also throughout Western Europe?
Michael:
[25:45] So it sort of has its origins in France with.
Italy as a kind of influencer, you might say. And then it kind of spreads around Europe from there.
And it's particularly prominent in Germany. And that's the part of Europe that I'm sort of most focused on is sort of Central Europe and Northern Europe also.
Germany has a real love of the rococo. And so, they kind of adopt it from the French and they kind of explode it into this ever bigger and more elaborate thing.
And it ends up becoming like the major style of German art in the 18th century.
But you see it all over. It's in Russia, it's in Portugal.
There are international outside of Europe manifestations of the Rokoko.
It can be found in North America, can be found in East Asia.
So, it's around. Yeah.
Keller:
[26:41] And just out of curiosity, is there a distinct end point or transition point to the next like kind of movement?
Michael:
[26:48] Yeah. So, art history has traditionally said, well, the rococo sort of runs its course and then it's followed by neoclassicism, which is this return to the ideals of classical Greek andRoman design, but actually the rococo never really goes away.
And that's actually, it's a funny thing because it supposedly ends, but then you keep finding revivals of it.
And it's still sort of as revived even today, right? Like, there are these kind of weird moments where suddenly things are kind of rococo.
And when I teach my rococo class here at UC Davis, we end with this discussion of revivals and references.
And I'm always surprised at how I can find, you know, relatively recent pop figures, like figures often who are kind of evoking that world of 18th century Europe in a photo shoot, forexample.
Brent:
[27:41] Oh, okay.
Michael:
[27:41] Right? Something like that.
Brent:
[27:43] Does one come to mind?
Michael:
[27:44] Oh, you know, I'm terrible at pop culture. Who was it? Who was it?
Oh, I'm so embarrassed I can't do this off the top of my head because I showed the picture of her in my class and yet I'm so out of it that I cannot remember.
Brent:
[27:59] Yeah, if it comes up later we can put it on the website.
Michael:
[28:01] All right, sounds good because of course the minute we're done I'll be like, yes, it was her. Yeah.
The Dynamic Relationship Between Art and Viewer
Brent:
[28:08] So, when we were reviewing, we saw one of your pieces talking about how the Rokoko is not only a reflection of the time period, but also the viewer.
How do you talk about or think about that dynamic relationship?
Michael:
[28:25] I'm very interested in that question because art history was taught to me very much as being about the artist communicating through the work of art to a relatively passive audience.
That was sort of the narrative that was sold to me when I was sort of first studying it.
And the more I've studied it, the more I realized that the viewer is actually engaging with the work of art and creating the meanings of that work of art very much in conjunction with whatthe artist has done.
And part of what I think attracted me to rococo decoration is because it's very overtly trying to do that.
It's sort of doing that in a very sort of direct – like it's really trying hard to engage the viewer and let the viewer feel like they can kind of start to understand what they're looking at.
But it's not just rococo, it's really every work of art is.
[29:24] It's a moment where a maker and the society that that maker represents and a viewer are kind of coming together, it's like an interface.
And so, the viewer actually has a lot of power in front of a work of art to sort of decide what it's going to be about and to create some of the meanings of the work of art.
And I try really hard to get students particularly to think about that because usually they're not kind of comfortable with that idea.
They're like, well, I just want to know what the artist intended.
And it's like, well, you know, like you can intend something too, right? Like you have, have actually a lot of agency here in, in deciding what this work of art is going to mean to youtoday.
And it doesn't matter if that's not what the artist intended necessarily, right? Like it's the artist created this so that you could have an experience in front of it. And if you're having anexperience, you're doing it right, right?
And so, it's not about you have to know what the artist specifically wanted.
It's more that you have to bring something from your experience to the work of art and let that kind of guide a little bit your process of looking at it.
So, yeah, I think that's a really important part of a work of art that maybe doesn't get talked about enough. Yeah.
Taking Agency in Art and Its Impact Beyond
Brent:
[30:44] And I know some of our artist friends have even said like, I don't care to explain this one to you. Yeah.
But from that standpoint, I just, it's meant to be what you want it.
I don't want to put my view on that.
Michael:
[30:55] Exactly. I've had artists say things like, you know, if I could explain this to you, I wouldn't have had to make the work of art.
Yeah. Right? Like if it were possible to say two sentences that describe what I mean here, I wouldn't have to make a sculpture.
Brent:
[31:11] Yeah.
Keller:
[31:12] Do you think that perspective of taking agency with your relationship with the art has benefits beyond art?
Maybe just broadly to our relationship with materials.
Art history's relevance beyond the museum
Michael:
[31:24] Totally. And so, something that art history has done for me has made me much more aware of the material world that I live in than I think I would have been had I not studied this.
So, just being extremely aware of how the design and appearance and decoration of everything around us is engaging us in all sorts of ways.
And so, I think that that's one of the ways that art history can actually be relevant outside of the museum, right? Of course, we're interested in what's in the museum too.
But you don't have to know anything about famous European paintings.
Everyone lives in an environment with designed things around you all the time.
And those designed things are engaging with you visually and materially all the time.
And art history really consensitized people to that, right?
You become aware that, you know, why does, you know, I always use my water bottle as an example.
Why does this water bottle look the way it is? Why is it colored the way it is?
Why does it have, I mean, function explains some of that, but some of it is also aesthetics and, you know, sort of marketing this object to a certain kind of person and creating a context forthem to understand why this object is appealing.
Those are all actually art history problems.
Even though they may not seem like it, they are actually art history problems. It's very interesting.
Brent:
[32:53] Yeah. And I think nowadays it's becoming a little bit more mainstream, especially in some of the scientific sense of these colors will, like a room of that color will have this impact.
Although it's probably slight, there is some of that becoming a little bit more talked about and people are starting to see like, wow, if I wake up and like view some sunlight, I will be alittle bit more awake throughout the day or- Or you paint your room this color and that'll help your mood stay in, you know, calm.
Michael:
[33:26] Whereas if you paint it this other color, it's going to maybe have the opposite effect. You'll occasionally read about like how they want to paint jails, certain colors.
Yeah, like they want to- Like calm them? like, yeah, I'm trying to think, is it like, is it like yellow? That's a good color for jail cells because it's supposed to keep people calm. I have tolook at this.
Brent:
[33:47] I don't remember.
Michael:
[33:47] Yeah. I mean, and, but those are questions that artists were thinking about as well.
You know, they were, they were imagining often how the aesthetic effect of what they were creating would create certain kinds of responses in people.
Art history's popularity at UC Davis and its impact
[34:03] And that's absolutely an art historical kind of problem.
Keller:
[34:07] Do you have any thoughts about how Davis is structured as a school in relation to that?
Michael:
[34:12] Yeah, actually, so I'm a little bit of a Pollyanna about this.
So Because I think Davis does a lot of things right in this regard.
So, you know, there's the arts Consortium the sort of departments here that are all involved in the arts and we're all pretty closely connected to each other Which is a good thing.
[34:33] Davis has a really strong Studio art program.
It's very well known and that studio art program is sort of operating at a high level Which is a good thing and then we have the opportunity to teach classes that people in other areas of theuniversity Take and so we actually are regularly teaching students from veterinary sciences and the ag departments and all of that And I'm surprised at how often those students actuallywant art history Yeah, you'd be surprised like we have a very interesting problem here at UC Davis, which is that our art history classes are very in demand, which is not maybe what youwould have expected me to say, but like our classes are routinely full to the brim because so many people want to take our classes.
And I just think that there's something here where students who are in maybe more hard sciences or practical sorts of subjects somehow still recognize that the arts are relevant to whatthey're doing.
And so we, we, I hope can continue to kind of build off of that positive energy that we have with those other areas and, you know, find ways to make what we're doing interesting to themso that they have that chance, you know, have that chance. Yeah.
Brent:
[35:49] No, I couldn't get into one of the classes before too. I've experienced that myself.
Michael:
[35:54] Yeah. It's interesting. Like our classes are very, I mean, they, they routinely all fill every quarter.
Brent:
[36:00] Yeah. Who would've known? How do you?
How do you interact with like the architecture on campus? How does it make you feel?
Michael:
[36:08] Oh, it's an interesting question. Yeah. So, the architecture on campus, you know, it's – so, I'm not from California.
So, that's maybe the first thing I should say here. So, you know, coming from the Midwest, I'm used to a certain kind of red brick, pseudo-Gothic kind of, you know, university aesthetic.
So, the architecture here seems very functional to me. And it seems very modern compared to universities that I'm familiar with from earlier moments in my life.
I think it's a pretty campus. It's been said to me that it lacks a really clear focal point, right?
And that's not me being critical. That's – other people have noted that to me.
You know, whereas other universities have like a thing that is sort of like – like Berkeley has that bell tower, right?
And things like that. The closest we seem to have to that are the water towers, right?
Which are kind of great, but they're not really right in the middle of campus. And so, yeah.
So, I don't know if the university were thinking about something to do, they could think about some sort of focal point, you know? I've heard that when the media people on campus arelooking for things to photograph, that's actually a real problem here.
Because there's only so many times you can show the UC Davis water tower before, Or, you know, people have seen it.
Brent:
[37:30] No, I definitely think that South Campus of like Robert Mundavi Center, that whole area is a lot better. The new TLC is pretty nice, but I've always felt that it's prettydiscombobulated.
There's not a clear theme or style. Yeah. And like the functional pieces seem to be like a lot from like the 70s and that whole just bland era. Yeah.
Michael:
[37:53] And like, where's the heart of campus?
Brent:
[37:54] Yeah.
Michael:
[37:55] Like, I don't know if it's really articulated architecturally, right?
That said, it's a pretty nice campus, it's actually really beautiful and I don't know, it works, right? Like it. Yeah.
Keller:
[38:08] Yeah.
Material culture and its connection to art history
[38:10] And stepping back out a little bit is what we just talked about, does that fully encompass the material culture theory or are there more pieces to it that plan to how we should look atit?
Michael:
[38:20] Yeah. So, I became really interested in this idea of material culture because I wanted precisely what you were asking about a minute ago where you asked about, you know, can weconnect art history to things that are outside of the realm of art?
I became really interested in that question. I wanted to find ways to do that.
And material culture, the project of material culture in university settings seemed to me to be a really interesting place to do that. And it doesn't really come from art history. It comes morefrom anthropology.
It's anthropology that sort of kind of coined that term and was using that term relatively early to talk about what they're interested in.
And I was able to sort of reach out to anthropology and kind of borrow a bunch of ideas from anthropology and try to make the case that art historians should maybe sometimes think alittle bit more like anthropologists.
[39:15] By which I mean thinking not just in terms of how things look, how works of art look, or how tables look, or how water bottles look, but also thinking a little bit about what they'remade of and how we understand that material dimension to them as being part of our experience of the world and how much that changes historically and how much that affects people'ssensory understanding of what's going on around them.
We live in the era of plastic. I mean, we are constantly surrounded by plastic and you have imagine a world in which no one had any, I mean, it didn't, you know, no one knew what plasticwas, right?
[40:00] And to imagine that world is a little hard for us today because everything we have is, you know, coated with plastic, right?
Or is plastic right now.
So that material culture project out of anthropology, that was actually really influential in helping me kind of develop my own thinking for art history.
Brent:
[40:18] And when you're talking about everything being covered by plastic.
Like that seems to be pretty unanimous across a lot of the modern world.
Michael:
[40:27] Yeah.
Brent:
[40:27] Does, the current society being so integrated across cultures, cause any problems when you're looking at art and understanding where does this come from?
What's truly influencing this piece?
Michael:
[40:40] Oh, yeah. Sure. Sure. So, first of all, let me comment on the sort of global plastic, right?
So, this is a really big issue because of course we talk about the environment and what that has, the effect that that has on the environment and on our bodies because we all have plastic inour bodies at this point.
But, you know, the fact that plastic is maybe a hundred years old, something like that, like the Bakelite being one of the first, and that it is something that is part of human experienceacross the globe.
It's actually something that links people all over the planet, is that they have a connection to plastic objects. It's one of the few things that we could say actually connects us to people inevery imaginable culture.
Globalization and its Impact on Art Diversity
[41:23] But if I understand your question, you're asking about sort of globalization and how that affects the arts.
It's a big issue because I think globalization has had the effect of making art from around the world actually more like itself.
So rather than thinking about kind of local contexts for art making, increasingly art is really kind of a global phenomenon.
So, the art being made in one country is sort of about what's going on in that country, but it's actually also about kind of the broader global conversation that's occurring.
And you could probably say that that's had a bit of a flattening effect on diversity in the arts. So, I suspect that.
Brent:
[42:08] So, do you think we're homogenizing culture?
Michael:
[42:12] That's a very firm way of asking that question.
And I think, you know, if I can maybe go out on a limb a little bit, yes, I would say that. You know, I'm old enough to remember a pre-internet world.
And the first time I went to do research in Austria as a graduate student, the internet had just sort of started to be a thing. Like we had email and we were really excited by email.
And I remember going to Vienna and it just felt so different from the United States.
Felt like a completely different social setting and social structure and people looked different and they dressed differently and the music was different and everything was just constantlyconfronted with difference.
And now you go, you know, to the remotest place and people kind of look like they do here and they're listening to some of the same music and they have the same technology in theirhands that you have.
And I don't know, there is a way in which it's all become a little bit more similar and homogeneous.
So, maybe I'm ducking that by actually answering and saying, yes, I agree that that's what's happening.
Keller:
[43:19] And building off of that, where do you see the future of art going, especially in respect to medium use?
Michael:
[43:26] Yeah, it's an interesting question to ask right now after the unleashing of artificial intelligence onto the world, right?
And so, this is something that we're all sort of following very carefully.
So, the old media are never going to die. They just, you know, I mean, so I'll put it to you this way, when photography was first invented and popularized in the 19th century, there werepeople who said, oh, well, no one's going to make paintings anymore because we have this machine that will make a really accurate picture of how something looks. So why do we need tomake a painting?
And painting didn't go away. So I think that that's where we're going to be in the future. I think these old media are going to have a lot of people who still practice them, and there will stillbe people who want to make ceramic pottery, for example.
But I think that the value of those things is going to change and we're going to associate different ideas with them and we're going to sort of transform how we make images so that thetechnologies available to us will continue to be used, you know?
And so, we may in 15 or 20 years, I don't know, be just doing everything with artificial intelligence tools, but there will still be someone out there making a painting with, you know,acrylic and a brush.
There'll still be someone out there who probably is fetishizing that experience and saying, see, I'm doing it the way that they used to do it in the 20th century. Right.
Brent:
[44:50] I think that's a real though, because a lot of people find the value in building with their own hands, painting that painting.
And I think with the AI, you're starting, you're going to start to see more and more of like, Oh, cool photo. Yeah.
Value of Handcrafted Art vs. Artificial Intelligence
[45:07] Like I can hop on and tell it to do the same thing.
And yeah, I could tweak it a little bit and come up with something a little bit different, but I feel like that art form is so fleeting versus when you know someone took 40 days to sit downand meticulously paint this item or craft this sculpture.
Absolutely. There's a reverence for that.
Michael:
[45:26] I mean, we've all, whether you're interested in the arts or not, all had the experience of seeing something made by someone with that kind of care that you're describing.
And it's always a little awe-inspiring to think, wow, you know, that person carved that table out of whatever and made this thing with their own hands because there's a way in which wefind that to be, I mean, we sort of think of that as an impressive act to be able to do that.
Even something as simple as someone making a really complicated dinner, which is not simple, where you're like, wow, look, I can't believe you did this, right?
Yeah. But I also want to say artificial intelligence is interesting because it's like artificial has at its core the idea of art.
And so, it is something that is not real, right? So, art is the thing that's not real.
And in some ways, it's just the latest chapter in a long history of human beings trying to create things that are different from the way the natural world looks.
We're just using these elaborate complex technologies, which are – that's the world we live in, in order to get some of those things to happen.
Brent:
[46:41] Do you believe art isn't real?
The Philosophical Question of Art's Illusion
Michael:
[46:46] So, boy, that's a really – that's like a kind of philosophical question.
Is art real or is not? So, the thing of art, the material of art is the real part. The illusion of the work of art is is an illusion.
Wow, this is getting really theoretical here. Our listeners are gonna be like, oh, they lost me, right?
Because that's like a philosophical problem. It's like, do you believe the illusion of the work of art or do you appreciate it as an illusion? I don't know.
Brent:
[47:14] We can leave it there.
Michael:
[47:14] Yeah.
Keller:
[47:17] I have a question about art in respect to the amount of artists out there.
Because I was like within European art, there was a point in which guilds took place.
Michael:
[47:26] Yeah.
Keller:
[47:27] And then the amount of artists grew and became more of a career choice instead of a, oh, I'm an artist and I have a passion for art.
Yeah. As opposed to this is a direction I could take. And I think now we see that all over the place because you could be doing art for a marketing firm or you could be doing art forsomething that isn't intrinsically tied to art itself.
Michael:
[47:46] Yeah.
Keller:
[47:46] Could you just talk about, I guess, that dynamic?
Michael:
[47:50] Like the sort of professional versus non-professional.
Keller:
[47:52] Yeah, or whether that even exists.
Michael:
[47:54] Oh, it totally exists. You know, so when we talk about the history of art, we almost always are talking about a professional class of artists who are people who have made some sortof life commitment to making art and they sort of wear the hat of artist and want to be an artist.
And that's really only a small part of it.
Section of the people who are actually making art. There are many, many more people making art. So it can be people like you described who are sort of professional.
So we even have language that kind of separates them from artists.
We can call them illustrators, we can call them graphic designers, we can call them other sorts of things.
And then there's this huge category of people who are making art as amateurs.
And traditionally, art history hasn't really talked much about those people those people because they're not really the main, you know, main protagonists of our narrative, but there are lotsof people engaging with art that way, you know, and making things.
And every so often you'll find an artist who you think, I don't know why we're not talking about this person because the art's really great and really interesting.
And it's because they, you know, somehow they weren't really professional artists and didn't sort of create that persona around themselves.
So art is much bigger in other words, than just the famous, you know, Rembrandt, you know, Rembrandt, Van Gogh, the usual characters.
The Future of Art and the Role of Social Media
Brent:
[49:20] Yeah. And then if you had to extrapolate a hundred years from now, you're an art historian. Oh my God.
Looking back at our current time, how are you going to be interpreting who is that professional artist? Is it, you have to go back and find their social media and see how many followersthey had? Is it?
Michael:
[49:38] So yeah, I mean, I'm sure that's going to be part of it. What I would like would be a hundred years from now for people to look back at this era that we live in and think of art notjust as museum stuff, but as all the ways that we create visual representations of imaginary worlds, which could be anything from the gamer community to movies to all of it.
So art like in that big A, capital A sense of art, that all of that stuff is somehow about creating these sort of images that are meaningful to us.
And that sometimes I think of movies and TV and stuff like that, I think that's really our art today.
That's where we're putting so much of our emphasis on creating these imaginary worlds.
And I would hope 100 years from now, we would maybe be, be more willing to see those, those as part of art history.
Brent:
[50:42] Would you ever view social media as that imaginary world from the standpoint we are augmenting reality in it?
Michael:
[50:48] So, yeah, I mean, I think there are people who understand this a lot better than I do, but yeah, what you post on social media is often not real in quite the same, I mean, and I'mgonna get really academic with you.
It's, it's often curated, right? It's like people curate their feeds, right, of social media and also, part of the appeal of a lot of social media seems to be that it seems real, but of course, it's notreally real, right? And that goes right back, that's art history, right?
That's exactly what people were sort of trying to play with when they were making paintings hundreds of years ago, is like they wanted to have that feeling of being real, but they alsowant you to recognize its artificiality at the same time.
So, yeah, maybe in the future, there will be like a department of social media, you know, social media archaeology where the job will be to go through all of this social media content thatwe are generating right now and see if we can like excavate what the world meant in 2020 or whatever. That's fascinating.
Brent:
[51:50] And then I think social media does a really good job right now at kind of inviting the viewer into that illusion.
Michael:
[51:57] Yeah.
Brent:
[51:57] Do you think that is inhibiting people nowadays from looking at older works
The Impact of Social Media on Engaging with Traditional Art
[52:01] of art and fully being able to immerse themselves?
Michael:
[52:04] It's such an interesting question because you expect the answer to that to be yes, right?
Like, well, why would you go and visit the Louvre, which is a long way from here and costs money and is inconvenient and all of that, when you have social media and you have theinternet and you have all of these things that you can use and you go to any major museum in the world and it is just stuffed full of people.
I I mean, just overwhelmingly stuffed full of people. And the Louvre, I mean, I forget what the numbers are, tens of billions of people visit that museum every year. And they all go andthey all see the Mona Lisa and they do, you know, so.
And so you think, well, so social media and digital imagery and the internet is actually not, it's not preventing people from having encounters with these works of art.
In fact, it's probably creating some sort of desire in people to then say that they've gone and seeing the original.
Yeah, so I just mentioned I was in Chicago at the Art Institute of Chicago.
And on the day I was there, which was a Thursday, it was packed, just completely packed, full of people. Thousands of people were there, so.
Keller:
[53:14] Yeah. And how do you think people should, like, building off of that, how should people go about consuming art given the fact that they could look it up online?
Should they make an effort to go to a local museum? Are there other ways that they should be going about taking in these pieces?
Michael:
[53:30] Yeah. So, here's what I would tell someone to do. You know, of course, you can go online and look at whatever you want.
But like, you know, here in California, there are great museums.
So, like, like, you know, pick your local museum, right?
So, here would be Minetti Shrem on campus or a little farther away in Sacramento, we have the Crocker and they're both fine, fine museums.
And just go. And I wouldn't do any research at all. I would just go.
Brent:
[53:54] Right?
Michael:
[53:54] Go, look at some things. Don't try to look at everything because usually museums have more on display than any one human being can take in.
Art historians included. We can't take in everything in the museum.
And maybe get the little guide and look and say, you know, I think I'm going to go look at this stuff today. And then just go and let your feelings and your responses be as natural as theyare.
So that may mean that you're looking at something and saying, God, I really hate this. I don't know why anyone would do this, right? That's really bad.
But just let that feeling be there. And then of course, something you will not hate, right? there'll be something there that you maybe are like, you know, that's actually pretty cool.
Or that maybe shows you someone's view of the world that you hadn't considered before, something like that.
And just let that be the kind of natural growth of things, you know?
And in other words, find out, find your own path through it.
I always find these sort of, you know, popular culture like guides to the history of art and all that to be actually really intimidating and sort of silly because I think most people want todiscover it on their own terms.
Brent:
[55:07] Yeah.
Intimidation and Posturing in Art Interpretation
Michael:
[55:08] Yeah.
Brent:
[55:08] And then...
You saying intimidating is silly. Do you ever think that some people are posturing when they are interpreting art or that art is kind of falsely taking on this elitist mentality?
Michael:
[55:24] Yeah, I do. Yeah. I totally do. And you may have gotten the impression from just talking to me right now that I work extraordinarily hard to not give that impression, right?
Because I find it really off-putting. Yeah. You know, when you have like the kind of art expert standing there, wow, this is, you know, and then sort of telling you all these things that theysort of know you don't know, but making you feel like there's something wrong with you because you don't know these things.
So I work really, really hard not to model that in my teaching and in my engagement with colleagues.
And I would just say to anybody, you know, you have every right to go to the museum and experience that any way you want.
And there is no, you know, no art authority out there who can invalidate your feelings about what you're seeing.
And so, don't let those people have that power over you because they don't really have it.
Brent:
[56:27] Yeah, exactly. It's the same thing as someone like, I don't like your shirt. Cool. Still wearing it.
Michael:
[56:31] Yeah, exactly. It's like, yeah.
Brent:
[56:32] It's that simple.
Michael:
[56:33] Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's like, you know, it's the famous artist, but you look at their work, their painting and you're like, I don't really like that. That's fine. Right? There's somefamous artists whose work I don't like.
I will not name them, but I will.
Brent:
[56:45] I think asking you why you don't like it too, or like kind of the opposite of meditating, like letting those thoughts come in, but not just letting them pass, but maybe ask every sooften, why did I not like that?
Michael:
[56:57] Why did I not like that?
Brent:
[56:59] Right?
Michael:
[56:59] Is it because it wasn't pretty to look at? Is it because, the artist wasn't saying something here that I kind of could understand?
Did it disturb me? Maybe that's why you don't like it because the artist is showing you something that you don't necessarily want to admit or acknowledge?
Or were you just not in the mood? I mean, that's the other thing, you know?
I mean, some days you will go and sort of – I've taught works of art where on one day it's like, wow, I really see how exciting this is.
And then, you know, teach that same work of art a couple of weeks later and I'll be like, oh my God, I have to do this again. You know, it's just because you're in a slightly different placementally and you know, that affects it as well.
Brent:
[57:41] And then do you ever think some art pieces are touted as being so moving and powerful and then you look at it like, what's backing that up?
Michael:
[57:50] Yeah, I mean, you know, some of these like really famous paintings have an enormous history associated with them.
And they become these kind of, you know, they become something outside of reality, really. I mean, they become these, you know, incredible things.
And that doesn't mean they're necessarily good works of art, right?
Or even being particularly fun to look at or I don't know, like, I mean, that doesn't mean that anyone really maybe even likes them that much.
They just have that incredible power because they have so much, you know, cultural cache associated with them, right?
And then you'll go to the museum, it'll be something by an artist you've never heard of.
And you'll stand in front and go, that's really cool actually and why haven't I heard of this, right?
I don't know, that person wasn't on the right side of history.
Keller:
[58:39] Yeah.
Brent:
[58:40] Yeah.
Keller:
[58:41] Do you have any favorite artists or art pieces both in the past and any currently alive?
Henri Matisse: A Favorite 20th Century Artist
Michael:
[58:47] Yeah. So, you asked this question before and I was sort of thinking, oh God, I'm not gonna answer that because there's so many different works of art.
So, I work in the 18th century and I love many different 18th century artists.
I could name, you know, 10 maybe for you that I really like.
But an artist who's always been very dear to me who is not an 18th century artist is Henri Matisse who's a 20th century French artist.
And I just love his work in a kind of instinctive way.
I think it's incredibly pretty and I think it's incredibly visually inviting and arresting and he's a very clever artist.
And he creates things that I want to look at, right?
So, it's funny because he's not actually in my research area, but he's an artist I've always really, really enjoyed looking at and thinking about.
Keller:
[59:38] He does more impressionism, right?
Michael:
[59:39] Yeah, he's sort of a little after the impressionists. He sort of straddles a number of different movements in early 20th century, but he's kind of growing out of what the impressionistsdid.
Yeah, yeah. And his work is always really arresting to me. He's a good painter.
And then later in his life, he did these cutouts with this huge pair of scissors.
So, they're like kind of hard to use. And he would do these paper cutouts and kind of glue these cutouts together. Those are some of the most interesting things you could ever see. They'rereally, really beautiful.
Brent:
[1:00:10] Definitely.
Michael:
[1:00:11] So, he's a favorite of mine.
Brent:
[1:00:12] Do you think he, you're more open to that work because you don't research at that area?
Michael:
[1:00:18] Probably, yeah.
Brent:
[1:00:19] Yeah.
Michael:
[1:00:20] Yeah, yeah. That's probably true. So, it's interesting because that means that I can look at his work with the kind of open eye that a member of the public can go to the museum andjust enjoy it.
Whereas in 18th century, I'm sort of looking more like maybe kind of analytically, right?
And so, that part of the brain is what's getting turned on. I love 18th century artists too, don't get me wrong. I absolutely love them. Jean Etienne Lyotard is one that I absolutely love. Ilove Boucher.
He's a Francois Boucher, big French painter of that period, beautiful painter.
I love Gian Battista Tiepolo. Chicago has a number of paintings by that artist and he's beautiful, just gorgeous, beautiful artist.
Yeah, so there are others too.
Keller:
[1:01:09] Yeah. And are there any artists today that are currently alive that you follow or not so much?
Michael:
[1:01:15] So, you know, it's like, I'm not the best spokesperson for contemporary art, I gotta tell you.
And it's not because I don't like it, but because the contemporary art world is a very big, complicated place.
And it really requires full-time engagement in order to sort of make the most of it.
I mean, there are contemporary artists I like, but not, I can't say that there's a single artist that I particularly am kind of devoted to. I can't say that. My failing, probably.
Keller:
[1:01:46] I can't do that.
Brent:
[1:01:47] Yeah. Do you have any parting words of wisdom, advice for students, listeners, colleagues, whatever you want to say?
Empowering Students to Appreciate Art on Their Own Terms
Michael:
[1:01:57] Yeah. I mean, so it's what we just touched on a a couple of minutes ago, which is my real mission is to here at UC Davis particularly, is to just make students realize that this worldis available to them, right?
It's available to them. And while there may be hindrances and obstacles to feeling comfortable in it, and there may be people who want to make it seem more exclusive than it really is.
In reality, you have, if you want every right to go and appreciate works of art on your own terms.
And if I can get one student in a class to feel that the history of art is something they can start to look into, if I can achieve that with one student in every class, I feel like I've justified myexistence, right?
So, that's what I would say. Yeah. Yeah.
Keller:
[1:02:51] Wonderful. Well, thank you very much.
Michael:
[1:02:53] Oh, my pleasure. I really enjoyed it. You got me all talking, you know.
Brent:
[1:02:57] That's the goal.
Michael:
[1:02:59] You succeeded. I was actually pretty chatty. Thank you.
Brent:
[1:03:01] Cool.
Keller:
[1:03:03] Sweet. Wonderful!