NUGGETS

“If you want to read more about any of this I would recommend. Shelley Rice has written a book about early photography and how it influenced the reconstruction of Paris.”

“If you wanted to be an artist. What that looked like in 1850 and what that looked like was very like State sanctioned.”

“And if you got lucky every year, the Academy of art had what they called a salon which was. A big exhibition where you could submit your paintings an if you were accepted they would be shown and the opening night of the salon was like the social events of the season.”

“So of course there's always counterculture movements against these sorts of state sanctioned kinds of art, so in the 1850s the counterculture movement was called realism.”

“Manet Looks at that and then he makes his version of it and he does this really cool thing he does like a full remix he's. Really cool and he takes that Venus painting that super classical painting and he copies it, but pops in a sex worker”

TRANSCRIPT

00:00:00 Tom Sachs: When you can see it.

00:00:07 Erum: Live.

00:00:29 Tom Sachs: Can you hear me? OK. I don’t want to see how many people are watching. Hey, welcome to office hours. Just getting the camera just right. I’m just covering up my. Counters, so I don’t know how many of you are watching ‘cause I think it’s important when you make your art that you make it for you first. If it makes sense for you, it’s going to make sense for everybody else. So. Welcome back to the shop.

00:02:29 Tom Sachs: Today we’re going to talk about. Tools. The most dangerous tool in the shop is. The The Razor Blade box cutter scalpel any. Anything that’s like a knife. And it. And this is the. This is the thing that sent me the hospital the most times and more people the hospital. It’s like people cut themselves with their knives, not the table saw and. So one of the questions and the first question. Today so you know, let’s do it the old way for a second. Just ‘cause we can demo. Couple details is from M lo. And the injuries are inevitable. In your line of work, what’s injury that you’ve had side lined you?From em low 84. So was before, the Internet and a car alarm was going off with hot enough air conditioning. Had to take a shit and I was on the ladder an I was cutting a piece of foam core and like the blade was dull. The blade was dull and I pulled and pulled and pulled it. Finally went through and it went all the way down to my thigh and it was about 7:00 o’clock on Sunday night and my ritual was watching The Simpsons and I was like, Oh no problem. I’ll just. Got an Hour before I gotta watch The Simpsons, there’s a pretty bad cut. I was clear I couldn’t fix it myself, so I walked to the fire Department and I said, hey, can you guys can you stitch it? And they were like no way you gotta go to the hospital. I’m never gonna make The Simpsons by then so I went home with a needle and thread and I threaded. I watched Rambo and I tried to stitch it. And I just couldn’t. Penetrate my skin. It was the needle wasn’t sharp enough and it was, it was and then so like you know, whatever flash forward a dozen years later to the Internet and you can buy these kits of needles online and. I’m going to. There’s there’s sterile and you just kind of look up how to how to do it, but I guess my point. Is if you have the right tools, anything is possible and I’m just going to open this up so you can see. So this needle and this is a big one. This is way too big for a razor blade, but my point is it’s sharp and you can get in through this skin. This is, uh, this is for this is I don’t know. What kind of situation you need this one for. I know I didn’t order the right one whatever. We can talk about maybe someone can post what’s the right size for a I don’t know. 4 to 8 millimeter depth incision. That’s just typical of this anyway. But to answer a question next on the list for today is.

00:05:37 Tom Sachs: My favorite questions ever. Is. From cargo cult scientist Rule #1. Sharp blade, right? But how do I know when to change it? These are cheap, like. Make sure it’s always perfectly fucking sharp. You know when it’s just make sure it’s sharp, sharp, sharp. Let you know when if it’s dull. Start over, that’s the way to avoid injuries.

00:06:10 Tom Sachs: But let’s get into it today. It’s all about the jigsaw, and this is one of my favorite tools. And the reason why I like the jigsaw is because unlike the table saw which DP makes, stuff is asking question. At DP makes up what is the one tool that you’re afraid of that you can’t live without? At the table saw and we’ll talk about that another day. But the table saw is a witch, a witch who will take your finger. See that that’s a spinning, spinning blade of death, so that’s another, and I don’t even think 20 minutes is enough to do it over table soft, but the jigsaw is great because it can’t hurt you.

00:06:52 Tom Sachs: The worst cut you can get from a jigsaw will just hurt an open you up and you need a band aid, but you won’t need to go to the hospital. So if you don’t need to go to hospital, it’s not an injury. It’s a Boo Boo, and the difference between injury and Boo Boo is everything alright, so bandsaw, it’s uh, sorry jigsaw is reciprocating. Goes up and down some people call it a fucksaw. Alright, and then the the blade pulls the material into the. Table thing the the fence, the the the plate that is essential and you’ll see why in a minute. It’s very simple. There’s a variable speed control. Trigger see. Down all the way it goes fast, little bit goes slow, the other thing you need to understand is that this this is the oscillator. This is the angle so 0 not because it goes too fast, but so if it’s on zero the blade goes up and down. And if it’s on 3. It goes up and down with a little bit of a curve. You can’t see it, but basically it it scoop cuts. It goes faster so. But today, let’s just leave it on zero ‘cause we’re just going for basics. Alright, so first thing, change the blade by the way, when you get one of these get just get a. Reputable and don’t get a get a. But get a Makita or Bosch. I think Bosch is the best thing they invented it or they bought the company skin tilla essay from Switzerland, probably in the 50s and they kept making them. But I I think they’re all the same to what. Whatever, I just don’t get cryobi

00:08:37 Tom Sachs: So you pull this little lever. And then you pull the blade out. And I would like to mention that today that this episode of office hours is sponsored by edge manufacturing, who make their the official bandsaw blade, hole saw and jigsaw blade supplier and sponsor of the studio. So they’re great if you need bandsaw blades and you really need a band sawing It’s another episode. Those guys are those guys are great so thank you Steve for hooking us up at Steve Menendez on insta.

00:09:15 Tom Sachs: So um, anyway? Yeah, so you pull this thing back and this is great. The new ones don’t need a tool. The old ones need a screwdriver and then you take your blade. Stick it in there. And let go now, this is very important needle nose pliers. I love these ease of this new ones from Klein tools. They’re glow in the dark handles, but you want some Skookum Needle nose pliers ‘cause it when you’re when you’re a caveman woodworker like me, you will break these blades and you need to get in there and pull the blade out. And you, there’s the only way to do it with needle nose pliers. I like these. Awesome Klein tools.

00:09:57 Tom Sachs: Alright, so. Let’s go over to the table. Shall we? And. I just want to show that you. Make it so that Erum’s talking I can only I wanna see only her face. Can you make that on that?

00:10:18 Erum: Can you hear me?

00:10:19 Tom Sachs: Yeah. I know I just see Ava and I’m trying to talk to you so. I don’t know how to make that alright. So. Alright, let me tell you about the project. We’re going to do today. This is kind of fun.

00:10:38 Erum: That’s a good angle.

00:10:40 Tom Sachs: Right? So. Alright.

00:10:51 Tom Sachs: So guy has his new John Deere tractor and. It’s a real Backbreaker ‘cause when I’m pushing he refuses to pedal because he’s two and. So I gotta push him and it’s kind of a back breaker. So what I’m gonna do is I’m going to attach this, see that see the ironing board there. In the picture, can you see that? So I broke the little legs off of it. I said broke the legs off it. This is the legs off the ironing board. And I’m going to attach this to that little steering wheel. That plastic steering wheel, but.

I’m afraid that it’s gonna break ‘cause it’s plastic, so I’m going to reinforce it with some wood and I got some special wood today. This is it’s got wood grain it’s it’s called Centra. I think an it’s I think it’s some kind of PVC plastic that’s puffed with air, but it’s strong as wood its got wood grain. I think in this community it’s used as siding, but it’s strong. It won’t swell so that’s why I’m I’m using centra but just to know you can cut wood, metal, plastic, all kinds of things with jigsaw. Today we’re going to cut this this air pocket stuff. That stuff works so.

00:12:10 Tom Sachs: First rule of thumb. Clamp the work down so that you can use two hands. Later we can talk about how to cut with one hand, but for today let’s just do it the right way and and clamp it down. And when you clamp, use two clamps, one clamps not enough. You have to always use two or more clamps. Three is is really proper, but I think for today Two is two is enough

00:12:39 Tom Sachs: #2 mark your mark your work. Oh sorry you couldn’t see me so I just clamped this board down. OK mark marking right so when you’re going to cut #2 is you’re going to. Cut to one side of the line. You’re going to make a mark so. In a way. If I was a really good teacher, I would spend this entire 10 minutes talking about marking because marking is everything. It’s kind of like the set up. Yeah, if I had 10 hours to chop down a tree, I’d spend nine of them sharpening my axe. If I had 10 minutes to cut a piece of wood. I’d spend nine of them marking it and clamping it and prepping, so we’re gonna talk about I made these marks already in advance.

00:13:30 Tom Sachs: Right, so this is a mark. So I would do something like this. Combo Square, that’s another great lesson we can do. Can talk about combo squares and their importance. Alright, and so we’re going to cut to one side of this line. We’re going to cut to this. I’d always market with an X. That’s garbage. This is my. This is a scissor drawing that I do always to show it cut along this line, but the garbage side this crap goes on the side. I always put a garbage can. Underneath my trash so that I have to clean up, it just falls straight in there. I don’t like cleaning. I don’t like this fucking confusing Dyson Vacuum. It’s like a jigsaw puzzle every time. I know it’s efficient, but it’s hard and I want to be easy. So instead of just grab it and let it fall in the trash, get that in place now.

00:14:29 Tom Sachs: I’m going to cut this line, but I’m going to. I’m going to rehearse my body’s movement, so I’m going to move through space. Boom, rehearse, that means there’s no. Extension cord on the floor, ready to go right now. I don’t know what number on, but let’s just say #3. The most important thing when you’re cutting with a jigsaw in any material is your body’s movements. I’m gonna pull. Back a little bit. So I’ve got. I’m holding here with the trigger. And I’m pushing down. And I’m leaning a little forward. Can you see how like this is flat and this is forward not flat? And that’s forward. Gotta be leaning a little forward. If you lean back it’ll do this crazy hopping vibrating thing. And I’m not even going to demonstrate that right now, but I will. But I will show you if you just lean a little forward, you’re fine, but not not this much, just a little. Still little like that. So I’m gonna make the cut.

00:15:31 Tom Sachs: Little piece of metal underneath that skin I’m gonna hit that so we gotta move these clamps I can show you again about. Yeah, I like Bessey clamps, my favorite are Wetzler. Bessie is the next. Best one. K get in there. Let’s get real close.

00:16:14 Erum: Perfect.

00:16:21 Tom Sachs: How’s that? OK. Alright. Ready?

00:16:35 Erum: But we couldn’t see for OK. I see it now.

00:16:37 Tom Sachs: It’s like 15 second delay, right? So is that look good now?

00:16:43 Erum: Looks great.

00:16:57 Tom Sachs: Alright, so I’m just gonna show you some.

00:17:05 Tom Sachs: Oh, there’s the pencil line.

00:17:08 Tom Sachs: And then the blades to one side don’t cut it down the middle. Always cut to one side or another. Someone, oh Martin.

00:17:21 Tom Sachs: When you’re making the cut, how does it in mind not wander when I’m doing a cut like this is kind of the only time my life that my mind doesn’t wander, it is my place of Zen, probably from ‘cause I learned on the table saw. And if your mind wanders in the table, saw you, your penis gets cut off. So I translated that obsession to this kind of cutting and with a scalpel or the box cutter, because that’s really when you’re in trouble.

00:17:47 Tom Sachs: So I’m going to keep cutting. Show you a little bit. Finish the cut. I’m kind of Pulsing it along, being very, very careful. OK, that’s how you do it cut, that’s all there is to it. Again, leaning ever so slightly forward. I’m gonna show you the difference between flat. Flat and forward is that that’s that much. It’s just it’s just a little rocker right now. Show you one more trick.

00:18:38 Tom Sachs: This is my favorite is called plunge cut. Now I want to cut out this. I want to cut out. I want to cut this out. Alright, that’s garbage so. The way I do it is again, I lean forward. And I lower the blade in very slowly and it plunges in. If this is not on zero, it will skip all over the place. This always just always leave this on zero. Just you know what? Leave it on zero until you you figure out for yourself why. Just always leave that on 0.

00:19:27 Tom Sachs: Alright. There it goes. Can you see now I’m gonna bring you down a little bit. I’m gonna bring it down a little more. Plunge cut.

00:20:01 Tom Sachs: See I only use one clamp and that’s why this whole table is moving. So the second clamp. OK. Plunge cut proceed.

00:20:21 Tom Sachs: OK, so it hopped that hopping thing I was telling, but that’s because I only did a clamp. I did a halfass clamp job. So I going to clamp it properly. Glad you saw that. That’s what you don’t want to do and plunge cuts will hop so it’s kind of an advanced move, but everyone needs to know it. In case you don’t have a drill.

00:20:49 Tom Sachs: When you do this plunge, cut. Put a lot of pressure on the front of the skids.

00:20:58 Tom Sachs: Now you’re in.

00:21:00 Tom Sachs: Now. You can go to corner. You can back it out.

00:21:20 Tom Sachs: You can cut your pieces.

00:21:53 Tom Sachs: Again, now I’m cutting always to the inside of the line.

00:22:16 Tom Sachs: Now I need glasses so I can’t wear glasses ‘cause I’m nearsighted, so I have to wear safety glasses so I can see these last details.

00:22:35 Tom Sachs: OK, so. Pretty good. I am going to later cut these three other holes out and this circle and a bunch of other parts and I’ll take a picture and I’ll post it. And I think that’s pretty much it for basics.

00:22:58 Erum: Tom, how many years does it take to get to where you’re at with a plunge cut?

00:23:05 Tom Sachs: Um?

00:23:07 Erum: How long before someone as novice as me would be allowed to do that?

00:23:10 Tom Sachs: I think OK, so the the question that came in from air underscore rum is how many years would it take? Before you could get as good as I am, I think it’s probably. It depends on your ability to focus like if you could really just only do that. I’d say you could learn to be that good in like. Of pure focus and doing nothing else like not thinking about anything else. If you can do that. I don’t know a couple hours, two or three hours. It’s just when you’re trying to do something else, like I hopped out of that hole because I was I’m on Instagram like an idiot trying to like make a cut an explain it to you. You can’t do that. It’s like don’t don’t try and do that. Only do that. So like for example, if you’re really good at martial arts and you’ve like are can be totally present with the time, the moment of the cut in an hour or two just to understand the tool and like. It’s nuances and some other stuff we didn’t go over, or you know, a dozen years. If you’re like a knucklehead, you could find your black belt in carpentry through use of the. The the jigsaw but I think Erum knowing you really, really well. I think if you spent a day.

00:24:38 Tom Sachs: That like after a day you would be this level if you just did this all day and you had like a pack of 100 blades. Oh yeah, here’s another thing. Highly recommend you buy like when you get involved, just go ahead and like by the pack of 100 blades you will go through them. There are two basic kinds of blades. Wood blades and metal blades. You can use metal blades on wood for fine cuts. There are a bunch of other kind of blades you can even special blades for ceramics.

00:25:10 Tom Sachs: But I you know I had a thought and I want to just change directions for a second and. I want to Sarah Yeah can you keep can you come down here or? I wanted to introduce my beautiful wife. Sarah Bang Bang Hoover. Sarah Bang Bang Hoover? That’s at Sarah who’ve an insert. You can follow her, but I asked her to come in and talk a little bit about Manet the painter and why he’s important to what I do and what we all do in the 21st century.

00:25:54 Sarah Hoover: I can do that.

00:25:55 Tom Sachs: Can you?

00:25:56 Sarah Hoover: I tell you a little bit about Manet.

00:25:59 Sarah Hoover: OK Oh. Thank you and I don’t know what I’m listening.

00:26:06 Tom Sachs: No there listening to you and Erum. Can you give a thumbs up when you can hear her?

00:26:14 Erum: That sounds great.

00:26:17 Sarah Hoover: Don’t go far. OK Manet was born in the beginning of the 1830s in France. OK, thank you and.

00:26:29 Sarah Hoover: He was born to like a wealthy family, not like private jet rich, but like you know his dad was a judge and his mom descended from some kind of European aristocracy. He had like a big safety net. His family wanted him to go into the Navy. He failed the naval exam a couple of times, so he decided to pursue his passion, which was art.

00:26:49 Sarah Hoover: Oh, look at you with the Paintings already. Oh. My assistant. He’s so talented so a couple things you should know about France at the time that Manet decided to go into the art world, which is in the early 1850s. First of all, Paris had just started to undergo a massive reconstruction project under Napoleon, the third. He hired this dude called Baron von Houseman to basically make Paris from a medieval city into a modern city. So do to two technological advancements at the time, 1 being the hot air balloon and the other being somewhat portable photography capabilities. Houseman would go up in his hot air balloon and take pictures of Paris from above.

00:27:31 Sarah Hoover: And he made plans to redo the whole city using this Birds Eye view. Napoleon the third had grown up in London and Switzerland, and he had traveled to America, and he had seen cleaner, more organized cities with beautiful Big Green Parks and well lit monuments and lighting at night. And he wanted Paris to have all of those modern innovations, so he and Houseman destroyed something like 25,000 buildings and they built these huge boulevards and they radically altered the way Paris looked. They made it look more unified. He kind of had run on a platform of doing more for the poor, so he said that this was to create a city where Commerce would be easier where people would be less sick, more sanitation systems could be put in place and it is true that there were a lot of plagues and sickness in Paris because of the lack of infrastructure, but in reality there had been seven uprisings in the center of Paris in the last few years, and it was very difficult for the army to control people because of the kind of rabbit Warren of streets and disorganization. So it was also in an effort to control the population.

00:28:38 Sarah Hoover: So this new Paris this newly conceived modern city meant that people were going outside in a way they never really had before an public life. The the meaning of public life was changing. So you could now go out at night and sit in a cafe and an actual pastime was people watching and walking around and there was this like very sexy idea of catching a glimpse of someone who was walking in the other direction and you maybe would never see them again because of the time Paris was very large. I think it was around 2 million people which was huge for city at the time. If you want to read more about any of this I would recommend. Shelley Rice has written a book about early photography and how it influenced the reconstruction of Paris.

00:29:19 Sarah Hoover: And of course, Baudelaire, who was writing at the time writes about this phenomenon of people watching an cafe life, an public life being out in the streets in a way it never had been before. So one of the things about being out in the streets is that you suddenly were able to come across people You maybe never would have seen in your daily life, like. If you’re a rich person now, you can walk to neighborhoods that are of a different socioeconomic structure and you can see people doing stuff that you didn’t even know people did, like beg or whatever.

00:29:51 Sarah Hoover: So OK, it would became a more diverse and mix city due to that. That’s one thing you have to know about Paris at the time, but other thing that I think is important to understand is what you if you wanted to be an artist. What that looked like in 1850 and what that looked like was very like State sanctioned. If you wanted to be an artist. You would try and study at the Ecole de beaux art, which was the the art Academy that the King ordained and you would study like old master painters and really classic paintings. Maybe if you had some extra money you would tour around Europe and you would see these paintings in person you will learn how to copy them. You would learn how to paint very realistically from people who painted subjects that were considered important enough to be the subjects of paintings, and that words like you know, history, important moments in history like the Coronation of Kings or Greek mythology. And if you got lucky every year, the Academy of art had what they called a salon which was. A big exhibition where you could submit your paintings an if you were accepted they would be shown and the opening night of the salon was like the social events of the season. People came from all around Europe to see it. If you got lucky a rich person, an aristocrat, maybe the King would buy your work or Commission you to make art for him and that was. What your career would be would be making art for rich people.

00:31:17 Sarah Hoover: So of course there’s always counterculture movements against these sorts of state sanctioned kinds of art, so in the 1850s the counterculture movement was called realism. Uh, the best example of a realist painter was Courbet and he was doing things like going out in the streets, which he could do safely for the first time in the history of France and painting poor people and. You know scenes from everyday life like bull fighting and people gambling and people drinking an people begging what they called Gypsies at the time. Which is a word we don’t use now. He was making paintings of all of that. So Manet decided he wanted to paint in this kind of cultural milieu. So he decided to start off by learning how to paint. Like the academic style like in the Academy doubles act. So he went to this teacher called Thomas Couture, who was an Academy teacher and he studied with him for six years and he traveled on throughout Europe. He went to northern Italy. He went to the Netherlands. He went to Spain. He was particularly influenced by the artist, Goya, and Velazquez, and by Flemish painters like Franz Hall, who painted scenes of people in daily life like getting drunk at the pub or whatever.

00:32:33 Sarah Hoover: And um, he came back to Paris, and he had copied all of the old Masters and copied all of the classics, and he had a little brief early 1860s moment painting religious stuff. He had a pretty loose painting style which had been influenced by the paintings he saw in the Netherlands, but you know, he was doing kind of like Boring stuff that everyone was doing like the academic style, painting, religious stuff, whatever. Then in 1863. I don’t know what happened to this dude in 1863, but he got wild and first he painted this painting called Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe the luncheon on the grass which is a great painting and you should Google it. But I’m not going to talk about excellent care about it that much. The One I really like is called Olympia. Oh Tom, show the painting Olympia OK this is what the painting Olympia looks like and so he painted it in 1863. He did not show it at the salon of that year, but the salon of that year was a kind of big deal. One because they rejected an unheard of number of paintings they rejected over 2000 paintings from that salon. And artists were in like this major uproar, so Napoleon the third in order to appear Democratic founded a second salon called the salon, defuse a for everyone had been refused from the first salon and many art historians consider that salon of refused paintings to be the birth of the Avant garde and the first time modern painting was shown in Europe.

00:33:59 Sarah Hoover: So Manet makes this painting in 1863. He doesn’t show it at the salon of 1863. He shows it at the salon of 1865 where it is accepted into the like official state show of art and people fucking hate it. They freak out, they have to put guards around it so people don’t tear it down and let me give you a little background on this painting and why it’s cool. First of all, the structure of how the figures are sitting comes from a painting by Raphael, which no longer exists. It’s from around the year 1500. We know that it at one point existed because another artist made an etching of it in around 1515, and it also comes and is inspired by a painting by Titian, called the Venus of Urbino, and this painting Manet would have seen on his travels to Italy, to have a picture of that of the Titian. The Titian painting is of this Greek goddess of the Venus an. She’s like soft and voluptuous and gorgeous, and the background is beautiful and she’s like looking at you like jump into this painting and fuck me. Let’s do this and she’s I mean she’s a babe. Like she’s really. She’s gorge, look at those boobs everything about her she’s like gently covering her pussy. Her hair is gorgeous. Nipples are perky like we love her. OK. Oh, and there’s a little dog at her feet. He’s sleeping. He’s Cute. He’s soft. You can’t fuck him, but he’s supposed to symbolize Fidelity. OK, so Manet Looks at that and then he makes his version of it and he does this really cool thing he does like a full remix he’s. Really cool and he takes that Venus painting that super classical painting and he copies it, but pops in a sex worker and.

00:35:56 Sarah Hoover: Um? That alone is like pretty radical because he’s doing the realism of Corbeille. But putting this realism in the context of like history, painting of academic painting. But it’s not only that she’s a sex worker, it’s that she’s staring at us with like confrontation in her eyes and she has like a claw, basically clap clasped over her vagina and she kind of is subverting the idea of the male gaze, whereas with the Venus of Urbino. Titian’s painting you’re looking at her and you’re like thinking oh like this chick wants me like this is hot. This is porno, this one is looking at you like I fucking dare you do not come near me unless I say you are allowed to come near me and that’s like very subversive for that I mean depicting a sex worker at all is the first. Uh, oh, by the way, we know she’s a sex worker. There are some symbols at the time, like the the fact that she has a flower behind her ear that she’s being presented with a bouquet of Flowers that she is jewellery on that there’s a cat on the edge of the bed. These all are symbols that you would have understood at the time is meeting. She was a sex worker. What?

00:37:11 Tom Sachs: The shoe?

00:37:12 Sarah Hoover: Oh yeah, she has shoes on and no clothes like. She is. It would have been very clear at the time that she was acordos on on.

00:37:20 Tom Sachs: OK, for those of you turning in, we’re talking about Manet’s Olympia from…

00:37:25 Sarah Hoover: 1863. She also people hated her because she was painted with no idealism, which it completely subverts what would have been a normal, traditional way of painting at the time. She’s Skinny. She’s outlined in black, which is something that Manet took from Goya and Velazquez. The use of the color black people thought this made her look dirty. They said that her skin looked dirty. She’s painted fairly flat. There’s not a real effort by him to make her look super threedimensional and soft and curvy. He was super influenced by Japanese woodcuts, an traditions of Asian painting. That was kind of a new thing. And. We see a black servants in one side of the image presenting her with Flowers. First of all, this is interesting because it gives her enough status that she would have a servant which is a sign of something. It’s a sign of of sex worker having some status, but also you have to keep in mind this painting was made. During what in America it was made during the time of the Civil War, France of course, was neutral in the civil war technically, but it was known behind closed doors that Napoleon the third took the side of the South, and of course slavery still existed in France, slavery had been abolished in France in 1794. An anyone who was a slave living in France got automatic citizenship. Can I look at the camera on your blocking it?

00:38:48 Sarah Hoover: Got automatic citizenship? Which meant that there were communities of black people in Paris and in France from the time of the late 1700s. But then Napoleon brought slavery back in 1802 because he needed people to fuel his colonial empire. And then it was abolished. The slave trade was abolished in 1815. It was formally abolished in the colonies in 1848, but for all purposes slavery still existed in France for the rest of the 1800s. So to show a servant and to paint her as one of the primary figures in this was subversive on its own and. You should also know, I think a couple of things like this servant, this model in real life. Her name is lore. Manet painted an actual portrait of her which she gifted to a fellow painter and a friends and a student he wrote about her in his journals. She posed for him in many other paintings she posed as a nursemaid in a painting that he showed at the salon of 1863. She was a real human and there is a groundbreaking exhibition that started at Columbia University at the wallet Gallery. It was curated by Denise Myrelle. It went to Musee Dorsay about the history of the black figure in art around this time period because many paintings had black models sit for them and we know very little about the identity of these models. But they were a real an important part of the artistic community in France, and they’ve been marginalized from history. And now they’re, you know, their names were never listed on the titles, etc. But they were a very important part of at history, so this show kind of did them justice.

00:40:31 Sarah Hoover: So that’s cool. We know she is her name is lore, but at the time racist rhetoric said that black people were uncivilized because they were overtly sexual and their sexuality was listed as a way to prove that they were less than white people. They were out of control, they were crazed. All they cared about was sex. But by showing this servants with a white sex worker, it’s kind of like Manet is saying. Oh yeah, you. You say all this shit about black people, but here’s a white woman who’s literally selling her body for sex. So it’s kind of questioning this idea of racism that only black people are overtly sexual, which is like kind of cool that he was subverting all of these cultural narratives at the time. So yeah, I mean he’s subverting the narratives about the role of women about sex workers about beauty about these racial cliches, and he does it all in the context of state sanctioned classism and remixes it. By pulling in these figures of the street and these kind of political ideas that were not normally highlighted in classical painting, so that would in turn give subsequent artists permission to politicize their work and to free themselves from the cliches and tropes that the Academy. Delineated as making good art. It would allow for the impressionist movement and then Post Impressionism and many subsequent art movements to exist. I think you could argue that without Manet you would not eventually get Picasso who is considered kind of a backbone of contemporary modern contemporary.

00:42:14 Tom Sachs: So he was kind of the first guy to do it on his own without the system. Yeah, I mean there are other examples of people doing it on their own without the system, but I think that he of course, throughout history, always there’s that. But I think that I mean he was a combination of kind of right place, right time, right? Like he was making work without the aid of you know outside of the rules of the system at a time that more people were seeing art than ever that more people were seeing different kinds of people than ever. At a time of Enlightenment where people were calling for social reforms where people were slavery was ending and it ended in the UK in the 1830s. It would technically end in America later in the 19th century, so it was he was he was primed to be painting in this way. At a time when his ideas could be seen by many, you know, photography had been invented. Journalism was becoming a thing because people for the first time cared about news from other neighborhoods that they you know, 10 years ago, had never even been able to go into. That’s all.

00:43:20 Tom Sachs: Wow, so he really is the the painter of modern life.

00:43:24 Sarah Hoover: He was a painter of modern life and he was a painter of modern ideas, and he’s just a really good painter like the details of that painting are so cool. The blanket that she has at her feet is like sumptuous and beautiful. Everything about it is really special and really turns these classical ideas of Titian on an on their head. And that’s why I like Manet. OK, I have to go do some more stuff.

00:43:53 Tom Sachs: Thank you. Thank you.

00:43:57 Tom Sachs: Come back again to office hours and talk about more art.

00:44:02 Tom Sachs: Love you too, babe. Oop.

00:44:06 Tom Sachs: Headphones in.

00:44:08 Tom Sachs: So just a couple of things. In closing, I just made a couple of mistakes on my notes. All those questions were not from europa_and_back there from at cargo cult scientist, so check out that feed and then last question from.

00:44:24 Tom Sachs: LUSERRAVALLE

00:44:30 Tom Sachs: Is it right?

00:44:32 Tom Sachs: To work even when one is feeling down, or is it better to wait until a good mood arrives? I don’t think anyone can wait. Man. I didn’t wait, he just had to work and you work when you’re feeling good and you work when you’re feeling bad and you just sometimes gotta eat a shit sandwich and keep through it and just. Stay work and you will find through that work that you will find freedom and happiness. Any other announcements from the Home Office? Any other announcements OK?

00:45:10 Tom Sachs: Keep your dick in a vice.

00:45:15 Tom Sachs: End. Thanks end. End