0:00:00.516,0:00:04.623
I'm going to tell you about an affliction I suffer from.

0:00:04.623,0:00:07.127
And I have a funny feeling that quite a few of you

0:00:07.127,0:00:09.047
suffer from it as well.

0:00:09.047,0:00:11.144
When I'm walking around an art gallery,

0:00:11.144,0:00:13.247
rooms and rooms full of paintings,

0:00:13.247,0:00:17.764
after about 15 or 20 minutes,

0:00:17.764,0:00:19.655
I realize I'm not thinking about the paintings.

0:00:19.655,0:00:21.263
I'm not connecting to them.

0:00:21.263,0:00:23.767
Instead, I'm thinking about that cup of coffee

0:00:23.767,0:00:26.767
I desperately need to wake me up.

0:00:26.767,0:00:29.951
I'm suffering from gallery fatigue.

0:00:29.951,0:00:32.327
How many of you out there suffer from --

0:00:32.327,0:00:34.332
yes. Ha ha, ha ha!

0:00:34.332,0:00:36.482
Now, sometimes you might last longer

0:00:36.482,0:00:38.576
than 20 minutes, or even shorter,

0:00:38.576,0:00:40.790
but I think we all suffer from it. And do you have

0:00:40.790,0:00:42.871
the accompanying guilt?

0:00:42.871,0:00:45.858
For me, I look at the paintings on the wall

0:00:45.858,0:00:48.873
and I think, somebody has decided to put them there,

0:00:48.873,0:00:51.401
thinks they're good enough to be on that wall,

0:00:51.401,0:00:52.759
but I don't always see it.

0:00:52.759,0:00:55.423
In fact, most of the time I don't see it.

0:00:55.423,0:00:59.197
And I leave feeling actually unhappy.

0:00:59.197,0:01:02.664
I feel guilty and unhappy with myself,

0:01:02.664,0:01:04.727
rather than thinking there's something wrong with the painting,

0:01:04.727,0:01:06.184
I think there's something wrong with me.

0:01:06.184,0:01:09.092
And that's not a good experience, to leave a gallery like that.

0:01:09.092,0:01:10.363
(Laughter)

0:01:10.363,0:01:12.672
The thing is, I think we should give ourselves a break.

0:01:12.672,0:01:15.132
If you think about going into a restaurant,

0:01:15.132,0:01:18.819
when you look at the menu, are you expected to order

0:01:18.819,0:01:21.002
every single thing on the menu?

0:01:21.002,0:01:22.884
No! You select.

0:01:22.884,0:01:26.059
If you go into a department store to buy a shirt,

0:01:26.059,0:01:29.036
are you going to try on every single shirt

0:01:29.036,0:01:30.364
and want every single shirt?

0:01:30.364,0:01:34.491
Of course not, you can be selective. It's expected.

0:01:34.491,0:01:37.112
How come, then, it's not so expected

0:01:37.112,0:01:39.685
to be selective when we go to an art gallery?

0:01:39.685,0:01:42.980
Why are we supposed to have a connection with every single painting?

0:01:42.980,0:01:45.684
Well I'm trying to take a different approach.

0:01:45.684,0:01:47.302
And there's two things I do:

0:01:47.302,0:01:51.796
When I go into a gallery, first of all, I go quite fast,

0:01:51.796,0:01:56.031
and I look at everything, and I pinpoint the ones

0:01:56.031,0:01:59.085
that make me slow down for some reason or other.

0:01:59.085,0:02:01.886
I don't even know why they make me slow down, but something

0:02:01.886,0:02:03.943
pulls me like a magnet

0:02:03.943,0:02:07.061
and then I ignore all the others, and I just go to that painting.

0:02:07.061,0:02:09.525
So it's the first thing I do is, I do my own curation.

0:02:09.525,0:02:12.821
I choose a painting. It might just be one painting in 50.

0:02:12.821,0:02:16.511
And then the second thing I do is I stand in front of that painting,

0:02:16.511,0:02:19.588
and I tell myself a story about it.

0:02:19.588,0:02:23.186
Why a story? Well, I think that we are wired,

0:02:23.186,0:02:27.077
our DNA tells us to tell stories.

0:02:27.077,0:02:29.446
We tell stories all the time about everything,

0:02:29.446,0:02:34.557
and I think we do it because the world is kind of a crazy, chaotic place,

0:02:34.557,0:02:38.508
and sometimes stories, we're trying to make sense of the world a little bit,

0:02:38.508,0:02:40.677
trying to bring some order to it.

0:02:40.677,0:02:44.668
Why not apply that to our looking at paintings?

0:02:44.668,0:02:48.383
So I now have this sort of restaurant menu

0:02:48.383,0:02:51.606
visiting of art galleries.

0:02:51.606,0:02:54.814
There are three paintings I'm going to show you now

0:02:54.814,0:02:57.878
that are paintings that made me stop in my tracks

0:02:57.878,0:03:00.424
and want to tell stories about them.

0:03:00.424,0:03:03.975
The first one needs little introduction --

0:03:03.975,0:03:07.006
"Girl with a Pearl Earring" by Johannes Vermeer,

0:03:07.006,0:03:09.162
17th-century Dutch painter.

0:03:09.162,0:03:11.662
This is the most glorious painting.

0:03:11.662,0:03:13.806
I first saw it when I was 19,

0:03:13.806,0:03:16.086
and I immediately went out and got a poster of it,

0:03:16.086,0:03:20.243
and in fact I still have that poster. 30 years later it's hanging in my house.

0:03:20.243,0:03:23.393
It's accompanied me everywhere I've gone,

0:03:23.393,0:03:25.737
I never tire of looking at her.

0:03:25.737,0:03:29.516
What made me stop in my tracks about her to begin with

0:03:29.516,0:03:32.073
was just the gorgeous colors he uses

0:03:32.073,0:03:34.017
and the light falling on her face.

0:03:34.017,0:03:36.801
But I think what's kept me still coming back

0:03:36.801,0:03:39.857
year after year is another thing, and that is

0:03:39.857,0:03:43.551
the look on her face, the conflicted look on her face.

0:03:43.551,0:03:45.969
I can't tell if she's happy or sad,

0:03:45.969,0:03:48.936
and I change my mind all the time.

0:03:48.936,0:03:52.535
So that keeps me coming back.

0:03:52.535,0:03:56.544
One day, 16 years after I had this poster on my wall,

0:03:56.544,0:03:59.226
I lay in bed and looked at her,

0:03:59.226,0:04:01.805
and I suddenly thought, I wonder what

0:04:01.805,0:04:05.723
the painter did to her to make her look like that.

0:04:05.723,0:04:08.667
And it was the first time I'd ever thought that

0:04:08.667,0:04:11.467
the expression on her face is actually reflecting

0:04:11.467,0:04:13.606
how she feels about him.

0:04:13.606,0:04:16.762
Always before I'd thought of it as a portrait of a girl.

0:04:16.762,0:04:21.531
Now I began to think of it as a portrait of a relationship.

0:04:21.531,0:04:24.363
And I thought, well, what is that relationship?

0:04:24.363,0:04:27.571
So I went to find out. I did some research and discovered,

0:04:27.571,0:04:29.896
we have no idea who she is.

0:04:29.896,0:04:32.243
In fact, we don't know who any of the models

0:04:32.243,0:04:34.603
in any of Vermeer's paintings are,

0:04:34.603,0:04:36.730
and we know very little about Vermeer himself.

0:04:36.730,0:04:39.504
Which made me go, "Yippee!"

0:04:39.504,0:04:44.163
I can do whatever I want, I can come up with whatever story I want to.

0:04:44.163,0:04:46.759
So here's how I came up with the story.

0:04:46.759,0:04:48.636
First of all, I thought,

0:04:48.636,0:04:50.728
I've got to get her into the house.

0:04:50.728,0:04:53.216
How does Vermeer know her?

0:04:53.216,0:04:54.760
Well, there've been suggestions that

0:04:54.760,0:04:59.183
she is his 12-year-old daughter.

0:04:59.183,0:05:01.408
The daughter at the time was 12 when he painted the painting.

0:05:01.408,0:05:04.104
And I thought, no, it's a very intimate look,

0:05:04.104,0:05:06.288
but it's not a look a daughter gives her father.

0:05:06.288,0:05:08.128
For one thing, in Dutch painting of the time,

0:05:08.128,0:05:11.720
if a woman's mouth was open, it was indicating sexual availability.

0:05:11.720,0:05:13.608
It would have been inappropriate for Vermeer

0:05:13.608,0:05:15.504
to paint his daughter like that.

0:05:15.504,0:05:17.384
So it's not his daughter, but it's somebody

0:05:17.384,0:05:19.634
close to him, physically close to him.

0:05:19.634,0:05:21.898
Well, who else would be in the house?

0:05:21.898,0:05:25.281
A servant, a lovely servant.

0:05:25.281,0:05:26.842
So, she's in the house.

0:05:26.842,0:05:29.503
How do we get her into the studio?

0:05:29.503,0:05:31.637
We don't know very much about Vermeer,

0:05:31.637,0:05:33.776
but the little bits that we do know, one thing we know

0:05:33.776,0:05:36.767
is that he married a Catholic woman, they lived with her mother

0:05:36.767,0:05:39.040
in a house where he had his own room

0:05:39.040,0:05:43.323
where he -- his studio. He also had 11 children.

0:05:43.323,0:05:46.400
It would have been a chaotic, noisy household.

0:05:46.400,0:05:49.344
And if you've seen Vermeer's paintings before,

0:05:49.344,0:05:53.208
you know that they're incredibly calm and quiet.

0:05:53.208,0:05:57.104
How does a painter paint such calm, quiet paintings with 11 kids around?

0:05:57.104,0:05:59.400
Well, he compartmentalizes his life.

0:05:59.400,0:06:03.080
He gets to his studio, and he says, "Nobody comes in here.

0:06:03.080,0:06:07.808
Not the wife, not the kids. Okay, the maid can come in and clean."

0:06:07.808,0:06:14.859
She's in the studio. He's got her in the studio, they're together.

0:06:14.859,0:06:16.939
And he decides to paint her.

0:06:16.939,0:06:19.207
He has her wear very plain clothes.

0:06:19.207,0:06:22.578
Now, all of the women, or most of the women in Vermeer's other paintings

0:06:22.578,0:06:28.544
wore velvet, silk, fur, very sumptuous materials.

0:06:28.544,0:06:31.064
This is very plain; the only thing that isn't plain

0:06:31.064,0:06:33.104
is her pearl earring.

0:06:33.104,0:06:36.551
Now, if she's a servant, there is no way she could afford

0:06:36.551,0:06:38.758
a pair of pearl earrings.

0:06:38.758,0:06:42.020
So those are not her pearl earrings. Whose are they?

0:06:42.020,0:06:47.061
We happen to know, there's a list of Catharina, the wife's clothes.

0:06:47.061,0:06:50.677
Amongst them a yellow coat with white fur,

0:06:50.677,0:06:52.424
a yellow and black bodice,

0:06:52.424,0:06:56.118
and you see these clothes on lots of other paintings,

0:06:56.118,0:06:59.232
different women in the paintings, Vermeer's paintings.

0:06:59.232,0:07:03.710
So clearly, her clothes were lent to various different women.

0:07:03.710,0:07:06.229
It's not such a leap of faith to take

0:07:06.229,0:07:09.813
that that pearl earring actually belongs to his wife.

0:07:09.813,0:07:12.990
So we've got all the elements for our story.

0:07:12.990,0:07:15.420
She's in the studio with him for a long time.

0:07:15.420,0:07:17.463
These paintings took a long time to make.

0:07:17.463,0:07:20.334
They would have spent the time alone, all that time.

0:07:20.334,0:07:22.334
She's wearing his wife's pearl earring.

0:07:22.334,0:07:25.149
She's gorgeous. She obviously loves him. She's conflicted.

0:07:25.149,0:07:27.941
And does the wife know? Maybe not.

0:07:27.941,0:07:31.319
And if she doesn't, well --

0:07:31.319,0:07:33.174
that's the story.

0:07:33.174,0:07:35.351
(Laughter)

0:07:35.351,0:07:37.941
The next painting I'm going to talk about

0:07:37.941,0:07:41.188
is called "Boy Building a House of Cards" by Chardin.

0:07:41.188,0:07:45.564
He's an 18th-century French painter best known for his still lifes,

0:07:45.564,0:07:48.157
but he did occasionally paint people.

0:07:48.157,0:07:52.124
And in fact, he painted four versions of this painting,

0:07:52.124,0:07:56.084
different boys building houses of cards, all concentrated.

0:07:56.084,0:07:59.548
I like this version the best, because some of the boys

0:07:59.548,0:08:02.941
are older and some are younger, and to me, this one,

0:08:02.941,0:08:05.893
like Goldilocks's porridge, is just right.

0:08:05.893,0:08:09.884
He's not quite a child, and he's not quite a man.

0:08:09.884,0:08:14.677
He's absolutely balanced between innocence and experience,

0:08:14.677,0:08:19.160
and that made me stop in my tracks in front of this painting.

0:08:19.160,0:08:22.877
And I looked at his face. It's like a Vermeer painting a bit.

0:08:22.877,0:08:25.500
The light comes in from the left, his face is bathed

0:08:25.500,0:08:27.724
in this glowing light. It's right in the center of the painting,

0:08:27.724,0:08:30.736
and you look at it, and I found that when I was looking at it,

0:08:30.736,0:08:31.943
I was standing there going,

0:08:31.943,0:08:34.896
"Look at me. Please look at me."

0:08:34.896,0:08:37.632
And he didn't look at me. He was still looking at his cards,

0:08:37.632,0:08:40.384
and that's one of the seductive elements of this painting is,

0:08:40.384,0:08:44.874
he's so focused on what he's doing that he doesn't look at us.

0:08:44.874,0:08:48.767
And that is, to me, the sign of a masterpiece,

0:08:48.767,0:08:52.744
of a painting when there's a lack of resolution.

0:08:52.744,0:08:54.265
He's never going to look at me.

0:08:54.265,0:08:55.944
So I was thinking of a story where,

0:08:55.944,0:08:59.160
if I'm in this position, who could be there looking at him?

0:08:59.160,0:09:01.362
Not the painter, I don't want to think about the painter.

0:09:01.362,0:09:03.888
I'm thinking of an older version of himself.

0:09:03.888,0:09:09.833
He's a man, a servant, an older servant looking at this younger servant,

0:09:09.833,0:09:12.304
saying, "Look at me. I want to warn you about

0:09:12.304,0:09:14.754
what you're about to go through. Please look at me."

0:09:14.754,0:09:16.280
And he never does.

0:09:16.280,0:09:20.083
And that lack of resolution, the lack of resolution in "Girl with a Pearl Earring" --

0:09:20.083,0:09:22.127
we don't know if she's happy or sad.

0:09:22.127,0:09:23.776
I've written an entire novel about her,

0:09:23.776,0:09:25.776
and I still don't know if she's happy or sad.

0:09:25.776,0:09:27.880
Again and again, back to the painting,

0:09:27.880,0:09:32.561
looking for the answer, looking for the story to fill in that gap.

0:09:32.561,0:09:36.008
And we may make a story, and it satisfies us momentarily,

0:09:36.008,0:09:41.823
but not really, and we come back again and again.

0:09:41.823,0:09:44.361
The last painting I'm going to talk about

0:09:44.361,0:09:49.225
is called "Anonymous" by anonymous. (Laughter)

0:09:49.225,0:09:52.276
This is a Tudor portrait bought by the National Portrait Gallery.

0:09:52.276,0:09:54.889
They thought it was a man named Sir Thomas Overbury,

0:09:54.889,0:09:57.553
and then they discovered that it wasn't him,

0:09:57.553,0:09:59.153
and they have no idea who it is.

0:09:59.153,0:10:01.296
Now, in the National Portrait Gallery,

0:10:01.296,0:10:03.065
if you don't know the biography of the painting,

0:10:03.065,0:10:04.689
it's kind of useless to you.

0:10:04.689,0:10:07.113
They can't hang it on the wall, because they don't know who he is.

0:10:07.113,0:10:12.017
So unfortunately, this orphan spends most of his time in storage,

0:10:12.017,0:10:14.161
along with quite a number of other orphans,

0:10:14.161,0:10:16.672
some of them some beautiful paintings.

0:10:16.672,0:10:21.675
This painting made me stop in my tracks for three reasons:

0:10:21.675,0:10:24.552
One is the disconnection between his mouth

0:10:24.552,0:10:27.257
that's smiling and his eyes that are wistful.

0:10:27.257,0:10:30.264
He's not happy, and why isn't he happy?

0:10:30.264,0:10:33.981
The second thing that really attracted me

0:10:33.981,0:10:35.697
were his bright red cheeks.

0:10:35.697,0:10:39.304
He is blushing. He's blushing for his portrait being made!

0:10:39.304,0:10:42.338
This must be a guy who blushes all the time.

0:10:42.338,0:10:44.480
What is he thinking about that's making him blush?

0:10:44.480,0:10:48.256
The third thing that made me stop in my tracks

0:10:48.256,0:10:51.056
is his absolutely gorgeous doublet.

0:10:51.056,0:10:54.624
Silk, gray, those beautiful buttons.

0:10:54.624,0:10:56.256
And you know what it makes me think of,

0:10:56.256,0:11:01.048
is it's sort of snug and puffy; it's like a duvet spread over a bed.

0:11:01.048,0:11:03.704
I kept thinking of beds and red cheeks,

0:11:03.704,0:11:06.464
and of course I kept thinking of sex when I looked at him,

0:11:06.464,0:11:09.072
and I thought, is that what he's thinking about?

0:11:09.072,0:11:11.344
And I thought, if I'm going to make a story,

0:11:11.344,0:11:13.328
what's the last thing I'm going to put in there?

0:11:13.328,0:11:16.958
Well, what would a Tudor gentleman be preoccupied with?

0:11:16.958,0:11:18.888
And I thought, well, Henry VIII, okay.

0:11:18.888,0:11:23.032
He'd be preoccupied with his inheritance, with his heir.

0:11:23.032,0:11:26.681
Who is going to inherit his name and his fortune?

0:11:26.681,0:11:30.561
You put all those together, and you've got your story

0:11:30.561,0:11:33.915
to fill in that gap that makes you keep coming back.

0:11:33.915,0:11:38.636
Now, here's the story.

0:11:38.636,0:11:41.566
It's short.

0:11:41.566,0:11:44.297
"Rosy"

0:11:44.297,0:11:48.347
I am still wearing the white brocade doublet Caroline gave me.

0:11:48.347,0:11:52.658
It has a plain high collar, detachable sleeves

0:11:52.658,0:11:55.834
and intricate buttons of twisted silk thread,

0:11:55.834,0:11:58.760
set close together so that the fit is snug.

0:11:58.760,0:12:02.323
The doublet makes me think of a coverlet on the vast bed.

0:12:02.323,0:12:06.073
Perhaps that was the intention.

0:12:06.073,0:12:10.991
I first wore it at an elaborate dinner her parents held in our honor.

0:12:10.991,0:12:12.817
I knew even before I stood up to speak

0:12:12.817,0:12:15.386
that my cheeks were inflamed.

0:12:15.386,0:12:19.087
I have always flushed easily, from physical exertion,

0:12:19.087,0:12:21.442
from wine, from high emotion.

0:12:21.442,0:12:25.907
As a boy, I was teased by my sisters and by schoolboys,

0:12:25.907,0:12:28.354
but not by George.

0:12:28.354,0:12:31.428
Only George could call me Rosy.

0:12:31.428,0:12:33.587
I would not allow anyone else.

0:12:33.587,0:12:37.811
He managed to make the word tender.

0:12:37.811,0:12:40.610
When I made the announcement, George did not

0:12:40.610,0:12:43.674
turn rosy, but went pale as my doublet.

0:12:43.674,0:12:45.578
He should not have been surprised.

0:12:45.578,0:12:47.250
It has been a common assumption

0:12:47.250,0:12:51.098
that I would one day marry his cousin.

0:12:51.098,0:12:53.682
But it is difficult to hear the words aloud.

0:12:53.682,0:12:56.983
I know, I could barely utter them.

0:12:56.983,0:13:01.385
Afterwards, I found George on the terrace overlooking the kitchen garden.

0:13:01.385,0:13:06.642
Despite drinking steadily all afternoon, he was still pale.

0:13:06.642,0:13:10.867
We stood together and watched the maids cut lettuces.

0:13:10.867,0:13:13.129
"What do you think of my doublet?" I asked.

0:13:13.129,0:13:18.573
He glanced at me. "That collar looks to be strangling you."

0:13:18.573,0:13:20.577
"We will still see each other," I insisted.

0:13:20.577,0:13:23.865
"We can still hunt and play cards and attend court.

0:13:23.865,0:13:25.601
Nothing need change."

0:13:25.601,0:13:29.318
George did not speak.

0:13:29.318,0:13:32.712
"I am 23 years old. It is time for me to marry

0:13:32.712,0:13:36.817
and produce an heir. It is expected of me."

0:13:36.817,0:13:40.398
George drained another glass of claret and turned to me.

0:13:40.398,0:13:44.481
"Congratulations on your upcoming nuptials, James.

0:13:44.481,0:13:49.317
I'm sure you'll be content together."

0:13:49.317,0:13:52.634
He never used my nickname again.

0:13:52.634,0:13:54.393
Thank you.

0:13:54.393,0:13:57.775
(Applause)

0:13:57.775,0:13:58.957
Thank you.

0:13:58.957,0:14:00.504
(Applause)