0:00:00.489,0:00:03.458
Two years ago, I have to say there was no problem.

0:00:03.458,0:00:07.516
Two years ago, I knew exactly [br]what an icon looked like.

0:00:07.516,0:00:09.871
It looks like this.

0:00:09.871,0:00:12.700
Everybody's icon, but also the default position

0:00:12.700,0:00:16.523
of a curator of Italian Renaissance [br]paintings, which I was then.

0:00:16.523,0:00:20.215
And in a way, this is also another default selection.

0:00:20.215,0:00:24.762
Leonardo da Vinci's exquisitely soulful image

0:00:24.762,0:00:26.062
of the "Lady with an Ermine."

0:00:26.062,0:00:28.605
And I use that word, soulful, deliberately.

0:00:28.605,0:00:30.988
Or then there's this, or rather these:

0:00:30.988,0:00:33.642
the two versions of Leonardo's "Virgin of the Rocks"

0:00:33.642,0:00:37.918
that were about to come together [br]in London for the very first time.

0:00:37.918,0:00:42.102
In the exhibition that I was then in [br]the absolute throes of organizing.

0:00:42.102,0:00:45.539
I was literally up to my eyes in Leonardo,

0:00:45.539,0:00:47.357
and I had been for three years.

0:00:47.357,0:00:51.779
So, he was occupying every part of my brain.

0:00:51.779,0:00:54.620
Leonardo had taught me, during that three years,

0:00:54.620,0:00:56.468
about what a picture can do.

0:00:56.468,0:01:01.786
About taking you from your own [br]material world into a spiritual world.

0:01:01.786,0:01:04.677
He said, actually, that he believed [br]the job of the painter

0:01:04.677,0:01:09.128
was to paint everything that was visible [br]and invisible in the universe.

0:01:09.128,0:01:13.125
That's a huge task. And yet, [br]somehow he achieves it.

0:01:13.125,0:01:15.896
He shows us, I think, the human soul.

0:01:15.896,0:01:20.342
He shows us the capacity of ourselves

0:01:20.342,0:01:23.770
to move into a spiritual realm.

0:01:23.770,0:01:28.298
To see a vision of the universe that's [br]more perfect than our own.

0:01:28.298,0:01:31.874
To see God's own plan, in some sense.

0:01:31.874,0:01:35.945
So this, in a sense, was really [br]what I believed an icon was.

0:01:35.945,0:01:39.803
At about that time, I started talking to Tom Campbell,

0:01:39.803,0:01:42.354
director here of the Metropolitan Museum,

0:01:42.354,0:01:45.678
about what my next move might be.

0:01:45.678,0:01:48.449
The move, in fact, back to an earlier life,

0:01:48.449,0:01:50.407
one I'd begun at the British Museum,

0:01:50.407,0:01:52.926
back to the world of three dimensions --

0:01:52.926,0:01:55.158
of sculpture and of decorative arts --

0:01:55.158,0:01:59.376
to take over the department of European sculpture [br]and decorative arts, here at the Met.

0:01:59.376,0:02:00.816
But it was an incredibly busy time.

0:02:00.816,0:02:04.223
All the conversations were done [br]at very peculiar times of the day --

0:02:04.223,0:02:07.136
over the phone.

0:02:07.136,0:02:09.200
In the end, I accepted the job

0:02:09.200,0:02:10.573
without actually having been here.

0:02:10.573,0:02:13.125
Again, I'd been there a couple of years before,

0:02:13.125,0:02:15.637
but on that particular visit.

0:02:15.637,0:02:19.729
So, it was just before the time that [br]the Leonardo show was due to open

0:02:19.729,0:02:23.751
when I finally made it back to the Met, to New York,

0:02:23.751,0:02:25.207
to see my new domain.

0:02:25.207,0:02:29.150
To see what European sculpture [br]and decorative arts looked like,

0:02:29.150,0:02:33.941
beyond those Renaissance collections [br]with which I was so already familiar.

0:02:33.941,0:02:36.938
And I thought, on that very first day, [br]I better tour the galleries.

0:02:36.938,0:02:38.390
Fifty-seven of these galleries --

0:02:38.390,0:02:43.246
like 57 varieties of baked beans, I believe.

0:02:43.246,0:02:49.367
I walked through and I started in my comfort zone[br]in the Italian Renaissance.

0:02:49.367,0:02:51.288
And then I moved gradually around,

0:02:51.288,0:02:54.390
feeling a little lost sometimes.

0:02:54.390,0:02:57.443
My head, also still full of the Leonardo exhibition

0:02:57.443,0:03:01.465
that was about to open, and I came across this.

0:03:01.465,0:03:09.395
And I thought to myself: What the hell have I done?

0:03:09.395,0:03:12.748
There was absolutely no connection in my mind

0:03:12.748,0:03:15.847
at all and, in fact, if there was any emotion going on,

0:03:15.847,0:03:18.216
it was a kind of repulsion.

0:03:18.216,0:03:21.454
This object felt utterly and completely alien.

0:03:21.454,0:03:26.917
Silly at a level that I hadn't yet [br]understood silliness to be.

0:03:26.917,0:03:29.116
And then it was made worse --

0:03:29.116,0:03:30.961
there were two of them.

0:03:30.961,0:03:34.100
(Laughter)

0:03:34.100,0:03:37.067
So, I started thinking about why it was, in fact,

0:03:37.067,0:03:39.523
that I disliked this object so much.

0:03:39.523,0:03:43.329
What was the anatomy of my distaste?

0:03:43.329,0:03:46.797
Well, so much gold, so vulgar.

0:03:46.797,0:03:50.651
You know, so nouveau riche, frankly.

0:03:50.651,0:03:53.564
Leonardo himself had preached [br]against the use of gold,

0:03:53.564,0:03:56.999
so it was absolutely anathema at that moment.

0:03:56.999,0:04:02.427
And then there's little pretty sprigs [br]of flowers everywhere. (Laughter)

0:04:02.427,0:04:05.946
And finally, that pink. That damned pink.

0:04:05.946,0:04:08.842
It's such an extraordinarily artificial color.

0:04:08.842,0:04:12.370
I mean, it's a color that I can't think of [br]anything that you actually see in nature,

0:04:12.370,0:04:15.458
that looks that shade.

0:04:15.458,0:04:19.198
The object even has its own tutu. (Laughter)

0:04:19.198,0:04:21.558
This little flouncy, spangly, bottomy bit

0:04:21.558,0:04:23.593
that sits at the bottom of the vase.

0:04:23.593,0:04:25.966
It reminded me, in an odd kind of way,

0:04:25.966,0:04:28.065
of my niece's fifth birthday party.

0:04:28.065,0:04:32.587
Where all the little girls would come [br]either as a princess or a fairy.

0:04:32.587,0:04:34.468
There was one who would come as a fairy princess.

0:04:34.468,0:04:36.890
You should have seen the looks.

0:04:36.890,0:04:38.583
(Laughter)

0:04:38.583,0:04:41.925
And I realize that this object was in my mind,

0:04:41.925,0:04:44.865
born from the same mind, from the same womb,

0:04:44.865,0:04:50.089
practically, as Barbie Ballerina. (Laughter)

0:04:50.089,0:04:53.611
And then there's the elephants. (Laughter)

0:04:53.611,0:04:55.757
Those extraordinary elephants

0:04:55.757,0:04:58.481
with their little, sort of strange, sinister expressions

0:04:58.481,0:05:03.778
and Greta Garbo eyelashes, with [br]these golden tusks and so on.

0:05:03.778,0:05:05.554
I realized this was an elephant that had

0:05:05.554,0:05:11.287
absolutely nothing to do with a majestic [br]march across the Serengeti.

0:05:11.287,0:05:16.782
It was a Dumbo nightmare. (Laughter)

0:05:16.782,0:05:19.628
But something more profound [br]was happening as well.

0:05:19.628,0:05:21.057
These objects, it seemed to me,

0:05:21.057,0:05:25.366
were quintessentially the kind that I [br]and my liberal left friends in London

0:05:25.366,0:05:27.901
had always seen as summing up

0:05:27.901,0:05:30.740
something deplorable about the French aristocracy

0:05:30.740,0:05:32.912
in the 18th century.

0:05:32.912,0:05:35.701
The label had told me that these pieces were made

0:05:35.701,0:05:38.412
by the Sèvres Manufactory,

0:05:38.412,0:05:41.637
made of porcelain in the late 1750s,

0:05:41.637,0:05:44.768
and designed by a designer called [br]Jean-Claude Duplessis,

0:05:44.768,0:05:46.964
actually somebody of extraordinary distinction

0:05:46.964,0:05:49.441
as I later learned.

0:05:49.441,0:05:54.249
But for me, they summed up a kind of,

0:05:54.249,0:05:57.663
that sort of sheer uselessness of the aristocracy

0:05:57.663,0:06:01.136
in the 18th century.

0:06:01.136,0:06:03.602
I and my colleagues had always thought

0:06:03.602,0:06:06.558
that these objects, in way, summed up the idea of,

0:06:06.558,0:06:08.922
you know -- no wonder there was a revolution.

0:06:08.922,0:06:13.465
Or, indeed, thank God there was a revolution.

0:06:13.465,0:06:15.224
There was a sort of idea really, that,

0:06:15.224,0:06:17.897
if you owned a vase like this,

0:06:17.897,0:06:21.621
then there was really only one fate possible.

0:06:21.621,0:06:25.685
(Laughter)

0:06:25.685,0:06:30.349
So, there I was -- in a sort of paroxysm of horror.

0:06:30.349,0:06:34.309
But I took the job and I went [br]on looking at these vases.

0:06:34.309,0:06:37.840
I sort of had to because they're [br]on a through route in the Met.

0:06:37.840,0:06:40.472
So, almost anywhere I went, there they were.

0:06:40.472,0:06:43.241
They had this kind of odd sort of fascination,

0:06:43.241,0:06:46.259
like a car accident.

0:06:46.259,0:06:48.983
Where I couldn't stop looking.

0:06:48.983,0:06:51.205
And as I did so, I started thinking:

0:06:51.205,0:06:55.733
Well, what are we actually looking at here?

0:06:55.733,0:06:59.064
And what I started with was understanding this

0:06:59.064,0:07:02.616
as really a supreme piece of design.

0:07:02.616,0:07:03.713
It took me a little time.

0:07:03.713,0:07:05.151
But, that tutu for example --

0:07:05.151,0:07:08.273
actually, this is a piece that [br]does dance in its own way.

0:07:08.273,0:07:09.915
It has an extraordinary lightness

0:07:09.915,0:07:12.430
and yet, it is also amazing balanced.

0:07:12.430,0:07:15.905
It has these kinds of sculptural ingredients.

0:07:15.905,0:07:17.544
And then the play between --

0:07:17.544,0:07:22.156
actually really quite carefully disposed [br]color and gilding, and the sculptural surface,

0:07:22.156,0:07:24.431
is really rather remarkable.

0:07:24.431,0:07:27.261
And then I realized that this piece went into the kiln

0:07:27.261,0:07:30.651
four times, at least four times [br]in order to arrive at this.

0:07:30.651,0:07:33.705
How many moments for accident can you think of

0:07:33.705,0:07:35.209
that could have happened to this piece?

0:07:35.209,0:07:37.771
And then remember, not just one, but two.

0:07:37.771,0:07:42.036
So he's having to arrive at two exactly matched

0:07:42.036,0:07:44.548
vases of this kind.

0:07:44.548,0:07:45.954
And then this question of uselessness.

0:07:45.954,0:07:50.913
Well actually, the end of the trunks [br]were originally candle holders.

0:07:50.913,0:07:54.663
So what you would have had [br]were candles on either side.

0:07:54.663,0:07:57.219
Imagine that effect of candlelight on that surface.

0:07:57.219,0:07:59.951
On the slightly uneven pink, on the beautiful gold.

0:07:59.951,0:08:02.697
It would have glittered in an interior,

0:08:02.697,0:08:05.779
a little like a little firework.

0:08:05.779,0:08:09.431
And at that point, actually, [br]a firework went off in my brain.

0:08:09.431,0:08:12.266
Somebody reminded me that, that word 'fancy' --

0:08:12.266,0:08:15.376
which in a sense for me, encapsulated this object --

0:08:15.376,0:08:19.422
actually comes from the same [br]root as the word 'fantasy.'

0:08:19.422,0:08:22.038
And that what this object was just as much in a way,

0:08:22.038,0:08:24.490
in its own way, as a Leonardo da Vinci painting,

0:08:24.490,0:08:26.697
is a portal to somewhere else.

0:08:26.697,0:08:30.892
This is an object of the imagination.

0:08:30.892,0:08:37.701
If you think about the mad 18th-century [br]operas of the time -- set in the Orient.

0:08:37.721,0:08:44.200
If you think about divans and perhaps even [br]opium-induced visions of pink elephants,

0:08:44.200,0:08:47.501
then at that point, this object starts to make sense.

0:08:47.501,0:08:51.557
This is an object which is all about escapism.

0:08:51.557,0:08:54.754
It's about an escapism that happens --

0:08:54.754,0:08:56.775
that the aristocracy in France sought

0:08:56.775,0:08:58.561
very deliberately

0:08:58.561,0:09:03.129
to distinguish themselves from ordinary people.

0:09:03.129,0:09:05.093
It's not an escapism that

0:09:05.093,0:09:08.960
we feel particularly happy with today, however.

0:09:08.960,0:09:11.945
And again, going on thinking about this,

0:09:11.945,0:09:15.119
I realize that in a way we're all victims

0:09:15.119,0:09:17.130
of a certain kind of tyranny

0:09:17.130,0:09:19.151
of the triumph of modernism

0:09:19.151,0:09:21.877
whereby form and function in an object

0:09:21.877,0:09:25.282
have to follow one another, or are deemed to do so.

0:09:25.282,0:09:28.246
And the extraneous ornament is seen as really,

0:09:28.246,0:09:31.266
essentially, criminal.

0:09:31.266,0:09:34.417
It's a triumph, in a way, of bourgeois[br]values rather than aristocratic ones.

0:09:34.417,0:09:36.240
And that seems fine.

0:09:36.240,0:09:43.697
Except for the fact that it becomes a kind of [br]sequestration of imagination.

0:09:43.697,0:09:46.387
So just as in the 20th century, so many people

0:09:46.387,0:09:48.375
had the idea that their faith

0:09:48.375,0:09:51.057
took place on the Sabbath day,

0:09:51.057,0:09:52.431
and the rest of their lives --

0:09:52.431,0:09:56.409
their lives of washing machines and orthodontics --

0:09:56.409,0:09:58.441
took place on another day.

0:09:58.441,0:10:02.209
Then, I think we've started doing the same.

0:10:02.209,0:10:05.541
We've allowed ourselves to

0:10:05.541,0:10:07.898
lead our fantasy lives in front of screens.

0:10:07.898,0:10:11.880
In the dark of the cinema, with the[br]television in the corner of the room.

0:10:11.880,0:10:15.958
We've eliminated, in a sense, that constant

0:10:15.958,0:10:20.886
of the imagination that these vases [br]represented in people's lives.

0:10:20.886,0:10:24.922
So maybe it's time we got this back a little.

0:10:24.922,0:10:27.272
I think it's beginning to happen.

0:10:27.272,0:10:28.538
In London, for example,

0:10:28.538,0:10:30.687
with these extraordinary buildings

0:10:30.687,0:10:33.678
that have been appearing over the last few years.

0:10:33.678,0:10:36.081
Redolent, in a sense, of science fiction,

0:10:36.081,0:10:38.195
turning London into a kind of fantasy playground.

0:10:38.195,0:10:43.049
It's actually amazing to look out of [br]a high building nowadays there.

0:10:43.049,0:10:44.853
But even then, there's a resistance.

0:10:44.853,0:10:49.189
London has called these buildings the [br]Gherkin, the Shard, the Walkie Talkie --

0:10:49.189,0:10:52.494
bringing these soaring buildings down to Earth.

0:10:52.494,0:10:56.574
There's an idea that we don't want these

0:10:56.574,0:11:01.435
anxious-making, imaginative journeys [br]to happen in our daily lives.

0:11:01.435,0:11:04.703
I feel lucky in a way,

0:11:04.703,0:11:07.251
I've encountered this object.

0:11:07.251,0:11:09.692
(Laughter)

0:11:09.692,0:11:12.994
I found him on the Internet when [br]I was looking up a reference.

0:11:12.994,0:11:15.888
And there he was.

0:11:15.888,0:11:19.202
And unlike the pink elephant vase,

0:11:19.202,0:11:21.175
this was a kind of love at first sight.

0:11:21.175,0:11:24.031
In fact, reader, I married him. I bought him.

0:11:24.031,0:11:27.895
And he now adorns my office.

0:11:27.895,0:11:31.436
He's a Staffordshire figure made [br]in the middle of the 19th century.

0:11:31.436,0:11:36.242
He represents the actor, Edmund Kean, [br]playing Shakespeare's Richard III.

0:11:36.242,0:11:38.695
And it's based, actually, on a more [br]elevated piece of porcelain.

0:11:38.695,0:11:40.849
So I loved, on an art historical level,

0:11:40.849,0:11:45.509
I loved that layered quality that he has.

0:11:45.509,0:11:48.002
But more than that, I love him.

0:11:48.002,0:11:49.680
In a way that I think would have been impossible

0:11:49.680,0:11:52.292
without the pink Sèvres vase in my Leonardo days.

0:11:52.292,0:11:55.509
I love his orange and pink breeches.

0:11:55.509,0:11:58.259
I love the fact that he seems to be going off to war,

0:11:58.259,0:12:02.691
having just finished the washing up. (Laughter)

0:12:02.691,0:12:05.168
He seems also to have forgotten his sword.

0:12:05.168,0:12:07.787
I love his pink little cheeks, his munchkin energy.

0:12:07.787,0:12:10.978
In a way, he's become my sort of alter ego.

0:12:10.978,0:12:13.279
He's, I hope, a little bit dignified,

0:12:13.279,0:12:18.453
but mostly rather vulgar. (Laughter)

0:12:18.453,0:12:21.671
And energetic, I hope, too.

0:12:21.671,0:12:26.826
I let him into my life because the Sèvres[br]pink elephant vase allowed me to do so.

0:12:26.826,0:12:28.394
And before that Leonardo,

0:12:28.394,0:12:33.500
I understood that this object could become [br]part of a journey for me every day,

0:12:33.500,0:12:36.245
sitting in my office.

0:12:36.245,0:12:39.234
I really hope that others, all of you,

0:12:39.234,0:12:40.809
visiting objects in the museum,

0:12:40.809,0:12:43.263
and taking them home and [br]finding them for yourselves,

0:12:43.263,0:12:47.577
will allow those objects to flourish [br]in your imaginative lives.

0:12:47.577,0:12:49.130
Thank you very much.

0:12:49.130,0:12:53.013
(Applause)