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>> Tonight we're going to be
exploring the answer to how,
then, should I live, which the
answer being by art, by the
artistic life, by appreciating
beauty.
And our example is going to be
looking at the pre-Raphaelites
and their most distinguished
artist and political thinker:
William Morris.
I'm going to talk a little bit
descriptively about the
pre-Raphaelites and several of
their artists and art this
evening before I move into the
greatest of them: William
Morris.
The pre-Raphaelites were really
an informal society of artists
starting around the mid-century
in Britain.
And they saw themselves as
artistic rebels who wanted a
different form of art than what
they saw as the stayed and
artificial painting.
Their focus was largely but not
exclusively on painting.
So they wanted to break from
this stayed traditional view.
And, of course, this is familiar
to us as every major art
movement in the history, I
guess, of the world gets started
with this framework of we want
to get away from the traditional
dead stuff and let's get
something that really is so much
better.
Of course, they had no doubt
about what was better.
The pre-Raphaelites wanted to
represent nature as they
believed it really was, rather
than in a very formal way.
They were particularly
interested in a whole series of
different eras than the
contemporary era.
They were not enthusiastic about
art that focused on their time.
And so there was a considerable
interest, as we will see, in
pictures portraying or
purporting to portray various
medieval themes and personages.
A great deal of interest in
religious, Christian religious
themes.
And, above all, there as a
tremendous interest in women.
And if you want to have any
keyword about the
pre-Raphaelites, they loved
painting women.
And virtually all of their
really "great" paintings are of
women, and in the case of some
of the key figures, it is, as
they saw it, paintings of their
women.
Wives, lovers who, in their
paintings, may be reappearing at
-- growing up or in the middle
ages or wherever.
So there was this tremendous
interest in looking elsewhere,
but in the past, for models.
And the favorite models were
women who, some would argue,
you can judge for yourself,
were, shall we say, highly
romanticized.
The way the pre-Raphaelites,
especially of the second
generation, put it was they were
looking for women for their
pictures, and these women had to
be, to use their term,
"stunners."
They didn't want anything else
or any other women.
Well, again, it's a matter of
individual judgment as to
whether they found those
stunners.
I'll let you judge for yourself.
The kind of women they liked
besides being stunners were
women that were, if I can use
this term, soulful looking.
A sensitive, a deep.
Was soulful.
And very frequently there was,
or their critics charged anyway,
a hint of sexual energy, which,
of course, the pre-Raphaelites
said no, not in the Victorian
era.
Well, that's just a little bit
about the movement.
The movement went through
several phases, several
generations.
As I say, it was very loose
bounded activity in group.
So some were part of it at one
time and not at others.
But, of course, it culminates in
our subject for tonight,
William Morris.
But let me show you, if I can, a
few examples of what we're
dealing with.
Well, Sir John Millais was a
crucial figure of the first
generation of the
pre-Raphaelites and a widely
admired painter.
I'll show you.
Here we see in Autumn Leaves.
Again, what you expect, you have
these women.
You notice they're all women.
They are engaged with nature, as
was the approved procedure.
This is one of the most famous
of Millais' paintings: Ophelia.
She is lying in nature, and the
emphasis on beauty is obvious
with the flowers.
Here was Millais with another
theme that was quite common, as
I mentioned.
This painting caused quite a bit
of controversy.
In case this isn't immediately
obvious to you, this is Mary
with Jesus.
And that raised criticisms, of
course, that, well, I'm sorry,
this isn't quite the way we had
envisioned it.
But, again, one of the things
that critics suggested was,
well, Jesus isn't really the
center of the picture.
It's once again a women who is
central to it.
But it just gives you a feeling
for some of the works that he
did.
Now another first generation
figure was this gentleman with
the magnificent, absolutely
magnificent beard:
William Holman Hunt.
And you notice the dress, for
example, that he has.
This is part of their, why
shouldn't all aspects of life be
beautiful?
Why shouldn't clothes be
beautiful?
Why do we have to wear those
dreadful Victorian numbers?
Now here is a famous painting by
him where Christ is portrayed as
the light of the world.
He is, presumably, knocking at
the door after his resurrection,
and the door does not appear to
have a way that he can enter.
So it is meant to symbolize that
they must, one must welcome
Christ.
Now, the irony here is that the
pre-Raphaelites, on the whole,
were not necessarily
particularly religious.
But the religious themes they
thought were often beautiful and
engaging.
And so that's what really
mattered.
After all, the goal is art, is
beauty, and wherever it might be
present in the past, one should
call on it, call it up.
And, of course, they did.
So Millais and Hunt were kind of
two crucial figures of the first
generation, if I can put it that
way.
The second generation of the
pre-Raphaelites, and again keep
in mind this is a very loose
concept, but perhaps as time
went on what was common was the
style of their art.
But the second generation brings
us to Edward Burne-Jones.
And he was very much in touch
with Morris because Morris
himself could be described as
something of a second
generation.
I'll give you an example of his
artwork.
It's very characteristic.
Here we have the three women,
once again, and it is their
faces reflected in the pool.
This setting, of course, is not
a contemporary setting, as you
can see.
It's meant to be a more or less
medieval one.
Now that brings us to the
perhaps most famous of the
second generation, and that's
Dante Gabriel Rossetti.
And we're going to look at
several of his pictures here and
talk a little bit about his
story.
Rossetti's sister, some of you
may have read her poetry.
She was a Victorian poet.
In her case, a very devout
Christian and wrote Christian
poems.
Her brother was a bit of a
different story.
There he is.
And these people are generally
self-portraits.
He looks a little ominous, but
he was an artistic genius.
No question of that.
But he had a very, very troubled
life.
And his first wife, who we'll
see in a moment, he really liked
to paint the women in his life.
His first wife committed
suicide, and he never fully
recovered from that and spent a
lot of his time afterward not
just painting but a lot of time
drinking and taking drugs and,
in general, was a mess but a
very creative mess.
And he did stabilize his
romantic life by having as his
mistress William Morris' wife.
So the relationships were rather
close among these people.
Of course, we understand because
we are liberated.
This was not a secret romance.
Not at all.
And so, well, let's look a
little bit at his magnificent
art.
Here we have, it says, "Behold
the helper of God."
And that's presumably Jesus, and
I don't know whether that's Mary
or not for sure.
If you look at this, Jesus
appears to be highly
romanticized, if I may phrase it
to you that way.
But, again, really the key
figure, at least as I look at it
and I don't claim to be a great
art historian, appears to be the
helper who is carrying, of
course, the lilies, the glory of
sort of Christian nature.
Okay, so now this is his first
wife who he painted, the one who
committed suicide.
They did a lot of painting of
each other.
I think this is their version of
the modern day selfie.
[LAUGHTER]
If I can put it to you that way.
And I do think, though, that
very frequently this result is
better than the realistic or the
distortion that comes from
modern day pictures.
And here is The Beloved.
I believe the setting for this
is the Song of Solomon in the
Hebrew scriptures, Jewish
scriptures.
And we have these beautiful
women.
And, again, they are dressed in,
allegedly, indigenous costumes.
But of course we have the
flowers and the beautiful
jewelry.
It's pre-Raphaelite.
Let's put it that way.
All the way.
And then we have Jane Morris.
This is Jane Morris.
Obviously, Dante Rossetti
considered her a stunner and
remarkable.
Again you see the presence of
nature, both in the fruit, the
rich gown.
It's a whole style.
And here she is again.
And she's portrayed here.
You see the beads.
She's portrayed here more in the
medieval setting.
We have the Roman numerals here
and so on.
But they're always in this
soulful style.
Almost always.
I think it's, obviously I think
the art is wonderful myself.
Okay, well, let's just take one
more Rossetti.
And there she is again.
And you can see everywhere
there's this sense of richness
of color and beauty.
And people often say, well,
where are the action pictures?
And I'm afraid we're in the
wrong realm of art.
We don't want any action
pictures here.
And also, there's nothing of
the, or very little I would say,
of the pure nature type
paintings that we can imagine,
say, an Emerson or Thoreau might
do were they painters.
That's not really what we're
concerned about.
There is incredible beauty in so
many ways in this world, but,
clearly, the very acme of beauty
is woman.
And that was central to their
meaning.
Does anyone have any questions
about the pre-Raphaelites before
we move on to talk a little more
about the master that is
William Morris.
Yeah?
>> [INAUDIBLE]
>> That was a term they made up.
>> [INAUDIBLE]
>> There's no
significance of it.
Some people have said, well,
doesn't this refer to Raphael,
the painter, and we're going
back before that and so on.
But they had no, and you can
work that and some have, but
it's a loose jointed movement.
But the term is one that came
from within.
It isn't a critics term for it.
But a lot of people have said,
well, they want to go way back,
and that's the expression of it.
There's no constitution for the
organization.
It's difficult to be certain.
Well, let me turn to
William Morris.
There are many expressions of
Morris that you can get.
You can even buy, today, you
might be surprised at this, a
William Morris coloring book.
You can't buy a Horatio --
coloring book, a Thomas Carlyle,
and you can't even buy an
Emerson one, but you can buy
this.
And I haven't colored it, but it
has his designs in there.
I wouldn't want to color it
because it would ruin it.
But I just wanted to show you
that.
I'm not going to pass it out
lest anyone else start coloring
it.
We don't want that.
Not that you'd do that, of
course, but, well, we have to be
careful.
So let's turn to...
My view was that life itself
must be lived as an art and
lived for art and taken
together, then, an expression of
art as a way of life.
I started out as a poet, like
others in the movement, but
fairly soon I developed an
interest in drawing and in
painting and, above all, in
producing beautiful design.
And don't you see, you do see,
don't you, that that's a way of
expressing what I'm all about.
How then should we live?
We should design beauty.
We should live beauty.
We should design it.
And the concept of design is
very important for you to
understand because I'm not
talking about the sort of raw
celebration of spontaneity.
When I think about art or when
you think about designing a
picture, a print, cloth,
wallpaper, I did all of those
things, you have to design it.
I am not an anarchist.
I don't want to think that way.
I think that art requires
spontaneous inventiveness, but
then it requires design.
And, my friends, so does the
good society, of course.
It must be about art.
But it also must be about
design.
And I want you to keep that in
mind.
Now, I've already mentioned that
things did not go very well with
my wife.
A very sad situation.
And then they did not go well
with my second wife, obviously.
But they went very well in other
areas of my life.
Because you see, I was a
businessman.
I had a business.
I supported myself.
And it was quite a successful
business called Morris and
Company.
And it was a lifelong business.
An unquestioned success.
We probably became known most
for our textiles.
And Morris textile prints are
available today in your town.
They were an enormous success.
In my time, wallpaper was very
big, and I produced some of the
bestselling wallpaper designs,
which I'll show you in a moment.
So textiles, wallpaper, another
area, as this is, was producing
stained glass.
In all cases, carefully designed
but about beauty, as I
understood it.
And to enhance beauty and to get
people to appreciate beauty.
Now, while I was working my
business, and, quite honestly,
compared to a lot of other
thinkers of my period, I felt I
had a sort of down to Earth
experience with the
practicalities of life.
And in my case, of course, that
was specifically with the
practicalities of business.
Lots of complications there.
But at the same time, it was
through my business that
questions first started coming
up in my mind about the way
commercial business activities
were conducted in my time in
England.
Or as I would put it later,
about how capitalism actually
worked.
Now, I saw a lot of things that
I thought were terrible, in
terms of the consequences of a
lot of free wielding business.
I saw a lot of free wielding
business that wasn't ethical,
also.
But I'm sure you can realize
nothing irritated me more,
nothing made me more angry than
what business produced in terms
of goods and services.
It wasn't about producing the
beautiful.
It wasn't about helping people
to enter into, commercially or
any other way, the beautiful.
That was its greatest fault.
It was a denial of beauty.
Now, I recognize people could
disagree about what's beautiful,
but the point I want to make is
the commercial and capitalist
society was not interested in
the subject whatsoever.
And so given how I believe we
should live, it was condemning
itself.
So I had business experience, I
ran a business throughout my
professional life really, but I
saw a lot of things that I
didn't like, above all the
abandonment of beauty, of art.
Now, I want to show you a few of
my pieces of my artwork.
Here we have a, more or less,
Guinevere.
We have a holy book here.
By the way, I hope you all
understand, if you were to say
to me, well, did you and the
people who preceded you in this
very loose art movement, were
you interested in returning to
the middle ages or something?
No, no.
This is a subject and yet it
takes us away from what was seen
as the commercial, the deadly,
the beauty denying world.
To look at this is to inspire
you to look elsewhere, to think
elsewhere, to think about
alternatives.
And most of the pre-Raphaelites
were not in any way political.
But Morris' experience is
leading him in this direction.
Now, this is one of several
prints we'll look at.
These prints would be wallpaper,
fabric.
Of course, you observe the
presence of flowers everywhere.
There's a distinct style here,
obviously, you recognize.
One of the things that was
characteristic of his wallpaper
and his prints was that they
had, as part of their aim, to
sort of liven up the often drab,
dark, and overstuffed middle
class and upper middle class
Victorian homes.
And something like that covering
a wall, I believe, would
undoubtedly accomplish that
goal.
Well, somewhere in my history,
as you may know, comes the
development of my very
prominent, in the late 19th
century, socialism.
By no means did I begin as a
socialist, and, though I did not
object to people calling me a
socialist, I was a socialist of
a very, very special kind.
And perhaps it would be better
if latter day commentators on me
might have called me a beauty
socialist because socialists, I
felt, like a lot of other people
with political agendas, could be
very far away from the goal of
living a life of beauty.
The goal never changed.
How, then, should we live
doesn't change with me.
It's always the same.
The life of art and beauty.
What begins to take shape is a
social and political design that
will promote, in my view, this
beauty.
In short, it's not enough for me
to run a business and have
complaints about the commercial
world around me, the Victorian
society with its failiure to
appreciate beauty as I
understand it, I really need to
look at what in your time would
be called the structures of
society and ask, because there
are so many beautiful people in
the world, especially beautiful
women, so the fault is not in
us.
People don't appreciate beauty,
but I believe they could
appreciate it and absolutely
integral to the process of
appreciating it, this is not
going to museums, this is
producing beauty.
Because if one is a producer of
beauty, recognizing the
differences among us, then
beauty has become part of our
soul and we are really living
beauty.
By my middle age, let say the
1870s, I was definitely now
committed to a kind of activism
for a socialism.
As I said, the love and practice
of art made me a socialist.
Not the analysis of some
historical processes.
You understand?
I'm no Marx.
What is that all about?
It's the love and practice of
art.
The goal isn't to achieve state
ownership of the means of
production.
The goal is not to achieve some
kind of formal equality.
Those may be, in other words,
I'm really not in touch with a
lot of the socialist movement in
my time.
Britain, the continent, the Marx
and all the people fighting with
Marx, sectarianism, I'm not
really interested.
In some general sense, they are
allies, but I am a businessman
and it's the practice of art
that matters.
Even as I began to work and
think about a design, a
socialist society where art
could reign, because that's the
goal, I continued to develop as
a professional artist and
businessman.
And in my later years, I
developed a artistically
oriented printing press.
And, for example, the works of
Chaucer were produced as works
of really exquisite beauty by me
and my collaborators.
So the words were beautiful but
we set them in beautiful
manuscripts because that's what
we're seeking: beauty.
Now, as time went on I began to
think about this design.
And my most famous work that
expresses this is called
News From Nowhere.
And as was common, as many of
you know, and awful lot of what
Marx would call the utopian
socialists tended to present
their views in a literary form.
And so did I.
No unspeakably turgid economic
analysis as in Marx's Kapital.
Instead, I wrote many individual
essays about different
particular issues from my
socialist perspective.
News from Nowhere was meant to
be my literary expression, my
literary design.
Now, I want to tell you about my
design, of course, and see if
you think it is an expression.
And while I emphasize that I was
my own socialist, okay,
obviously I associated with
other people who had somewhat
similar ideas.
An example would be
George Bernard Shaw.
I used many of his plays to
present kind of very soft
anti-capitalist, pro, though you
have to work at it, socialist
views.
But again, Shaw, like myself,
was a humanist.
This is not economic analysis.
Not meant to be.
And indeed, if you said to me,
well, do you think there will be
a revolution?
Well, sure.
Sure.
Now let's move onto something
important.
Understand?
If you said to me, is class
conflict going to be important
in this?
Yeah, it is, but let's get
going.
So there was a kind of
ritualistic endorsement of sort
of some of the socialist ideas,
but it wasn't very deep in my
soul.
Not at all.
Well, what was?
What did it look like?
What was I looking for?
I've said I'm a practical sort.
So when we talk about designing
a society, we're going to have
to be practical.
And besotted as I was by beauty
and the creation of beauty, I
knew, as I put it, that art does
not go before the knife and the
fork.
Art does not go before the knife
and the fork.
So, again, we have to design a
society that can sustain itself
in very practical terms.
And, therefore, we have to think
about we can address the knife
and the fork.
And we will.
Okay?
We will.
But I want you to have just a
little bit of a feel for what
it's all going to look like.
What values is it going to
embody?
What's it going to be like?
One thing for sure is it's going
to be a very simple society.
We need to operate in a world
where we're not overwhelmed, and
that means we have to
drastically simplify.
And, of course, you understand
that means simplifying the
production of goods as well as
how we live personally.
And yes it will also embody the
value of equality, but not
equality as some kind of
doctrine, some kind of thing we
measure.
Equality, if it's alive, I
believe, must be a communal
value.
And let me explain that.
That is, equality cannot be
measured by incomes or anything
like that precisely, but
equality is ultimately about a
fundamental respect for each
other within an artistic
community.
And so, for me, equality apart
from community and community
apart from equality will not
work, and I do not want them.
And I'm not interested in people
who urge one or the other and
seemingly not both.
And that community is going to
be built not just by this
respect, but it's going to be
built by, respect is a formal
term, it's a formal
relationship, and the way it's
really built, as I understand
it, is through sharing.
And that we will be a sharing,
interactive community.
But first you may say, what
about the knife and fork?
Sharing community and so on.
These words roll off tongue but
where's the knife and fork?
As you may know, all of us
socialists in the 19th century
from me to Marx were
tremendously committed to the
value of work.
And valued people vary
definitely by their commitment
to work.
And so my view is if we have a
simply community where everyone
understands as part of the
reciprocity and sharing that we
all have to work, then what the
community will need will be far
less than what people think as
they look from our Victorian
times.
The knife and fork will need to
be used but much less.
Yes, well, yes there'll be
farming.
Of course.
Yes we'll raise our own basic
crops and live off them in terms
of our food.
Of course.
And there'll be reciprocity with
this.
And at the same time, we will
observe what is true, which is
there is, for example, an art of
husbandry and an art of farming.
And we will be alert to those
who see their work and their
work expresses the art.
But you do understand that the
central part of our community
will be the production of art,
of beauty in a slightly
different sense.
That is, our community will be
about the production of art.
Now, you might say, wait a
minute, that doesn't sound
realistic.
I'm practical.
The art I'm talking about is
useful art.
After all, it's from me over the
time that the famous arts and
crafts movement develops.
We're going to build furniture
for us and for others.
We're going to design fabrics.
We'll use it but we'll sell
them.
Practical art.
Practical crafts.
And this is something which so
many people can participate in
and can play a role in and can
share in and thus build an
artistic community.
So we'll be able to take care of
ourselves in terms of our basic
needs and, as appropriate, sell
the practical things that we may
make.
Now, there are people out there,
and I was well aware of it, who
think, oh, well, I'm sorry,
making some end table or beds,
that's not beautiful.
But it is beautiful if it's
done, it's created as a work of
art.
Now, I know in your time you can
go to, I don't know, Shopko and
you can get bookcases and end
tables and beds and stuff.
That's not art.
That's junk.
But from my point of view, we
can both have the practical and
the art, and we must never ever
in my community surrender that
pairing.
We must never let art become, if
you will, fine art because then
it leaves the community.
At best it becomes something
that a handful of people do in
the community.
But practical arts and crafts
are beautiful and they're
practical for us and for others.
And how wonderful that the
objects in people's homes on
people's walls, the practical
things that they will need in
their lives will also be
beautiful and created in a
beautiful community devoted to
the arts and crafts and to art
itself.
It's very, very exciting.
Now, when we are working in the
arts and crafts, we have a
commitment to, as my
predecessors of the
Pre-Raphaelite movement did, we
have a commitment to art that is
natural.
And so as much as possible we
want to use natural materials,
natural woods because part of
being simple, and here you see
an invocation of Emerson, is
being close to nature.
Morris felt a connection with
Emerson and with Thoreau, whose
line simplify, simplify,
simplify, sums up his approach.
Simplifying means getting back
to what's natural and getting
back to what's natural in us,
which is we are creative people
who can produce beauty in very
practical objects.
Now, you understand I'm not
suggesting for a minute that
everyone has the same capacity
to produce beauty, but everyone
has the capacity to participate
in the process of producing
beauty.
And therefore, they are
producing beauty.
And we're doing it, we're going
to do it together, which, of
course, is what we did and
continue to do in Morris and
Company.
Now, you all understand that
while we're producing these
objects of art, there'll be no
factories.
There'll be no mass production.
It will be done by individual
workers.
We're going to get rid of the
factory system.
It's oppressive, it's
exploitive, but above all you
know my objection.
In its results it does not
produce art, but even worse in
the actual production process it
is not about art or the artistic
community.
So we reject it.
Well, there's a few other nos
that will give you a little
sense of what we don't want,
what we're not going to have.
There'll be no private property.
I'm a socialist.
It's our property.
Private property means mine and
thine, means the drawing of
lines.
By definition, the drawing of
property lines.
We're not going to have property
lines.
We're going to have an artistic
sharing of community.
And, as my reference to farms
should make clear, we aren't
going to operate in the
horrible, crowded, art-denying
urban world of the big cities.
I've seen those cities.
They're getting bigger and
bigger.
There's precious little art to
be found there but a great deal
of suffering.
So we want to move to an
agrarian setting with plenty of
space where we share common.
And, of course, there'll be no
authority in my society,
needless to say.
Now, you might say, well, wait a
minute, wait a minute, wouldn't
there be some because you may
not have elected officials and
all of that, and I assure you
we're not going to have any of
that, but isn't there a kind of
authority that's going to exist
through the community and
community norms?
And indeed you know in your time
we have people who say, well,
you know, all these people who
celebrate these communities of
equals and so on, that's very
frightening because there's
nothing to block a majority that
oppresses.
Well, my friends, I hope you
understand that people who are
really, really worried about
this, I'm afraid they're not
really going to succeed in our
community.
Our community is about people
who trust others, who share with
others, who accept our basic
values.
And if you think people are
going to oppress each other,
then, I'm sorry, you're not
ready.
You have been corrupted.
But I think people aren't like
that, if you give them half a
chance.
Yes, if you force them into a
factory.
Yes, if you have crowded cities.
Yes, if you live under these
exploited systems.
And so here is my thought about
Thomas Carlyle.
You see, Thomas Carlyle is a man
who understood.
I, too, was influenced by him.
Who wasn't in the second half of
the 19th century in Britain?
And I salute Carlyle because he
sees what the costs of
capitalism are.
He faces the social question.
And to tell you the truth, with
his tremendous emphasis on a
very strong state, a tremendous
amount of regulation and
control, he really is an
unspoken socialist, in my mind.
But the problem is, as I put it,
he needs to have somebody once
in a while go hit him in the
head.
Now, why does Carlyle need to be
hit in the head?
Because he thinks the answer is
authority.
It's called heroes.
And a very strong top-down
government.
No.
That's not the answer.
Yes, it may address some of the
social issues, but it will not
transform society toward the
artistic community, which I
believe Carlyle really wanted.
For me, Carlyle is a
fundamentally, you might say,
not religious but deeply
spiritual.
Now, what else are we going to
be free of?
Are we going to be free of so
many things so we can be the
artists we are?
Well, there's not going to be
any divorce.
And since there's no divorce,
and I'm sure you understand the
reason there's not going to be
any divorce in my society is not
because we have strict laws
against it, of course, but, of
course, there's not going to be
any marriage.
Love itself should be an art.
So we'll get rid of all of that.
It stands in the way.
And, of course, all you skeptics
out there, I can assure you that
we're not going to have any
prisons either.
We don't need prisons.
Prisons and the number of people
in prisons are a statement of a
society's inadequacy.
There should be no doubt about
that in your mind.
There certainly isn't in mine.
But you see in our society we
won't have people like that.
We won't need prisons.
And, more than that, we won't
have the need to put people in
prison, which is part of the
authority complex that I don't
think much of.
In fact, you name an
institution, government,
religious institution, formal
schooling.
What we are going to have is
people who are going to discover
the incredible truth that
they're artists, that they're
beautiful, and that they can
create beauty which, after all,
is the purpose of living.
That is William Morris.