The Art of Asking: Or Trust

       

Memorize this book.  It will do you so much good.  This book is more about trusting than asking and by that I mean you have to trust and respect who you are asking.  You have to trust that the asked will deliver.  You have to trust and hope that they will not make fun of you.  You ultimately have to trust that the universe is mostly good.  Amanda Palmer has been extremely lucky with the universe, but she also participated in numerous trust falls to encourage people to trust her in return and want to help support her.   Amanda is a rock star who likes to get naked.  I hate to define her that way, but just google image her and see what I mean.  She rebelled against her record label and successfully crowdfunded an album.  She is a big advocator for the pay-what-you can patronage. 

     Brene Brown summarizes the book in her introduction:

 "But this book is not about seeing people from safe distances—that seductive place where most of us live, hide, and run to for what we think is emotional safety.  The Art of Asking is a book about cultivating trust and getting as close as possible to love, vulnerability, and connection.  Uncomfortably close. Dangerously close.  Beautifully close.  And uncomfortably close is exactly where we need to be if we want to transform this culture of scarcity and fundamental distrust.”

     The main plot lines driving the book are the successful Kickstarter campaign (which raised $1.2 million, the most any musician has), her years as a street performer, the internal debate of asking her husband, Neil Gaiman, for financial support, and her friend/mentor’s, Anthony Martignetti, struggle with cancer.  There are hundred of tiny, important, and enlightening stories along the way, but these three are the main arches. 

     Of course the biggest plot line is asking.  Amanda breaks down people’s fear of asking: 

"Often it is our own sense that we are undeserving of help that has immobilized us.  Whether it’s in the arts, at work, or in our relationships, we often resist asking not only because we’re afraid of rejection but also because we don’t even think we deserve what we’re asking for. We have to truly believe in the validity of what we’re asking for––which can be incredibly hard work that requires a tightrope walk about the doom-valley of arrogance and entitlement.  And even after finding the balance, how we ask, and how we receive the answer––allowing, even embracing, the no––is just as important as finding that feeling of valid-ness.”

You are worth helping is her battle cry.  This strong fountain of empathy comes from Anthony’s teachings and really taught me something as well:

 "You can never give people what they want, Anthony said.
     What do you mean? 
      […]
     People always want something from you, he said.  Your time. Your love.  Your money.  For you to agree with them and their politics, their point of view.  And you can’t ever give them what they want.  But you–– 
That’s a dreary worldview.   

   Let my finish, clown.  You can’t ever give people what they want.  But you can give them something else.  You can give them empathy.  You can give them understanding.  And that’s a lot, and enough to give."

 This sentiment is my New Year’s resolution to be more empathetic and that will lead to understanding and connecting. 

     Many things were surprising and life-changing/altering, but the thread of her busking adventures as a nine-foot tall bride statue, changes my world view the most.  Amanda would wear a wedding dress, paint herself white, and stand frozen with flowers in her hands until a patron stopped and gave her money.  She would come alive to give the person a flower, her gratitude, and human connection by meeting the person’s gaze and not flinching.  Amanda says, “I was ignored by probably 99 percent of all those who passed me on that sidewalk over my five or six years of Bride-ing.” Resilience.  Keep going and cherish the few that do notice you.    

     A person has to really want to be looked at to take so many chances of rejection.  Which brings us to Amanda’s insightful revelation about the difference between being “looked at” and “seen:”

“There’s a difference between wanting to be looked at and wanting to be seen.
     When you are looked at, your eyes can stay blissfully closed.  You suck energy, you steal the spotlight.  When you are seen, your eyes must be open, as you are seeing and recognizing your witness.  You accept energy and you generate energy.  You create light.
     One is exhibitionism, the other is connection.
     Not everybody wants to be looked at.
     Everybody wants to be seen."

     Artist want to be seen.  They want to feel real and that is often hard because there are no rules to art and becoming a real artist has no definitive guide book.  We are all just feeling around in the dark, but Amanda gives us a magical way to believe in ourselves and go for what we want:

"When you’re an artist, nobody ever tells you or hits you with the magic wand of legitimacy.  You have to hit your own head with your own handmade wand.  And you feel stupid doing it.
     There’s no "correct path" to becoming a real artist.  You might think you’ll gain legitimacy by going to art school, getting published, getting signed to a record label.  But it’s all bullshit, and it’s all in your head.  You’re an artist when you say you are.  And you’re a good artist when you make somebody else experience or feel something deep and unexpected."

And to all those artists who are told to get a real job:

“Nobody would have shouted GET A JOB at the ticket-taker outside a gallery door if The Bride had been on view for a dollar a pop.  It seems that, over time, artists and audiences alike have become accustomed to a legitimizing agent, a transactional middleman to throw professional fairy dust over the exchange.  The times are changing.” 

You work hard at connecting the dots and producing something of value.  Don’t let anyone take that away from you.  Accept the help and sometimes all you have to give is gratitude, sometimes just a flower, but your art is worth it.

This is my original art work inspired by this book.  Take the Daisy Poms.

A good artist can take hate and turn it into something beautiful.

“Have you ever heard of a “sin-eater?’ [asked Anthony.]       

No, I said. Tell me.      

It’s when a local holy man, or a guru, takes on the sins and sufferings of the community by opening to those who are in pain, and filtering the pain and suffering.  He takes all the emotional trash and, through his body, through his love and capacity to stay present, clarifies the pain into compassion.  Lots of religions have their version of it.  Jesus does it for the Christians.      

A community confession-booth attendant, basically, I said. 

Ha. Basically.  There were professional sin-eaters in England.  A guy, for money, would come around and eat bread over the corpse of a dead family member to purge the body of sin before it went to heaven.  It’s also the magic and mystery of what we do––when we nail it––in psychotherapy.  We take on the suffering of others, digest it, transform it.     And artists? I asked. Sounds like art.      

Yeah, good artists do it.  You know the “Artist “ and the “Medicine Man” used to be the same guy.  “Musician” and “Shaman” used to be the same characters, in a way.  Our jobs aren’t that different, you and me.  I’ve seen you in the signing line, I’ve watched you.  Eat the pain.  Send it back into the void as love.”

     Amanda’s career is based on connecting with people.  She provides a wonderful formula:

“Collecting the dots.  Then connecting them.  And then sharing the connections with those around you.  This is how a creative human works.  Collecting, connecting, sharing.”

     She advises in her book to stop worrying about impressing people because if you’re worrying, you’re not connecting.  So lets put connecting at the top of the priority list.  It’s a very rewarding way to find happiness which should be the ultimate goal of all humans.  Though, there is risk involved. She even warns us:

“A warning: With every connection you make online, there’s more potential for criticism.  For every new bridge you build with your community, there’s a new set of trolls who squat underneath."

     She connects with her fans through twitter on a daily bases (she’s a wonderful follow), through her shows where she takes the time to meet her fans, and even through her tours where she often stayed at people’s houses.  Some of this may seem scary to some but Palmer believes that trusting people makes them your allies.

"I’m often asked: How can you trust people so much? Because that’s the only way it works.
     When you accept somebody’s offer for help, whether it’s in the form of food, crash space, money, or love, you have to trust the help offered.  You can’t accept things halfway and walk through the door with your guard up.
     When you openly, radically trust people, they not only take care of you, they become your allies, your family.
     Sometimes people will prove themselves untrustworthy.
     When it happens, the correct response is not:
     Fuck! I knew I couldn’t trust anybody! The correct response is.  Some people just suck.  Moving right along."

     A big take away and quote from this book is “take the donuts.” This comes from discovering that Thoreau had infinite amounts of help throughout his stay at Walden Pond.  He dined at friends houses, the land was a friend’s, and his mother would bring him donuts every week.  Amanda makes a call to just “take the donuts;” take the help. 

“Maybe it comes back to that same old issue: we just can’t see what we do as important enough to merit the help, the love.  Try to picture getting angry at Einstein devouring a donut brought to him by his assistant while he sat slaving on the theory of relativity.  Try to picture getting angry at Florence Nightingale for snacking on a donut while taking a break from tirelessly helping the sick.  It’s difficult."
[…]
“So a plea.
     To the artists, creators, scientists, nonprofit-runners, librarians, strange-thinkers, start-upper, and inventors, to all people everywhere who are afraid to accept the help, in whatever form it’s appearing:
     Please, take the donuts."

Here's her beautiful TED talk if this post hasn't convinced you of her beauty and important messages.

Raised in a Graveyard

This book is about forward motion, about growing up and having hopes and dreams. The Graveyard Book begins with a family’s gruesome murder. All but the baby, the reason for the massacre, die.  The precocious toddler survives because of his curiosity.  He walks out the front door because it has never been wide open for him and he wondered what was out there.  Ultimately, he ends up in a foggy graveyard populated by ghosts, the dead trapped by the bounds of the graveyard for eternity always the same as the day they died.  A kind, motherly woman takes him in and fights for his acceptance in the graveyard since raising a human child is unheard of.  Outsiders can’t even see the ghosts unless they are given the freedom of the graveyard, which is another rarity, but it has been done once before.  

Illustration from the book by Dan McKean.

     Even in death the ghosts have a social hierarchy.  The longest dead are the most important and their opinions carry the most weight.  The oldest man dates back to the Roman occupation and he is against raising the child.  There are a number of reasons this will not work: they cannot leave the grounds for food and supplies, no proper living place, and the all important one is dead people raising a child.  See the whole being stuck exactly the way you died is no way to raise a child.  The dead have no goals.  They exist in a grim mimic of life, where their day is night, no eating, no jobs, but they do socialize.  Plus, the child could only play with children ghosts, which makes for a lonely existence.  

Personal photography by Charity Troy.  Taken in a Syracuse, NY graveyard.

     A mysterious man steps into the argument and advocates for the child staying because he is in danger.  This figure is allowed to leave the graveyard and he promises to take care of the child’s outside needs.  He becomes a guardian and mentor to the renamed Nobody Owens, Bod for short.  The boy has two parents and as good older parents, they protect him from scary truths like why he is not supposed to roam certain overgrown areas of the graveyard or why he’s not supposed to talk to a witch inhabitant.  But the guardian gives Bod straight answers and doesn’t keep things from him.  His parents lies usually lead to curiosity and then trouble anyway.  

Another illustration by Dan McKean.

     The boy goes on several adventures some normal, mostly supernatural.  Despite being mostly free to do what he wants, he pleads to learn, so his mentor brings him books and teaches him to read.  Bod has various homeschool teachers until he finally pleads to go to real school where adventures ensue and he takes on a bully.

By Charity Troy

     Bod cannot know any living person because he is in danger although no one knows why except the guardian.  I will not spoil the book any further.  You will jus have to read to find out why Bod was in danger and experience his adventures of being raised in a graveyard.

By Charity Troy

     Neil Gaiman turns the sadness of death into an acceptable reality with a comfortable afterlife.  This book gives a child (and even adults) a nice little afterlife to imagine all their family and friends.  It shoves death in the reader’s face from the very beginning and makes death an unavoidable life occurrence which doesn’t need to be incredibly sad.  This book is all about death, but really more about life and growing, being free to explore and learn.  

By Charity Troy

     This story is about curiosity saving a child. The boy just escapes death because he is curious about what is on the other side of a door and he keeps wandering, just taking in everything but the danger because, you know, he is a baby.  Nobody’s curiosity spills over into the joy of reading as an escape from loneliness (something this only child knows something about).  His curiosity takes him into an ancient tomb where he discovers the true oldest inhabitant of the graveyard going all the way back to the Druids.  This knowledge eventually saves his life and makes for a happy-ish ending.  This endless sense of curiosity not only takes Bod on adventures but gives him something to hope for, which serves to give a person purpose.  Being curious means you are not letting life pass you by like what the dead have to endure.  A curious person sees something out of the ordinary or interesting and a really good curious person finds out more.  This curiosity is essential to succeeding at anything because if you are not interested you will not engage, won’t enjoy the process, and will not take any knowledge or lesson from the experience.  Even graveyards are good places to explore because there are hundreds of unique and often important people buried there.  Each person experiences their own struggles of light and dark, which makes the past and present world interesting and worth the adventure.  Keep wondering and wandering. 

And to top of this post, a painting I did in honor of graveyards everywhere:

My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me: Reimagined Fairy Tales

Fairy tales invite us to hope for a happy ending were some wonderful person appears to save us.  There is something good to be said about always hoping for better and working for a happier future.  But often the fairy tale teaches reliance on others and a false hope in a mythical happy ending.  The average Disney movie promises love at first sight and a happy ending in which all one's troubles disappear because a mate is found.  Anyone who has fallen out of love, been dumped, broken hearted, loved widely, and married knows this happy ending is unrealistic.  The real world does not deal in perfections.  These flat stories do not explore the wonder of love, of two people connecting on a deeper level for extended periods of time.  Disney fairy tales leave out the complexity and intricateness of life which makes it challenging and rewarding.  

     But if one reads the original inspiration for the tales (think Grimm’s fairy tales), they portray a a darker, grittier side.  In My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me edited by Kate Bernheimer forty authors reimagine non-traditional fairy tales from many different cultures.  The writers embrace the darker more depressing side but also catch the ethereal, anything goes quality of the originals.  Bernheimer believes the growing interest in fairy tales (think Once Upon a Time, Beauty and the Beast, and Grimm) comes from “a growing awareness of human separation from the wild and natural world.”  Humans miss being connected to nature, being amazed by the wonder of the natural world.  She also gives a poetic description on the importance of these stories:

“For in a fairy tale, you find the most wonderful world.  Yes, it is violent; and yes, there is loss.  There is murder, incest, famine, and rot––all of these haunt the stories, as they haunt us.  The fairy-tale world is a real world.  Fairy tales contain a spell that is not false: an invocation to protect those most endangered on this earth.  The meek shall inherit…went one of the very first stories I heard as a child.  I believed it then, and still do.” 

Images from Salvador Dali's illustrations of Alice in Wonderland.

     One example is the tittle story about an evil stepmother and a half brother and sister.  The older boy is from a previous marriage in which the mother died and the young girl is from the current marriage.  The step-mother dislikes being constantly reminded of the first wife when she sees the boy so she dislikes him and forces him to do all the chores.  One day the mother finds the two siblings in bed so in her anger she kills the boy.  She chops him up and keeps him in the freezer and slowly feeds him to the father (who loves the new flavor in his food).  The little girl is an unwilling accomplice in disposing of the body.  She experiences some Tell-Tale Heart guilt so she rescues his remains and buries them under a tree next to his mother.  The tree magically stitches him back together, but this doesn’t result in one big happy family.  The boy leaves his family to go out into to the world, but the step-mother is out of the picture so there is a bright side.  
     The trope of the evil step mother reveals a child’s resistance to change in which the child fears and hates this new person in his or her life (this same resistance and discomfort also appears in adults).  The child just lost a mother and now another one wants to step in.  Most people would have problems with that.  

J.R.R. Tolkien's illustrations for The Hobbit.

     In a world of whirling houses on chicken legs, truly murderous parents, witches, incest, genocide, talking cats, these tales don’t just spin fantastic stories but can teach us something about the fears and wonders of life.  Fairy tales speak to the imagination and hope, but these new stories show we can no longer expect the world to have a happy ending.  Its a good dose of reality.  Hope is important, but do not wait for a prince or fairy godmother to save you.  Save yourself.  

Of Magic and Impotence

A woman knocks on a wooden door.  When no one answers, she turns the knob and enters the empty house while looking over her shoulder.  She heads for the mattress and places a dirty needle in it.  Then, she leaves as quietly as she came with a smirk on her face.  Unlike the Three Bears, the owners of the house return to no Goldilocks.  Instead, the newly married couple are unable to consummate their marriage; the man cannot get it up.  For several months they try to have sex with more and more frustrating attempts.  They hadn’t hoped for a fairy tale love, but they did hope for contentment and children.  The man is fairly young and could get it up before he married.  Each started eyeing other lovers.  Their unhappiness began to show every time they went out in public.  At the local tavern, in the market, every one knew.  The husband’s wandering eye lands on a shop girl, but he is worried he’ll have the same problem.  He risks it and finds out he is not impotent all the time.  After months of disappointing tries, the couple fear an ex-lover turned witch caste a spell on their marriage. 
     

Roped Penis from Ms 25526, National Library of France.  Marginal illustration of The Romance of the Rose.

     Since they live in the middle ages when the Catholic Church ruled Europe, they were not allowed to get a divorce at least not until three years of marriage.  One solution was to go directly to the source and find out what kind of magic the witch used.  There were all kinds of impotence magic ranging from placing a heart wrapped in a bull's testicle under the bed, placing the halves of a acorn on opposite sides of the road and having the lovers walk past, to enchanting a lock and key and throwing them down separate wells.  All of these examples could be reversed by removing the objects from the bedroom (besides wouldn't a heart wrapped in a testicle begin to smell?), putting the acorn back together, and retrieving the lock and key from the wells.  A good rule of thumb was to attempt sex in another bed and see if it worked, then the couple could just find whatever was in their bedroom and remove it.  Sometimes magical impotence was harder to cure because the witch could die and leave no clue as to how she (all but one case of impotence magic derives from a female, usually a very jealous lover) caste the spell. 
     All these salacious stories dealing with medieval impotence magic are collected in Magic and Impotence in the Middle Ages by Catherine Rider.  In this book, she argues for the importance of impotence magic during the middle ages and how it was mainly related to marriage laws.  She uses various sources from pastoral sermons and guide books to law documents, commentaries, religious texts, theological debates, magic books, and medical texts.  All the records of impotence magic debate whether or not the couple could divorce.  Many thought the magic was temporary so the couple should stay together, but sometimes the couple never could shake the evil magic from their marriage.  But if the impotence was permanent, they further debated if the couple could remarry after a divorce.  Some said the cursed man could remarry but not the woman.  It's all very murky when trying to nail down laws about magical impotence (it's usually not just regular medical impotence).  These records and debates show impotence magic was common enough that laws needed to be made to deal with the problems it brought up. 
     Law makers and theologians were not the only ones who discussed impotence magic.  Learned books on magic talked about the ways it happened and how to cure it.  Even medical writers mentioned impotence magic as a last resort in trying to cure impotence, so the belief in magic was widespread during the middle ages as evidenced by the witch burnings during the Inquisition.

Phallus Presentation from Ms 25526, National Library of France.  Marginal illustration of The Romance of the Rose.

     Returning to the first couple.  Once they suspected witchcraft they searched the bedroom for the bewitched object, but never found the needle.  They did attempt sex outside of their bed and were able to finally enjoy themselves.  They searched the man’s past lovers to see if they could break the spell, but they never flushed out the witch.  
     Years later their daughter prepares to marry a man she does not know.  All the fear and worry is on her face.  She only knows him through his cheater reputation.  While she dresses for the small ceremony, her grandmother slips into the room.  The old woman has a reputation for being wise but a little eccentric.  There are quiet rumors she is a witch.  The old lady gives the girl a look of love tinged with worry and understanding.  Her expression quickly changes to business.  
     “Now deary,” said the old woman, “ I know you are worried about this marriage, especially his cheating heart.  Most people would tell you to turn a blind eye to his bad behavior, but not me.  I’ve got some tricks up my sleeve for you.”  
     And as she said “sleeve” she pulled a piece of paper out of her’s.  It had ingredients and rhyming words on it.  The note nor the grandmother said what the spell would do, but the girl knew it was something to do with cheating men.  The girl was fearful of magic because the law would prosecute practitioners by burning them, the church forbad it, and it was a dangerous power (rumors spread about spoiled spells killing people and the consequences of choosing magic to solve problems).  But she didn’t throw the paper away.  She stored it for years until she almost forgot about it.  
     She married the man and for a while they were fairly happy.  As long as she did what he said, they were content.  Until one night he did not come home.  She imagined him dead in a ditch and her having to live with her parents again or even worse his parents. He came home the next afternoon like nothing happened.  After that, their contentment dwindled and he didn’t come home many nights. This pattern continued for a while until the girl could not take it anymore.  She fought and screamed, but that only drove him farther away into other’s arms.  At least that is what the other townspeople said, but they forgot he was a cheater before he married.  
     She finally came to a breaking point so she pulled out the lining in her plain jewelry box and there sat the spell.  One of the many nights he did not return home, she bought the ingredients and said the words not knowing what it would do.  He came back very grumpy the next day.  The bad mood continued for weeks and he started staying home more.  After months of frustration he finally discovered he could only have sex with his wife.  He was furious at his wife for a while and blamed her for his problems, but he never found any proof so they lived happily ever after.  Sort of. 

Witch's Sabbath by Parmigianino in 1530. 

                                                     
All the accounts of impotence are rooted in a jealous woman’s attempts at revenge.  All these accounts came from the mouths of men fearful of independent women and of the mysterious magic that kept them from enjoying themselves.  The problem with believing in magic and miracles is often those explanations hide the real physical problem behind them.  

Lessons from history:
1. Never anger a witch.
2. Be faithful or you just might lose a body part.
3. Keep your jealousy in check or you might get burned at the stake. 
4. Be open to other explanations. 

Wandering Womb

Has your doctor ever prescribed sex to cure a headache?  Well, that's what most doctors during ancient through the 19th century thought was the cure for female diseases.  Women with any kind of pain, tiredness, or imbalance would visit a doctor and he would say her womb wandered around her body.  Then he would suggest sex, pregnancy, and fumigating the vagina with nice smells to bring the womb back to its rightful place.  They seriously believed the womb traveled around the body like an animal.  No seriously.  This theory is even better than the dancing babies in the womb.

From MS 399 in Bodleian Library from 1292.  Woman suffering from wandering womb.

The ancient Greek doctor Hippocrates, known for founding medicine, said the womb was like an animal.  Another ancient doctor Aretaeus said, 

“It [the womb] delights also in fragrant smells, and advances towards them; and it has an aversion to fetid smells, and flees from them; and, on the whole, the womb is like an animal within an animal.”

The Doctor's Visit by Jan Steen from 1600.  This woman is ill because her womb is moving about her body. The wooden box in the lower left is for fumigating her vagina.  It goes under her skirts.  

Since the womb was like an animal, it had needs and wants just like any another being.  The womb needed food and entertainment and if it didn’t have these things, it would move around searching for them.  Wandering wombs ate semen and their favorite forms of entertainment were sex and nurturing fetuses.  And additionally, like Aretaeus said the womb liked nice smells.  So if the woman was religious and wanted to preserve her chastity, the doctor may burn something that smells nice near her vagina or make her smell something really bad to chase the womb back to its proper place.  The most effective treatments were sex and pregnancy, though.  Doctors took this ailment seriously because if the womb did not return within six months, the woman would die.  

Hysterical women under hypnosis. 

This belief made it all the way to the 19th century where it became known as hysteria.  So all those images of women fainting and being revived with smelling salts come from this medical belief.  Other treatments included hypnosis, vibrating devices, and jets of water aimed at the stomach.  During the 18th century and the age of the corset, the symptoms probably came from the tight corsets women wore.  Before this time, it was basically any sickness a female suffered.  

Illustration of water treatment for wandering womb. 

Up until Freud, most doctors believed the womb wandered.   Freud said even men get hysteria and claimed the problem was all in the mind, not in an animal-like womb.  

This theory kept women in check and absolutely dependent on men for their health.  Not only were all doctors men but the women needed sex and semen in order to be healthy.  Just another example of the misogyny that held women down.  

Women today can at least be thankful they do not have to worry about their wombs wandering around their bodies and causing all kinds of illnesses.  That’s one less thing we have to worry about.  

Fighting for Art History

“The good news is that wisdom and knowledge do actually come with age.”

David by Michelangelo

Being from small town Alabama I have to explain what art history is almost every time I proclaim what my major was in school.  Most people still think I am just an artist and not a historian.  But also being from the South means the people are too nice to question my odd and unimportant choice, especially when you compare the abstraction of art to the very productive farming lifestyle that reigns in the country.  Because of this lack of understanding, I built an arsenal of reasons art is important.  It teaches us about the past, which teaches us about the present.  It provides a creative outlet for emotions.  It will make our souls grow.  The most important one is art reflects life.  It shows us how people live and why they struggle or seek pleasure.  Art teaches us how to live.  It is far more important than most people give it credit.  

At Syracuse’s Florence Convocation, my professor Dr. Gary Radke gave an excellent commencement address on the importance of art history.  This professor is the reason I slaved for two years in the arctic cold of Syracuse.  Dr. Radke mainly discusses Renaissance art history because that is the focus of the graduate program in Florence but his lessons and reasons apply to all art history.  His speech centers around the question and title “What Good Is a Degree in Renaissance Art History?”  Highlights from the video follow.

Dr. Radke begins by joking about the perks of getting a Renaissance art history degree: 

“Let me start by giving a short and flippant answer to my question 'what good is a degree in Renaissance Art History?' It can land you a great gig in Florence.”

Travel is one of the great life enrichers.  It can take you out of your every day life and guide you to see a whole different perspective.  

He addresses the monetary reasons for receiving a degree.  He uses data to show art historians may not make the most money, but they do make money which increases as they work their way up.  He does this to devalue the material motivations and lead into some of the the real reasons:

“Many people who majored in art history do not earn a great deal of money, but art history does not make you poor.  We, of course, would claim that it actually enriches both us and our society.”

He dismisses the monetary means and enters into the skills and insights art history teaches those who study it:

“If we were to accurately and honestly address the question “what good is a degree in Renaissance art history?” We obviously need to make sure we don’t define words like ‘valuable' and ‘best' and ‘worst' primarily in monetary terms. First, I think we need to appreciate and celebrate how a degree in Renaissance art teaches us to see the world clearly and accurately.  Art historians pay attention to detail.  Not just to what is beautiful or pleasing but to how humans strategically use color, line, image, and space to manipulate one another and the world around us. Renaissance art historians are always alert to the fact that what we see and the spaces and buildings we inhabit make us feel certain things, believe certain things, sometimes buy certain things, often dismiss other things...Renaissance art historians learn both to appreciate the art and skill with which 15th and 16th century artists and politicians shaped their messages.  This was the age of Machiavelli after all. But we also take great care to resist and contest these images. We art historians unmask the structures of power.” 

Niccolo Machiavelli by Santi di Tito

We see images every day and it is important to understand how the visual affects us.  This is similar to the experiment Facebook conducted where they manipulated people’s news feeds to see the effect of positive or negative emotions on people.  Turns out we are more negative if we are exposed to the negative and more positive if exposed to positive emotions. We are easily influenced.  Instead of just accepting these influences, art historians look at a visual image and ask why?  We do not just accept the image at face value; we want to dissect it and learn from it.  Visual images are made by people and generally every stroke, mark, shape, object is placed there for some reason and we want to find out why.  

For example take this image which provides a background for the speech:

The Last Supper by Taddeo Gaddi. Art historians ask why is John reclining in Jesus's lap?  Is it to show their close relationship?  Gaddi also doubly diminished Judas by placing him on the opposite side of the table and by making him smaller than the other figures even though perspective laws say he should be the largest because he is the closest.  Why did the artist need to diminish Judas so much?  It is so the audience will know he is the one who betrayed Jesus.  

Besides asking questions, art history teaches us to read critically:

“Renaissance art history then teaches us not just to analyze the visual but to understand and appreciate the psychological and social as well. A degree in Renaissance art history also teaches people how to read critically.  In a world where words now fly around us at dizzying speed, people in art history are extremely well prepared to sort through the verbal den and ferret out what counts.  We read carefully and closely in order to learn how different people at different times looked and saw and understood things differently than we do. Reading frees us. Liberates us from myopic insular vision and inevitably enriches our own writing and communication as well.”

Reading allows people to enter into another’s thoughts and see another perspective and in turn readers empathize more.  

“We treasure what we learn because we are inspired to look beyond ourselves and our own times and our own places to connect in some distinctly spiritual way with human beings who came before us and who left sweet fruits for us to contemplate and enjoy. Studying Renaissance art history changes and enriches lives.”

Vitruvian Man by Leonardo

To sum up and resolutely answer the question:

“What good is a degree in Renaissance art history?  It teaches people to look creatively at the world around them.  It empowers us to embrace both the past and present. It makes us clear-eyed about how art, architecture, and everything visual can liberate and control us. It teaches us how to read and write critically and effectively.  It taps into our deepest spiritual dimension and it demands that we share our love and passion for the history and the art and the visual with others. I’m proud to say that Renaissance art historians do make mute stones speak. We give voice to the thoughts and ideas that our fellow humans wanted to record and share centuries before the days of digital reproduction, radio, or film.  In that way, a degree in Renaissance art history offers the joys of having the past continue to live through and well beyond us."

Plus, art history contains some pretty crazy images and ideas. See images about dancing babies in the womb, Medieval serial killer fashion, and books bound in human flesh.

Revisit this speech if you ever question the importance of art and the study of the past. 

Dancing, Tumbling, and Posing Babies in the Womb

I have a knack for enjoying the more salacious and little talked about aspects of art.  We may think of this as a taboo topic or even just a topic we do not literally think about much, but babies in the womb are all over the place from the political debate on abortion (stay out of my vagina) to pictures of ultrasounds posted on Facebook.  The medieval idea of the baby in the womb is pretty hilarious.  

This baby is doing yoga:

It’s going to be one calm and fit baby. (Disclaimer: this baby is probably not doing yoga. They probably don't know what yoga is in the 15th century.) Images like this one populate medieval manuscripts.  These illustrations show toddlers in the womb in silly classical poses.  I am not kidding.  This is what they believed babies were like in the womb!  The various poses do speak to their (and by ‘their’ I mean men) knowledge of the baby kicking. 

Manuscript 3701-15 created in the 9th-11th century from Muscio Medicus’ Musitio Gynaecia, a treatise on gynecology.

Before the Enlightenment, there were many interpretations on how the mysterious womb looked and functioned.  At one time they thought the uterus was the same as the penis except turned inside the body.  Another theory claimed the womb was divided into seven chambers, one for each day of the week.  This meant that up to seven babies could be born from one pregnancy.  

Notice these last two wombs have horns.  This is because doctors would autopsy animals and they just applied the structure to those uteri to humans.  
     
Another theory held on to the chamber idea but said there was only two: one for males and one for females.  They later adjusted it to accommodate a third chamber for hermaphrodites. 

Then the magnificent Leonardo came along and gave history this image:

It is slightly more accurate, but it was only a sketch and not seen outside Leonardo’s circle of friends.  So the ideas did not spread.  Historical gossip says Leonardo fished a drowned pregnant woman out of the Arno River in Florence and snuck her to an underground room to autopsy.  He had to keep it secret because it was against church law to cut open an innocent person because the body needed to be whole for the last judgment.  

Any knowledge of the human body came from very stiff public autopsies of executed criminals.  The doctor would read from a book which told what to do and a barber (because they were good with their hands and had similar utensils) would do the dirty work.  Any movement outside the book was not allowed.  

Imagine the terror of being caught Leonardo went through to acquire this image.  Imagine the stench of the decaying body, not on ice and probably in a closed stuffy room with no windows.  This image is a big deal for history because Leonardo experimented with the body and was able to view things most doctors never dreamed of.  

Renaissance artists dared to slice open the truth in their pursuit to realistically depict nature.  To accurately draw something, you had to understand it.  A true Renaissance man/woman is insatiably curious about all aspects of life.  A trait our focus-on-one-field culture needs to take into consideration.  Should we know a lot about a little or a little about a lot?  

For one, my curiosity knows very few limits (one being math, but if someone could explain how it works in the real world, I might like it).  Despite the saying "curiosity killed the cat," wonder is a good trait.  Diving into the mysteries of the female body just teaches people how it works and that leads to better health for females.  Diving into any mystery may have it's risks, but greater knowledge for all is usually the reward.