73: Blame It on Art
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So, Jim, say who you are and say where you are. Well, I'm Jim Bitterman and I'm standing in the hall of the states in the Louvre Museum that's a hall of Italian masters where many of the Italian masters, the Caravaggios and Raphael's and many of the Italian painters are from the Venetian period, and including Lynn out of the Vinci and the Bona Lisa. I'm standing right across the way from the Bona Lisa as a matter of fact. And you're speaking to us on a cell phone from there, from there in Paris. From the actual museum itself. I was in Italy once in Florence, and I went to the museum where they have Michelangelo's statue of David. He holds a slingshot in one hand using pictures of this. And as I stood there, all around the statue where people were talking about what restaurant they were going to go to later when they were going to meet their friends, you know, you just stand there and you just think how good would this statue have to be to actually get their undivided attention? What has an artist got to do? And this is not just Michelangelo's problem. We sent out an actual foreign correspondent, Jim Bitterman, to the Louvre. And he discovered that Leonardo da Vinci is also having trouble touching people's hearts in the museum setting. Well, one of the great debates that's taking place here around the Bona Lisa is exactly how expensive it is and why it's valued at so much. You know, the people are talking about what it is exactly that makes this painting so special. And I heard one woman say, "Well, I had to smile." Another woman said, "No, no, no. It's her eyes." And she says, "You know, her eyes follow you anywhere in the room." And then she says to her friend, "Go over there in the corner and see if she's looking at you and shout. She stops across the room." You know, is she looking at you over there? Can you see her looking at you over there? So Jim, do people stand next to the Mona Lisa and talk about things that have nothing to do with the painting at all? Oh, absolutely. Yeah. I mean, and also you've got a lot of people sort of pressed to get out of their places. I'm tired, Dad. You said you were going to take us somewhere else, and now we've seen this, let's go. And yeah, there's a lot of that. It actually makes you feel bad for artists, you know? A group must give us feel no sympathy for it whatsoever. I mean, imagine an artist's life. It takes years to develop any skills. It's intensely difficult to learn. It's very, very competitive. Almost nobody makes any money doing it. There are jealousies and unfair treatment, and then, if somehow, somehow, your work is recognized and you end up in a museum, perhaps incredible you end up in a world-class museum like the Louvre.
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