Dear friends,
A few weeks ago I gave a lecture online to students of the History of Ideas course at Pavel Usanov’s Hayek Institute. The full recording, including the Q&A, is now public.
The title is a question because I think a lot of people don’t care about art, and it’s a real shame. Much of today’s art has earned its bad reputation, from empty public sculptures to a banana taped to a wall and sold for $120,000. But I don’t think a history of ideas is complete without knowing what those ideas look like, and art shows it to you. Art is the history of ideas made visible.
The lecture builds on my essay Why Should You Care About Art?, and goes further. It traces how every civilisation, from ancient Egypt and Greece through the Dark Ages and the Renaissance, expressed its philosophy in its art, and how we got from Michelangelo’s David to Duchamp’s urinal. Along the way I ask what art is, drawing on Ayn Rand’s definition, and why none of us can afford to ignore it.
The Q&A went in some great directions: whether Kant was worse than Plato, whether a painting sold for $85.8 million can be said to have no value, whether we should separate the artist from the art, and how to find good art today.
Chapters
00:00 Introduction
10:28 What is art?
29:02 The history
36:36 The crack
41:09 The break
43:09 Is there hope?
47:37 Q&A
My thanks to Pavel for having me, and to the attendees for their sharp questions.
If you enjoyed it, share it with someone who thinks art doesn’t matter.
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And if you’re looking for something longer, my debut novella, The Weight of Silence, is available on Amazon. Get your copy here.